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Where Is Everybody?

A literal interpretation of Fermi’s Paradox embraces a number of invalid assumptions. It therefore has irreconcilable problems, putting it in conflict with reality. Some misguided individuals attempt to use Fermi’s Paradox as if it were proof that Earth is the only home of intelligent life in the Universe. They are erroneous and likely misunderstand the original point of Professor Fermi’s question.

BILL M. TRACER

FERMI’S PARADOX

Enrico Fermi was a highly distinguished, world-renowned physicist. In 1950, he addressed the issue of whether there was intelligent life in the universe, and if there was, why had it not contacted Earth?

He came to the conclusion that there was an apparent contradiction between the high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and humanity’s apparent lack of contact with, or observational evidence for, such civilizations. The basic points of Fermi’s argument follow:

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Fig. 2.1. Is there intelligent life elsewhere? Photo courtesy of NASA.

According to this line of thinking, Earth should have already been colonized or at least visited long ago. However, according to Fermi, no convincing evidence of this exists. Hence, his famous question, which is said to have been raised during a lunchtime conversation with other physicists about the possibility of extraterrestrial life:

Where is everybody?

The Fermi paradox can be summed up in the following way: The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems contradicted by the lack of observational evidence to support it.

But there is a large fly in Fermi’s ointment; his assertion that there was no evidence in the historical and archaeological records was based on the assumption that conventional scholars could explain and dismiss all of history’s mysteries.

While he declared there was no evidence, he also failed to even acknowledge that there were anomalies in the historical and archaeological records, which he had not analyzed and therefore not dismissed on any clear scientific basis.

Though his argument is internally consistent with the known astronomical facts, I would beg to differ about the assertions concerning colonization and contact. Fermi, and the majority of his colleagues, failed to examine the archaeological, historical, and cultural evidence the way he examined the physics of space-time, energy, and matter.

Lacking that rigor, he made a false assumption by asserting there was no evidence to support contact and colonization in Earth’s or humanity’s records.

We need to know what archaeological evidence, if any, Fermi investigated to arrive at that conclusion. Did he systematically collect and analyze the data contained in the Great Pyramid? Or did he simply accept the conventional interpretations offered by archaeologists? The latter was obviously the case.

Did he know that the base of the Great Pyramid was leveled with such precision that we could only duplicate it today using laser leveling technology? (This analysis was conducted by the engineering firm Daniel Mann Johnson & Mendenhall.)

Have any of our physicists and astronomers carefully considered the fact that no mummies were ever found in any of the major pyramids?

In addition, have these physicists ever thought through the reasons the Great Pyramid lacks predecessors, the hundreds or even thousands of smaller, less sophisticated pyramids it would have taken to gain the knowledge, skills, and organizational infrastructure needed to build it or them?

We must wonder why a scientist of Fermi’s stature would make such a blanket statement without supporting it in any way. Unfortunately, here we are faced with one of the severe weaknesses of our own civilization: overspecialization.

Fermi was a stellar physicist, but he appears to have been just another bozo on the bus the moment he stepped out of his specialty to weigh in where many disciplines need to be involved.

I have repeatedly invited hard scientists to apply their knowledge, technologies, and skills to make a thorough investigation of the Great Pyramid. Now they must also include the geological and geographical facts raised in the next chapter. I hope they will be happy to load all of the data they have accumulated over decades of research into a Cray supercomputer to see what results it comes up with.

Now I have my own paradox to present to the scientific community:

Since you dismiss the histories handed down by our ancestors as being nothing more than mere myths (apparently spun by ignorant, childish minds) that have no intrinsic value or relevancy to scientific investigations, then why do you, contrarily, insist that they were intelligent enough to engineer plant genetics, build the Great Pyramid, and invent the sexagesimal numeric system that is still the basis of timekeeping?

You see, you cannot have it both ways; either our ancestors knew what they were talking about and doing, or they did not, so which way is it? The Sumerians were quite clear in their historical documents: another race of beings, the Anunnaki, built that civilization. The Sumerians were merely workers taking orders or scribes keeping track of inventories and events.

The late astronomer Carl Sagan had enough insight into human nature, politics, and history to realize that there were historical and archaeological mysteries that raised questions that needed serious investigation.1 But even his ideas fell on deaf ears, and Sagan was the main public spokesman for the scientific community back in the 1970s.

Physicists, astronomers, and other scientists are so focused on their own narrow fields that they do not take the time to do serious research into other fields. Instead, they seem to simply accept the “findings” and “interpretations” of the archaeological and historical communities as having been scientifically verified.

As we shall soon see, that is a big mistake, since such is not the case.

