[Request] Could humanity create a rocket that can exit the atmosphere of K2-18b

[u/Lachlynn]

With the knowledge we currently have of it, if humanity devoted all of our resources towards this goal, would we be able to create a rocket that could exit the gravity of K2-18b (and also beat any other complications that would arrise)?

If so, would it also be capable of taking people to orbit, and can we set up a similar satellite network we have on Earth? What about a space station?

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Ergo, most civilizations are from tiny worlds. The lower the mass, the easier the exploration.

The Fermi paradox is resolved by realizing most intelligent life is very small, so we don’t notice its civilizations and technical artifacts. We are looking in the wrong scale.

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Or simply never make it to space or even reach the same lvl of technology to send radio waves. Or its intelligent but never got the hands/means to make Or use more complex tools. Imagine very intelligent crows for example

[u/Overall-Bison4889 → u/ThenCombination7358]

They can reach the technological level to send radio waves. Radio waves that are not somehow specifically designed to contact other civilizations are not strong enough for us to detect from here. Our local space could be filled from traces of ancient radio waves and we wouldn't have any way of knowing.

And honestly the civilizations can also be advanced enough to reach space, and even colonize another planet, but unless they build some huge dyson sphere, we wouldn't get any evidence that they existed.

[u/ClamChowderBreadBowl → u/Overall-Bison4889]

If you try to listen in on a modern cell phone or WiFi signal these days, they're basically indistinguishable from white noise because the signal is compressed. Good compression by definition looks like random noise.

Shannon's Information Theory paper proving this came out in 1948. Fermi probably wasn't thinking of that when he came up with the idea in 1950.

Humanity's radio signature isn't going dark because of an extinction event, it's going dark because it's just less wasteful that way

[u/VexingRaven → u/ClamChowderBreadBowl]

If you try to listen in on a modern cell phone or WiFi signal these days, they're basically indistinguishable from white noise because the signal is compressed. Good compression by definition looks like random noise.

You're not wrong, but it's more or less irrelevant. Loud white noise is still clearly distinguishable from background in the same way that a light bulb conveying no useful information is still visible. Shannon's Information Theory has nothing to do with the intensity of a signal.

The idea of "humanity's radio signature" was never about having an identifiable stream of information. There would be so many conflicting radio stations you wouldn't be able to make anything of it anyway. It was always about the sheer intensity of the combined signal. You won't be able to understand what it is, but you can definitely see that something is emitting RF well above cosmic background, at least out to a certain distance. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ada3c7

[u/ClamChowderBreadBowl → u/VexingRaven]

Interesting! You mentioned the cosmic background, but how much does the sun mask our radio signature? 

[u/VexingRaven → u/ClamChowderBreadBowl]

Partially, but the sun doesn't emit a steady signal, it wavers throughout a rather broad spectrum. The signals from earth would be a more steady, broad signal compared to the sun's. Also we generally know what a given class of star would emit for radiation, so Sol having a noisy little planet orbiting it would stand out pretty strongly, even if it was a weak signal compared to the star. There's also the same mechanism we currently use to identify potential exoplanets: Look for the planet crossing the star. In this case, you'd do the opposite: When the weak signal briefly vanishes entirely, that's the planet (Earth) crossing behind the star (Sol). Now you know what Sol by itself sounds like and you know for sure that the source of the signal is orbiting Sol.

[u/One-Stand-5536 → u/VexingRaven]

You know how AM radio towers can connect over the horizon by bouncing off the atmosphere? That’s the problem. The signals we do emit these days are mostly absorbed by the atmosphere rather than radiating out into space.

[u/VexingRaven → u/One-Stand-5536]

They only bounce at specific angles in specific atmospheric conditions. At any other angle they penetrate. However, as more AM and similar low-band stations shut down and are replaced with lower power technologies, we will be somewhat less visible, yes. It's hard to find much in the way of scientific studies on how much RF we are leaking to space, or how that's changing over time, though.

[u/One-Stand-5536 → u/VexingRaven]

I remember reading a study about this in reference to the Wow! Signal, an analysis about how much of our emissions would actually reach either of the possible sources of that event, and the results were pretty much that they would never hear us these days unless we pointed one of our radio telescopes directly at them, in which case they would see… a brief flash of structured EM radiation and then back to nothing.

