What do you think the Great Filter is?

The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it's photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

Hadriscus ,

It may very well be republicans

send_me_your_mommy_milkers ,
@send_me_your_mommy_milkers@lemmy.world avatar

One dope-ass 2 pole analogue ladder filter

Cocodapuf , (edited )

I don't think there is a great filter. I think there's an easy solution to the fermi paradox that doesn't require great filters, we're just the first intelligence in this galaxy.

Here's my reasoning: intelligent species that manage to develop space travel probably do tend to expand out into their galaxy. When they achieve this level of technology they can settle most of all of their galaxy in a matter of 10,000 years or so. That time period is very brief on an evolutionary scale. It's estimated that life began on earth 3.7 billion years ago. That means it took about 3.7 billion years for earth to produce intelligent life, and then from that point it would take a mere 10,000 years to reach modern day, and 10,000 more years to settle the whole galaxy. That expansion happens so quickly compared to how long it took the planet to develop intelligent life, that the chance of two civilizations rising at the same time becomes very small.

It all boils down to this: there are no intelligent aliens out there in our galaxy, because we are the first intelligent species in our galaxy. We know we're the first because if we were second, then aliens would already have settled this star system.

Probably there are lots of alien civilizations out there in the universe, but they're in different galaxies.

MonkderDritte ,

Or we just don't know, because every possible indicator is gone after a few hundred million years or our star system was still a proto disk when they were around.

smb ,

and the ones finding apes on a planet just short ahead or into the beginning of those 10000 years might think "well lets teach them how to stack stones and let them call us gods for just showing some of our million years old and cheap replicated tech gadgets pewpew, how amusing! but now lets go on, this planet has water but way too much oxygen and also there is axial precession that would change weather over only few hundrets of thousands of years if not less, not the planet of choice for eternals like us, duh!"

Cryophilia OP ,

But why are we the first. That's the question. Given the age of the universe, statistically it should have already happened by now. Unless something was stopping it.

Cocodapuf , (edited )

That's definitely the right question! And honestly we don't know, but it's evident that we are first.

Given the age of the universe, statistically it should have already happened by now.

I'm not sure that's true... I'm pretty sure that our sun is old for a main sequence yellow star in our galaxy. When you compare how long it takes for a star to get to the point ours is now, compared to the age of our galaxy, I believe it suggests that sol is part of a first wave of stars of its type. So if life really requires a star like this one to start up, then intelligent life starting just now could be right on time.

Now why is our start perfect for life? Again, we don't know, but evidently it is. Sadly we only have this one data point, this is the only star where we know there's life. So assuming that something about our type of star is perfect is about as sensible as assuming that life could start around any star. Is it that other kinds of stars produce too much radiation in the Goldilocks zone? Or is it that other kinds of stars are too variable in the amount of heat they produce? Or that other kinds of stars don't tend to have rocky planets? We don't know, but something about main sequence yellow stars could be special, and we have one of the first of those stars in this galaxy.

So declaring "we're the first" requires some assumptions, but they aren't crazy assumptions, and a lack of evidence of other older civilizations makes those assumptions stronger.

And to your point, the universe is much older than this our star, so I suspect intelligent life has developed many times before us, at least in older galaxies. But sadly I don't expect us to ever meet life from another galaxy. While I think stars within a galaxy are close enough for travel between them, galaxies are very, very far apart. I don't think life has much chance of traveling to other galaxies, at least not without some method of ftl travel (which I am also not optimistic about).

Tlaloc_Temporal ,

It might have something to do with the available elements.

We live in a population I star system, full of crap spewed out from long dead stars. Perhaps it is exactly this crap (like copper, iron, nickle, manganese, and possibly the bulk of carbon and nitrogen) that allow life to develop with enough agility to survive mass extiction events with any kind of complexity.

Or perhaps it's exactly those mass extiction events that have allowed enough breathing room for new paradigms to take hold. Maybe our 5-7 mass extictions that didn't end life entirely are exactly what is needed to prevent stagnation. We just happen to be on the edge of dead and too slow.

Subverb ,

It could simply be that the rise of life is wildly more rare than we think.

Cocodapuf ,

Yeah, it totally could be.

Xanis ,

Statistically I shouldn't fail a 99% roll 7 times during a single mission in XCOM and yet here we are.