Despite the apparent paradox raised by Fermi, he actually confirmed two key supports for the Genesis Race theory: (1) there are billions of stars older than our sun, and (2) some of these stars evolved intelligent life and interstellar travel.

The physicist seems not to have considered the possibility that a superior civilization might prefer to remain concealed from its colonized planets. There is no reason to assume that any advanced race would or should act in ways we consider logical to prove their existence.

This is why the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project is based on a series of false presumptions.

Just because we have gone the radio, electromagnetic, technological route does not mean an extraterrestrial civilization would have done the same. Or if they had, that they would openly broadcast that fact.

Turned around, there actually seems to be a very good and simple explanation for the absence of evidence showing discernable contact. It is illustrated by the devastating consequences that isolated primitive human cultures have endured after suddenly being exposed to modern civilization.

That fact is well established, and it would seem that Fermi and other living scientists ought to be aware of the hard lessons learned from it.

Sagan was the exception. He urged the scientific community to investigate the histories of ancient civilizations. He was convinced that there was something to the so-called myths; too bad that his suggestions were not acted on.

The evidence of the existence of highly superior civilizations should not be obvious; in fact, we should expect it to be well camouflaged. Apparently it has been because even our smartest and most well-educated scientists cannot recognize it for what it is.

The Great Pyramid and the geometrical configurations of Earth’s major rivers and land masses are like an invisible elephant standing in the room yet going unnoticed.

THE DRAKE EQUATION

The Fermi paradox is used as a kind of thought experiment to test any one of numerous theories about the possibility of there being intelligent life in the universe and whether an advanced civilization has ever existed, colonized planets, or made contact with humanity at any point in time.

The paradox involves what is referred to as the great silence, the fact that there is seemingly no hard evidence to support the statistical findings that always conclude that there must be intelligent life out there.

I have refuted the no-contact assumption; there is evidence of extraterrestrial contact on Earth, and there may be good reasons that extraterrestrial civilizations do not broadcast their presence.

The most closely related theoretical work to Fermi’s was done by Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics Frank Drake, Ph.D., at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1961, he formulated a set of principles that have become known as the Drake Equation. The SETI project has based their research models on his work.

Drake formulated the equation a decade after Fermi raised his objections, in an attempt to find a systematic means to evaluate the numerous probabilities involved in the “alien life” debate. The equation is a mathematical formula used to estimate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.2

The speculative equation factors in:

  1. The rate of star formation in the galaxy
  2. The fraction of stars with planets and the number of planets per star that are habitable
  3. The fraction of those planets that develop life
  4. The fraction of intelligent life and the further fraction of detectable technological intelligent life
  5. The length of time such civilizations are detectable

In the final analysis, the equation is a close relative of the Fermi paradox. Drake suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations (again presumed) suggests that technological civilizations tend to vanish rather quickly.

A central objection to the formula is that it assumes that civilizations arise and then die out within their original solar systems. If interstellar colonization is possible, this assumption is invalid, of course.

The equation has been used by both optimists and pessimists, who have arrived at opposite conclusions. Sagan, using optimistic numbers, suggested in 1966 that as many as one million communicating civilizations might have existed in the Milky Way. The number is inconsequential, as we shall see, confirming that the general principle is what counts.

Frank Tipler and John D. Barrow, both mathematicians and cosmologists, used pessimistic numbers and concluded that the average number of civilizations in a galaxy might be less than one. After penning the equation, Drake commented that it was unlikely to settle the Fermi paradox; instead, it was just a way of organizing our ignorance on the subject.

What are we “scientifically illiterate lay people” to make out of all of these contradictions and unsubstantiated speculations? One simple conclusion: intelligent life exists in the universe beyond Earth.

However small the number of advanced civilizations may be is irrelevant to our quest. We only need one superadvanced civilization to colonize the planet with life and then intervene much later to inject civilization into the process of human evolution.

Would it be too farfetched to conclude that at least one solar system—among hundreds of billions—produced an Earth-like planet that evolved a race of superintelligent beings? Unlike when Fermi and Drake were penning their theories, we now have the Kepler telescope reporting back to us that there are, indeed, many Earth-like planets out there.

Consider the alternative: Earth is so rare that it is the only planet in the entire universe to have spawned life. In essence, according to this view, we are alone, end of story. That position is the most extreme, completely homocentric perspective imaginable. It makes the notion that the sun revolves around the flat Earth seem enlightened by comparison.

