Beatriz Gato-Rivera is a Physicist at the Instituto de Matematicas y Fisica in Madrid, Spain.
Beatriz Gato-Rivera - The Full Wiki
She published and spoke about a paper she wrote in December, 2005 at the World Mystery Forum 2005, Interlaken (Switzerland) in November 2005. The title is "
A Solution To The Fermi Paradox: The Solar System, Part Of A Galactic Hypercivilization?" It is a rather long read but one that I believe address many of these questions about "where are they"? One question that is rarely ever broached is one that addresses the possibility of aggressive or hostile species. This is one possible reason we have not yet detected any other civilizations. I will upload it as I think you may find it of interest. I do not buy into all her ideas but I do think much of it may have merit.
Decker
1 Introduction
This talk is about the possibility that the Solar System belongs
to the territory of a hypercivilization spanning our galaxy or a
large region of it. I will start introducing the Fermi Paradox
(why we do not see aliens around?) and some of its solutions.
Then I will present my own solution which includes two proposals
called the Subanthropic Principle and the Undetectability
Conjecture. This solution states that, at present, all typical
galaxies like ours are already colonized by very advanced
technological civilizations spread through large regions or the
whole galaxies, many of them containing primitive
subcivilizations like ours. After discussing some consequences
of this solution for our planet and our civilization I will make
some comments on recent, very popular theories in the scientific
community of Particle Physics and Cosmology. These theories,
known as 'brane worlds', assume that our visible Universe with
three space dimensions is embedded in a much larger Cosmos with
more space dimensions. Therefore it would be most natural if
other universes would also exist located along the extra space
dimensions. As a result, these theories open up enormous
possibilities regarding the visitation or colonization of the
Solar System by alien civilizations, strengthening the Fermi
Paradox. Finally, in the appendix I have included some questions
and answers that came up during this Forum.
2 The Fermi Paradox
In the summer 1950, in Los Alamos, the nuclear physicists Enrico
Fermi, Edward Teller and other colleagues brought up the subject
of unidentified flying objects (UFO's) while having lunch. This
topic was very popular at that time. After a while, when they
had changed subjects Fermi suddenly asked: Where is everybody?
Performing fast mental computations, Fermi had reached the
conclusion that alien civilizations should have been around
visiting Earth for many thousands or millions of years.
Therefore, why we do not see them? This is the Fermi Paradox.
Although Fermi never explained how he made his computations, nor
gave an estimate of the number of civilizations which should
have visited Earth, he had to rely on arguments like these: In
our galaxy there are thousands of millions of stars much older
than the Sun, many of them thousands of millions of years older
(in the 'habitable zone' of the galaxy they are on average one
thousand million years older [1]). Therefore many civilizations
must have arisen in our galaxy before ours and a fraction of
them must have expanded through vast regions or even through the
whole galaxy.
Some other arguments pointing in the same direction involve
estimates about the lifetime of the second generation stars,
inside of which the chemical elements of organic matter are
made, and also involve estimates of the total time necessary for
a technological civilization to colonize, or visit, the whole
galaxy. Regarding the second generation stars, they are formed
only two million years after the supermassive first generation
stars (these burn out exploding as supernovae in one million
years only and it takes another million years for the debris to
form new stars). Therefore the appearance of organic matter in
our galaxy could have happened several thousands of millions of
years before the Sun came into existence. As to the total time
necessary to colonize, or visit, the whole galaxy by a
technological civilization, conservative computations of
diffusion modeling give estimates from 5 to 50 million years
[2], which is a cosmologically short timescale1. Besides these
considerations, the fact that life on Earth started very early
supports the views, held by many scientists, that life should be
abundant in the Universe.
3 Solutions to the Fermi Paradox
Many solutions have been proposed to the Fermi Paradox. I
classify them as expansionist and non-expansionist. The non-
expansionist solutions are based on the assumption that
technological civilizations do not expand beyond a small
neighborhood of the galaxy. The most popular of these solutions
are the following ones:
- Interstellar travel is not possible no matter the scientific
and technological level reached by a civilization.
- Generically, advanced civilizations have little or no
interest in expanding through large regions of the galaxy.
- Technological civilizations annihilate themselves, or
disappear by natural catastrophes, before having the chance to
expand through large regions of the galaxy.
On the other hand, the most popular expansionist solutions to
the Fermi Paradox, based on the assumption that generically
technological civilizations do expand through large regions of
the galaxy, make use of one or more of the following arguments:
- Alien civilizations do visit Earth at present times, for
different purposes, and/or have visited Earth in the past. In
this respect it is remarkable the fact that Francis Crick, one
of the discoverers of the DNA structure, proposed in the mid-
seventies1
During this Forum Claudio Maccone, member of the International
Academy of Astronautics, has presented a mathematical model that
predicts around 150 million years, which is still a short time.
that life on Earth could have been inseminated on purpose by
alien intelligences2.
Besides, some scientists as well as countless authors of popular
books, have speculated that some UFO's could be true alien
spacecrafts whereas some 'gods descending from the sky',
abundant in many ancient traditions, could have been just alien
astronauts (see for example [3] [4]).
- Advanced alien civilizations might have strong ethical codes
against interfering with primitive life-forms [5].
- Advanced aliens ignore us because of lack of interest due to
our low primitive level. For example Robert Jastrow, ex-director
of Mt. Wilson Observatory, claims [6] that, on average, advanced
civilizations should consider us as larvae due to the fact that
they should be thousands of millions of years ahead of us....
and who would be interested in communicating with larvae?
- Alien civilizations have not reached us yet because
intelligent life is extremely diffi- cult to emerge. Otherwise
alien civilizations would necessarily be here. As a result we
could find ourselves among the most evolved technological
civilizations in our galaxy or we could even be the only one.
Besides these simple solutions there are many more exotic
proposals. For example, a rather drastic expansionist solution
is given by the theoretical physicist Cumrun Vafa, at Harvard
University, who thinks that the fact that we do not see aliens
around could be the first proof of the existence of brane
worlds: all advanced aliens would have emigrated
to better parallel universes [7].
cont.