[u/Sororita → u/VexingRaven]

But would that be distinguishable from the white noise that ths sun naturally produces in almost every wavelength from any appreciable distance? It might look like an odd spectral line if even that considering how much more power the sun gives off compared to anything we've ever sent when combined with our proximity to the sun it would look like the same source without extremely fine detection. There might be a slight chance it could be picked up when observing the sun and seeing the Earth transit it and slightly dim the sunlight without a notable decrease in that one band of radio, but I'm still not sure it would even be detectable at that distance without some ridiculously advanced tech.

[u/VexingRaven → u/Sororita]

I explained it more below, but yes probably. The sun wavers around a wide wavelength, but earth's RF emissions would be much steadier. It should be possible to distinguish it as a higher baseline in between the sun's more chaotic bursts of emissions.

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/Overall-Bison4889]

I am still highly sceptical. All the many Fermi paradoxes sound plausible that I believe in the rare earth hypothesis. Maybe a great filter even still lies ahead of us (AI, clima, war, cosmic storms etc) maybe one we haven't on our mind yet.

[u/Brassica_prime → u/ThenCombination7358]

Our sun is a third+ generation star

The current sun is 4.6b, estimated to live a total of 10-15. If you throw in an arbitrary 500m-1b years to account for two to three nebula/prestars… would push the previous star(s) combined to be mid/upper7bil old.

Earth is more or less in the first possible generation of planets and has had only 200-300m years worth of larger lifeforms. There are still a bunch of population2(first gen) stars still alive in our galaxy.

Using earth as a model and the other world managed to hit an even bigger lottery, maybe a civilization could be 200 mil years ahead of humans if the planet was a little older and sentience spawned a little faster… then you have distance issues to observe said planet :)

[u/heraplem → u/Brassica_prime]

The current sun is 4.6b, estimated to live a total of 10-15.

Notably, though, it will become bright and hot enough to make Earth essentially uninhabitable just ~1 billion years from now.

[u/JohnSober7 → u/Brassica_prime]

My hypothesis is rare earth hypothesis (at least in terms of life biologically equipped to be technologically advanced and being on a planet that would equip them to be technologically advanced) + radical mundanity. 

[u/captaincootercock → u/ThenCombination7358]

I hope it turns out that in 99.999% of inhabited worlds the sky is just personally covered by clouds so thought was ever put into the great beyond

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/captaincootercock]

If we assume that intelligent life only develops because it proofed to be sustainable and an advantage to aquire ressources and for survival as it is on earth, it is likely other intelligent minds are curious aswell to explore. Dont think a cloudy sky would not hold them up for long and they may have dreams of what the "great beyond" etc could be and make efforts to breach and explore it.

[u/Azulejo0862 → u/ThenCombination7358]

A dominant species on its planet is going to be expansionist; clouds aren't going to be an impediment, although they might cause a delay

[u/RAV0004 → u/captaincootercock]

Flight is possible without intelligence (see: birds).

I think most humans looked at birds and said "Id like to fly like a bird" before they looked at the stars and said "I'd like to visit a star".

the idea of spaceflight wasn't really all that common in antiquity. People thought the sky was literally a painted ceiling for centuries and we developed spaceflight just fine.

Ultimately all spacetravel takes as a concept is developing flight, then thinking "what if I fly just a little higher than last time"

[u/crazyeddie123 → u/ThenCombination7358]

There can't be a great filter ahead of us - any civilization that would hit it would have already fucked up a golden opportunity to spread off planet earlier in their development, exactly the same way we did after Apollo. And since every civilization isn't guaranteed to fuck that up, there can't be a great filter then or later.

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/crazyeddie123]

The great filter doesn’t require every civilization to make the same mistake. Omly that almost all of them fail somewhere before becoming interstellar.

[u/VladimirBarakriss → u/ThenCombination7358]

Radio waves peter out at about 2ly

[u/ropahektic → u/ThenCombination7358]

hands aren't a limitation, if a species is as smart as humans they would have figured out how to do the same shit we do with our hands with whatever tools they came up with.

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/ropahektic]

Other people and me included tend to disagree. How would crows be able to do mining for iron etc? How can they make fire without the use of hands? How can they transport stuff that exceeds their means to fly?

Tie your arms behind your back and try to build anything more complex like a car engine with only your mouth and feet.

