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What do you think could be the Great Filter(s) that prevents us from colonizing our galaxy?
- Thread starter Firemind
- Start date
Human beings being too neurologically limited to overcome their own base biological needs and perception of mortality to coherently form long term plans hinged on strict resource manage and grand social cooperation. If we survival through climate change and continue to develop technologically, it'll be our post-human androids/AIs that ultimately formulate and execute viable galactic conolisation planets, thanks to being free of extreme human limitations (particularly time).
If it's possible at all, given the immense energy requirements to do so.
If it's possible at all, given the immense energy requirements to do so.
It is greatly exaggerated if the fear is that it will prevent launches. The fear is that it will prevent the usage of satellites in the range that we typically put them. Space ships could launch 'through the gaps' (as it isn't like space is full), but a satellite that is a year in orbit would very likely be hit.
Either the Rare Earth theory is mostly correct and we are so special that we will be forever alone, or the Prime Directive could be at play.
The space between. Though if we could colonize somewhere local and spread like the disease we are over generations that would solve that in a way. Or if we ever find a way to bypass spacetime.
Other than that there could be a global catastrophe before we ever get anywhere.
Other than that there could be a global catastrophe before we ever get anywhere.
Three simple things
1) FTL restrictions means you're basically chucking space crafts into highly radioactive empty voids and hoping they come out on the other side fine after centuries of travel.
2) Human like beings are probably extremely rare on planets that support life. We can see intelligent beings similar to us in other mammals, but it's just a few evolutionary advantages that tipped us over the edge to where we were able to use tools and develop things
3) Luck. Our solar system has developed to be rather friendly to Earth in respect to random giant celestial objects smashing into us and causing massive extinction events. In the event that advanced life does form, it could be in a more hostile and dangerous solar system to where it's simply that much harder for it to escape.
There is also the fact that people over look. If Earth was larger, the amount of energy required to escape it's gravity well becomes increasingly higher. I think if Earth was 50% larger in diameter, there wouldn't be a way for us to get into orbit, we would be stuck here using conventional rockets.
It's very plausible that some life baring planets are simply too large to ever support a species being able to even get into space in the first place. Just another piece of the puzzle.
1) FTL restrictions means you're basically chucking space crafts into highly radioactive empty voids and hoping they come out on the other side fine after centuries of travel.
2) Human like beings are probably extremely rare on planets that support life. We can see intelligent beings similar to us in other mammals, but it's just a few evolutionary advantages that tipped us over the edge to where we were able to use tools and develop things
3) Luck. Our solar system has developed to be rather friendly to Earth in respect to random giant celestial objects smashing into us and causing massive extinction events. In the event that advanced life does form, it could be in a more hostile and dangerous solar system to where it's simply that much harder for it to escape.
There is also the fact that people over look. If Earth was larger, the amount of energy required to escape it's gravity well becomes increasingly higher. I think if Earth was 50% larger in diameter, there wouldn't be a way for us to get into orbit, we would be stuck here using conventional rockets.
It's very plausible that some life baring planets are simply too large to ever support a species being able to even get into space in the first place. Just another piece of the puzzle.
Global warming, every other filter is irrelevant until that's taken care of and it's looking bleak.
I disagree. It will get fixed imo. Preventive absolutely not imo. But eventually carbon capture etc. If we are to geoform planets we have to be able to geoform our own. Im pretty sure we will not end up a venus .
This is such a depressing question when you stop and think about all the potential answers.
1.Every alien species tends to keep to themselves as they don't know the tech level of surrounding alien species. Dark Forest principle lol.
2.It might be flat out impossible from a physics standpoint due to the distances involved.
3.The Great Filter is so harsh that there might only be a few hundred actually advanced civilizations in the universe.
3a.Even if a civilization is advanced, there might be particular circumstances that prevent them from leaving their solar system or even their planet.
1.Every alien species tends to keep to themselves as they don't know the tech level of surrounding alien species. Dark Forest principle lol.
