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How can Fermi's paradox be resolved in terms of modern scientific approach? In the middle of 70's Shklovskii tex2html_wrap_inline48 formulated a concept of ``Space Miracle'' a resulting from the activity of Supercivilizations and proposed an idea of uniqueness of our civilization in the whole huge Universe tex2html_wrap_inline44 . If there are no ``Space miracles'' and ``the Universe keeps silence'' so there is no any Extraterrestrial Intelligence. That was an awful thought, especially for a man who was looking for artificial origin of Martian satellites. Neither for humanity the matters were much better. One of the most optimistic human ideas crashed down, the idea of multitude of the worlds. As was said by Ya.B. Zel'dovich in other connection, ``What Jordano Bruno was burnt for?''

Is a hypothesis of uniqueness of Terrestrial Civilization so natural? Certainly, not. This hypothesis is in evidant contradiction with the observable uniformity and isotropy of the Universe consequent from the discovery of cosmic background radiation. A rise of only one civilization in the uniform and isotropic (on the whole) Universe, in a galaxy which is indistinguishable from others, near an ordinary yellow star, seems rather incredible. There are billions of such stars in our Galaxy. And even more of the galaxies themselves. Nevertheless, the probability that terrestrial life is unique, is not so small and cannot be compared to Fermi's paradox., so the question arises about the number of planetary systems, the Drake's formula appears, and so on. However the uniqueness hypothesis resets us at the anthropological point of view from which the physicists always try to stay away. Moreover, as will be shown below, this idea and connected calculations on the probability of appearance of life lose their actuality in the light of Tsiolkovskii's paradox.

Shklovskii himself, in his last paper rejected the idea of uniqueness and put forward even less consoling hypothesis of ``deadlock branch''. Let us look once more at the formula given above, the only possibility to get rid of this gigantic number is to suppose that the time of exponential stage of the development of a civilization is much less than the time of existence of the Universe. In other words, Giant Silence of the Universe can be explained by assuming that technological supercivilizations don't arise at all. Why? At least, two answers may be proposed: because of loss of interest for the technological development or because of their destruction. Shklovskii chose the second variant, and he had his reasons for that (we don't notice yet any limit for technological development). Saying by words of Shklovskii, the Earth represents ``a cemetery of species'': biological estimates argue that about one billion species have evolved on the Earth from the beginning of life appearance, and now there are only two million. May be, an intellect is also some ``hypertrophic'' function (as a mass of a dinosaur's body) leading to an inevitable destruction? Thus an intellect may be only an unsuc cessful invention of the nature, ``a deadlock branch''. What is a direct reason for destruction? An atomic war, an ecological catastrophe? It doesn't seem so. It is clear that in spite of all possible variety of specific ``local conditions'' the destruction of different civilizations must be due to the same, universal reason. What reason? An interesting possibility is discussed by V.Khlumov tex2html_wrap_inline72 . A common reason for destruction of an intelligence in the Universe can be related to a loss of its main function, a function of cognition. His arguments look as follows.


next up previous
Next: Simple Universe Up: No Title Previous: Fermi's Paradox

Lipunov V.M.
Sun May 3 16:35:20 MSD 1998