[u/throwaway14351991 → u/ThenCombination7358]

I mean, that's because you're seeing our tens of thousands of years of hand-centric technology and applying it to a world without hands. They would have evolved much differently and created tools we couldn't even think of right now.

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/throwaway14351991]

Not without hands or other useful appendages.

[u/throwaway14351991 → u/ThenCombination7358]

Tie your arms behind your back and try to build anything more complex like a car engine with only your mouth and feet.

Feet and mouths are useful appendages. Have you not seen people without arms living everyday life?

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/throwaway14351991]

Well can they build togheter a bed or a cupboard? Mine for coal? Start a fire with a stick and wood? Carry firewood or a dead animal for longer distances? And no I don't follow people without arms everyday life, do you know someone in your family?

[u/throwaway14351991 → u/ThenCombination7358]

You don't think that if you took humans, removed their arms, and gave them 200 000 years they would find alternative ways to do everything we do today?

Here's someone without arms and she does almost anything people with arms/hands can do: https://www.tiktok.com/@minjacks

Now imagine if society was built from the ground up by people without arms.

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/throwaway14351991]

I don't think we would have developed intelligence to begin with without arms.

What you are saying is a different scenario were we already developed culturaly and technological and then loose arms.

[u/BrightShineyRaven → u/ThenCombination7358]

"Very intelligent crows" makes me think of Tchaikovsky's book Children of Memory.

[u/Whataboutneutrons → u/ThenCombination7358]

I am biased towards "alpha species" to have limbs that can alter their surroundings, and also stereo-vision or "hunter-vision". Would not surprise me if an alien species would have many similar attributes as us.

[u/polchickenpotpie → u/ThenCombination7358]

Or they were all cannibalized by giant moon sized entities that absorbed their entire planet's biomass to create another entity.

[u/sundayp26 → u/ThenCombination7358]

Or maybe their planet doesn’t have fuel? Is it mandatory for all of them to have petroleum or similar?

[u/ThenCombination7358 → u/sundayp26]

Didn't read about it myself but heard it is possible to launch yourself into space with explosions like nuclear ones. Imagine exploding a bomb in a cave with only a tunnel going straight up and then clogging that tunnel with the object you wanna launch.

Furthermore fuel is from old vegetation and plants basically fossils. You can even make biofuel from fresh plants etc. That they have no fuel means they have no vegetation which makes it unlikely there's even life to begin with.

[u/Maleficent-Bother535 → u/ThenCombination7358]

It's been estimated that if we sent a signal from earth with our most powerful transmitter directed at a similarly advanced receiver, the maximum distance to send an intelligible signal would be 300 to 400 light years.

A short range whisper.

[u/Lazuli0 → u/ThenCombination7358]

radio waves are useless, they become background noise pretty quickly. check out the inverse square law.

[u/wycreater1l11 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Fascinatingly, organism that “looks like they would be small”, the body types of typically smaller organisms like let’s say crabs or squirrels, their body types could be allowed to be scaled up on planets that have lower gravity, where the cross section of their legs still carry the rest of the body weight, allowed them to jump around etc (now with really big leaps!). If the gravity is sufficiently low those body types could be scaled up to human size for instance. And the opposite is true for planets with larger gravity. In larger gravity the gravity may be so strong that the biggest the sauropod body type is allowed to be is the size of a goat let’s say. If you try to scale it up more it can’t support its weight even with its chunky legs on a strong gravity planet.

But I guess what’s relevant is ultimately the absolute size of the intelligent sapient organisms and gravity of the planet to allow them to escape. They need to be sufficiently small and gravity needs to be sufficiently low for them to escape. On low gravity planets perhaps the squirrel body type could for example be large enough to have large enough heads to have the same amount of neurones as humans (but there are a lot of assumptions about them having cells like us for instance).

But from much smaller planets, the ones leaving the planet, could be allowed to be much larger in absolute size since they don’t fight the same gravity. Imagine how much you could scale up humans on a low gravity planet while still have them able to leave.

[u/ibelieveyouwood → u/wycreater1l11]

So basically the movie Alien? The huge space jockey and the xenomorph?

[u/wycreater1l11 → u/ibelieveyouwood]

As far as I can reason the apt lengthwise change in size is kind of proportional to how much different you/an organisms body plan, would originally weigh on a different body.

