Whistle blower says non-human bodies recovered from crash

[Reynard]

There's also the possibility presented in the "Berserker" series by Saberhagen, or in the "Babylon 5" episode "A Day in the Strife." An alien species either creates a weapon to destroy their immediate enemies and it gets loose, or they can't stomach the idea of other life and send out weapons to destroy any possible competitors. It's one of the possible answers to the Fermi Paradox.

The problem with the Fermi paradox is that it hinges on the belief that we've looked and we haven't seen them. That's just not true. We have scanned an immeasurably small percentage of the sky for signals that don't propagate particularly well with tools not actually built to find what they are looking for.

We are getting a little better with projects meant to start looking for high intensity laser communications. And we are working on tools to examine exoplanet atmospheres for signs of life and industrial activity, but we are a very long way from being able to legitimately wonder "where is everyone?"

 

[Dausuul]

The problem with the Fermi paradox is that it hinges on the belief that we've looked and we haven't seen them. That's just not true. We have scanned an immeasurably small percentage of the sky for signals that don't propagate particularly well with tools not actually built to find what they are looking for.

The point of the Fermi paradox is that the amount of searching we've already done should be more than enough. If there were significant numbers of intelligent aliens capable of interstellar travel, and just one of them were inclined to expand and colonize, that species would have filled up the galaxy. Forget other star systems, they should be right here in ours, and their presence should be blindingly obvious. They should have resculpted our solar system just as we have resculpted our planet.

There are many ways to explain the absence of such aliens, but it does require explanation, and that explanation has to work for 100% of aliens. If 99.99% of aliens don't colonize the galaxy, the remaining 0.01% do, and they should be here.

I enjoy coming up with hypotheses as much as the next science fiction reader; my favorite is that aliens are here, but they are so advanced and ubiquitous that we perceive them as natural laws -- some part of what we call physics is actually the interaction of inconceivable alien beings. (I am quite sure we will never find aliens by poking around looking for radio signals and the like. Look at the changes in human society in the last 100 years, extrapolate that over 10 million years, and whatever comes out the other end is going to be totally beyond our comprehension.)

But the simplest answer is that they just don't exist.

 

[Morrus]

Complex biochemicals for one thing. Program a living population's DNA and they can produce all sorts of specialised materials at scales that artificial production would struggle to match.

I don't even know what that means.

 

[Clint_L]

I think the simplest answer is that we don't know enough to make any kind of reasonable conjecture. The Fermi Paradox is based on completely unknown variables, so it's little more than a hypothetical conjecture with no means of testing.

 

[Reynard]

I don't even know what that means.

I think @MarkB means things like algae engineered excrete medicine or whatever.

 

[Reynard]

The point of the Fermi paradox is that the amount of searching we've already done should be more than enough.

This is very silly. We have effectively not looked at all given how we have searched. We couldn't detect our own civilization with the technology we have currently, and we don't even know what to look for in a galactic scale civilization. Mathematical models saying that it would only take 100 million years to visit every star in the galaxy (I think that's the number; I did not look it up) doesn't account for how we would even know. The Oort cloud could be absolutely teeming with von Neuman probes. How would we know?

 

[Guest 85555]

I don't pretend to have any kind of answer on this, but as someone who has long been highly skeptical of anything aliens, I know I take the opinion of people who believe a lot more seriously as these kinds of things have happened and as we have seen more footage in recent years (not saying this means the answer is aliens, I just think it is now a more plausible part of the conversation and something I don't dismiss)

 

[MarkB]

I don't even know what that means.

It means anything that living beings can produce naturally, plus everything they could be engineered to produce. Basically, anything involving complex organic chemistry.

 

[Guest 85555]

If there are aliens, I hope they look like lion people and not grays (don't need any fire in the sky nightmares)

 

[Ryujin]

It means anything that living beings can produce naturally, plus everything they could be engineered to produce. Basically, anything involving complex organic chemistry.

For example the Spider Cows and Spider Goats that scientists have created, through genetic manipulation, to produce silk along with their milk.