Cryophilia OP ,

"weird coincidence" is one potential solution to the Fermi paradox.

creditCrazy ,
@creditCrazy@lemmy.world avatar

In my sci Fi that I've been working on has this theory being true but I also play with asking what is the point of colonization. In my story humans have colonized mars to study the fossils and what life used to be like on Mars. However the people there after a few generations separate from earth. Earth doesn't do anything about it because not only can mars use telescopes to see our ipbm years before it arrives and have that time to shoot our ipbm before it arrives but invasion will destroy the fossils we care about. And that's all assuming history won't just repeat itself. Eventually the mars colony expands until it breaks into different nations all fighting echother to become the first martin superpower. So everything that earth cares about gets destroyed by war anyway and earth is pointless to mars without life and water. Eventually the sun becomes so old that everyone feels the need to move their populations to another solar system. And only then de humans discover alien life. Only to discover that it's currently 900 billion years beyond 2024 and aliens are just now figuring out radio waves and rockets and are more concerned about developing eugenics than discovering humans.

sparkle ,
@sparkle@lemm.ee avatar

The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across. It's physically impossible to settle that in 10,000 years

Soggy ,

That assumes that interstellar travel is possible. Physically, economically, socially, there's a lot of boxes to check for near-light extrasolar expansion (let alone FTL, which probably is impossible)

I think the easy solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we're stuck in our fish bowl and so is everyone else.

Cocodapuf ,

That's true, it does assume interstellar travel is physically possible, but at this point there are forms of interstellar travel that we know are possible.

Solar sails for instance, we know those work, we've tried it. Now if you wanted to travel to another star system with a solar sail, it's just a matter of scaling that proven technology way up. We're not ready to do that today, and we won't be ready in the next 20 years, but to think that we wouldn't be ready in 500 years, I find that idea far fetched.

But a much better technology would be fusion propulsion. With fusion drives you could get your cruising speed up to a meaningful fraction of the speed of light (perhaps 5-10%). At that rate you can make it to the closest stars in less than 100 years. And that technology is not at all far fetched. We truly are approaching working fusion power plants, it's extremely likely that we can eventually develop fusion propulsion, or at the very least, fusion powered electrical propulsion (ion drive).

As for if it will ever be economically possible, I'm not at all worried about that. The fact is, there are a lot of resources and opportunities right here in our solar system, just waiting for people to utilize them. So people definitely will start mining and manufacturing in space eventually. And as we start to operate more in space, we will naturally continue to iterate and improve our methods of getting around. In short, over time it's going to get cheaper and cheaper to make space ships and we're going to get better and better at doing it. The economic factors are likely to fall into place eventually.

And finally, will interstellar travel ever be possible socially? Hey, your guess is as good as mine. I don't think we have any way to answer that...

randon31415 ,

Everyone is talking about society or physiology stuff. That is just things that might get humans.

Stars going super-nova is the real great filter. Our sun is 4.6 billion years old. Life started 4 billion years ago. In 4 billion years, the sun goes supernova. We are halfway to the end of the earth.

Smaller stars last longer, but have smaller ranges that life can exist in - and planets tend to move in or out in their orbits. Bigger stars have giant habitable zones - but some large stars born when humans took their first steps are in their last decades of life. You couldn't get from the pyramids to NASA in that time, never mind the 4 billion years it took to get to humans.

WhaleSnail ,

I think it's supposed to actually less than that, the sun's luminescence will increase over the next 1 billion years to the point that it will boil off the earth's oceans. No life will be able to exist past that, and earth will just be a barren rock in orbit for the next 3 billion years.

Aussiemandeus ,
@Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone avatar

Well I'm doing my part to make sure the oceans are full of Arctic ice for the great boil off

Subverb ,

When they do boil off they need to make sure to have a hell of a lot of cocktail sauce and melted butter on hand.

Pulptastic ,

That is an interesting idea that is not typically considered in the drake equation as far as I know. That could significantly reduce the chance of finding intelligent life elsewhere.

oo1 ,

I think it is in the drake equation effectively, it factors into the length of time that the civilization might send and receive detectable signals - It doesn't say why the Civilisation might collapse, but the planet becoming uninhabitable is surely one reason. On wikipedia for Drake Equation the Carl Sagan specification of L is in terms of the "fraction of planetary lifetime".

I think a missing factor might be how directional transmission and receiving is, if we can't broadcast to and listen to the whole sky equally then we might have a 1/r-cubed type issue with the chances of both listening and transmitting with enough strength/energy at the same time.

creditCrazy ,
@creditCrazy@lemmy.world avatar

While that is true I would counter point that humans have a bit of a handicap as earth got hit by a big astroid that killed just about everything on it making terran life have to start all over again but at the other hand I saw someone else on here mentioned that oil has given us a head start at space ferrang advancement and oil is made from dead life so granted I haven't done much reacerch on how oil forms naturally but I do wonder if we would have oil if earth never got blown up but on top of all that there are theorys that mars used to have life so if astroids haven't interfered with our solar system intelligent life may have formed faster and maybe twice also there used to be multiple species of humans in the past so maybe 4 or five times in the same solar system

sp3tr4l ,

Howabout a reasonably advanced civilization destroying itself and its homeworld after exploiting and then running out of petroleum?

