The great silence: Just 4 in 10,000 galaxies may host intelligent aliens

[MikeMc]

Jan, What are you calling the "Earth Battery"? Because you say it is a "quarter-billion years of solar energy", I am guessing you mean "fossil fuels"?

We really are not "running out" of that, we are just realizing that burning more of it will cause major changes in our climate. And, that will damage our technological infrastructure investments. Which may or may not cause social instability and threaten the existence of our technological capabilities.

Maybe. Not really that clear what in the "L" that will do.

(There is a theory that human technological advancements were spurred by past changes in climate.)

Huh? Of course we are running out of Fossil Fuels. It takes millions of years to produce fossil fuels. We are currently burning through fossil fuels much, much, much faster than they are being replenished. The only way to not run out would be to stop using them. Is that what you mean? They are not running out because we are going to stop using them?

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Huh? Of course we are running out of Fossil Fuels. It takes millions of years to produce fossil fuels. We are currently burning through fossil fuels much, much, much faster than they are being replenished. The only way to not run out would be to stop using them. Is that what you mean? They are not running out because we are going to stop using them?

Of course fossil fuels are a limited resource because more are not being made, at least not anywhere close to our usage rates. So, at some point in the future, we will stop using them, either because we run out or because we decided that using what remains is too hard to get out of the ground or using any more would damage the environment too much.

My earlier comment was related to why we are trying to stop using fossil fuels.

Jan is saying that we are running out of them so fast that our society will collapse in a couple of decades due to lack of fuels. But, I don't think we are that short of fossil fuels. I think there is still plenty of fossil carbon fuels in the ground to keep the emissions going for much more time. But, doing so would have even more serious climate effects than we are predicting based on cutting back as quickly as we can manage.

If Jan was correct that the fossil fuels are just not there to keep us going past 2050, then we would have no choice about meeting our "greenhouse gas commitments" to be carbon-neutral by then. But, I have no confidence that is the case. We are still finding more, and we have a long history of being able to switch among gas, oil and coal for a lot of uses.

So, like my concern about continued human population increases, I don't think we can count on some sort of "automatic" correction processes where we end up doing "the right things" because we have no other choices.

If we are really intelligent as a species, we should be able to find our way through the options and problems. But, we will need to recognize that we are creating our own worst problems with our behaviors.

 

[Jan Steinman]

Jan is saying that we are running out of them so fast that our society will collapse in a couple of decades due to lack of fuels.

No, that is not at all what I'm saying. Please pay attention to my actual words, not the spin you give them in your head.

I'm saying that fossil sunlight is about to go into decline, and that energy growth is perfectly correlated with economic growth, and therefore, the economy will also go into decline.

I'm also saying that humans lack experience with negative economic growth, and that modern capitalism is absolutely dependent on economic growth. Therefore, when economic growth goes into decline, so will capitalism.

We've built a civilization based on capitalism and constant growth. Even totalitarian regimes (China, Russia) that claim to be non-capitalistic have growth at their core.

I don't think it will take anything near "running out" of fossil fuel to collapse civilization. All it will take is persistent negative growth.

The overhead of exploiting fossil sunlight is continually increasing. It doesn't take much imagination to understand that when it takes a barrel of oil to recover a barrel of oil, you might as well focus your efforts elsewhere. This is the crux of Joseph Tainter's argument that excess complexity kills civilizations.

Currently, the return on investment for new oil wells is under 6:1. Many think that civilization with a return of less than 3:1 may not be possible, as there is a lot of energy going into oil production "behind the scenes" that isn't currently counted in that 3:1 ratio, such as the finance industry and the education industry, which are indispensable to energy production, but which are not direct costs that are counted in the 3:1 ratio.

Furthermore, countries that are currently petroleum exporting nations are finding they need more and more of their own production for their own needs, and may not be willing to export for very much longer. Some analysts predict the end of "diesel exports" may happen as soon as 2026 or 2027.

Thanks to fracking, the US is currently the largest producer of petroleum. But fracked well overwhelmingly produce a lighter crude that does not yield as much diesel as heavier crude does. The US is not producing as much diesel as it did ten years ago, and so is in the contradictory position of being the largest petroleum producer, while being a net importer of diesel fuel.