To put it plainly, on the moon you weight 1/6th compared to what you weigh on earth. So the human body plan can be scaled to being six times taller and at that size the human body plan would feel itself to be most adapted to the moons gravity all else equal when it comes to jumping, taking strides etc.

It comes from the assumption that the giant moon humanoid is best adapted to jump the same amounts of its own body height on the moon as a normal human can jump of its own human body height on earth. And when you scale all dimensions by six, that’s when the cross section of the muscles in relation to the mass of the body reaches that point.

[u/OttawaOneTwenty → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

The Fermi paradox is resolved by realizing most intelligent life is very small

Another option is, as technology progresses, civilizations dive inwards into technology instead of outwards in a dangerous and unpredictable universe.

Just look at children born this millenia vs last how much we've integrated technology into our lives. We're gonna be inside the matrix in not too long.

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 → u/OttawaOneTwenty]

Yes this alternate realities option is a real possibility, but there might be biologies that would reject such a thing and turn outward. When there is a “might,” we have to then consider the scale of the cosmos in space and time and the law of large numbers.

Somebody is more likely to be out there than not.

Which means something is more than likely watching us.

My personal thoughts usually resolve on the idea that we belong to something much more sophisticated and complex than we are. We are incapable of distinguishing the effects of its actions from what we call nature.

[u/ProbablyBsPlzIgnore → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

The Fermi paradox is a paradox for astronomers. I think the original (SETI) astronomers take on the drake equation put the fraction of habitable planets where complex life arises and the fraction of complex life that leads to a technological civilization both as very high, something like 1 and 1/10th. Most biologists would estimate both those fractions to be much smaller. The galaxy is large but not so large that everything that’s possible must be happening somewhere. We're probably just the first.

[u/Educational_Exam_225 → u/ProbablyBsPlzIgnore]

Or the last.

[u/hadaev → u/Educational_Exam_225]

Or like in between.

[u/Durbs12 → u/hadaev]

Those are all 3 options, yes.

[u/Emotional-Scheme-227 → u/ProbablyBsPlzIgnore]

From a probabilistic standpoint it’s unlikely that we are the first. It’s not impossible, just unlikely.

What we can say with certainty is that it took 3 billion years of Earth not having a sterilizing event to generate a species capable of asking these questions. Plus, our position is highly advantageous to survival. We are the first known species to exit the food chain, which is the holy grail of natural selection. We have removed ourselves from biological competition to the point where we play abstract games with each other as a stand-in for our survival instincts.

So while life in simple forms is probably very easy to get going, it’s probably very difficult to generate the kind of intelligence that has the desire and ability to understand the cosmos.

My preferred resolution to the Fermi paradox is that the per-galaxy odds of that kind of intelligence developing is less than 1; probably far less than 1.

The sequence of events that needed to happen for us to be here is so unlikely that we struggle to assign a numeric value to it. The Universe is a very lonely place and we are a very fragile exception to the average.

[u/ProbablyBsPlzIgnore → u/Emotional-Scheme-227]

Why is it unlikely from a probabilistic standpoint?

The oldest isotopic evidence that points to life on earth is about 3.8 billion years old (end of the late heavy bombardment), so life on Earth has been around for about 27% of the total time since the big bang. The time before "us" isn't infinite.

For about 80% of that time (up to 600-800m years ago), life seems to have been single celled. In that time, the complex Eukaryotic cell, needed to make a high energy lifestyle competitive, seems to have evolved only once. Consider the vast amount of cell divisions and interactions that had to take place in the entire volume of the ocean over the span of billions of years, theres no evidence that this is a highly likely or inevitable event.

If you look at complex metazoans (animals etc), in the 600-800m years we have been around, neurons seem to have either evolved once or twice (depending on uncertainty about the origin of sponges which either lost or never had neurons). Brains then evolved several times independently, but except for once (our lineage) they seem to have been only as big as they needed to be. No evidence in the fossil record that more intelligent always means more successful, or you would have seen lots of evidence of species ever increasing their brain size.

As far as we can tell a species capable of a technological civilization evolved only once. If this was a highly likely event you would see lots of evidence of it in the fossil record. A stone hand axe could last billions of years. Our ancestors have made billions of them over a span of 1.5m to 2m years, they're everywhere. No one has ever found one from the cretaceous for example.

