The Fermi Paradox And Other Conjectures

     He who writes science fiction is regularly embroiled in certain arguments about what’s possible, what’s impossible, and what might be coming soon to a planet near you. He who writes far-future SF invariably resorts to “handwavium:” the postulation of imagined developments that would make possible the sort of events he wants to write about. One of the developments that’s frequently hand-waved into fictional existence is very rapid interstellar travel: i.e., travel at speeds faster than that of light.

     When I decided to write Which Art In Hope, I resolved to avoid postulating faster-than-light travel. That first volume of the Spooner Federation trilogy does a little hand-waving – e.g., it postulates developments in the biological sciences that would extend an individual life to span many centuries – but it does avoid the FTL premise. (Yes, the latter two volumes do “go FTL.” That was forced on me by the themes I sought to explore.)

     There’s much talk among SF writers about whether we’ll ever encounter other sentient species, or extraterrestrial life of any kind. Some make probabilistic arguments; others simply say “yeah, we’ll see.” But if our knowledge of physics today is accurate and sufficiently complete, we might never know.

     If we omit all hand-waving, what remains are the speed-of-light limitation and the problem of lifespan. For travel of any kind rests on two factors:

• The risks involved in undertaking that travel;
• The ratio of the time it will require to a human lifetime.

     For creatures with human-like longevity, interstellar travel is a non-starter. Let’s say Smith boards a vessel bound for Proxima Centauri, or any other “nearby” star. He will die en route. Perhaps descendants of his will get there; he won’t. And he will know that ab initio. So what’s his motivation for boarding?

     Yes, Smith could be under the pressures that motivated the Spoonerites. He’d know that he wouldn’t live to see the destination, but he might undertake the journey to perpetuate “his people.” Would any other motivation suffice?

     The enthusiast now waves his hands: “What about suspended animation?” Well, we don’t know how to do that just yet. “What about relativistic time dilation?” That would require propulsion of a magnitude that’s beyond us today and possibly tomorrow. Besides, where’s the reaction mass to come from? Newton’s Third Law can’t be suspended by Congressional decree. So present conditions continuing, Mankind will likely be confined to the Solar System.

     This makes me sad. I’d love for Mankind to “go interstellar.” The adventures our progeny would have are beyond anyone’s imagination. But physics will have the last word. Unless some currently unborn or unrecognized genius can break the lightspeed barrier, or can extend a man’s life to many centuries in length, we’ll be “staying home.”

     But let’s imagine that there are other sentient species in the universe. Might they be equal to the challenge, by virtue of extreme longevity? A species whose members expect to live a millennium or two would look at the matter differently, especially if they could solve the propulsion problem. Yes, it’s hand-waving again, albeit of a different kind, but that desire to believe in interstellar travel, galactic confraternity, and so forth is very strong. Maybe, rather than humans going to them, they might come to us.

     Maybe. The famous Green Bank Equation suggests that there’s life elsewhere in the Milky Way – if we set its variables to the “right” values. But we’re hand-waving again. How would they get here? What would they necessarily be able to do that we aren’t, to make that possible? Given the costs, the risks, and the difficulties, what would their motivation be?

     We don’t know enough to be certain of anything. We don’t know whether there’s a way to slip past the lightspeed barrier. We don’t know whether there are methods of propulsion superior to what we possess today, or whether Man or any other sentient creature is capable of living long enough to survive an interstellar journey. Even if the trip should become possible, we have absolutely no idea whether there’s a reason to undertake it other than sheer curiosity.

     The Fermi Paradox is summarized thus:

     The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence.

     That “paradox” is only worth consideration if:

• There’s another sentient species “out there;”
• There are ways to communicate reliably over the intervening distance.

     But even communication over interstellar distances is dubious. Ultra-collimated, ultra-powerful lasers? Modulated gravity waves? Using the resonant frequencies of stars to encode messages? It’s all hand-waving. Physics as we know it today says it won’t happen.

     But what if we “know differently” somewhere down the timestream? What if the lightspeed limitation is just a misunderstanding that some future Einstein will dismiss with a grin and a wave of his whiteboard marker? What if we manage to “cure death,” or extend human life far beyond what’s currently possible? Don’t get me waving my hands. I write this stuff for the entertainment value!