081 - The Fermi Paradox - Are We Alone in the Universe? Can Rationality Ever be Alone?

It is estimated that over 2 billion stars in our own Milky Way galaxy have planets orbiting them that could sustain life.  Are we on planet Earth a lottery winner, a one in 2 billion chance for establishing life and intelligent beings?  The odds suggest life exists elsewhere.  

However, although it took billions of years to life on Earth to evolve to where we are today,  there are stars are much older that our own sun.  Several billion years older in fact.  Why no evidence of extraterrestrial life?  No radio signals, no unmanned probes, no hard evidence of visitations.  Why not?  Could we be alone?

Hegel teaches that rationality and Spirit is paramount, what is real. If so, it most be universal, across the cosmos.  Are we the only place where it has actualized?  This episode explores.  

Transcript

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Hello, I'm Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist episode 81. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to explore philosophy psychology and modern science. With an emphasis on the great 19th century philosopher, George Wilhem freezer, Hagle. I also cover other great thinkers here, such as psychologist, Carl Young media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, and many more. All of whom I believe can provide help to us today and understanding our place in the world. And then setting meaningful goals and taking appropriate actions to build a better life for us and for everyone. Before we get into this episode, I want to mention that. I realize it's been seven weeks since I last published. an episode. And when I started the podcast some four years ago, I began by doing them every two weeks. Very religiously. Then after a year or so, I moved to every three weeks then after another year or so to about once a month. And I continued that just up until now. and as I've mentioned before, I. Feel that I really need to have something to say that is new and different to record an episode. I just can't force it. I don't want to just come on here and babble and waste your time. But I do believe that I've come up with a new topic and I'm excited to present it here now. So here we go. In this episode, I'm going to move beyond the confines of planet earth and look at the larger universe as a whole. To get the bigger physical picture. If you will. There's so much we know about the cosmos today, there was unavailable to Hagle and other things. It was even to those philosophers and psychologists in the 20th century. The questions I will be addressing are these first one, does life exist elsewhere in the universe? Two is so does intelligent life rationality exist elsewhere in the universe? Three. If intelligent life does exist elsewhere, is it possible for us to communicate? With extra terrestrial consciousness. And for lastly, if extra terrestrial consciousness exists beyond our planet. Why have we not heard from them? So. As regular listeners. Now, I normally begin an episode by stating my overall conclusions first, then backing up and presenting my, my full argument and then summarizing, but given the uniqueness of this topic, I believe it's best again, into some of the details first, then present my conclusion. So let's start. Question one. Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? Well, let's break this question down first. We do know that life exists here on planet earth. So we know it's possible for life to originate in the universe. We also know that rational, conscious thought here. It exists here as well. So it's possible for rational consciousness to exist. In the universe. And whether or not that is the aim of the universe is a separate question, which I'll put on hold for now. Revisit later. But let's step back and examine what we know about life appearing here on earth. And right off the bat, we are faced with a big question. Do we have the right to say that life began to exist here? I only bring this up because there is a serious theory called panpsychism. We devoted an entire episode to that back in episode 12. Panpsychism holds that mind exists as a fundamental feature of the cosmos of everything. Even if matter. There's no particle or speck of dust or subatomic particle that does not contain some very rudimentary form of mind. If that's correct. Then mine may have been operating even in. Rudimentary form mind in life. From the so-called beginning of our universe. But this brings up a question. From the beginning of our universe, did our universe have a beginning? I've covered my thinking on this question back in episode 39, but let's review. what I have to say on this. Scientists now consider the notion of the big bang as being established fact that this occurred some 13.8 billion years ago. And just what was going on at that moment and what proceeded it is unknown. My own theory. Similar to, to what is taught in Hinduism and in other. Traditions teach is that the universe goes through cycles. From the big bang, the universe continues to expand to the point where everything is so far apart, eventually dissolves. And then a new universe is reborn from this. cosmic quagmire. Uh, of nothingness, if you will, into another big bang. Now, this is not eternal recurrence. It's not the same things. Repeat over and over again in each round. All in nature. But the universe itself can evolve. I believe. And others believe including his laws from round to round. I covered this theory in detail in a full episode, episode 61. So check that out. Now, how did scientists conclude that the big bang occurred? Well, this is interesting. They discovered that the galaxies we now