The world runs on diesel. Mining, long-haul transportation, trans-oceanic transportation, and agriculture are all totally dependent on diesel. When other countries stop exporting diesel, the US will be in a big hurt that more drilling and fracking won't solve.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Jan, reading what you posted previously and what you just posted, I am going to disagree that my shortened version "is not at all what [you/re] saying".

"Running out" of fossil fuels does not necessarily require a slurping sound from every oil well, etc., and I recognized that with my statement "either because we run out or because we decided that using what remains is too hard to get out of the ground."

What we disagree on is how imminent the fossil fuel shortages will be, and how societies will respond to a combination of increasing extraction costs, increasing population and recognition that continued uses result in climate effects that we wish to avoid or at least minimize.

As I posted before, I think your economist-type perspective on this complex subject is too narrow and simplified. I think that there are other aspects and perspectives that need to be included, involving potentials for sociological adaptations and technological developments. Humans have shown remarkable adaptability, and we do have some options to current uses of fossil fuels. Yes, economics is part of the interaction processes that drive changes in behaviors and options chosen. But, factors other than diesel fuel availability are involved, too, not the least of which is the innate behavioral/emotional response to crowding, the loss of other natural parts of our ecosystem, etc. We are also diminishing the world's fisheries, forests, ground waters, etc.

Yes, people are going to be hard to convince to change their ways, and maybe humans will fail to maintain a technological society, thus demonstrating why there is "the great silence" from the rest of the cosmos, which is the subject of this thread.

As I posted before, I am not seeing the progress that would make me bet on us, but I still have some hopes and am rooting for us.

 

[ChrisA]

The other side of the uncertainty band would be 20,000 advanced civilizations per galaxy.

What the headline writers choose to focus on is just a matter of their own personal biases.

The article does make a point that we might be extremely rare, and therefore should take care of ourselves. But, I think we are going to want to do that whether we are rare or not.

One thing that seemed to be missing from the article is the potential for something like the Thea collision hypothesis to be necessary for the start of plate tectonics on a planet. If it requires not just any collision, but some small probability combination of masses, velocities and center of mass offsets at closest point, then that could be extremely rare.

Complex life likely does depend on the "rock cycle". Without any way to recycle the crust, a planet would be worn down smooth with little variation at the surface. We would not have ore deposits or mines. So plate tectonics is likely required but do you need a collision to have this? Perhaps any Earth-size planet has tectonics? We don't know.

Then there is the bigger question of why it took so long to evolve intelligent life. If being smart has an advantage why were there not smart dinosaurs? Maybe it required a one-in-a-billion freak accident to cause intelligence to evolve.

Maybe a freakishly rare biological accident is required. There is some evidence that our species all descended from a very small population bottleneck of as few as six women. Without that near extinction event maybe we'd still be walking naked in Africa without even modern language skills.

On the other hand, even if we are the result of a dozen rare accidents, perhaps there are other routes to life and technology.

 

[sizzlerjoe]

Didn't we also just find evidence vaguely suggesting Dyson spheres in our own galaxy? We have no evidence, having never encountered a single alien lifeform, to be making significant or factual claims about the nature of the search for alien life. Limiting the scope is good, but for all we know every planet has life buried under the surface in tiny pockets of habitable conditions. But we don't know... We have so many criteria for spotting alien life but none that should actually fully eliminate most planets as potentially home to microbes, which may eventually terraform and evolve like they did on earth. Some scientists talk like we've been observing distant worlds clearly enough to spot a lack of cities on their surfaces, but we really can't even tell that much.

Where there's blood there's life.. otherwise No! Let there be microbile or whatever out there, but no blood, it will be beyond impossible to get any reply nor anything received either.

 

[sizzlerjoe]

Complex life likely does depend on the "rock cycle". Without any way to recycle the crust, a planet would be worn down smooth with little variation at the surface. We would not have ore deposits or mines. So plate tectonics is likely required but do you need a collision to have this? Perhaps any Earth-size planet has tectonics? We don't know.

Then there is the bigger question of why it took so long to evolve intelligent life. If being smart has an advantage why were there not smart dinosaurs? Maybe it required a one-in-a-billion freak accident to cause intelligence to evolve.

Maybe a freakishly rare biological accident is required. There is some evidence that our species all descended from a very small population bottleneck of as few as six women. Without that near extinction event maybe we'd still be walking naked in Africa without even modern language skills.

