Space
The Dark Forest Theory Explains Why We Haven’t Found Aliens Yet – And It Is Pretty Terrifying
The Milky Way galaxy is made up of 200 billion stars and maybe 100 billion planets. Even if just a tiny proportion of those planets maintained life, and even if only a pitiful scattering of those planets had intelligent lifeforms, our galaxy would be swarming with alien civilizations, some of which would be seeking for us or discoverable for at least a short time.
The Drake equation, which converts the preceding components into variables, may be used to calculate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that should exist in the galaxy. When you enter them into the calculation, you get to the conclusion that our galactic neighborhood should have at least 20 civilizations. When you think about it, the fact that we have yet to discover any other life in the universe is almost astounding.
The Fermi paradox refers to the apparent discrepancy between how many advanced civilizations there should be in space and the lack of evidence for any. Over the previous several decades, it has given rise to hundreds of concepts and proposed solutions.
The Dark Forest theory explains why we haven’t heard from aliens by asserting that they are intentionally staying quiet.
The argument is best spelled out in Liu Cixin’s book The Dark Forest. The storyline of the book, the second in a trilogy, is concerned with how to communicate with possibly hostile extraterrestrial species.
The following is how the novel’s argument is set out:
All life seeks to stay alive. There is no way of knowing if other lifeforms can or will annihilate you if given the opportunity. In the absence of guarantees, the safest choice for any species is to eliminate other life forms before they can do the same.
Because all other lifeforms in the book are risk-averse and prepared to go to any length to preserve themselves, every contact is risky, as it nearly always results in the contacted species wiping out whoever was dumb enough to give away their position. As a result, all civilizations seek to remain radio silent.
This excerpt from the book explains the reasons for the paranoia: ‘The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds another life—another hunter, angel, or a demon, a delicate infant to tottering old man, a fairy or demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them.’
Scientist David Brin proposed this notion as a possible answer to the absence of radio evidence for extraterrestrial life. While the form he describes employs robotic probes to eliminate civilizations other than the one that produced it, the essential principle remains the same. In this paragraph, he argues why this answer is appealing from a technical standpoint but horrifying from an existential one:
‘It is consistent with all of the facts and philosophical principles described in the first part of this article. There is no need to struggle to suppress the elements of the Drake equation in order to explain the Great Silence, nor need we suggest that no ETIS anywhere would bear the cost of interstellar travel. It need only happen once for the results of this scenario to become the equilibrium condition in the Galaxy. We would not have detected extraterrestrial radio traffic- nor would any ETIS have ever settled on Earth- because all were killed shortly after discovering radio.’
For over a century, we’ve been shouting our existence to the universe. Any extraterrestrial within a hundred light years of us would be bombarded with radio transmissions from our way. We could have a problem if we had reason to avoid informing aliens about ourselves, as Stephen Hawking believed we do.
A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.
Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.
One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.
This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.
According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.
Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook
Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.
The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.
While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.
Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.
Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.
However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.
Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.
Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.
Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.
Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.
Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.
One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.
Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.
Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.
“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.
“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.
If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.
They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.
Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.
“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.
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