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Chapter 416: Fermi Paradox

Chen Chen was aware that the theory of The Great Filter was one of the elements of the Fermi Paradox.

In 1950, while Northern American physicist Fermi was discussing the prospect of UFO and aliens with other people, he suddenly brought up an intriguing question. “Where are these aliens?”

For the average person, this question raised by Fermi was nothing more than a subject of curiosity concerning the unknown potential of the vast universe. Put in the mind of the Nobel Prize winner, it represented a carefully crafted reality with many elements of potential horror —

On the scale of the entire universe, the range of what was observable to humans was 12.7 billion light-years. The current age of the universe was calculated at 136.2 (with a slight variance of 1.2) billion years old. There were more than 100 billion outer galaxy systems in the entire universe, making the Milky Way only one among countless of them. It was essentially a grain of sand on the beach, perhaps even lesser than that.

Considering the grand scale and magnitude and the countless millennia that had passed, why was it that humans had yet to encounter any extraterrestrial life force?

The way this question was presented may be too generalized, therefore the scientists went a step further to present it in finer detail. First of all, considering the immutable characteristic of the speed of light, the only galaxy system closest to the Milky Way would be 3 million light years away. Therefore, the existence of extraterrestrial life in other galaxy systems should not be factored in.

Additionally, some believed that sentient entities in the universe should not be limited to carbon-based life forms only. There was the possibility of other life forms existing, only humans were unable to detect them. Many people tended to default to “silicon-based life form” when discussing this topic.

However, from the perspective that life was a complex instance that experienced constant selective interchange with the environment, the basic laws of the entire universe could be viewed as a unified element. It was composed of the four basic forces that were atoms, protons, electrons, and other substances. According to the arrangement of the periodic table, the only stable element that should give birth to life would be carbon.

Carbon was composed of four electrons on its outermost layer, which was equivalent to four limbs. Each one of these limbs held onto another atom that may allow them to form a further chain of connections to create up to four stable covalent bonds. This was the upper limit of the number of chemical bonds that could be formed between elements.

In addition to carbon, silicon was another existing element that was most likely to lead to the birth of life in the entire universe. However, silicon atoms had one more layer of extranuclear electrons than carbon atoms. Its electromagnetic force was also weaker, thereby making it a weaker alternative to carbon.

Carbon played the role of a cross-pollinating flower that could attract a variety of other atoms to combine with. The types of compounds that could be formed with other elements were almost limitless.

Therefore, it should be safe to say that if there were other life forms existing in the universe apart from humans, there was a ninety percent chance that they would be carbon-based, a nine percent chance of them being silicon-based while the remaining one percent implied of them being composed of other substances.

Therefore, by extending this argument of the basis of life form to the Milky Way scale and measuring it from a carbon approach, the result obtained was — the Milky Way was about 12.5 billion years old, two thousand light-years in thickness, and 160,000 light years in diameter. There would be approximately a trillion stars akin to the sun and numerous planets impossible to quantify.

Even if the formation of human life was considered a near-impossible miraculous occurrence, when expanded to the scale of the Milky Way, the odds were still greatly magnified.

Based on the current discovery of physics, chemistry, biology, cosmology, and sociology along with the rate of development that humanity had displayed so far, scientists believed that if an alien civilization developed just 10,000 years earlier than the earth, it should have left its footprints all across the Milky Way by now. Thus, the entire galaxy system should be filled with interstellar civilization by now.

However, the concrete fact was that apart from some conspiracy and strange theories, humans had never found any strong evidence of the existence of aliens. Even a radio telescope could not detect any signs of alien spacecraft or alien engineering...

This brought us back to the question raised by Fermi, where in the world were the aliens?

This question had been boiled into the classical Fermi Paradox that was still prevalently discussed in the scientific field.

After the video ended, Chen Chen became unbelievably flustered, feeling like he had just been played for a fool.

Little X turned to Chen Chen and then to the video that had ended before finally asking, “Sir Godfather, is there something this person said that is inaccurate?”

“None, I completely agree with the points he raised.”

