If the Universe Is Teeming With Aliens, Where Is Everybody?

by Webb, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781441930293
• ISBN10: 1441930299
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-10-01
• Publisher: Copernicus Books

Summary

In a 1950 conversation at Los Alamos, four world-class scientists generally agreed, given the size of the Universe, that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations must be present. But one of the four, Enrico Fermi, asked, "If these civilizations do exist, where is everybody?" Given the fact that there are perhaps 400 million stars in our Galaxy alone, and perhaps 400 million galaxies in the Universe, it stands to reason that somewhere out there, in the 14 billion-year-old cosmos, there is or once was a civilization at least as advanced as our own. Webb discusses in detail the 50 most cogent and intriguing solutions to Fermi's famous paradox.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Figure Credits	p. xi
Where Is Everybody?	p. 1
Of Fermi and Paradox	p. 7
Enrico Fermi	p. 8
Paradox	p. 12
The Fermi Paradox	p. 17
They Are Here	p. 27
They Are Here and They Call Themselves Hungarians	p. 28
They Are Here and Are Meddling in Human Affairs	p. 29
They Were Here and Left Evidence of Their Presence	p. 33
They Exist and They Are Us - We Are All Aliens!	p. 44
The Zoo Scenario	p. 46
The Interdict Scenario	p. 49
The Planetarium Hypothesis	p. 51
God Exists	p. 55
They Exist But Have Not Yet Communicated	p. 61
The Stars Are Far Away	p. 62
They Have Not Had Time to Reach Us	p. 72
A Percolation Theory Approach	p. 74
Bracewell-von Neumann Probes	p. 79
We Are Solar Chauvinists	p. 84
They Stay at Home ...	p. 85
... and Surf the Net	p. 86
They Are Signaling But We Do Not Know How to Listen	p. 88
They Are Signaling But We Do Not Know at Which Frequency to Listen	p. 94
Our Search Strategy Is Wrong	p. 102
The Signal Is Already There in the Data	p. 105
We Have Not Listened Long Enough	p. 106
Everyone Is Listening, No One Is Transmitting	p. 108
Berserkers	p. 111
They Have No Desire to Communicate	p. 113
They Develop a Different Mathematics	p. 116
They Are Calling But We Do Not Recognize the Signal	p. 118
They Are Somewhere But the Universe Is Stranger Than We Imagine	p. 121
A Choice of Catastrophes	p. 122
They Hit the Singularity	p. 134
Cloudy Skies Are Common	p. 137
Infinitely Many ETCs Exist But Only One Within Our Particle Horizon: Us	p. 138
They Do Not Exist	p. 141
The Universe Is Here for Us	p. 143
Life Can Have Emerged Only Recently	p. 147
Planetary Systems Are Rare	p. 150
We Are the First	p. 153
Rocky Planets Are Rare	p. 156
Continuously Habitable Zones Are Narrow	p. 158
Jupiters Are Rare	p. 160
Earth Has an Optimal "Pump of Evolution"	p. 164
The Galaxy Is a Dangerous Place	p. 166
A Planetary System Is a Dangerous Place	p. 172
Earth's System of Plate Tectonics Is Unique	p. 180
The Moon Is Unique	p. 184
Life's Genesis Is Rare	p. 189
The Prokaryote-Eukaryote Transition Is Rare	p. 206
Toolmaking Species Are Rare	p. 211
Technological Progress Is Not Inevtiable	p. 215
Intelligence at the Human Level Is Rare	p. 217
Language Is Unique to Humans	p. 223
Science Is Not Inevitable	p. 231
Conclusion	p. 233
The Fermi Paradox Resolved ...	p. 234
Notes and Further Reading	p. 241
References	p. 275
Index	p. 283
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.