Aliens and the Fermi Paradox

Consciocentric thoughts on life in the universe and the Fermi paradox

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One of the most interesting topics of debate in cosmology, biology, and physics surrounds the question about the origins of life, and whether or not there are aliens living elsewhere in the universe.   From the perspective of cosmology and biology, it appears abundantly likely that aliens exist elsewhere in the universe.   

An Abundance of Life on Earth
Here on Earth, we find life in every corner of the planet.   There are an estimated 8 million different forms of life on this planet alone, and we find different types of life in virtually every nook and cranny of the planet -- including in the depths of our ocean where pressure is crushing and there is no light, in boiling hot springs, near volcanic activity, and even in our atmosphere.   Life is abundant and seems to find a way to not only survive, but thrive in various forms and in various environmental conditions.    In the studies of biology, thermodynamics and dissipative adaptation, there is growing evidence that the formation of life is basically guaranteed in any situation where there is thermodynamic energy available, and matter which can react through chemistry.   The thermodynamic energy may be from sunlight, radioactive decay, or from the heat and pressure of gravity... and anywhere there is matter (elements of hydrogen, helium, carbon, silicon, oxygen, etc..), the electromagnetic force allows for molecular chemistry to occur, and for novel molecular combinations to form.   

An Abundance of Stars and Planets
In just our local Milky Way Galaxy, it is estimated there are well over 100 billion stars (100,000,000,000), with most likely trillions of planets orbiting them all together.   In the entire observable universe, astronomers estimate there are approximately 200 sextillion stars (200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).   Every one of those stars may have dozens of planets and moons which may possibly support life.   Given the incredible amount of stars and planets out there, and our observations for how prevalant life is on earth, it seems absurb to think that our planet is the only one that has life on it.   In fact, its incredibly likely that with time to explore just our local solar system, we may find life on multiple other planets and moons in our close neighborhood.   Mars, Venus, Callisto, Ganymede and Titan are all planets/moons which astronomers and biologists believe may contain some forms of "alien life".   It might be a couple decades to centuries before we can confirm or deny this, once we have explored out system with more robots and astronauts.    From the viewpoint of the Consciocentric paradigm, we would say it is highly likely there is alien life in our own solar system, let alone the sextillions of other systems in the universe.   

Categorizations of Life
Of the estimated 8 million different forms of life on Earth, clearly they are not all equal.  There is one species which has become the overwhelmingly dominant form of life on our planet -- Homo Sapiens (Humans).  There are thousands of other species however, which are more advanced, evolved forms of life.   There are tens of thousands of different mammals and species of fish, with hundreds of thousands more eukaryotic organisms.   The most pessimistic scientists may view humans as the only truly intelligent species, but most scientists and philosophers, along with the general public sees that there are many species which seem to possess intelligence, memory, planning and reasoning.  Our dogs, cats and other pets, chimpanzees and many of the larger mammals and sea creatures all have shown high level functioning of life.   Clearly humans are an order of magnitude ahead of other species though. 

The Advanced Life of Homo Sapiens and the Time Line Flicker of Intelligence
The human capabilities of advanced tool creation and language are two monumental inventions of our homo sapien history that have allowed us to leapfrog ahead of all other species on the planet, and exert dominant control over other species, our environment and planetary biosphere.   It is interesting to not that the invention of tool usage is only estimated at about 250,000 years ago, our first agriculture began only 12,000 years ago, and first written language records only date back about 5,000 years ago.   And all of the advanced technological and industrial capabilities which we take for granted in our daily lives have only begun to pop up around 300 years ago.   Our ability to launch vehicles into space is less than 100 years old, and all the communications and information age advancements have popped up in the past few decades.     There is this sort of exponential curve of advancement we are currently experiencing since the "Age of Enlightenment" and industrial revolution began.    In the grand scheme of the age of the universe (~13 billion years), or just the age of our planet Earth (~4.5 billion years), the time of "advanced human intelligence and capabilities" looks like a quick flicker of light in the overall time span which life could exist.   Its sometimes hard to take a step back and consider spans of time longer than our lifespans, let alone our day to day grind...  but to discuss the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, we must be ever aware of geological and cosmological time scales that are orders of magnitude greater than our entire species history has existed, let alone the small fraction of that time in which we have been as advanced as we are now.     For reference/illustration:  if you squeeze the entire history of the Earth down to a timescale of 1 Hour, the whole 250,000 year period since invention of tools would occur in a flicker of just 200 milliseconds (a fraction of a second).  Our advanced human civilization would look nothing more than a quick flicker and then disappear in a one hour condensed version of Earth history.