2.It might be flat out impossible from a physics standpoint due to the distances involved.
3.The Great Filter is so harsh that there might only be a few hundred actually advanced civilizations in the universe.
3a.Even if a civilization is advanced, there might be particular circumstances that prevent them from leaving their solar system or even their planet.
Climate change. Species get advanced enough to fuck themselves over with nuclear/polution but not advanced enough to get past it and develop fusion and clean energy sources at the scale needed.
Plain old physics and biology.
Everything about our physical make-up is tailored to Earth. Skeletal structure, bone density, cardiovascular system, pulmonary system, respiratory system, susceptibility to radiation, thermal regulation, tolerances to heat and cold, biorhythm, immune system, everything.
It takes a lot of energy to achieve escape velocity for any material object or lifeform situated on a planet, and it takes a LONG time to get anywhere once you're in space, no matter how fast you're going.
Everything about our physical make-up is tailored to Earth. Skeletal structure, bone density, cardiovascular system, pulmonary system, respiratory system, susceptibility to radiation, thermal regulation, tolerances to heat and cold, biorhythm, immune system, everything.
It takes a lot of energy to achieve escape velocity for any material object or lifeform situated on a planet, and it takes a LONG time to get anywhere once you're in space, no matter how fast you're going.
I hope you're right.
That's a problem with people, capitalism is just the latest successful ideology exploiting it.
Climate change aka our self destructive nature. We are literally addicts overdosing on fossil fuels until we die.
We will hopefully get a better understanding of this in our lifetime. The current missions planned and in the future to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, plus Mars and asteroids may reveal microbial life. If found the drake equation changes dramatically.
I assume they only showered at night, don't use deodorant, and date people 3 years younger than themselves, which is what inevitably led to the downfall of all intelligent species.
It's a pessimistic take but I do genuinely believe that intelligent life has an innate drive towards self destruction and annihilation. I think the great filter is ultimately the species-wide realization that life has no purpose and nothing last forever.
Call it nihilistic but I believe this plays a significant role in the great filter.
Call it nihilistic but I believe this plays a significant role in the great filter.
We really should not be colonizing any planet or any humans on other planet. If we can go by our own history, we all know it doesn't end well and it is wrong.
Setting up a colony of an on inhabited planet is a different story though and a case can be made for it. But any planet with life should be left along unless they threaten Earth. Threaten Earth, lol
Setting up a colony of an on inhabited planet is a different story though and a case can be made for it. But any planet with life should be left along unless they threaten Earth. Threaten Earth, lol
This is a (relevant) reference to an excellent scifi series by liu cixin. Highly recommended to anyone in this thread who hasn't read it.
See this is precisely why religion was such a significant invention.
It tricked early humans, even more primitive and selfish creatures than ourselves, into investing in a future far beyond their grasp, one from which they would never personally benefit.
It gave them the motivation they were missing to invent agriculture, to build roads, pyramids, to refine metallurgy and animal husbandry, to record writing, construct gothic cathedrals, colonise new continents, everything that brought us as far as we've come.
The Glory of an Almighty God, more worthy of investment than any human or society of humans. And endlessly more personal to each of us. Such a powerful lie.
And now we have to come up with something just as good to keep us going.
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I assume most aliens run into the same problems of psychology and economics that humans do. Sure, if we wanted to throw massive resources into building a fleet of Von Neumann probes to colonize the galaxy, but why would we? Who cares, why would any sentient lifeform whose lifespan numbers in the dozens or hundreds of years care about putting our resources into a project that would take millions of years to get results out of. We could go build domes on the moon or Mars, but if we just need space to live, the Sahara and Antarctica are way less hostile than the moon or Mars. We could put all our resources into a big project to build generation ships that could go to nearby stars, but without confirmation of habitable planets around them, why would we?
