To start, let’s unpack our understanding of scale.
The scale of our environment is something that is often hard to fully grasp. Everyday we’re exposed to numbers of varying magnitude and it seems we sometimes over simplify them to ease the workload on our brains.
A great example is the difference between tens, thousands, millions, billions, trillions and so forth.
We generally accept that ‘million’ refers to a lot of something.
A lot of money. A lot of debt. A lot of followers. A lot of trees. A lot of camels. A lot of time.
Anything beyond this figure tends to become a bit fuzzy and trivialised as being simply a bit more than a lot.
A billion is just the next step above a million. A trillion is just a 2nd step above that. Not that hard, not such a big deal.
It’s where language alone can become limited in its ability to convey information accurately.
So let’s add some additional references to help build a better appreciation.
The first reference has been around for a while and is elegant in its simplicity:
- 1 second = 1 second
- 1 thousand seconds = about 17 minutes
- 1 million seconds = about 12 days
- 1 billion seconds = about 32 years
- 1 trillion seconds = about 32,000 years
Well, that escalated quickly.
32 years ago East and West Germany were just being reunified.
32,000 years ago we were still painting on cave walls; and that’s just a lazy trillion seconds ago.
The next reference is a simple visual comparison.
What we see most often:
What the reality is:
That distance isn’t even half a million kilometres. (If you want an insanely good visualisation of this scale across our solar-system, definitely check out Josh Worth’s: If the Moon Were Only One Pixel webpage here)
The final reference is for our understanding of time.
Current calculations put this universe at about 13.8 billion years old.
Humans, in our current form, are about 200,000 years old.
That’s 0.0015% of the age of the universe.
For perspective: we would need to stick around for about another 140,000,000 years just to crack 1%.
For all intents and purposes we might only ever register as but a momentary glitch in the system.
Feeling small?
It’s ok. Remember, from little things, big things grow.
No more so than a distant bang and the insanely large universe we see today.
You may have heard the saying that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth (and that’s beaches, deserts, the lot).
While it is an estimate, the maths points to that being the case.
So there are well beyond lots of stars and, as the Kepler telescope’s data is uncovering (and the James Webb), there are a lot of lots of planets out there.
Which brings us to
The FERMI Paradox.
Renowned physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked a very simple question in 1950:
“Where the flip is everyone?” (can’t confirm his exact wording; it may have been “Dove diavolo sono tutti?)
Our galaxy alone has approximately 300 billion stars (that’s like 9,500 years worth of seconds) and it has been around for 13 billion odd years.
Why have we not heard or seen any evidence of other past or present civilisations?
There has been enough time and enough places for life to start, thrive, evolve, expand, travel between planets and generally make some noise many times over.
Yet it remains eerily quiet.
One exploration into this paradox is
The GREAT FILTER Theory.
The Great Filter identifies a series of achievements, or challenges, life needs to navigate sequentially in order to progress.
- Be on a planet that is not too warm, not too cold; e.g. in the goldilocks zone.
- Be able to develop in the first place from the environment; some elements + some energy.
- Be able to reproduce itself.
- Be able to evolve from simple cells (e.g. prokaryotes) to complex cells (e.g. eukaryotes).
- Be able to evolve into multicellular organisms.
- Be able to reproduce so as to introduce and sustain genetic diversity.
- Be able to create tools to master local environments.
- Be able to create tools to master off-planet travel and begin exploration. (We’re here…ish)
- Be able to expand existence throughout space… and not destroy itself.
Any failing along the sequence is met with a stern “YOU CANNOT PASS” from Gandalf.
So from one perspective, the reason we haven’t heard from anyone is because it is simply really hard to get to gate 7, 8 or 9.
We might very well be part of a select group and have just not yet had the time, or simply missed the time, to bump into each other.
From another perspective, maybe the jump from 8-9 is just insanely huge.
Any such civilisation, to have safely passed to gate 9, is well beyond our level of intelligence and quite simply, not interested with the likes of us.
I mean, how much time and effort are you willing to spend and collaborate with other complex and diverse species here on earth?
Or perhaps, such civilisations really do sow the seeds of their own destruction and simply fade from existence upon passing gate 9.
Or maybe…
We are the first.
The first conscious energy-interacting entities to have gotten this far. (Cue voice-over from Peter Parker’s uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility”)
For me, this is the most inspiring perspective.
Regardless if we are alone or not, the fact that we have made it this far and have the power to contemplate past, present and future instances and intentionally act to effect change, points to a potential responsibility to lead by example.
If we choose to take it.
It’s not like we don’t have any idea what a decent example would look like.
Our research, experiences, data, books, movies and songs are filled with information and ideas on what an aware, knowledgeable, understanding and advancing civilization looks like and how it behaves.
So in the absence of any engagement from other entities or more ‘advanced’ civilisations;
- How should we behave to lead a way forward? And,
- How willing are we to do it?
Let’s discuss soon.