On the other hand, even if we are the result of a dozen rare accidents, perhaps there are other routes to life and technology.

Read book 'rare earth'.

 

[Gibsense]

Then there is the bigger question of why it took so long to evolve intelligent life. If being smart has an advantage why were there not smart dinosaurs? Maybe it required a one-in-a-billion freak accident to cause intelligence to evolve.

Maybe the dinosaurs were well on the way but development curtailed. Perhaps there is a still bigger question. What if intelligence is a natural progression (I think this is likely)? The issue then becomes why -until now maybe- is it not more common and the answer lies in destruction:

Supernovae, Black hole radiation, confinement (dolphins), asteroids, collisions, star population density, competition.
You might say we are lucky so far.

 

[Gibsense]

You might say we are lucky so far.

But not much longer methinks

 

[Joexo]

This is my first post. I was inspired to sign up by reading the back and forth in this thread.

I have a question, does anybody actually know for a fact when fossil fuel will run out?

Rather than guessing, couldn't a calculation/research be made to get an exact number of exactly how much it's left?

When I googled this I found various guesses, but no certainties.

 

[COLGeek]

This is my first post. I was inspired to sign up by reading the back and forth in this thread.

I have a question, does anybody actually know for a fact when fossil fuel will run out?

Rather than guessing, couldn't a calculation/research be made to get an exact number of exactly how much it's left?

When I googled this I found various guesses, but no certainties.

The real answer is NO, regardless of source. No one truly knows this.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Joexo, There really isn't any certainty in the estimates for several reasons.

On the supply side, there really isn't a clear inventory for how much oil is still in the earth, or even where it all is. And, the costs for extracting it are what really determines if it is "available" for use, or not. And, those costs change as technology changes - fracking being a recent example.

On the demand side, it depends on how much is used, and for what. How fast electric or "green" hydrogen powered vehicles replace fossil fuel vehicles depends on a lot of things, including how the economies are fairing in the various "developed" countries over time so that people can afford new cars and/or afford more expensive gasoline. And Jan is focused on diesel fuel, mainly to support industry. But, there are alternatives to that, including mixing 90% hydrogen with 10% diesel, and even using electric powered earth mover machines running on power cables from fixed generating stations because batteries are not viable options for those. See https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240829-the-search-for-the-worlds-biggest-electric-vehicles .

And global population growth plus "development" in "underdeveloped" countries also drives increasing demand for energy of all types.

People have a hard time predicting population growth (and decline), economics, technological breakthroughs, ,etc. very far into the future, so we really just don't know how all of this will play out.

However, it is clear that there will be a limit reached at some point where we simply cannot afford to extract as much fossil fuel as everybody wants, so the price of what can be obtained will increase and people will be forced to find options (or perish, which is not an impossibility).

People who think where we are heading now with population and energy use per capita is not sustainable for much longer are still not in agreement on what can be done about that and whether various proposals are actually feasible. Part of our problem is that modeling of the future condition is not very credible because it has not been very accurate in the past. So, most people who are mainly worried about day-to-day challenges are not eager to make sacrifices in their own lives "for the good of all" when those asking seem to have their own biases and agendas. But, by the time that future problems become so clear that they cannot be denied, it is too late to avoid most of the bad consequences.

So, many of us see this as a existential challenge for the intelligence of humanity to exert enough collective self control to maintain what has become a highly complicated system for the survival of our large population.

The subject is pretty divisive, with some people counting on technological advancements and talking about traveling to the stars, while others are openly worrying about humans going extinct due to collapse of our support systems.

Which is what may be the answer to "Where is everybody" else out in the cosmos - maybe they evolved about as far as we have and then collapsed to a point where they no longer have the capability to travel or even communicate from star to star, or maybe they no longer even exist at all.

 

[sizzlerjoe]

This is my first post. I was inspired to sign up by reading the back and forth in this thread.

I have a question, does anybody actually know for a fact when fossil fuel will run out?

Rather than guessing, couldn't a calculation/research be made to get an exact number of exactly how much it's left?

When I googled this I found various guesses, but no certainties.

It's not going to run out. The earth has not stopped making it. Nor will it ever stop till the sun red giants. Who's telling you that garbage ?