observe are moving away from each other in an accelerated. Rate. They, and they use this fact to project backward in time and realized that the universe had to have a much smaller. Beginning. it must've been much smaller earlier on than it is today. And actually it keeps, if you go backwards, it keeps getting smaller and smaller to the original, big bang, some 13.8 billion years ago. As I said, what, exactly went down there? They don't know. Uh, that's because the laws of physics break down in these initial conditions. But it appears that there was initially something that existed on a quantum level and scientists determined that right before the big bang, there was a huge expansion of space itself. Now what's important. Here is the universe did not expand into space. It was space itself that expanded. I know it's impossible to visualize this because if something's expanding, then it must be expanding into something. Now scientists use the concept of blowing up a balloon with dots on it. To explain this as the balloons is the balloon gets bigger, the dots move away from each other. That is the best current science can do as an explanation. And it's not perfect by any stretch because the balloon obviously is. Expanding into the air around it. But let's just leave that conundrum here and just say that scientists using relatively theory, Einstein space-time continuum, et cetera, believe this is what's occurring based on current knowledge. Now after this initial extreme expansion of space. There was just a kind of cosmic radiation that existed and it existed. Like this for some 400 million years. And then the first star has finally appeared. So the cosmic background, radiation is still detectable today, in fact, and it actually is what's provided further evidence to support the big bang theory. So the expanding universe is what gave empirical evidence to the original, big bang. But we're talking here about galaxies and stuff. Let's just back up for a second and review some basics about a universe from a physical standpoint. We live on the planet earth. It's around blue ball. We've all seen the photographs of it from space. We live on this planet. And the planet earth travels around in the circle around the sun. The sun is that big, bright object in the sky that you can't look at directly. It takes one year for the earth, our planet to make the circular journey around the sun. In fact, this is how we define the term one year, how long it takes the earth to go one revolution around the sun. Now there are seven other planets that also revolve around the sun, different sizes and makeups. Earth is the third one out. Scientists used to consider Pluto, which is the outer most protoplanet. They used to consider that an actual planet. But they no longer classified as a full fledged planet. so. Our son now is just one son of about 100 billion stars that make up our Milky way. Galaxy. As soon as you can see this at night, the Milky way galaxy consists of a hundred billion stars and we're one of the stars. With our eight planets. Now that's a lot of stars in coincidentally, the human brain. They estimate has approximately 100 billion neurons, roughly the same number. Of stars as in the Milky way, galaxy. Now. What's fascinating. Here is the Milky way. Galaxy our galaxy is just one such star cluster. Of an estimated 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the entire universe. Now we're getting into numbers that you cannot visualize to calculate the total number of stars in the universe. One, one after multiply 100 billion stars from one galaxy times, the number of galaxies say 1 trillion. And I don't think my calculator can handle that many zeros. Now. These first stars are suns appearing some 13.4, roughly. Billion years ago. 400 million years after the big bang. Not all the stars were formed in stars. Continue to be born and go through a lifecycle. Some were formed then, and some are formed after. Including our own sun and stars die out also. Uh, it depends on the size of the star where they can live from some 20 million years on the short side to several trillion years on the long side. Our own son is estimated to have a lifespan of some 10 billion years. So it is possible that some of the first stars in the universe may still be around. Now. Our son was born about 4.6 billion years ago. So it's a relatively new star. And it will continue to live for another 5.4 billion years or so. The earth itself is almost as old as the son being born 4.5 billion years ago. And it, and the other plants were formed at roughly the same time, very early in the son's life. So that's where we stand on the, on the cosmic timetable and it gives you some perspective. Now let's go back to the question of life. Scientists contend that the first physical evidence of anything that could be called life, which is microscopic microbes appeared some 3.7 billion years ago on the planet. So the physical appearance of life on earth appeared relatively early in the Earth's history. so just over 80% of the Earth's life so far has contained observable physical life. Now. From the appearance of these first singular cell microbes, it took him to the two to 3 billion years. That's a lot of time for multicellular life to evolve, where the cells joined up. Some. w one cell might eat another one or they would combine somehow. And they w. Then formed a new entity and multicellular organism. Then it took another 800 million years, almost another billion years for multiple forms of life, plants and animals to evolve. Then around 538 million years ago. The so-called Cambrian explosion occurred, and this is a great evolutionary leap. And that many early primitive lifeforms emerged that