Your Interesting Thought for the Day

[scarlettina]

Sustainable Aliens: A New Theory On Why E.T. Hasn't Arrived Yet

What's interesting to me about this (and there are many, many elements about this that are interesting to me) is that I've been slowly, ever-so-slowly working on a piece about sustainability on an alien world, an idea that's grown at a glacial pace out of my trip to Africa two years ago....

Comments

[oldmangrumpus.livejournal.com]

What's interesting to me is the ways in which we impose our own societal norms on possible alien life. First nuclear war, now environmental concerns. And even before that, the Fermi Paradox, arising from a society built on exploration and colonization, assumes that alien life will follow the same course. But perhaps an alien society won't want to pay the costs, or has it's own planet in environmental balance, or has made its peace with its mortality as a species.

[keikaimalu.livejournal.com]

And here I thought it was because of the real-world limits imposed by the speed of light.

They may be out there, but they may not be able to get here. Even their radio transmissions could take hundreds of thousands of years.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

As I just posted to the thread:

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The hypothesis the galaxies should be teeming with intelligent life depends on the idea that they develop "quickly," for galactic values of quickly. Ben Bova kicked around in the 1970s the idea that h. sap. may turn out to be one of the "old ones," and while sentience may be widespread, we may be among the first.

Another possibility, related to the idea of sustainability, is that while sentience, again, is widespread, fossil fuels and the jump start they provide to industrialism are not. That could mean having to negotiate a quantum jump from animal-and-plant power straight to nukes (just about all "sustainable" energy sources being greatly helped by a fossil fuel kickstart). Such a transition may not be impossible, but it may be as rare as it sounds.