 

[COLGeek]

It's not going to run out. The earth has not stopped making it. Nor will it ever stop till the sun red giants. Who's telling you that garbage ?

Do you have a source that explains the process as you have described it? If so, please share it.

Conventional science doesn't comport with this notion.

 

[Atlan0001]

I don't understand how, but I've read that so-called "fossil fuels" could be endlessly synthesized . . . including making use of the gas giants, plus! We are going to be able to a lot more synthesizing once we are out into a universe of greater potential dimensionalities, capabilities, and creativity.

Enlarged frontier (enlarged opportunity) enlarges the mind (Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, circa America's frontier 1770s CE).

 

[COLGeek]

I don't understand how, but I've read that so-called "fossil fuels" could be endlessly synthesized . . . including making use of the gas giants, plus! We are going to be able to a lot more synthesizing once we are out into a universe of greater potential dimensionalities, capabilities, and creativity.

Enlarged frontier (enlarged opportunity) enlarges the mind (Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, circa America's frontier 1770s CE).

From a chemistry perspective, sure. From an economic and technological perspective, not feasible in any imaginable way.

 

[Atlan0001]

From a chemistry perspective, sure. From an economic and technological perspective, not feasible in any imaginable way.

I was going elsewhere to try to go into this, but you created the vacuum here:

Human energy particularly, and life's energy in general, has almost no economic and life "expanding vacuums" in this closed systemic world to fill. So, it must ebb and flow destructive/creative tidal waves. It has an infinity of such potential wealth of vacuums to fill in the frontier; more benignly, more non-murderously, creating vacuums in homelands' Earth. Fossil fuel combustibility to combustibility.

 

[COLGeek]

I was going elsewhere to try to go into this, but you created the vacuum here:

Human energy particularly, and life's energy in general, has almost no economic and life "expanding vacuums" in this closed systemic world to fill. So, it must ebb and flow destructive/creative tidal waves. It has an infinity of such potential wealth of vacuums to fill in the frontier; more benignly, more non-murderously, creating vacuums in homelands' Earth. Fossil fuel combustibility to combustibility.

Lots of words to relate the "two sides of the coin" argument, but I get it.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Fossil fuels are not being made (naturally or synthetically) at anything like the rate at which they are being used. So, they can definitely "run out".

Yes, we know how to synthesize similar fuels using sunlight, either with biological or photovoltaic processes. But, we don't have the technology to synthesize them at the rate we are using them, and especially not at a cost per unit of energy that is low enough to compete with the prices of fossil fuels taken out of the ground.

 

[Classical Motion]

The amount of all resources are hidden from us. We can’t see or search thru the earth. We don’t even know how much water is here. And it’s everywhere. Deep into the earth.

Beautiful super heated water. Unlimited electricity for all at all locations. We can make diesel from plant matter and other wastes ourselves now. We don’t have to wait. Internal combustion transportation for centuries to come. Dependable supply trains.

With a little common sense this could be the start of something great. Great prosperity for all. A historical first. A new future grid might be our roads and interstates. Two grids in one. No batteries needed.

All that’s needed is a digging stick. A hole puncher. Man has always sought a hole to hide in from danger. Don’t stop now.

 

[COLGeek]

The amount of all resources are hidden from us. We can’t see or search thru the earth. We don’t even know how much water is here. And it’s everywhere. Deep into the earth.

Beautiful super heated water. Unlimited electricity for all at all locations. We can make diesel from plant matter and other wastes ourselves now. We don’t have to wait. Internal combustion transportation for centuries to come. Dependable supply trains.

With a little common sense this could be the start of something great. Great prosperity for all. A historical first. A new future grid might be our roads and interstates. Two grids in one. No batteries needed.

All that’s needed is a digging stick. A hole puncher. Man has always sought a hole to hide in from danger. Don’t stop now.

All theoretically solid points. However, given the relative cost of each alternative method, as well as a plethora of other reasons, none are likely to occur in any significant fashion. Unfortunately.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan0001 seems to be picking up on the posts about deep geothermal energy, which we hope to be able to reach soon with microwave hole boring techniques. But, that is not "fossil fuel" in the sense that it is not biological material that became buried in the ground hundreds of millions to billions of years ago. That is the definition of "fossil fuel", as differentiated from "geothermal energy".

