Current Events > Scientists' disturbing answer to why we haven't been visited by aliens

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https://www.space.com/alien-civilizations-doomed-to-collapse

The new hypothesis suggests that, as space-faring civilizations grow in scale and technological development, they eventually reach a crisis point where innovation no longer keeps up with the demand for energy. What comes next is collapse. The only alternative path is to reject a model of "unyielding growth" in favor of maintaining equilibrium, but at the cost of a civilization's ability to expand across the stars, the researchers said.

The researchers of the new study say they may have the answer.
"Civilizations either collapse from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritizing homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no longer a goal, making them difficult to detect remotely," astrobiologists Michael Wong, of the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Stuart Bartlett, of the California Institute of Technology, wrote in the study. "Either outcome homeostatic awakening or civilization collapse would be consistent with the observed absence of [galactic-wide] civilizations."

"We hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an 'asymptotic burnout,' an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval time scale becomes smaller than the time scale of innovation," they wrote.

To avert their doom, civilizations could undergo a "homeostatic awakening," redirecting their production away from unbounded growth across the stars to one that prioritizes societal wellbeing, sustainable and equitable development and harmony with their environment, the researchers suggest. While such civilizations may not completely abandon space exploration, they would not expand on scales great enough to make contact with Earth likely.

Pikachuchupika posted...

redirecting their production away from unbounded growth across the stars to one that prioritizes societal wellbeing, sustainable and equitable development and harmony with their environment

Why is this disturbing?

Pretty sure, I heard this theory, ages ago:
Once a species gets advanced enough, Space Travel becomes too much of a drain of resources, and therefore you explore universes within your Virtual Space, instead. Randomly generated by Machine-minds.

What about if they dont want to be found three body problem stylee

No surprise, sending resources to outer reaches of space would be just too costly as it is.

Shadow_Don posted...

Why is this disturbing?

That's not why it is disturbing. The fact that we haven't discovered any aliens so far might be because of civilization collapse. Some of them might try homeostasis, but some may not. The ones that don't will end up collapsing and that's why it is disturbing. Regardless if they collapse or reach homeostasis, it explains why we haven't been visited. This could be humanity's future as well. Which begs the question: Why is the universe made to be so hard to travel? Going from point a to point b in the universe is crazy hard. If it was easier, we'd probably be visited by aliens by now.

Pikachuchupika posted...

civilizations could undergo a "homeostatic awakening," redirecting their production away from unbounded growth across the stars to one that prioritizes societal wellbeing, sustainable and equitable development and harmony with their environment,

holy fuck, really? find one of these societies quick so i can go live there until earth sorts its shit out

Id say this is only bad if you dream about fictional interspace societies like in Star Wars becoming a reality.

Otherwise, the hypothesis is that we eventually just become good at self sustaining societies, without interstellar expansion.

Pikachuchupika posted...

That's not why it is disturbing. The fact that we haven't discovered any aliens so far might be because of civilization collapse. Some of them might try homeostasis, but some may not. The ones that don't will end up collapsing and that's why it is disturbing. Regardless if they collapse or reach homeostasis, it explains why we haven't been visited. This could be humanity's future as well. Which begs the question: Why is the universe made to be so hard to travel? Going from point a to point b in the universe is crazy hard. If it was easier, we'd probably be visited by aliens by now.

Why can't the reason we've not been visited by aliens be because they know we're a worthless species that only know how to exploit and kill one another.

Shadow_Don posted...

Why is this disturbing?

because we know humans would rather die out than do that stuff

The_Popo posted...

Id say this is only bad if you dream about fictional interspace societies like in Star Wars becoming a reality.

Otherwise, the hypothesis is that we eventually just become good at self sustaining societies, without interstellar expansion.

Yes, in theory, homeostasis is a good end-goal, but resources are not infinite. What if we can't find ways to have a self-sustaining society or travel space?

Civilization collapse and decay.

This is dumb as shit and doesn't really say much. There's like a quarter trillion fucking stars in the Milky Way alone. Over 200k light years. Over 13 billion years in age.

One part of the galaxy can be living out Star Wars right now, or in the past, and we would never really know. Whether they exist or died off, the chances of detection in a sea of that many stars is insane. And our sister galaxy has a full trillion stars.

Crazy to think that there could be literal trillions of dead sapient beings across the universe and we'll never even know it any of it ever happened.

HornyLevel posted...

This is dumb as shit and doesn't really say much. There's like a quarter trillion fucking stars in the Milky Way alone. Over 200k light years. Over 13 billion years in age.

One part of the galaxy can be living out Star Wars right now, or in the past, and we would never really know. Whether they exist or died off, the chances of detection in a sea of that many stars is insane. And our sister galaxy has a full trillion stars.

This. Given that beyond a certain distance light from the Big Bang itself hasn't had time to reach us, it's almost certain that even if there is space faring life out there, it's never come anywhere near finding either us or other space faring life. Set two golf balls adrift on opposite ends of the Atlantic and tell me the chance of them bumping into one another. Then take that chance and add dozens of decimal points. Those are the kind of odds we're talking.

(And yes, I know that due to directional currents that scenario might actually be provably impossible, but that's not the point.)

