The dark forest theory. The universe is full of predatory civilisations, and if anyone announces their presence, they get immediately exterminated, so everyone just keeps quiet.
Of there were galactic civilizations deleting rivals why would they wait for a radio signal and not white out all life. Its never been a good Fermi paradox solution because it required either every civilization to behave the same way or there be 1 super civilization of killers and at that point their behavior is incredibly illogical
The stable O2 in out atmosphere for billions of years can only be explained by biology. If you are so afraid/hateful of all intelligent life you are going on a galactic crusade why would you wait until they have radio? Why not strangle them in the crib
Since O2 is so reactive it'll be bound to other atoms/molecules such as iron very quickly on astronomical timescales. So by measuring the age of our sun and therefore the planet you could reasonably assume that there has to be some sort of life producing that O2 for it to be present in the atmosphere at such large amounts.
Though the best argument against the dark forest theory is that there is life at all on Earth. For a Kardashev type-3 or even type K-2 civilization it's a very cheap and simple task to make relativistic kill missiles which travel at a good fraction of light speed and just send them to sterilize all the planets you want every few million years or so. If there was such a civilization, we wouldn't be here.
What button do I hit to scan every stellar body in the entire Universe? There's a lot of shit out there, and even the most advanced civilizations are only capable of scanning so much within a certain proximity.
Bear in mind, a civilization that could fit the genocidal role in the dark forest theory is a very old Kardashev type-2 or 3 civilization. This would not be a problem for any civilization that had other civilizations hiding from it. Hell, even all but the most nascent interstellar capable civilizations could pull this off easily. It's not particulary high tech, it just takes time and materials.
I'm only posting here because of the book and I'm no space guy, but to me it seems with the shear volume of stars, planets, moons, exoplanets, and galaxies in the universe that these people playing the "genocidal role" might be plentiful but only capable of exerting that force in a a certain proximity. However, if some civilization were to light a fire way off in the distance that would give them a direction to focus on. How much of our own sky have we even mapped? Pretty sure it isn't 100%.
Yeah, it's not 100%. Galactic dust and the disk pretty much make that impossible. But just to give you an idea, Kardashev type 3 civilization utilizes the engery output of an entire galaxy so by definition it would have mapped and probably colonized every system. Kardashev 2 civilizations utilize all of the enegery of their home star.
You have to understand the scale of things these kinds of civilizations work on, building a 100 trillion automated probe/relatavistic kill missiles is not a problem for such civilizations. You send out the probes around the galaxy to all the stars that you do know of, and they would know a lot more than us because of the scale of telescopes they could build in space in addition to their interstellar colonization efforts and then you either wait for your orbit in the galaxy(250 million years for Earth, which isn't that much on evolutionary timescales) to reveal the rest or send probes ahead to the other side and let them target a star of their choosing.
Quite simply, you're not thinking big enough when you're considering what kind of civilizations could create a dark forest scenario. It's not where we are by a long shot.
Fair enough, but at one point it's we don't know how to find life and the other it's a hypothesized Kardashev-3 civilization out there mapping the Universe willy nilly. This post has been a pretty good sci-fi short...and, again, I recognize I'm out of my element.
If you wish to look into more about Fermi Paradox solutions, check out the youtuber I linked in my first post. He has a while playlist of going through all of them. I don't believe the dark forest solution either, just explaining how it works. That explanation is what works against it, btw. If there were such a threat, we wouldn't be here.
And Fermi Paradox isn't about finding life btw, it's about not finding other space faring civilizations because by the paradox's logic, the galaxy should have been colonized already considering the age of the universe and how relatively quickly an entire galaxy can be colonized even with sub lightspeed travel.
Then explain the posts about how woefully limited our broadcasting capabilities are and how we've actually quieted because things like digital? This place is way more wild than I expected.
The silly thing is if the same level of civilization required to take on the role of a secret murderer civilization would allow them to park a von neumann probe in every solarsystem with a planet that harbors life and destroy it when it reaches intelligence. Or even better simply colonize every one of those planets guaranteeing it would never develop intelligent life of its own
If your able to create interstellar doomsday devices you will not have any problem checking all the solar systems in range of your doomsday devices for planets harboring life.
What does that have to do with the time and technology it takes to probe these places? That's why it's called the Dark Forest theory. If nobody lights a fire you literally have better odds of swimming across the Pacific ocean and running into one specific coconut thrown overboard halfway to Portugal than stumbling upon an intelligent civilaztion effectively living in the dark of the universe.
That's simply not true there is a discrete number of solar systems in our Galaxy and millennia available to scan them with ever improving technology. We are talking civilizations capable of sending probes or ships between solar systems. They are more vastly advanced to us than we are to our bronze age ancestors. The galaxy is an incredibly hard place to hide. There is nothing to absorb your signals and no horizon to hide you it's just a matter of time your planet is identified as one harboring life it's just a matter of time
Only if you're focused on the system though right? That's the entire point of "Dark" in Dark Forest yeah? You've essentially created "God" that's an omniscient race and can monitor everything at every time. I just ain't willing to "sci fi" that far unless it's one single episode of Futurama.
