Are advanced alien civilizations inherently environmentally-friendly? Does high technology ultimately lead to a world free of garbage? Well, these are just two interesting ideas postulated by Canadian science fiction writer Karl Schroeder, who holds that the very reason that we have yet to find alien civilizations is that they are100% natural, and thus incapable of bring detected by the means we are using now.
Explanation?
First of all, Schroeder's take on ET intelligence is an attempt to answer the Fermi Paradox, which simply asks the question of if there are so many planets in the universe, why haven't we been visited by an alien civilization yet. According to optimistic estimates, there could be about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, about half of which could have at least one planet, meaning that there are at least 200 billion planets in our galaxy. Now, even using a 1 out of 8 fraction being hospitable for life as in our solar system, that could still leave around 25 billion planets capable of supporting life, which begs the question: where are the aliens.
So far, there are two main camps when it comes to answering the question “where us ET?” First option: we are simply the only technological civilization in existence at this present time. Option 2: being that the galaxy is so vast and that there are so many stars with planets, aliens simply haven't gotten to our corner of the Milky Way just yet.
Now, there is a third option: environmentally-friendly ETs.
Taking an idea from Arthur C. Clarke, who once compared high technology to magic, Schroeder stated that “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature.” The key idea: technologically-advanced civilizations will leave no artificial waste products that can be used to detect them, hence why we have yet to find ET. Ina similar vein, Schroeder proposes that space probes sent out by such civilizations would appear so natural that they would never be detected for what they truly were, ambassadors from another world.
Are these ideas likely to catch on and go mainstream or will they merely serve as a point of discussion among serious alien hunters and no one else? Who knows, but one thing is for sure: with an unanswerable question like the Fermi Paradox, all possible solutions should be considered.
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