MorbidFaithless posted...

Crazy to think that there could be literal trillions of dead sapient beings across the universe and we'll never even know it any of it ever happened.

I admit I still get depressed about this. Not the life itself, but the fact that there are so many existential questions (the extent of the universe, what's "outside" it - both physically and conceptually) that I will go to my grave never learning the answers to.

We need to at least be able to reach nearby stars. If we can't do that, humans have an expiration date matched with our star dying

Dark_Arbron posted...

Set two golf balls adrift on opposite ends of the Atlantic and tell me the chance of them bumping into one another.

50/50?

Dark_Arbron posted...

Then take that chance and add dozens of decimal points.

...50................../......50...............?

Zikten posted...

We need to at least be able to reach nearby stars. If we can't do that, humans have an expiration date matched with our star dying

I think it's a safe bet that by then we'd be a solar system-spanning species, if not galaxy-spanning.

Of course it's an even safer bet that we won't last that long, or even a fraction of it.

I mean, this is one of many possibilities. That said, the likelihood I would say leans more towards the fact... Life is basically a monumental fuck-up in the cosmic scheme of things, especially sentient life. Combining that, space travel, and the actual distance they'd need to cover... It's very likely we'll never meet, or if we do, it'll be by accident.

The idea that not only is the distance between us too vast, but also, the time between us too vast, resonates with me.

If an alien race existed 2 billion years ago, they could have evolved to their absolute peak, explored half the universe, and died out a billion years before Earth was even habitable, and done so in a corner of the universe that's not even observable to us.

That process could have played itself out countless times, and all in a time span and location that would make it literally impossible for us to know.

LinkDaLunatic posted...

holy fuck, really? find one of these societies quick so i can go live there until earth sorts its shit out

Honestly it just sounds like living like we did back before the industrial revolution. Farming, living off the land, etc. But maybe I'm wrong.

We're constantly growing right now. We'd need to stop growth (people, cities, etc) and go on a linear path combining sustainability and harmony to achieve something like that.

Pikachuchupika posted...

Honestly it just sounds like living like we did back before the industrial revolution. Farming, living off the land, etc. But maybe I'm wrong.

No thank you.

Pikachuchupika posted...

We'd need to stop growth (people, cities, etc) and go on a linear path combining sustainability and harmony to achieve something like that.

Or we just push hard in building and researching in order to achieve energy abundance, rather than go through a degrowth phase

LinkDaLunatic posted...

holy fuck, really? find one of these societies quick so i can go live there until earth sorts its shit out

You should check out the short story Three Worlds Collide. It's a thrilling story that features baby-eating aliens.

emblem-man posted...

Or we just push hard in building and researching in order to achieve energy abundance, rather than go through a degrowth phase

I forgot to mention technology as well. Growth in tech also requires less than sustainable ways to achieve them. Just like what was said in the article, "they eventually reach a crisis point where innovation no longer keeps up with the demand for energy."

So to reach that homoestatis, we would need to go back to farming lol

I would put more stock in these theories:

• dark forest - aliens will remain hidden because revealing your presence opens yourself up to attack or obliteration from hostile and more advanced civilizations. Even if they aren't afraid of Earth power, they might reveal themselves to other more powerful civilizations in contacting us.

• The distances are just so great. Maybe the speed of light turns out to be absolute, and mortal being don't want to spend hundreds of lifetimes in stasis or in travel to reach a planet like Earth.

• We are the first civilization to or no other civilization has advanced fast enough to achieve intergalactic travel and make it all the way to our remote corner of the Milky Way.

Zikten posted...

We need to at least be able to reach nearby stars. If we can't do that, humans have an expiration date matched with our star dying

the next world extinction event will happen long before the sun dies out

Yes...Humans say they understand the millions of variables of an advanced alien civilization.

We are that arrogant aren't we.

Dark_Arbron posted...

I think it's a safe bet that by then we'd be a solar system-spanning species, if not galaxy-spanning.

Of course it's an even safer bet that we won't last that long, or even a fraction of it.

Torgo posted...

I would put more stock in these theories:

* dark forest - aliens will remain hidden because revealing your presence opens yourself up to attack or obliteration from hostile and more advanced civilizations. Even if they aren't afraid of Earth power, they might reveal themselves to other more powerful civilizations in contacting us.

* The distances are just so great. Maybe the speed of light turns out to be absolute, and mortal being don't want to spend hundreds of lifetimes in stasis or in travel to reach a planet like Earth.

* We are the first civilization to or no other civilization has advanced fast enough to achieve intergalactic travel and make it all the way to our remote corner of the Milky Way.

The better question on expansion would be "why?"

Why would any civilization need to become galactic? With all our advances, we still don't know how many exact stars are in our medium sized Milky Way. The estimate is 100-400 billion right now. Who needs to go that far? Pick a single dot anywhere in the galaxy, and you're looking at thousands of stars. NASA estimates about 40 intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way. It's almost impossible for any of those to detect each other.

Even with something small like the SMC and LMC, that's 3 billion and 30 billion stars respectively.

Intergalactic travel is a relatively pointless thing to worry about if nobody can even get around their own galaxy.