7:53The Fermi Paradox Just Got Much Worse
The most fashionable answer to the Fermi paradox has been that artificial intelligence cures a civilization of wanderlust: once you can simulate the galaxy there is no rational reason to cross it, so everyone stays home in virtual reality or aestivates until the universe runs cold. Sabine Hossenfelder walks through a new preprint by Sergey Ivliev arguing the inference runs backwards. Strip biology out of the spacecraft and expansion stops needing big fast starships; it needs 10 kilogram probes that require neither food nor air nor motivational posters, and at one percent of light speed those cross 100 light years in 10,000 years and the whole galactic disc in 10 million, under a tenth of one percent of the age of the galaxy. So the paradox gets worse, not better: the question is no longer only why there is no signal, but why there is no hardware in our own solar system. Her conclusion is that our technosignature searches have been aimed at loud civilizations when the prediction is quiet ones, and that maybe some of those supposed asteroids are not asteroids. She still grades it 10 out of 10 on her meter, on the grounds that it is cultural speculation rather than science, and interesting mostly for how much the conversation has shifted in a decade.