back then, but a half a billion years ago. Now fish continued to evolve during this period. And the first ones then moved out of the water to the land did so around 390 million years ago. Mammals appeared around 200 million years ago. It took some time for the initial primates, our direct ancestors to evolve. This occurred around 50 to 55 million years ago. Early humanoids evolve some five to 6 million years ago from a common ancestor of the ape. Um, and at that time there were many different humanoid species evolving separately, perhaps as many as 15 to 20 different types. MITRE humans. Speaking of our form, our bodies first appeared around 300 million years ago. And certain cultural developments like tools, cave, art, and such that's much more recent. And that started about 50,000 to 65,000 years ago. So. We're moving forward here. The agricultural revolution then occurred around 10,000 years ago. When people change from hunter gatherers to living in more stable communities writing, which is so important, became more recently around 3,200 BC in Mesopotamia. And this is. Very close to when. Writing was formed in Egypt or on 3,100 BCE. Hinduism the world's oldest religion appeared 2000 BC Judaism around 1000 BC Christianity around 33 CE with the death of Jesus. I continue to move forward. The printing press was invented in 1440. the scientific revolution occurred in the 16th, 17th century, along with the Protestantism of Martin Luther. The great liberal revolutions in Europe and America began in the late 17th and early 18th century. The philosophical revolution of content Hagle occurred during that time. The electrical revolution took hold in the late 18 hundreds, beginning with the Telegraph leading to the radio and then television in the 20th century. The first flight occurred early in the 20th century. And the first man in the moon was in 1969 and the internet late in the 20th century. All very recent. Given the fact that, observable life on earth goes back 3.7 billion years. And the most major developments occurred in just the last few thousand years. So it's just a tiny fraction of the total time of physical life in the plant. So. What am I getting at here? Life. Whether it was also there in a proto form. Before they had an as in panpsychism or if it began to exist at that time is nearly as old as the planet itself, but it took almost this entire time for it to evolve where we are today. Thinking conscious creatures. Now. Given that fact, though, there are stars in the universe that had been around much longer than our sun. Maybe even twice as long. And. Scientists estimate there's some 200 billion stars like our sun, just in our own Milky way. Galaxy alone, 200 billion stars like our sun in our own galaxy. And they estimate that some 20% of those stars have planets. 20% of the stars that elect our son have planets. That's 40 billion stars like ours in our galaxy with planets orbiting around them. And they also estimate that there are more than 2 billion planets in our galaxy that could sustain life because they are in the habitable zone from their mother's star. So. That's 2 billion plants. You know, so. We're saying that if life only involved here, that'd be one out of 2 billion. That's pretty low eyes. so to answer the first question where the life exists on the planet. It's it. Twofold answer it's certainly possible. And it looks like it would be highly likely given the vast number of planets that exist out there. Like ours. However, we've seen no evidence of such life, and this is a paradox. so we cannot really categorically say yes or no to question one without direct evidence of extraterrestrial, intelligent life. Now as Carl Sagan said, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. So. We must remain agnostic. At least on question one. Now. We have been searching the sky for radio signals from other plans for some time now, but nothing's turned up and some refer to this as Fermi's paradox and. For me. Was, Enrico, Fermi, and Italian physicist to. Raise the question back in 1950, if life on other planets is so probable. Why do we have no evidence of this life? Um, I'm going to address this question specifically in question four, but first. Let's move on to question two. Does rationality exist elsewhere in the universe? Well, As I said before, we know that we are rational creatures. So rationality exists in the universe. And importantly, it may also be fundamental to the universe as Hagle explains. Therefore it may be. Universal. and if life does develop in the university and also. If opportunity avails itself, continue to develop and continue to evolve to the point where it expresses rationality and intelligence. And this is I've said it was most likely it's cold. Not that it's a goal by some outside force or God. It's just that that's the nature of the life force itself. to express itself and better express itself. And. And have greater freedom and control of the environment and awareness of itself, which leads to the expression of rationality. But again, as with life itself, there's no evidence confirming that rationality intelligence also exists somewhere outside of earth, but we can't rule it out either. This brings us to question three. If there is rational life out there, is it possible to communicate? With such extra terrestrial consciousness. And the answer here appears to be yes, with some qualifications, we are capable of picking up radio signals from space, and we have monitors going on right now, trying to pick up signals from outer space. Many organizations monitor the skies for such signals. Our own radio waves and satellite transmissions extend into space and have for some time now. Many of which could be picked