Video Clip: The Fermi Paradox

This video on the Fermi Paradox by Kurz Gesagt is a thought-provoking piece on the absence of other known civilizations in our galaxy.  He also talks about the impossibility of travel to any other galaxies outside our cluster due to increasing distances. It is a very sobering piece, though I think we have plenty to explore in our own neighborhood, particularly if the space is available for settlement.  

Unless, as he postulates, a Type III civilization that controls the entire Milky Way is zapping potential civilizations that rise to threaten the neighborhood.  Think of it as the opposite of Star Trek where the Vulcans step in and help an emerging Earth.  This bleak scenario is close to ideas expressed by Dr. Hawking, where he noted we could get into trouble as we become a space-faring civilization.  Plenty to ponder as we move forward with SETI and space travel.

Mr. Gesagt has other informative video, including videos on the big bang and our moon.  I recommend you take a look at these videos as well. 

Galaxy Quest Turns Up Empty

It seems the search of millions of galaxies has not produced any evidence of intelligent life.  Of course, the presumption was that an "advanced spacefaring civilization" would have colonized an entire galaxy and thereby provide some clues for us to detect.  NBC News reported that researchers at Penn State University reviewed data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite to determine if any of the galaxies shows signs of  such life.  And while they found about 50 galaxies they want to review in greater detail, it appears any spacefaring is probably on a smaller scale.  And who knows how many pre-spacefaring civilizations like our own are sitting on the sidelines at the moment.

Presuming galactic occupation seems like a tall order, yet a March 2013 paper by the Future of Humanity Institute in the UK discussed how our own civilization could expand into the Milky Way and other galaxies.  Here is the abstract in the paper titled "Eternity in Six Hours: Intergalactic Spreading of Intelligent Life and Sharpening the Fermi Paradox":

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the strong likelihood of alien intelligent life emerging (under a wide variety of assumptions) and the absence of any visible evidence for such emergence. In this paper, we extend the Fermi paradox to not only life in this galaxy, but to other galaxies as well. We do this by demonstrating that travelling between galaxies – indeed even launching a colonisation project for the entire reachable universe – is a relatively simple task for a star-spanning civilisation, requiring modest amounts of energy and resources. We start by demonstrating that humanity itself could likely accomplish such a colonisation project in the foreseeable future, should we want to. Given certain technological assumptions, such as improved automation, the task of constructing Dyson spheres, designing replicating probes, and launching them at distant galaxies, become quite feasible. We extensively analyse the dynamics of such a project, including issues of deceleration and collision with particles in space. Using similar methods, there are millions of galaxies that could have reached us by now. This results in a considerable sharpening of the Fermi paradox.

This is amazing conjecture, and it is the last part that stumped the Penn State University researchers; if we can envision such a future for ourselves, where are such civilizations from other parts of the universe or even within our own galaxy?  Plenty to ponder.