Most of us believe that there’s probably some aliens out there, certainly from a statistical standpoint. So why is it that none of us have ever seen any of them? Or at least any evidence of them. That is what we call the Fermi paradox. This question is every astrophysicist’s favorite question to think about. In March of 2018, a brand new resolution to this paradox was proposed — and it is rather on the dark side.
This Universe Is not Big Enough for Two of Us
Actually, there’s no shortage at all for possible solutions to this alien dilemma. We find them ranging from the most simplistic to the very complicated, and from those that are quite logical to those that are totally off-the-wall. In all honesty, these explanations can get very grim sometimes, as was the case with the possible explanation proposed by Alexander Berezin, who is a Russian theoretical physicist at the National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET). His report was published on the pre-print site called arXiv. This report suggests a “first in, last out” solution. And then Berezin claims that his “solution would be hard to accept, as it predicts a future for our own civilization that is even worse than extinction.” If you find this hard to swallow, then you can perhaps find some solace in the fast that his report has been not yet been peer-reviewed.
The Most Wanted in the Universe
Berezin’s hypothesis is simply that the universe can only accommodate one life at a time. “What if the first life that reaches interstellar travel capability necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion?” he states. While this might sound like a big intergalactic war scenario, that is not necessarily what he is implying. Perhaps other life are eradicated accidentally, in much the same way a construction worker would inadvertently destroy an anthill during the construction of a house and not realizing these little bugs just got eliminated.
However according to Berezin, we are not ants who are waiting for our own deaths. Rather, we are actually the construction workers who continue to kill the very things we are trying to discover, perhaps using the very things we use to discover them. “Assuming the hypothesis above is correct, what does it mean for our future?” Berezin notes. “The only explanation is the invocation of the anthropic principle. We are the first to arrive at the [interstellar] stage. And, most likely, will be the last to leave.”
Will humanity go off the rails, becoming too powerful and accidentally destructive to make nice with our potential intergalactic neighbors? According to Berezin, maybe.
