NASA Scientist Proposes Theory of Alien Civilizations Throughout Milky Way

Assuming our solar system’s newest interstellar object isn’t an alien mothership sent here to threaten us, humanity still hasn’t detected any trace of extraterrestrial life, let alone intelligence—which is odd, given how incalculably vast the universe is. With all the potential homes for potential alien civilizations, why do we see no evidence of them?

You’ve probably heard of this conundrum: the Fermi Paradox. And you’ve probably heard of more than a few solutions to this.

There is the infamous zoo hypothesis, which posits that advanced aliens know about our planet but stay away from us to allow us to evolve naturally.

Or maybe you subscribe to spooky ones like this vulnerable worlds hypothesisIt argues that there may be some kind of sinister technological innovation yet unknown to humankind that invariably destroys any civilization advanced enough to develop it.

Or maybe the universe is kind of dark forestThere are many alien civilizations, but they are all too afraid to reveal themselves for fear of being destroyed by a more advanced and bloodthirsty interstellar species.

But here comes the party pooper. One new article that has not yet been peer-reviewedNASA astrophysicist Robin Corbet proposes a “radical banality” perspective that essentially relegates these fun ideas back to the realm of speculative science fiction. According to this hypothesis, the Milky Way actually contains a small amount of civilization. Featured by Guard – but the aliens aren’t busy tunneling wormholes or investigating singularities. Instead, they are slightly more technologically advanced than we are, are bogged down by the same limitations in their search for intelligent beings, and eventually give up on exploring the cosmos.

“The idea is that they’re more advanced, but not that much more advanced. It’s like having an iPhone 42 instead of an iPhone 17,” Corbet, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told the paper. “This feels more likely and more natural because it doesn’t suggest anything too extreme.”

This layman’s view explains why we can’t see any technosignatures or evidence of alien technology in the distance. Aliens don’t have what it takes to build the giant megastructures we can see with our telescopes. Dyson swarm something that surrounds a star to collect its energy.

And although they perhaps had the technological capacity to travel to other stars with robotic probes, this would be an extremely slow and extremely expensive endeavor, just like it is for us. And so, finding no other civilizations along the way, they decide it’s not worth the cost. “We are here!” Ditto powering a giant beacon to beam its message. Send signal to the cosmos.

“They don’t have faster-than-light speeds, they don’t have machines based on dark energy, dark matter or black holes,” Corbet said. Guard. “They don’t take advantage of the new laws of physics.”

This is a sobering rejection of some of our more fantastical theories about life in the universe. But not everyone is a fan. Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics, said: Guard He liked the “new perspective” but not much else.

“This reflects a very human indifference to the rest of the universe,” Garrett said. “I find it hard to believe that all intelligent life would be this monotonously boring.”

In fact, his personal hypothesis is detailed in an article. to work accepted for publication Acta AstronauticaIt could not be more diametrically opposed to Corbet’s.

“I lean towards a more adventurous explanation of the Fermi paradox: Other, post-biological civilizations are advancing so rapidly that they are beyond our capacity to perceive them,” Garrett said. Guard. “I hope I’m right, but I could be wrong. Nature always has some kind of surprise for us.”

More about space: Scientist Says Galaxies Shining with Radio Signals May Be a Sign of Many Advanced Civilizations