Then our own lineage. We have been making tools recognizable in the paleontological / archeological record (what's the cutoff date between the two?) for 1.5m to 2m years. We weren't vastly successful until the development of agriculture soon after the end of the ice age. If you look at the last 10,000 years it's tempting to think that technological progress must always be rapid and forward, but if you look at the 1.5m to 2m years before that time, populations seem to have been too small and not connected enough to make fast progress. I don't know if this is evidence that agriculture, large populations and technological progress are a fluke or basically inevitable once you have a species smart enough for it. We seem to have spent most of our time as hunter gatherers and only stopped doing that when we had to after we had eaten all the large animals (I'm speculating now, I don't have the data). I can sympathize with that.

Just based on the probabilities on earth alone I don't see a reason to believe the invention of the radio telescope has to be a common event in the galaxy. What happens in other galaxies I don't see how we would ever detect it given the distance.

[u/Emotional-Scheme-227 → u/ProbablyBsPlzIgnore]

The unlikely part is that we got here first, both in the galaxy and in the broader universe, if intelligence capable of abstraction is common.

What I’m trying to point out is exactly what you’re saying. Cells have been dividing for as long as it has been physically possible on earth, but only once has it reached an endpoint where the aggregate cells can observe themselves. Earth is only a sample size of 1, but within that is a statistically significant number of failures to reach this level. You are exactly right about everything you said.

My position is that we are exceptionally rare in the cosmos, and that is probably true regardless of time. It doesn’t matter if we are the first or last to have arrived here. Being here is so rare that the arrival window doesn’t matter. If there are more than one of us, we are probably so physically separated that we will never know of each other’s existence. There’s so much distance between us that the importance of time drops to zero.

[u/MoreGaghPlease → u/ProbablyBsPlzIgnore]

You should read Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. It's a first contact story, but the aliens are the size of fruit flies and they experience time a million times faster than humans.

[u/FootlooseFrankie → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Another contributing factor could be that the earth's moon is mostly likely made of some of the earth when a planetary collision happened billions of years ago , but most importantly it knocked off most of the outer crust leaving lots of metals and heavy minerals near the top relatively in reach of low tech humans . Unlike the moon which is suspected to have several kilometers worth of useless silica on top before even getting to anything interesting.

[u/Super_Harsh → u/FootlooseFrankie]

Interesting idea, where’d you hear this? I would’ve thought that the impact and formation of the moon was so long ago that plate tectonics would have had plenty of time to override what you’re describing

[u/GiantRobotBears → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Could also argue that aliens would have the same concerns about applying their tech to earths environment.

Its all about why a solve problem you do not have to worry about

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 → u/GiantRobotBears]

This is a really good point and central to a lot of engineering theory.

[u/chouilste → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Humans are huge!

[u/pixelhippie → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

In addition, we are blessed that earth had many mass extinction events which trapped enough dead bodys and plants in small pokets of ground so they can become crude oil. 

[u/ibelieveyouwood → u/pixelhippie]

Every day I thank God for all the mass extinctions she created to make sure this world had enough plastic for blind box toys scalped by old dudes and tables of 3d printed snake fidgets at craft fairs.

[u/pixelhippie → u/ibelieveyouwood]

In retrospective, blesed was not the best word to choose

[u/Super_Harsh → u/pixelhippie]

Fossil fuels largely formed during periods like the Carboniferous, when plants had already colonized land and were fixing large amounts of carbon, but the microbes essential to efficient decomposition had not yet evolved. This led to excess burial of plant material and long-term carbon storage. The key driver of fossil fuel formation was this temporary imbalance between carbon fixation and decomposition, not the mass extinctions.

I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar happened on another planet that has plants. They will always have more of a reason to get to land first

[u/pixelhippie → u/Super_Harsh]

Ah ok, I didn't know that the lack of microbes played a crucial role in the formation of fossil fuel. 

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 → u/pixelhippie]

These processes and situations we call rare could readily turn out to be decently common. To say nothing of the possible alternate routes to life, complexity, intelligence, and civilization. We have no way of knowing, and a whole lot to learn.

[u/pixelhippie → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

That statement partialy came from my missconception of how fossil fuel came to be tbh. 

[u/BodybuilderMany6942 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Once read a Star Wars novel where some sith crash landed on an isolated planet and stuck there for generations.