No species has any incentive to start pursuing serious space industry unless they luck into having two habitable planets in their system, or run into some extreme mineral scarcity while also remaining otherwise prosperous enough where asteroid mining becomes economically feasible. Hauling minerals in from space is costly; it's hard to imagine both needing them that badly, and being rich enough to do it. Occasionally you probably have species who manage to confirm a habitable planet around a nearby star and send colonists, but this never evolves into any sort of galactic empire because decade-or-more lag time in communications means that the new colony and the home planet cease to be a functioning single civilization almost immediately. They both go their own path right off the bat, and you never get the exponential growth that we would traditionally associate with colonial expansion.
It's possible that some other species is out there who is so different that these things don't matter, some sort of hive intelligence capable of grasping spans of millions of years and being willing to make those investments, but I also think it's possible that any sort of hive species like that, no matter how intelligent, never makes the jump to being a technology-making civilization as we typically think of it. When a social-but-still-individualized species like humans achieves intelligence, it's easy enough for some of those individuals to manage to go do science or whatever and start inventing things, but does a hive consciousness ever start having individual workers stop working to go do experiments? It may be that civilization as we think of it is very tied to human-like social structures. I mean, here on Earth we seem to have pretty high intelligence evolved among dolphins, but with nothing resembling civilization forming, because they live in the water and building with flippers is hard, and building underwater is hard. Hell, there are probably very human-like species out there who have never even considered space travel because they live on higher gravity planets where the tech that got us into orbit won't cut it.
Even in a universe where life is abundant, where intelligence is abundant, so many things have to go right to even get to space travel, and the sort of species that would even want something like galactic empire (want it as reality, not as a fantasy like most of us do) would have to thread so many needles so precisely to work that way.
No species has any incentive to start pursuing serious space industry unless they luck into having two habitable planets in their system, or run into some extreme mineral scarcity while also remaining otherwise prosperous enough where asteroid mining becomes economically feasible. Hauling minerals in from space is costly; it's hard to imagine both needing them that badly, and being rich enough to do it. Occasionally you probably have species who manage to confirm a habitable planet around a nearby star and send colonists, but this never evolves into any sort of galactic empire because decade-or-more lag time in communications means that the new colony and the home planet cease to be a functioning single civilization almost immediately. They both go their own path right off the bat, and you never get the exponential growth that we would traditionally associate with colonial expansion.
It's possible that some other species is out there who is so different that these things don't matter, some sort of hive intelligence capable of grasping spans of millions of years and being willing to make those investments, but I also think it's possible that any sort of hive species like that, no matter how intelligent, never makes the jump to being a technology-making civilization as we typically think of it. When a social-but-still-individualized species like humans achieves intelligence, it's easy enough for some of those individuals to manage to go do science or whatever and start inventing things, but does a hive consciousness ever start having individual workers stop working to go do experiments? It may be that civilization as we think of it is very tied to human-like social structures. I mean, here on Earth we seem to have pretty high intelligence evolved among dolphins, but with nothing resembling civilization forming, because they live in the water and building with flippers is hard, and building underwater is hard. Hell, there are probably very human-like species out there who have never even considered space travel because they live on higher gravity planets where the tech that got us into orbit won't cut it.
Even in a universe where life is abundant, where intelligence is abundant, so many things have to go right to even get to space travel, and the sort of species that would even want something like galactic empire (want it as reality, not as a fantasy like most of us do) would have to thread so many needles so precisely to work that way.
Personally, I believe we long passed the great filter, it's way back in the past. Single cell life to multi cell and finally intelligence is extremely difficult. It should have never even happened.
As of right now, the only thing holding back humanity is humanity. The first step should be getting some permanent habitats in our solar system. That way if something bad does happen to Earth, we don't go extinct. After that, as long as we don't kill ourselves we can slowly get the technology to venture farther out.
As of right now, the only thing holding back humanity is humanity. The first step should be getting some permanent habitats in our solar system. That way if something bad does happen to Earth, we don't go extinct. After that, as long as we don't kill ourselves we can slowly get the technology to venture farther out.
Yes! Halfway through the final book and it's sofar my favourite sci-fi trilogy.