The Chance of Advanced Alien Life and the Fermi Paradox
When cosmologists, biologists and physicists consider the above abundance of life on earth, and the abundance of stars and planets in the universe, it becomes almost a guarantee that we can say "there is alien life out there, and it is abundant".   This is the overall view of the Consciocentric paradigm.    The next question becomes:  "Is that alien life intelligent / advanced"  This is where the debate about aliens really is focused.   There may be some rare "Goldilocks" requirements that a planet needs to exist in a very specific region of a very specific sized star, with planetary characteristics similar to Earth, for an advanced form of live like us to evolve.   There may need to be liquid water or other fluids, there may need to be a breathable atmosphere or specific weather systems.   Even if this is the case though, and its a one in a billion type of chance to have the perfect Goldilocks planet in a given star system, that still would lead us to believe there are potentially billions of planets out there which could support advanced life.   Next we have to consider that maybe homo-sapien level intelligence, and advanced tool creation, cultivation of land, and language is extremely rare.   Maybe only 1 in a million Goldilocks planets might result in life advancing beyond chimpanzee level intelligence.   But even if that is the case, it still would be expected that there should be at least thousands of other advanced alien life forms out there in the universe with technology and capabilities equal to or greater than us.   So then, cosmologists ask:  Where are they?   Why haven't we detected traces of advanced, space faring alien civilizations?   This is the core of the "Fermi Paradox", which was first posited by Nobel prize winning physicist, Enrico Fermi.

Solving the Fermi Paradox
There are several possibilities which might explain our lack of advanced alien detection and the Fermi paradox. 

1. It may just be that we haven't been searching for advanced aliens for long enough to find signs of them, or our technology and detection methods are just insufficient at this time.   Due to the inverse square law, the potential for light wave / radio wave scattering in space, and cosmic noise, detecting a distance civilization's communications (even if they use similar methods to us) becomes incredibly hard.   Also, we are only searching during this time period that we're currently an advanced civililization -- which, in the cosmological time scale is just a momentary flicker in time.

2. The next consideration is that there may have been advanced aliens at some point in cosmological time, but they may have gone extinct, due to a natural catastrophic event.   On our planet Earth, we face the possibility of extinction from a variety of sources.   We know our planet has a long history of stellar bombardment of asteroids.  The dinosaurs went extinct from just such an event, and its entirely possible that another large asteroid could annihilate humanity.   

3. We face the possibility that man made or natural climate change may result in destabilizing the planetary ecosystem and resulting in another ice age, destabilization of our atmosphere, or other changes which result in the planet being incapable of supporting our form of human life. 

4. We may outright destroy ourselves.   With the discovery of nuclear energy, fission and fusion bombs and our geopolitical anomosities, we have been on the brink of a massive thermonuclear war which would make Earth unlivable for humans.   During the Cuban Missle Crisis, we came extremely close to this possibility.   A single mad man in power could trigger a global thermonuclear war.   Also, current advancements in Artificial Intelligence pose a potentially unique threat to humanity.   The point here being that its easy to imagine that if other advanced alien life forms have evolved in the universe, they may run into similar possibilities for extinction.  

Summing Up the Consciocentric View of Aliens
It is the viewpoint of the Consciocentric paradigm that life will occur in nearly any situation that the conditions are available, with a source of thermodynamic energy that can be used, and the material elements to form more advanced molecules and micro organisms.   Life is most likely abundant throughout the universe, and even in our own solar system, perhaps on the surface or underground layers of Venus or Mars, or on some of the oceanic moons of Jupiter and Saturn.  

Advanced life, equivalent to or exceeding the capabilities of our human civilization may be millions of times less likely however.   We may be in a situation where we have gotten an extremely favorable one to a million chance of perfect Goldilocks planet and conditions with our atmosphere, gravity, and resources, which have allowed homo-sapiens to evolve, invent tool usage, agriculture and language, and proceed through our industrial and scientific revolutions into the communications and information ages where we have access to space travel and interstellar exploration.    So, while its almost certain that there is abundant alien life out there, and even "intelligent alien life" like many mammals and other animals on Earth, the level of advancement of humans may be extremely rare.  That being said, just considering the orders of magnitude of stars and planets in the galaxy, there should be more advanced civilizations out there like us, or beyond us in terms of capabilities.    It may be that we just haven't found them yet, due to the distances involved and inverse square laws of falloff of light and radio signals.   Also, while science fiction likes to mull about the possibilities of faster than light travel, its entirely possible that it is just impossible due to the laws of physics, and that even getting close to the speed of light may be untenable due to a variety of factors.     

Also, due to the potential extinction events and possible limited time windows of advanced civilizations, it may be that civilizations which may have formed like us exist for hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of years before going extinct, but that sort of time window may be just a momentary flicker of light in comparison to the cosmological time scales and timing of other similar civilizations.    

We feel that it is likely though, that as our space infrastructure improves and we develop much larger telescopes and more advanced technologies for detection, that its likely that in the next few hundred years we will find strong evidence of other advanced civilizations that may be alive currently (with their time difference in light years), or their relics left behind orbiting planets.