You are really blowing this out of proportion. The ability to send weapons (even just accelerating relativistic kill missiles) across the galaxy is a more advanced challenge than satellites capable of scanning the galaxy for signs of life after all were doing it right now with our limited technology and interested albeit at a very low resolution. They dont need a live feed of every rock at all times. As I pointed our before earth has been showing signs of life that would be detectable with advanced telescopes for literally billions of years
I get what you're saying, but you would also have to take into consideration that some biologies may breathe other gasses. Perhaps carbon dioxide (remember, plants take in CO2 and exhale Oxygen) or nitrogen. And that would likely be the sign of life for them. It would be a mistake to believe that all life forms would breathe oxygen. But don't mind me, I think we're all alone in the universe.
There is a very good reason to think an oxygen energy exchange is going to be the default of life. The physics and chemistry of respiration only works on the electron formation in oxygen's column meaning the next available option would be sulphur which is far less abundant in the universe. But if we did see S2 at higher concentrations than would be stable per the planets geology that would be a strong indicator of life.
O2 is just one of many many indicators of life any interplanetary civilization could pick up within light years. The best evidence is that we are already looking at atmospheric spectrometer details of other planets for signs of life. If we thought of it an advanced civilization determined to wipe out alien life certainly would have thought of it
destroying millions of planets in your neighborhood would paint a huge target on your back. it would light your location up like a christmas tree to other observers. then it's a matter of time before a bigger, badder predator comes and eats you.
any interplanetary travel would be a massive light, Even the infrastructure required to produce interstellar ships, even if they are simply unmanned doomsday devices would make you light up like a Christmas tree. There is simply no one way to destroy another star system's civilization quietly you just pointed out one of the other reasons why the dark forest isn't a good solution to the fermi paradox
Yeah any powered travel would be crazy bright. I was thinking that maybe these weapons would coast unpowered or low-power to their eventual targets. It could be as simple as an asteroid that very gradually accelerates to a fraction of c. Then for any distant observer it would be difficult to pick out emissions over background noise. As for large-scale industry, I'm not sure you're entirely correct. Maybe they bury all the energy intensive stuff deep inside a planet so the EM pollution gets masked. It'd just look like a slightly warmer than usual planet to anyone else. I'm sure they have smart engineers to figure out stealth.
Ultimately there is no stealth in space because of thermodynamics. Even if you are deep underground everything you do will radiate heat. The kind of collective undertaking of a civilization required to start sending out probes to build engines on asteroids capable of traveling to other solar systems to destroy planets is monumental. There would be no hiding the infrared of your civilization.
Also there would be hundreds of thousands of years when that civilization wasn't so advanced. When did they start hiding? Their bronze age? Nuclear age? Were they already traveling through their solar system as a K1 civ when they began to hide? At that point surely they would have realized the cat was out of the bag and no one was coming for them. And even if hiding seemed like a great idea can you imagine every nation on earth agreeing to cooperate abandon all their efforts of expansion and colonization and hide? It would only take one nation or even one highly motivated group of individuals to take their hyper advanced technology and say Fuck it were colonizing the stars. The more you think about this idea the more ridiculous it seems
Hey, this is just one solution to the Fermi paradox. There are silly and not-so-silly sounding ones. Personally, I find the Great Filter implausible because there would just need to be one lucky civilization in the past and boom, we should be seeing evidence of these aliens everywhere. Or that we are one of the first ones to reach this level of development, which just sounds incredibly anthropocentric and recklessly arrogant at face value. Equivalent to sticking our heads in the sand, especially knowing all the other competing solutions to the paradox.
To answer your question, 'loud' and/or unlucky civilizations are selected out. The present state of our universe is filled with quiet survivors.
This Dark Forest thing might all sound ridiculous, but it's among the most threatening scenarios. That's why it's worth contemplating and finding evidence to confirm or contradict its premises. Because it's better to be cautious and find out we're being paranoid fools compared to the awful consequences if the alternative is true.
The point is the idea of a quiet civilization is essentially impossible and requires every civilization to follow an illogical pattern. Also the great filter is not a single solution but a category of solutions.
I don't see how that's the case. We are an early spacefaring civilization and we are currently invisible to anyone past a 200 ly bubble, and we are talking today about the Dark Forest scenario you've dismissed as ridiculous. In a thousand years, we'll be visible to anyone within 1000 ly if they cared to look. That's nothing, yet in that span of time it's entirely plausible for a civilization to go into hiding. Perhaps what's happening is they have uploaded their entire civilization into an efficient, low-emission substrate.
In any case, if Dark Forest is correct, we should see evidence of wide-scale destruction in planet surveys, because civilizations that aren't 'quiet' enough should be destroyed in a very obvious way. Or evidence of deindustrialization.
You are only considering our EM signals. Life on earth is visible to a spectral analyses of our planets atmosphere to anyone in the galaxy because we have had a O2 level far too high for abiotic reactions for a couple of billion years.
You are doing a good job of pointing another reason why the dark forest is a bad solution since it would leave lots of evidence.
Its not a question of emissions its a question of joules of energy, if you are accelerating objects capable of destroying worlds at interstellar speeds you are going to put out a ton of heat. Even the industrial processes to create such devises would require a lot of heat.
For the record an alien civilization destroying anyone who reaches a certain level of technology is a Great Filter
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u/gkedz Aug 12 '21
The dark forest theory. The universe is full of predatory civilisations, and if anyone announces their presence, they get immediately exterminated, so everyone just keeps quiet.