Aliens Are Green

Found a great article discussing a new theory about why aliens have not contacted us.

According to the article the idea that if there is intelligent alien life out there, it should have contacted us already is called the “Fermi Paradox“:

It’s an old conundrum (which may have started with physicist Enrico Fermi) that asks “If space-traveling ETs exist, why aren’t they with us already?”The idea is simple. Start with a civilization that colonizes one world. Then that world colonizes two more planets. Those worlds go on and do their own colonization. Follow this logic and you end up with a very, very rapid expansion of even a single star-faring civilization. Even one ET with space travel can, in a pretty short time, lead to a galaxy teeming with intelligent life.

Little green friends should already, have overrun us.

So, why aren’t we running around with E.T., Klingons, and Na’vi? The two normal theories are that they do, and secretly live among us, or there isn’t life out there. But there is a new theory that is gaining popularity in light of our own concerns about energy consumption.

It’s called THE SUSTAINABILITY SOLUTION TO THE FERMI PARADOX. Its authors, J. Haqq-Misra & S. Baum, have been quite creative in merging SETI with our new environmental concerns.Their answer to the Fermi Dilemma is simple. Civilizations, even extraterrestrial ones, can’t grow without limits. Instead of using the question the Fermi Paradox raises to infer that we are the only intelligent species in the galaxy, Haqq-Misra & Baum use it to infer that these civilizations have learned a lesson which we are just starting to grasp. You have to pace yourself. You have to live within your means. Exponential growth is not likely to be sustainable.

This theory comes from a scientific journal article linked above. The abstract of that paper:

No present observations suggest a technologically advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) has spread through the galaxy. However, under commonplace assumptions about galactic civilization formation and expansion, this absence of observation is highly unlikely. This improbability is the heart of the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox leads some to conclude that humans have the only advanced civilization in this galaxy, either because civilization formation is very rare or because intelligent civilizations inevitably destroy themselves. In this paper, we argue that this conclusion is premature by introducing the “Sustainability Solution” to the Fermi Paradox, which questions the Paradox’s assumption of faster (e.g. exponential) civilization growth. Drawing on insights from the sustainability of human civilization on Earth, we propose that faster-growth may not be sustainable on the galactic scale. If this is the case, then there may exist ETI that have not expanded throughout the galaxy or have done so but collapsed. These possibilities have implications for both searches for ETI and for human civilization management

So, maybe these civilizations are out there and very advanced. They have simply already had their Al Gore powerpoint presentations and peak oil crisis and have figured out that sustainability is the pinnacle of society.