1950, Los Alamos, New Mexico. Lunch time. The story goes that a few of the world’s top physicists were sitting around having a sandwich when one of them, Italian Enrico Fermi, blurted, “So where are they?” The scientists lunching with him, Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski, all knew what he was referring to. The media at the time had been covering a rash of UFO sightings and speculated on whether these visits from outer space had malevolent intent. At the time, Hollywood was on board, too, with a host of UFO pictures that featured all kinds of weird aliens, robots, and schemes of planetary domination.
While the other three scientists went back to munching on their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Enrico freestyled some elementary math.
He believed Earth to be at least 4 billion years old.[1] And while he wasn’t certain about the age of the Universe[2], Fermi knew it was thought to be more than twice the age of Earth. So, he reasoned, there was more than enough time for other civilizations to grow and mature, just as humans had. But what about the opportunities for other civilizations to become technologically capable? Well, there were around 100 billion stars in our own Milky Way galaxy, and many of them mostly likely had planets orbiting in the “Goldilocks Zone,” the band around the star that was not too hot and not too cold, just right for the creation of life. Multiply that by the estimated number of galaxies in the observable Universe, a number Fermi believed nudged close to 500 billion, and the number of potential Petri dishes for intelligent life was…astronomical![3]
Fermi reasoned, therefore, that we should be bumping into strange new intelligent lifeforms from outer space every other day. Hence the blurt: “So where are they?”
And here’s where that negativity I mentioned pokes its head above the parapet. There are several theories that provide a possible reason. The one that makes the most sense to me is the Great Filter.
In a nutshell, the Great Filter theory holds that when technologically savvy civilizations develop the tools to destroy themselves, they take that inevitable fatal step. I know it’s bleak, but it does explain the galactic silence.
It’s ironic to note that, back in Los Alamos in 1950, Fermi and his work chums were developing the next level of atomic destruction — continent-killing two-stage themo-nuclear weapons.
Indeed, for almost 80 years now, the threat of annihilation by these weapons has hung over the human race, a very real Great Filter. However, we’re still here. Sure, there have been some close calls, but we haven’t made the BIG mistake. Yet.
Given that Earth hasn’t been silenced despite the enticing opportunity, some have wondered whether the Great Filter is now behind us. Has our species lucked out, learned, and passed through the danger zone, now to move on to a blissful and rare state of Interstellar Peace and Serenity?
Others have theorized that while we have these weapons pointed at each other with enough megatonnage of TNT to wipe out all human life several times over, the filter is still very much in front of us. It’s just a matter of time.
I’m in that camp. In fact, I’ll go further and suggest that, nukes or not, the human race’s demise by the Great Filter is an absolute certainty. Why?
In 1950, nuclear weapons were really the only existential threat to humanity. Today, we have technologies that are beyond even the science fiction of those days. The science currently on the table that could potentially make humans go the way of the dinosaurs (and let’s not forget, those guys were around for 190 million years while we apes only climbed down from the trees a few hundred thousand years ago) are artificial intelligence (the fear is that one day a generally intelligent AI could relegate us all to the status of bugs — and squash us), gain-of-function research into already lethal viruses (making things like Spanish Flu, which killed more than 20 million people after WWI, even more potent), nano-technology (that could potentially supercharge a virus created in gain-of-function endeavors, for example), experiments in particle physics (in a particle accellerator, artificially creating a very small black hole that swallows the Earth in an instant), and man-made climate change which, running rampant, might not kill us all, but will probably come for a large number of us.
There is a whole range of other non-human species killers, such as gamma-ray bursts and supernovae explosions, but let’s just stick to the man-made ones for now.
Take Spanish Flu. Did you know that its DNA has been released on the internet and that it’s now possible to buy genetic printers that can reproduce this pathogen in a lab you could set up in your kitchen for a few thousand bucks? Given that we know the world is full of bad actors who rub their hands together with glee at the prospect of wiping out their fellow humans, this is not a good situation.
Returning to my point about the Great Filter always being in front of us and that it’s only matter of time, humankind can’t and won’t stop developing new technologies. And making these and old lethal technologies ever cheaper. For example, nuclear weapons, once the weapons only a handful of superpowers could afford, are now available to poor, deadbeat countries like North Korea.
In short, more and more technologies that can kill us all are only just around the corner. And they won’t stop coming. And once they arrive, effort is always applied to making them cheaper and more accessible. Who’s to say what technologies will be available to reckless, even murderous, people in the years to come? People like that wealthy guy who killed 58 innocent people, shooting down from his Vegas hotel window into a music concert[4]. No motive, no warning. Just death, destruction, and misery. He did what he did with guns. What if he’d decided to do it with an AI technology that could, if released, kill millions? Do you think he wouldn’t? What about the Columbine Highschool asshole? Or the Sandy Hook deadbeat? Or the Christchurch Mosque turd? Or the Port Arthur Massacre nutjob? Or Osama Bin Laden? Or Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi? Or Imad Mughniyeh? Or Hitler? Or Stalin? Et Cetera and so forth.
At some point, a deluded someone or group of someones will use a species-level extinction technology against the rest of us and strike up another notch on the Great Filter’s belt. It’s 100 percent inevitable. As one podcaster said, “Yes, we’re all going to die. Let’s just hope it’s not all of us on the same day.”
PS: The audio versions of Mire in the Middle East take forever to record and edit. Fear not, the remaining Parts 5 & 6 are coming. Soon. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this brief interlude. Certainly an interesting thought exercise, right?
— David
[1] Earth’s age was determined in the 1950s (after Fermi came up with his Paradox), to be 4.5 billion years old
[2] Now believed to be 13.7 billion years old +/- 200 million years
[3] There are estimated today to be between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable Universe. No doubt the number will be zeroed in on
[4] I refuse to name these creeps.
You must be a John Ringo fan. His Black Tide Rising series looks at this.
Well that was a fun read, Dave. Thursdays not one of your favourites, clearly. Actually, it would be a shame, just when the world is about to discover how to seriously clean its vinyl records.
All the best
Steve
ps still looking for a proof reader? You know I'm good...