Developing deep geothermal energy would indeed be a big help in satisfying our energy needs, but it is not a direct replacement for fuels for cars, airplanes, rockets, etc. It would require us to convert the geothermal energy to electricity for most of our energy needs, and convert our uses to electrical power or use the electricity to synthesize fuels.

But, as one of those of us who remember electricity from nuclear fission power being predicted to be "too cheap to meter" and nuclear fusion power being predicted to become available "within 50 years" over 70 years ago, I think we need to have some reservations about betting on deep geothermal energy being "limitless" and "cheap". There will definitely be limits on extraction rates at any given site, and we will be lucky if we can price the electricity it produces to be competitive with other methods.

New things like that don't just happen because somebody "has a good idea". It takes some good engineers and lots of funding to make something useful actually happen. And, in the process of doing that, the realities of the situation often result in the product not being very cheap or even economically viable after all.

Deep geothermal energy from boreholes drilled with microwaves does seem like it could be economically feasible, but that has not yet been demonstrated. People are actually working towards a demonstration, so we should get a realistic idea of what can be done in the next several years.

 

[Joexo]

There really isn't any certainty in the estimates for several reasons.

On the supply side, there really isn't a clear inventory for how much oil is still in the earth, or even where it all is.

If we don't have an estimate about how much fossil fuel is under the ground, maybe there's no urgency. Sure it will end at some point, but it could be in 1000 years.

When I read about Saudi Arabia "2030 Vision" that makes me think that maybe it is indeed finishing fast, which is why they're aggressively trying to build another business. But maybe that's not the reason?

If I owned a oil extraction company, and I developed a technology to extract oil from very deep underground easily, I wouldn't want to share this information until I had a huge enough advantage that competition couldn't catch me.

What I want to say is that oil could be there (or maybe not), technology could be there (or maybe not).

Since we have no idea, at that point I prefer to be positive about this.

When the urgency will show up, I like to think that governments and companies will find solutions to keep the status quo, simply for their own self interest of course. If we go back to primitive societies, very rich people will be the first to be killed or plundered.

If Jan is right and we're about to go back to primitive living, then think how lucky we all are that we lived in the 100-year window of human technology in the whole history of the universe. That is amazing honestly. As our grandparents have stories about them not having electricity, our future grandchildren could hear stories about when we could fly.

I personally think that it could be wise to develop some technology that studies our own planet so we can find out exactly how much resources we have.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Joexo, there are many people and corporations studying our planet to find useful resources all of the time. It isn't for lack of trying that we don't know everything there is to know about the resources that are on/in Earth. But, no studies are complete. And, some studies are stopped for environmental reasons after the location of a resource is found but the amount there is not quantified. Oil deposits are a good example of that.

So, we really don't have a good basis for predicting exactly when all of a resource will run out. We have some trouble just predicting when a localize supply that we are extracting will become uneconomical.

A lot of people do tend to think like you posted, that

When the urgency will show up, I like to think that governments and companies will find solutions to keep the status quo, simply for their own self interest of course.

The problem with that is those people are not the ones who really produce solutions. Solutions are produced by people with technological capabilities in the necessary fields of expertise, with funding and organization being provided by the "movers and shakers" that the media tends to credit with technological advances. So, there is a tendency on the part of the public to think we will always get solutions to every problem by getting Congress to approve the necessary budget or some genius somewhere to become rich based on having a good idea.

It just isn't that easy. Sure, Hollywood portrays engineer Scotty telling Capt. Kirk that the engines of the Enterprise are beyond maxed out and are coming apart, but somehow he always manages to get the job done and outrun the Klingons or whoever the threat-of-the-episode is. But, that is fiction.

To be successful in the real world, real technological development and real public policy development require some realistic assessments of what is available and what is possible both technologically and financially. And, it requires good situational awareness and plenty of lead time to see and prepare for approaching problems

Failure is a definite possibility.

 

[Gibsense]

Failure is a definite possibility.

It may become irrelevant

• GLOFs -Subglacial debris: As glaciers erode the underlying rock, they can create debris dams that can block the flow of meltwater. These dams can fail if they become saturated or if the pressure behind them becomes too great.
• Major situations in Greenland's Major Glacier are said to potentially increase sea level suddenly due to dam collapse. Unfortunately, I cannot find the Article again (it forecast a rise of 7 meters)