The following is a refutation of the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation:

  1. The central contention of the negative side of these equations is incorrect. There is evidence of technologically advanced, intelligent life-forms having visited and intervened in life on Earth.
  2. The universe is a hostile place, and it is difficult for intelligent life-forms to create a lasting civilization, and almost none get a chance to gain a foothold before some catastrophic event wipes them out; however, that does not mean it has never been accomplished.
  3. The very nature of technologically advanced cultures usually leads to global self-destruction before extrastellar space travel can be achieved; however, that also does not preclude the possibility of at least one civilization having achieved it.
  4. Our existing SETI observations of the cosmos are based on erroneous assumptions that presume other civilizations would evolve as ours has; in fact, that is highly unlikely.
  5. Lastly, an extraterrestrial race of beings would probably not want us, or any other “alien” civilization, to observe and monitor them. So they are actively preventing us from doing so. (See number 2 for the reasons this is likely the case.)

THE KARDASHEV SCALE

Regarding the last paragraph, in fact, we would be hard-pressed to find any scientist in any field who would admit to embracing the theory of the absolute exceptional status of the earth.

That said, it is time to move on to a more sophisticated view of the cosmos. The Kardashev scale is a system of measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancement based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal.

As our own civilization, for example, has progressed technologically, it has consumed more and more energy. While it is true that the scale is arbitrary—as it assumes that other advancing civilizations would also harness and consume energy—it is nonetheless useful as a benchmark for thought experiments concerning extraterrestrial life.

The scale has three designated categories: Types I, II, and III.

A Type I civilization has all the available energy impinging on its home planet, Type II has harnessed all of the available solar energy, and Type III all of its galaxy-wide energy. Of course, the scale is only theoretical, and in terms of an actual civilization highly speculative; nonetheless, it puts the energy consumption of an entire civilization in a cosmic perspective.

According to the Kardashev scheme we find:

From the above outline, we can see that our current civilization is a sub-Type I. A large-scale application of fusion power would vault us into that category and put us on the path toward a Type II. According to mass-energy equivalence formulas, Type I implies the conversion of about 2 kilograms of matter to energy per second.

While there is no known method to convert matter completely into energy, an equivalent energy release might be achieved by fusing approximately 280 kilograms of hydrogen into helium per second, a rate roughly equivalent to 8.9 × 109  kilograms/year. A cubic kilometer of water contains about 1011  kilograms of hydrogen, and Earth’s oceans contain about 1.3 × 109 cubic kilometers of water, indicating that this rate of consumption could be sustained over geological time scales.

(We are not yet near that kind of energy output via any form of fusion power.)

An equally large-scale application of solar energy through converting sunlight into electricity—by either solar-cell technology or concentrating solar power indirectly through wind and hydroelectric means—would put us very close to Type I.

However, right now, there is no known way for human civilization to successfully harness the equivalent of Earth’s total absorbed solar energy without completely covering the surface with artificial equipment, which is obviously not feasible, now or ever.

But if we put very large, space-based solar-powered satellites into orbit we might achieve Type I power levels someday.6 Still, that possibility is not within reach now.

At present, we are nowhere near using the first two proposed methods.

Astrophysicist Michio Kaku suggested that our current civilization may attain Type I status in about two hundred years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in about one hundred thousand to one million years (assuming it does not self-destruct or fall victim to natural catastrophes in the interim).

At present, we are on the course of harnessing hydroelectric, solar, and wind energy and turning them into electrical power. In fact, we only started with the hydroelectric method a little more than one hundred years ago when inventor Nikola Tesla invented AC power generation technologies. Additionally, the worldwide grid has become a reality within the last twenty-five years.

Solar cells and wind-turbine technologies have only recently become advanced enough to contribute to the grid in a significant, cost-effective way.

There are many historical examples of human civilization undergoing large-scale changes in a rapid manner, such as the Industrial Revolution. The transition between Kardashev scale levels could potentially represent even more dramatic periods of social chaos, as they do entail going beyond the hard limits of the resources available in a civilization’s existing planetary environment.

Scientists studying these phenomena commonly speculate that the transition from Type 0 to Type I probably carries the risk of self-destruction. In a number of plausible scenarios, there would no longer be room for further expansion on the civilization’s home planet as it neared the Type I threshold.

Excessive use of energy without adequate disposal of the carbon dioxide and heat (the greenhouse effect), for example, could make the planet of a civilization approaching Type I unsuitable to the biology of the dominant species and the production of its food sources; this is an actual looming threat today with a seven billion, and counting, human population currently on Earth.

Basing the level of a civilization’s development on power consumption may seem arbitrary; however, it is a logical extension of our own civilization. We are compelled to go on revolutionizing our technologies because we are using up necessary natural resources at an ever-accelerating rate as we move forward.