Seasoned_Greetings ,

I think it's a fair thought that any form of life doesn't perfectly recycle their resources and all forms of life give off waste for other life to utilize. That said, a reasonably advanced civilization might just inevitably grow to the size where the waste they put off makes their planet unlivable for them before they can take action to control it.

For us, it's carbon dioxide.

Tlaloc_Temporal ,

Don't forget plastics and pesticides! Those get everywhere, and many are bioavailable by design.

Subverb ,

Oil has a bad reputation but how lucky we are to have it. How does a civilization on a planet without hydrocarbons make the leap to a technological species?

It's not impossible, but it's got to be a lot harder.

Tlaloc_Temporal ,

Kelp farms? Domesticated bamboo? We need large areas of land to grow food anyway, we just skipped the charcoal agriculture step. Lathes and the three plate method are the real heroes of industry any way.

A slower ascension into the computing age could mean a more stable set of cultures and a more uniform global situation to avoid anthropogenic filters. Bright candles and all that.

rottingleaf ,

It's a society (or the whole humanity) becoming big enough to survive even when ignorant murderers are the elite and the majority of it, and civilized people - a smaller part and almost a property, similar to animals in a zoo.

When such a point is reached, the former will make the transition, and the latter will diminish over time. Then it just has no future.

A bit like with Ottoman empire and Qajar Iran, only on the scale of the whole humanity there won't be someone else to buy weapons and technologies from to keep going. Then some of the previously passable filters will kick in. Like hunger or resource scarcity.

Wahots ,
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

I think there are many great filters, but I think one of those filters is fighting over limited resources and wars. Perhaps limited to humans/earth, but I doubt it. Nukes, dropping rocks from orbit, and theoretical (but possible) weapons like black hole bombs are all going to tempt irrational beings to take someone's stuff.

We have to be extremely careful that we don't accidentally trigger a weapon that is going to kill or dramatically cripple our civilization before we become a truly interstellar species. There is so much to learn out there, while so many people are currently focused on the wrong things such as minor conflicts or what children aren't allowed to learn.

Cryophilia OP ,

We have to be extremely careful that we don’t accidentally trigger a weapon that is going to kill or dramatically cripple our civilization before we become a truly interstellar species.

Great filter confirmed to be oopsie-daisies

Spacehooks ,

That's what everyone was thinking with the LHC. Really should put oopsie labs off world.

averagechemist ,

Space itself. I believe there are other intelligent life forms out there and some of those happen to be close enough to communicate to each other/discover each other. We just hit the unlucky(or lucky) spot that we are simply too far away.

Cryophilia OP ,

Man that would suck
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/76e8fa70-ed71-4284-87c7-ddfa95a56818.jpeg

Spacehooks ,

Kind of like we don't have hive minds so they just think we are regular animals.

Tramort ,

Your answer doesn't make sense.

"Photosynthesis" is a positive development for life. The great filter must be a negative development: it's a filter or a barrier that keeps life from achieving long term extra terrestrial survival.

So "climate change" would be an answer. Or "fuel depletion" (to which photosynthesis may be a solution). But the filter is the mechanism by which life forms are prevented from progressing.

Cryophilia OP ,

I was suggesting that photosynthesis is a very unlikely mutation to occur and thus its unlikeliness means most life, if it emerges, won't progress to that stage.

The filter doesn't have to be ahead of us, it could be some stage of development that we've already passed. Like photosynthesis, or the development of consciousness. If, out of all life that develops, only a tiny fraction ever develops photosynthesis, the universe would be largely devoid of any life that we can presently detect. Despite us being the lucky lifeform that did develop photosynthesis in our past.

Tramort ,

Regardless: photosynthesis is a possible solution to avoid the filter. Not the filter itself.

You can't filter something in

Cryophilia OP ,

The failure to develop photosynthesis is the filter. I don't know how you're not getting this. No photosynthesis, no complex life, no sentience, no interstellar civilization.

Tramort ,

You started here

Personally I think it's photosynthesis.

Now you're here

The failure to develop photosynthesis

I think you got it! Good job!

Cryophilia OP ,

I'm sorry to tell you this, but I think you might be stupid.

littlecolt ,
@littlecolt@lemm.ee avatar

I would say it's the size of the universe and the fact that it is still expanding at an accelerated rate.

If the speed of light is really the "top speed" of the universe, it is inadequate for interstellar travel. It is barely good enough for timely communication, and not really even that.

Life can be as likely as it wants to be, but it seems to me that we're all quite divided, to the point of not being able to communicate at all with other potential intelligent species.

androogee ,

Isn't the fermi paradox specifically dealing with detection tho? Not just travel or communication.

littlecolt ,
@littlecolt@lemm.ee avatar

I suppose I was focusing on detecting some sort of communications. It still matters that when we see objects at great distance in space, it's the objects in the distant past

Tlaloc_Temporal ,

This universe being unfriendly to interstellar and especially intergalactic travel would seriously hamper a galactic civilization, and thus be less likely for us to notice them.