up by now by our nearest neighbors. And perhaps the most famous such message was sent out from earth from the huge air CBO radio telescope, located in Puerto Rico. In 1974, it contained numbers, atomic numbers, chemical formulas, a map of the solar system and other information showing our intelligence. And we aimed it at a star cluster, some 25,000 light years from earth. So our message will arrive 25,000 years from now. This method is obviously slow, real slow, but it may be too slow for real communication. What about physical visits? Well, if you think radio waves just slow, physical travel is so much, much slower. So any kind of meaningful physical travel would have to involve technologies beyond our current understanding and capability. Now there could be unmanned drones or probes that are sent out by civilizations. From other planets. In fact, the United States did that. In 1977, it's sent out two vehicles out of our solar system, Voyager one and Voyager two. They contain greetings from earth messages. They included also a recording of music, which they called Earth's greatest hits and even attain to Chuck Berry rock and roll hit Johnny B Goode. And As an aside, there's a very funny old Saturday night live skit in which earth receives its first message from outer space. Steve Martin portrays a scientist, and he's going to read you the world, the first message from the aliens. And he says it contains just four words and it's going to be on the cover of time magazine next week. And he reads the four words. Send more Chuck Berry. Anyway. I posted a video clip of this Saturday night live skit on the podcast. Facebook page. If you want to check it out.. But there's a fourth type of communication beyond radio signals, personal travel or unmanned spacecraft. That's ESP. Extra sensory communication. Well, there is some empirical evidence that ESP does exist perhaps only in a limited sense among some people, particularly between close relations and friends. It's not yet firmly established as an accepted view of science. But one wonder is just how deep does the collective unconscious mind go? Could it go? So deep that it includes extra terrestrial life. If it exists out there. It's an interesting idea. But it does not seem to be evident in our dreams or archetypes. So we expressing our religion and our art. Following along with. Young's theory. So this question of ESP cannot really be addressed at this point in time. It may be possible, but it may also not be possible. So this brings us to our last question regarding the Fermi paradox. For if rational creatures are out there. Why have we not heard from them? Well, as I said, the earth is close to 4 billion years old with measurable life arising shortly after that. Although conscious rational life only appeared relatively recently. Many stars out there have been. Around a lot longer, perhaps twice as long. Could they have not figured out an interstellar travel by now? The Milky way can be transversed in a few million years, given conventional space travel. So why aren't they here or their probes or the radio signals? Anything? But there's nothing. It's silence. And why is this so well, there are many theories, many possibilities. Let me just cover two. broad ones first is that. Uh, technologically intelligent civilizations may have a lifespan of their own and die out before they could establish galactic travel. And there can be many reasons why they die out, but we'll just lump it all in. That they never survived to the point. Of, uh, establishing in neglected. Travel. Now, secondly, it's possible that they're out there and they're aware of us, but they choose not to communicate with us. And this is because they see us as not having evolved enough to communicate with. And you can understand this. We are currently a species still engaged with wars against each other. Why would an advance civilization want to make contact with us? Remember the old line, take me to your leader. We, as a planet, could not even come to agreement as to who to put forth as our leader. So we may be sort of untouchable at this point in time. And also the recent, relatively recent spate of UFO sightings, unidentified flying objects raises this possibility of us being observed, but not. You had contacted. So it's an interesting theory. But again, backing up a little bit. All this is very technologically oriented, very physically oriented. And as I said before, my main DB universal. And as such if other creatures evolve and other planets. Uh, they may advance to the point where they tap into rational thought as well. So they would not be true aliens, but they would be fellow Centene, creatures, recognizing thought and spirit as a bond between us. Now. Let me bring up an interesting point. It, it cannot be denied that the universe appears as if it has been fine tuned for life. And as I said, this does not imply necessarily imply a creator God, behind at all. My own theory is that the law of nature. The laws of nature may have evolved from round around of the universe and other scientists. Phil. This may be the case as well. From birth to death, the rebirth there's a cycle and things get, get more fine tuned to produce life. It may have taken a few rounds just to get to the point where there. Where there was initial life. Anyway. Some of the coincidences that, that we see, for example, If the electronic magnetic force between two protons were only slightly smaller, the university would have been short-lived. If the strong nuclear forest was off a bit, by say two, one hundreds of a percent, the universe itself could not exist. If the ratio of dark energy to gravity, where I've just a bit, the initial universe would have