Episode 44 — The Brief Window Hypothesis — is now Live!
In this week’s episode, I returned to the well of the Fermi Paradox to address another of my favorite resolutions. While this one is not an official hypothesis, it encapsulates elements from several proposals and asks the big question — is intelligent life doomed? If humanity is any indication, intelligent creatures may eventually outgrow their resource base, ruin their natural environment, and build weapons of mass destruction that they may eventually use.
This raises a key parameter of the Drake Equation, the thought experiment created by astronomer and SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake:
N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L
For those who are unfamiliar, the equation basically states that the number of intelligent species ( N) in our galaxy that humanity could communicate with comes down to a series of parameters (planets per star, habitable planets per system, those that have life, etc.,) multiplied by the length of time ( L) a species is likely to transmit signals to space. If intelligent life is prone to destructive behavior or has a limited life expectancy, then L is the key parameter for finding evidence of it out there.
Basically, the transmission will begin when a species achieves an advanced state of development and will end when they succumb to their fate. If our antennas are not set to the right frequencies, and we don’t manage to detect their transmissions within this window, then we will never hear from them. There’s also the possibility that intelligent life undergoes a seismic shift at some point, which borrows from the Transcension Hypothesis and the concept of the “ Technological Singularity.”
The idea here is that intelligent life will eventually transcend its physical biology and become something radically different. At this point, species may not be likely to communicate via radiowaves but with something radically advanced — like neutrinos or gravitational waves — or may not be interested in communicating at all. Once again, the window will have closed. But in this case, it will be due to a pattern in the evolutionary development of intelligent life. Check it out by following the links below:
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Originally published at http://storiesbywilliams.com on July 5, 2023.