There might be hundreds of civilizations out there, each having only expanded to a few dozen stars, not caring to go further. Even the makeup of the interstellar medium might be incredibly dangerous, basically necessitating generation ships to cross. Large scale expansion might simply be too hard.

SLVRDRGN ,

That expansion at an accelerated rate - that's just so eerie when you think about it. The furthest objects we can see right now will slip away out of reach forever for the next generation, and so on. It's crazy to think that as time goes on, there will be less and less universe to observe.

littlecolt ,
@littlecolt@lemm.ee avatar

One of the weirdest facts. One that really makes you feel so small.

androogee ,

That's something really interesting, though. When we look at distant objects, we aren't limited by the distance they're at right now. We're limited by the distance they were at when they emitted the light.

So the observable universe is still growing because the edge of that bubble is such a long time ago that everything was still much closer together.

SLVRDRGN ,

But the light that reaches us is constantly getting stretched (red-shifted), so I'm not sure that our bubble is growing. Instead when they're stretched too thin, we won't be able to see it. I'm not 100% sure on the expansion rate of the universe and the pace of red shifting.
Also, eventually all the galaxies are expected to be pushed so far away from each other due to the pressures exerted by Dark Energy, that soon we'll only be able to see just the stars of our Milky Way.

retrieval4558 ,

It's gotta be the development of what we recognize as "intelligent". Our brains are not the goal of evolution, just a weird thing that happened.

rsuri ,

There's a lot of possibilities.

My top contender would be a desire to explore, which probably requires consciousness. Given that we have pretty much no idea what leads to consciousness, it can be guessed (dubiously) that if it arose more easily then we'd have an explanation by now. It could be that it's an extremely rare phenomenon, and there may even be other planets with "intelligent" but mechanistic beings that act entirely for their own survival and don't build civilizations or explore much.

Second would be intergalactic and to a lesser degree interstellar travel. If we assume both 1) intelligent civilizations are extremely rare and 2) faster-than-light transportation is impossible, it could be that everyone is just too spread out to make contact.

Third, and the one I most feel is right but it requires pretending I understand quantum physics (which I don't) and probably offending many that do, is the notion that the concrete universe is not large but small and has no objective existence independent of our respective perceptions, and any part of the universe that's invisible is a mere wave function that will only have concrete reality upon our perceiving it. I make the further dubious assumption that conscious beings can't be part of the wave function. So there.

KevonLooney ,

conscious beings can't be part of the wave function

That's not how any of this works. Your brain is made out of regular matter, not special fancy matter.

rsuri ,

I don't know if the type of matter matters, rather I'm basing in on the idea that measurement collapses the wave function, and consciousness does measure things

KevonLooney ,

Your brain isn't what "collapses the wave function", it's the measuring device that you use. You can do a double slit experiment and watch it with your eyes the whole time. Light will still act as a wave until you interact with it experimentally.

You are reading too much Deepak Chopra. Your brain is just a computer made out of meat. It's not magic.

Cethin ,

For your final point, that's not what that means. It's not "observation" that collapses the wave function, at least as you're understanding the word. It's any interaction that requires the information to be known. That includes any particle interactions. It's not consciousness that matters. When we "make a measurement" it's only recording information of an interaction. It doesn't actually matter that we record it, only that there was an interaction. There is zero metaphysical consciousness mumbo-jumbo involved.

ammonium ,

That's what I thought too, but according to Sabine Hossenfelder there actually is, we just choose not to speak about it. I don't really know enough about quantum physics to make my own judgement.

Cethin ,

That video makes no argument for consciousness being required. Also, Sabine is not a reliable source of information. She is confident and convincing, but that doesn't make her accurate or correct.

For an example, not related to this topic: https://youtu.be/s7XAxiJGJdg?si=S0IkGdF_EV5If_wJ

Cryophilia OP ,

Second would be intergalactic and to a lesser degree interstellar travel. If we assume both 1) intelligent civilizations are extremely rare and 2) faster-than-light transportation is impossible, it could be that everyone is just too spread out to make contact.

Not just too spread out to make contact, too spread out to even detect each other's presence

DeanFogg ,

Fear. Right now we're on the edge of facing fear or succumbing to it

Martineski ,

Time.

Cryophilia OP ,

Is on my side

bamfic ,

Yes it is

CaptainBlagbird ,
@CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe it's wisdom.

Every species that might have grown advanced enough, would have gotten over the point of fighting themselves. So they would be wise enough to have something like the Prime Directive in Star Trek (not interfering with less advanced species' until they reach a certain milestone).

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