We have largely reached the limit of harnessing hydroelectric power production now. With the industrialization of large countries like China, Brazil, and India, the prospect of using up the majority of fossil fuel resources is rapidly approaching.

The list of rapidly depleting resources is mounting each decade. Already, we are facing numerous man-made crises, such as global warming, nuclear warfare, environmental degradation, pollution, the extinction of plant and animal species, and so forth. It appears that advancing a technologically based civilization does come at a high cost.

It also seems evident that the prolonged advancement of a technological civilization appears like a slim possibility. As Drake noted, extraterrestrial civilizations would also have to face the same evolving crises that we do now, as well as all the natural disasters that we have always had to deal with as a species.7

It would seem that on this point we would have to agree with the Drake equation—most advanced civilizations do not last very long.

However, while that premise seems probable, some civilizations would overcome every challenge and continue to survive to reach the Type I level. At that point, they would probably colonize other planets, as our scientists are now considering, and create colonies, so the greenhouse issue would be averted, as the amount of waste heat could be distributed throughout the solar system.

Even fewer civilizations would make it to the Type II level, and only an infinitesimal fraction would survive long enough to reach Type III.

I would point out that there is a largely unconsidered limiting factor that would constrain the rise of a civilization to Type I status using our electromagnetic methods of power production, and that is the probability of eventual destruction by a super solar storm.

Happily, our sun is a relatively stable star, or so it has been up to now. However, stars that exhibit extremely explosive, unpredictable behaviors have been observed by astronomers.

We have unwittingly exposed ourselves to the possibility of a colossal disaster that would quickly destroy much of humanity—and fully wipe out civilization—though not cause species extinction.

Our current energy and food distribution systems and the entire global telecommunications infrastructure would not survive a massive, Earth-directed solar storm. Such an event would cause complete technological collapse and socioeconomic chaos, and perhaps the meltdown of the global economy.

The above points make it clear that as a civilization draws nearer to the full Type I status, the risks of destruction increase exponentially. This is why it seems very doubtful, if not impossible, for an advanced civilization to have reached the Type II or III status using our electromagnetic basis.

Kaku seems to have become highly aware of this problem. In recent years, he has issued numerous warnings about a coming super solar storm. He even went so far as to predict that it would occur in 2012 or 2013. Indeed, a solar storm did occur in July 2012, but the eruption was directed away from Earth; it missed us. However, just such a storm hit Earth in 1859, fortunately a half-century before the emergence of the electrical power grid.

We are already living with the sword of Damocles poised above our heads and ready to fall, though the average person has no awareness of this fact. For decades, the uncertain threats of nuclear destruction, earthquakes, tsunamis, meteor strikes, and so forth have preoccupied the mass media.

Yet the eventual and certain threat of the solar destruction of the power grid has gone unnoticed.

If any extraterrestrial civilization ever embarked on our power consumption methodology, it would have perished prior to reaching the interstellar contact and colonization levels. So will ours if we do not begin to find and deploy nonelectromagnetic methodologies of power distribution soon.

This is one reason we search the cosmos, in vain, for radio signals and other signs of intelligent civilizations that our astronomers (wrongly) believe would be transmitting electromagnetic radio signals. We may be exceptional in one way, the only civilization that has chosen this methodology to advance itself over a predictably very short time frame.

Given the above facts it does appear that the number of civilizations that have reached the Type II level is small, and it’s even smaller for Type III. That fact puts added pressure on the directed panspermia theory.

However, in the vastness of space among the countless planets, we only need one to have reached the late Type II or early Type III level; we do not need a crowded universe full of advanced civilizations to support the Genesis Race theory.

So the Fermi paradox is wrong on at least two counts: (1) his assumption that there is no evidence that Earth was ever colonized and that humanity ever had contact with a superior race, and (2) the possibility that our electromagnetically based civilization would eventually evolve to the point of interstellar travel.

Interstellar travel turns out to be a hard time- and resource-consuming problem.

The proposed Genesis Race would have to come from a highly advanced, well-evolved Type II or Type III civilization. Given the above-outlined scenarios and facts, we can assume that the technologies they developed along their extended evolutionary path would bear very little or no resemblance to ours. The latter is probably the case.

CONCLUSION

The Fermi paradox fails to acknowledge the existence of contact and colonization anomalies in the historical record. However, it does support the conclusions of astronomers who project the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.

The Drake equation also acknowledges the existence of cosmic civilizations, though it, too, fails to acknowledge the contact evidence already present on Earth. The SETI experiment is flawed because it assumes that extraterrestrial civilizations would have evolved as Earth’s have.

In fact, it is probable that at least one civilization did overcome all obstacles and seeded life on Earth.