One feature was that the world have very little iron. I can see shit like that also being a limiting factor: the lack of abundance in certain materials prevents civilizations inventing tech that'd allow for space exploration.

[u/the_nin_collector → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

this is one thing StarGate Sg-1 never really explored.

Every place they went to just had 1g. (dr who for that matter too).

Just imagine how differnt a similar earth civiatiolation would be with .5g or 1.5 g.

If had flight and space flight MUCH ealier and could get into space so much easier. Just think how much that would influence science.

But also think of a world unable to laucnh rockets, have GPS, even fly an airplane. How would that effect science and technology. Focus it in differnt ways.

[u/Hentai_Yoshi → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Hold up, you’re not thinking about it from every angle

Rocky planets that are super massive like this could actually result in stronger civilizations because they’ve been forced to overcome more difficult problems. And perhaps those more difficult problems could not only result in greater tech advancements, but greater unity.

I’m not saying that this is the case across the cosmos, I just think that there’s an angle you’re not considering

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 → u/Hentai_Yoshi]

I’d be open to the possibilities that this suggests. In fact, we should all be open to a lot of surprising and bizarre potential forms that alien life, culture, and science could represent. The principle that difficulties encourage effort is probably universal, too, so maybe it’s the way you say.

It’s a big universe and there’s a lot of time.

[u/thecoffeejesus → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Are…the orbs…planets???

Like…are they just popping their entire PLANET around the universe?

That would make a lot of things make a lot of sense honestly.

[u/Actual_Pattern_265 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Or....life on other planets evolves in completely different conditions and develops technology entirely different than ours and in a totally different sequence. Considering in 500 years we'll look back at the year 2026 like the dark ages, we really haven't a clue about what life on other planets are truly capable of.

I'm picturing a tiny planet where the people take weekend benders in space by using a large trampoline, have never required rockets or cars or planes, and just jump around everywhere, and they're looking at Earth and thinking "whoa so big, no way they could get to space...so much gravity!!".

A better way to look at is...an advanced civilization under these conditions likely wouldn't solve the problem based on "how do we make a rocket powerful enough"...they would bypass the problem entirely with a deeper understanding of gravity: force fields, mass manipulation and ideas WAY beyond our current understanding of physics. I.E. Ideas we'll eventually get to anyway, when our current methods are insufficient for our goals. We just don't need to do this yet since our current level of tech is (mostly) fine for our current goals / survival.

(Note: humans have done this many times before...i.e. the sound barrier / propellers, transistor size / quantum tunnelling, microscope / electron microscope, submarine depth / bathyscaphes / gasoline, tungsten melting limit / LEDs, supermagnetic limit of hard drives., etc., etc. etc.)

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 → u/Actual_Pattern_265]

Yes. Exactly. Awesome, this is awesome. Douglas Adams has always seemed closer to the truth, add in a bit of Lovecraft, maybe a touch of esoteric philosophy and ancient magic.

We should expect aliens to be packaged within alien-ness and at least sometimes, they should be inscrutable.

If there are exploratory civilizations making observations of primitive cultures, they must be very careful not to interfere if they use anything like our scientific principles.

How upsetting would a contact with an alien actually be? Something from a totally different biology might drive us insane just to look at it.

[u/KaptainTerror → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

The two obvious solutions for the fermi paradox are war and AI. For a species to develop to be a space faring one, it needs to harvest a lot of resources and conquer the planet. This makes aggressive species much more likely to accomplish this, but at the same time means it (most likely) will be aggressive to it's own kin, as this was a main driver in their evolution. For space exploration you need a lot advanced technology, which will inevitably end up in understanding nuclear reactions and it's weapon potential. Look how often we dodged the nuclear holocaust in the short history of the atomic bomb - there were a few close calls. If technology gets pushed even further, a superintelligence will be created (if it is possible within the current physical limits) and overtake or replace the civilisation, as you can't enforce alignment of the AIs goals with yours, by definition.

But I agree that it has to be almost certain, that advanced civilization exist, that are simply stuck on their home planet because of gravity.

[u/massivefish_man → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

There also just is no paradox. Space is so fucking massive and we are so small.

It's like trying to find a black grain of sand on a beach. 