collapsed. If the cosmological constant were just slightly larger space would have expanded too rapidly for stars to form. So the universe itself seems to Have evolved very much along the lines to support life and life evolves to the point to support rational thought. I mentioned this. Theory. That I've adopted an exported in, in episode 61. And this may be an, an evolutionary journey that we share with others. It may not be. You know, planet dependent. and as listeners to the podcast know Hegel's approach is that evolution of spirit in nature is historical and is ongoing. And he claimed that history evolves toward greater freedom and rationality dialectically, it's a dialectical process. And this often happens through the struggle of nation against nation. This is still going on today on earth. and someday, if, if, and when confronted with an alien civilization, we may have to engage dialect the claim with them for advancement. Let's hope it's a peaceful dialectic. Process. But assuming their rationality is core to the universe. When we are confronted with other rational beings, they may have evolved past us. From an understanding point. They may be more in touch with spirit incorporated into the lives that more than us. Will we be able to grow given such an account or hopefully. Are there things perhaps we can pass on to them given our own unique circumstances also, hopefully, possibly. meeting another civilization with their own dialectical history and then combining it with the. With ours in a dialectical process could be a life-changing experience for us here. So finally, what do we do about all this? What do we just wait and see? Uh, no, there are. There are a couple of knowns here that I think we should keep front and center. First, the big one, the sun will not last forever. It will eventually die out. Even if we live together. You know, w if we can extend life indefinitely is. That's not good enough. The sun will not last forever. It will die. And as part of its process, it will eventually become bigger and engulf the earth. This will incur in about 5 billion years or so. So he had plenty of time to prepare for this event and possibly leave earth and the solar system itself. And it may take us. A few billion years to become an interstellar species. But there's no time like the present to start things moving along. And there's another danger that, that have a giant asteroid hitting the earth. This is what is commonly believed to have wiped out the non-flying dinosaur some 65 million years ago. Unfortunately they didn't have rocket ships to escape the planet. And there's another thing that could happen. A huge random asteroid could strike the earth. And scientists estimate that this can occur every 500,000 years or so. and this is a much shorter time span than the 5 billion years when the earth is engulfed by the sun. And it just because it's very rare does not prevent it from happening sooner than later. And this is another reason that I'm interplanetary colonization. Got it in a very important life saving benefit for us and for rationality itself. if we're the only ones that, that have evolved so far to this point, otherwise we might have to wait for the next round to continue our evolution of what you've were alone or. You know, Somebody else in some other planets, some other species will, will carry on, but it's something that is important to consider seriously, interplanetary. travel and setting up colonies on other planets. Then there are the issues here on the planet itself. Things such as nuclear, Armageddon, climate change, they represent known risks that that could make the earth uninhabitable. And, and that's another reason to explore other, other planets. And there's also the issue of contagious pandemics. the, the could occur. The worst than what we've seen so far and they are certainly possible and can't be ruled out. So. All these terrestrial events. Point the need to take a look for, for new, for new Homeland. As they say. So to close things off let's return once again, to philosophy all this talk about the big bang and galaxies makes for great left brain analysis. But as Hegel famously said in the phenomenology of spirit, everything turns on grasping and expressing the true, not as substance, but equally as subject. And the following, what seems to take place outside of it to be an actively directed against it. Is its own doing. It's own activity and substance shows. That it is in reality subject. So, what are you saying here is that my Damanhur are essentially the same. They're two sides of the same coin. Both are fundamental. And we can take solace from the fact that mine exists in is indeed. Fundamental as other planets, the suns and the galaxies. But we shouldn't just rest with that knowledge. We are alive in nature and we must move forward. And for the reasons discussed here, this means moving out to other planets. And two other stars. So that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you so much for listening and a special thanks to all those of you who have braved through all 81 episodes of the cutting of guys podcast so far, I will keep them coming. And as I always remind everyone at the end of each episode, please be sure to like, and follow the podcast, Facebook page at cunning of guys, I post there often. And we have very fruitful. Conversations with followers of that page. So, so check it out like it and follow it and contribute. And also feel free to share links to these episodes on your own social media accounts. I highly encourage it. And also tell your like-minded friends about the podcast, spread the word. So closing, let me say. I'm Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. CNX time.