Sophons are essentially multi dimensional forms of photons of light who stymie human advancement for centuries as a precursor to alien invasion.
So....like Murphy's Law but with more dimensions.
Anyway read the books- The 3 Body Problem, Dark Forest and Deaths End. Thank me later!
Climate Change is the obvious one.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Some sort of catastrophic global conflict.
Lack of required resources / energy.
Exotic radiation in the interstellar medium.
VR / AR satisfying our desire for exploration.
I doubt very much we'd be able to restrict our access to space via space junk even if we actively tried to, never mind while doing our best to prevent it. Even then we'd only be restricting our access to that very specific orbit, not space entirely.
Space is really big, and the amount of stuff we put up there is really tiny. The ISS has been chilling in LEO for 20 years without serious incident, travelling over 3 billion miles, and only something like 20 near misses.
Kesseler syndrome is like looking at the rate of car accidents and determining we'll be unable to drive in 5 years because of the wreckage piled up on every Interstate. Actually that scenario would be way more believable.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Some sort of catastrophic global conflict.
Lack of required resources / energy.
Exotic radiation in the interstellar medium.
VR / AR satisfying our desire for exploration.
Kessler syndrome is massively overblown.
I doubt very much we'd be able to restrict our access to space via space junk even if we actively tried to, never mind while doing our best to prevent it. Even then we'd only be restricting our access to that very specific orbit, not space entirely.
Space is really big, and the amount of stuff we put up there is really tiny. The ISS has been chilling in LEO for 20 years without serious incident, travelling over 3 billion miles, and only something like 20 near misses.
Kesseler syndrome is like looking at the rate of car accidents and determining we'll be unable to drive in 5 years because of the wreckage piled up on every Interstate. Actually that scenario would be way more believable.
Assuming a civilization exists in the Milky Way that has managed to span across large portions of it while still communicating amongst itself, what's to say we'd know how to recognize such communication as artificial rather than attribute it to what we believe are natural phenomena?
I'm sure smarter people than myself can provide a rebuttal to this argument.
Edit: And what's to say we aren't ourselves part of larger intelligent organisms in the same way cells or bacteria are part of us?
I'm sure smarter people than myself can provide a rebuttal to this argument.
Edit: And what's to say we aren't ourselves part of larger intelligent organisms in the same way cells or bacteria are part of us?
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I dont think theres a great filter, I think we are just vastly overestimating us or at least making us out to be more important then we actually are.
If we were looking at us from the outside, in the grand scheme of things we are barely someone sitting on a piece of wood that we have set on fire ourselves, in the middle of the ocean while throwing paper air planes at it hoping to find something new and figuring out the vast nothingness.
Or if it has to be a "filter", it would be space itself. Everything in it wants to kill us.
If we were looking at us from the outside, in the grand scheme of things we are barely someone sitting on a piece of wood that we have set on fire ourselves, in the middle of the ocean while throwing paper air planes at it hoping to find something new and figuring out the vast nothingness.
Or if it has to be a "filter", it would be space itself. Everything in it wants to kill us.
Combination of energy dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear weaponry will impede us from even colonising the solar system.
We shouldn't even think about galactic expansion unless we develop FTL travel.
We shouldn't even think about galactic expansion unless we develop FTL travel.
Radiation, actual distances of millions and billions of miles just to the closest planets in our own solar system, $$$
It's a long list of issues, but this is #1. We are fragile beings that can't exist (for long) outside of our tiny snow globe. #2 is the fragility of life on our planet itself, which we are doing our best to kill. So any amazing future tech - all of which is dubious anyway - it's a race against how fast we can kill life on this planet.
So what's the Great Filter? It's either:
A) the built-in dependency of life on the environment it evolved in.
B) head-up-your-own-ass stupidity of "intelligent" life
okay so the Great Filter is way ahead of us and is unbreakable
gotcha. could have put it like that from the start
I was going to come in here and say the answer is "space colonialism" but I see it's been made for me.
