Why has humanity never (that we know of) been visited by aliens? Scientists have been baffled by the question for decades, but two researchers have proposed a possible – and disturbing – explanation: Advanced civilizations may be doomed to stagnate or die before they have a chance.
According to the new hypothesis, as space-faring civilizations grow in size and technological development, they eventually reach a point where innovation can no longer keep up with the demand for energy. Then comes the inevitable collapse. According to the researchers, the only other option is to reject a model of “unyielding growth” in favor of maintaining equilibrium, but this comes at the expense of a civilization’s ability to spread across the stars.
The argument, which was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, attempts to resolve the Fermi Paradox. The paradox, named after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi’s casual lunchtime musings, draws attention to the contradiction between the universe’s enormous scope and age — two factors that suggest the universe should be teeming with advanced alien life — and the lack of evidence that extraterrestrials exist anywhere in sight. “So where is everybody?” Fermi is thought to have remarked.
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.”
The pair developed their hypothesis after researching studies of cities’ “superlinear” growth. According to these studies, cities grow in size and energy consumption at an exponential rate as their populations grow, inevitably leading to crisis points — or singularities — that cause rapid growth crashes, followed by an even more precipitous, potentially civilization-ending, collapse.
The pair developed their hypothesis after researching studies of cities’ “superlinear” growth. According to these studies, cities grow in size and energy consumption at an exponential rate as their populations grow, inevitably leading to crisis points — or singularities — that cause rapid growth crashes, followed by an even more precipitous, potentially civilization-ending, collapse.
According to the researchers, these near-collapse civilizations would be the easiest for humanity to detect because they would be dissipating large amounts of energy in a “wildly unsustainable” manner. “This presents the possibility that a good many of humanity’s initial detections of extraterrestrial life may be of the intelligent, though not yet wise, kind,” the researchers wrote.
To avoid extinction, civilizations could undergo a “homeostatic awakening,” shifting their focus from unrestricted growth across the stars to one that prioritizes societal well-being, sustainable and equitable development, and harmony with their environment, according to the researchers. While such civilizations might not abandon space exploration entirely, they would not expand on large enough scales to make contact with Earth likely.
The researchers highlight a few of humanity’s “mini-awakenings” that addressed global crises on Earth, such as the reduction of global nuclear weapons stockpiles from 70,000 to under 14,000 warheads; the halting of the once-growing hole in Earth’s ozone layer by banning chlorofluorocarbon emissions; and the 1982 international whaling moratorium.
However, the scientists focus that their suggestion is only a hypothesis based on observations of laws that appear to govern life on Earth, and that it is designed to “provoke discussion, introspection, and future work.”
Their theory joins a slew of other scientific and popular explanations for why we’ve never made direct contact with celestial visitors. These include the numerous practical challenges presented by interstellar travel; the possibility that aliens are actually visiting Earth in secret; or the possibility that aliens arrived on Earth too early (or humans too early) in the universe’s life for direct contact.
Another theory, published in The Astrophysics Journal, proposes that due to the vastness of the universe, it could take up to 400,000 years for a signal sent by one advanced species to be received by another — a timescale far greater than the brief period humans have been able to scan the skies.
READ MORE: JWST Just Proved It Can Search for Alien Life on Exoplanets
If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you would believe!