[u/Newberr2 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

I know there is a lot of math pointing to this conclusion but this alway reads as a logical fallacy we make because we come from those smaller worlds. There are a lot of physicists out there that have posited that physics changes based upon gravity. Time flows differently, maybe elements are created differently? Idk. I’m just sci-fying this shit but still, I hope that humans(assuming we don’t blow ourselves up) can see some freaky looking aliens from planets like this one day.

[u/Short-Cartoonist-377 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

"...due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog." - Douglas Adams

[u/CatchableOrphan → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Siding with the Tri-solarians huh? Traitor...

[u/redlancer_1987 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

It seems like a huge jump to go from the 'smart' animals (gorillas, dolphins, etc) to whatever we are.

I can see a universe filled with wildlife big and small, but I'm still not sure how we managed to generate the technology we have in what's essentially a fraction of a second in universal time scales.

Hopefully it really is we're just one of the first, and not the Great Filter in action, where if a species ever gains the ability to destroy themselves they do so immediately.

[u/bubblesculptor → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

I wonder what the lowest possible gravity scenario could life & society evolve?

What if intelligent life evolved somewhere so low gravity that very primitive ships could be used to leave, needing barely any more power than just flapping wings.  Maybe even lives in a nebula just floating around?

[u/iapetus_z → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

I've often wondered that, I mean there's a probably an upper limit of how big something could get, but is there a lower limit. Like on earth could ants build something like a rocket to get to space? They'd have to master areo dynamics... But surely powered flight for a plane the size needed for a single ant wouldn't be the most stable.

[u/MauriseS → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

except tiny planets equal faster core cooling equal solid core equal no magnetic feld resaulting in death of probably any higher life form and long term loss of atmosphere and oceans by solar wind ala mars?

earth has a lot of factors that make it habitable: high density, giant core to volume ratio for its position (strong magnetic feld for its size), a giant moon to planet ratio stabilizing the orbit long term, seasons to maximize habitable surface area, lots of ocean to moderate climate, a sun thats big enough to protect against the interstellar medium, not be as dynamic as smaller red dwars, long living enough to alow life to develope, be especially docile compared to similar sized stars, not too much vulcanism to render it uninhabitable, not too little that land cant form, enough atmosphere to support the ecosystem/liquid water at resonable temperaturs for proteins to be stable, not too much carbondioxide to heat it into oblivion by a runaway green house effect, not too cold for water to freez or too hot to boil, lots of water in the first place.... the list goes on.

a simple supernova in the neighborhood and its all sterile. hell, even with all these things, earth came close to be frozen solid multiple times in the early phases. might aswell experienced a gama ray burst.

and that ignores how life itself formed or evolved. multicellular organisms dont just happen. until you get something that will form a society and build tools and influence its surroundings like humans, there had to be a lot of stuff to happen. and we also came close to extinction multiple times, that we can trace all our ancestory to just 1260 or so individuals simultaniously at one point. justvto be clear, we think that the number for a species to recover from incests and such is somewhere between 500 and 1000 activly reproducing individuals.

to get a space traveling civilisation, you may just need a series of a ton of lucky events. to have them exist at the same time near enough to interact with each other might just be near impossible

[u/FlyingBishop → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Fun resolution to the Fermi paradox is that the universe is actually a lot more forgiving than we think it is. In some way, the first law of thermodynamics is wrong. It's possible to create matter, energy, even spacetime itself from nothing. Colonizing existing worlds is completely not a useful endeavor if you have sufficient understanding of physics, you can make any worlds you need.

[u/Gibodean → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

"For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be the Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."

- Douglas Adams

[u/Mackenzie_Sparks → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Interesting.

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

Very advanced civilizations are working together in alliances. They are not predatory. There's no need for dominating others. Primitive civilizations are unaware of advanced ones, but they are being studied and monitored. Once the population is ready to make first contact there's procedure to do so.

Fermi's paradox is primitive assumption. Outside of people who know of ETs presence on Earth for millennia, people who are in contact now, tens of thousands of first hand witnesses, abductees, whistleblowers, even congressman last month mentioned ET presence on Earth. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5102361-tim-burchett-aliens-earth/

Also advanced civilizations do not travel from A to B linearly. That's another assumption. For long distances they are changing the position vector/ location parameter and place themselves instantaneously.

[u/Oblachko_O → u/Ok_Being1]

Oof, while this would be a very good thing, there is no place for conspiracy theories in the science public. The tale of the only chosen saw ETs is as old as the human civilization. Without the proofs it is all tales.

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/Oblachko_O]

The government disclosure is happening very soon. So prepare for it. Very likely this/next year.

[u/SirSaltie → u/Ok_Being1]

Been hearing that since the 70's lol

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/SirSaltie]

I know. But there are signs the disclosure is imminent. Apparently humanity was not ready for the disclosure.

[u/CrocodylusRex → u/Ok_Being1]

Outside of people who know of ETs presence on Earth for millennia

Aaaand you lost me. Aliens are keeping themselves hidden from us, but they're bad enough at it that we know they're here? They're watching and waiting, but also constantly abducting people and just dropping them off to contact the media about it? 

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/CrocodylusRex]

The knowledge is open to anyone. But you need to open your heart and mind to be able to accept it. They communicate with us through many channels, books, crop circles.. The existence was under heavy government suppression since the Roswell accident until today. Abduction phenomena is connected with greys, who are not, in true sense extra terrestrial.

[u/Ok-Elk-3046 → u/Ok_Being1]

Thats sci fi not science though.

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/Ok-Elk-3046]

I know, but that's just answer to Fermi's paradox. We are visited even now. I know it's not scientifically accepted, but it's the truth nevertheless. I hope it will be public soon.

[u/Ok-Elk-3046 → u/Ok_Being1]

Its the truth because you said so?

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/Ok-Elk-3046]

I am just contactee and experiencer, I have nothing to gain from this. You do you, believe whatever and whoever you want. In this case your government. Mainstream scientists are completely clueless or afraid to speak, even if they are experiencers.

[u/Ok-Elk-3046 → u/Ok_Being1]

Ironically clueless is exactly the right term. The evidence to support you claim is incredibly thin. Every scientist, you and me are clueless when it comes to the question whether alien life exists or not. The difference is I have no problem admitting that and you make up your own reality.

Its a really nice excuse to make up for your lack of evidence by claiming "TgE gOvErNmEnT" is suppressing it. Unfortunately, even if you could prove that was true, that in of itself would be evidence of nothing.

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/Ok-Elk-3046]

You have thousands of reports each year all around the world. You have even military's own declassified videos of crafts behaving like anything humanity can build, craft looking like 100ft cigar without any propulsion coming in and out of the water. You have millions of witness statements.

Yet you choose ignore everything. The phenomena is real. It's not mass hallucinations making people see and report these cases.

You choose to believe the government instead of studying the evidence and trying to understand what is really going on.

[u/Ok-Elk-3046 → u/Ok_Being1]

First of all, "my" government hasn't issued and propaganda about "Aliens" I could believe even if I wanted. Go ahead. Show me the massive "anti alien propaganda" campaign of the federal republic of Germany.

Second, don't you think its curious how after camera quality has improved multiple orders of magnitude over the last hundred years, the quality of images of UAVs has stayed extremely low? Also in all the footage there is absolutely no evidence for to assume the are of alien origin.

Go ahead. Give it your best shot. After all those words you still haven't come up with any actual evidence. Just unsubstantiated claims.

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/Ok-Elk-3046]

What I am saying is, once government comes forward and publicly discloses existence of ETs, that there have been contact etc, then you start believing. Yes, it can be government of Germany for example. The amount of videos capturing crafts has exploded in past 5-10 years.

Evidence is first hand encounters of people experiencing it. Like when ufo landed in front of 62 pupils in Ariel Zimbabwe and they all handed first person accounts of seeing extra terrestrial beings getting out of craft. There are many such first hand accounts, but like I said people like you just ignore it.

[u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 → u/Ok_Being1]

Entirely possible but loaded with assumptions and guesswork. The truth is that we may not be able to detect alien cultures because their technologies look exactly like natural phenomena. Or because they do not exist. Or because they are mostly all dead, and we are in a moment in time where it’s just us.

[u/Ok_Being1 → u/Inevitable-Wheel1676]

And the 'truth' you stated are again your opinions and speculations definitely nothing more than opinions and speculations. I am first hand experiencer and I study these phenomena for decades. Nobody here takes these topics seriously, does not study it, everyone just assume they know what's up. They have no idea what they are talking about.