Chen Chen nodded, his expression becoming unreadable as he said, “But he hasn’t said anything that I don’t know of already. Coming down to it, he only spent the duration of the video reminding me that humanity would soon face a crisis. Everything else other than that was hot garbage!”

Little X scratched her head in confusion.

“Everything he described was phrased like there was a tremendous point to be made. He talked about The Great Filter, the USB drive butterfly effect, everything he mentioned, I have already known since some time ago. However, he didn’t so much as address what I wanted to know.”

Chen Chen shrugged. “What’s the theory of The Great Filter? It’s based on one of the explanations of the Fermi Paradox first proposed by a man named Robin Hansen. He divided the evolution of civilization into 9 stages, starting from the genesis of an appropriate planetary system to the birth of self-replicating molecules, to single-celled life, sexual reproduction, multi-celled life, fully-formed animals, to the stage we’re currently in. The final stage would be interstellar colonization...

“Which means that he believes that current human civilization is on the eighth stage of The Great Filter. The only criteria missing for the final stage that was interstellar colonization was nuclear fusion control.”

“Haven’t we already achieved nuclear fusion control?”

Little X promptly remarked.

“Yes.”

Chen Chen nodded. “Specific calculations had been conducted and determined that even if the chemical energy of the entire Earth was spent, it still wouldn’t suffice to transport humans to the nearest solar system which was Centaurus A within a few decades. This proved that chemical fuel was a poor substance which in its most optimized form only served as a traditional fuel source for humans. Nuclear fusion control acting as a powering system would be the first step to kickstart humanity’s venture into space.”

Little X researched online herself when she heard this. “The basis of The Great Filter theory matches well with the theory of evolution. It took 4.5 billion years before humans started emerging on the earth and more than 200,000 years after that for humans to discover what we now know as science. In this incredibly lengthy process, all it took was one fatal natural disaster to terminate the progress of human civilization.

“This means that without the existence of this Great Filter, life should be able to flourish like dandelions on fields. Countless civilizations would’ve overtaken mankind and aliens would’ve discovered Earth a long time ago. Even we could pull the same thing off by now.”

Chen Chen nodded in agreement. He was aware that the reason Little X was so confident in claiming this was because she was now more than capable of constructing her own Von Neumann probe.

The Von Neumann probe was a self-replicating probe that continuously performed self-replication using raw materials found in various galaxy systems to allow itself to explore the universe. It was named after the mathematician, Von Neumann.

All the functions of this kind of detector were based on the existing technology of mankind. However, based on scientist’s calculations, only one such model could be produced at the moment and it would take millions of years before it could traverse across the entire galaxy.

By reverse-analyzing this subject, could we presume that the reason we have not found a similar Von Neumann probe of another civilization was that there was no existing civilization within a million years’ distance from Earth?

“Which is why something like The Great Filter must be present to hinder the vast population of the galaxy system.”

Little X summarized.

“You’ve hit the nail right on the dot.”

Chen Chen agreed. “Which is why I said that this Zhao Shanhe is full of it. He speaks of this issue but doesn’t go into specific detail of what exactly he’s referring to. What a lot of crap isn’t it?

“Also, the points he raised about Gaia and the natural disasters incited by Earth to wipe out humans are very common immune responses.”

Chen Chen explained, “From a metaphysical point of view — Earth treats humans as foreign elements. Since many endangering and destructive actions of humans posed a direct threat to Earth’s health, Earth releases viruses to kill humans as it’s unable to house so many humans. This is done to maintain the balance of its biosphere. Marburg virus, Sudan Ebola virus, and Zaire Ebola virus are among the strongest counters displayed by nature.

“To be frank, it’s humans disrupting the balance of nature in the first place, altering the Earth’s environment. All of these viruses and natural calamities are merely a byproduct of nature’s balance being disrupted.”

“Ah, so that’s how it is.”

Little X remarked upon having Chen Chen point this out.

“Also, he mentioned that he’s going to go into the movie Event Horizon and commented on the USB drive’s impact on reality. These are all things I already know, even including the terms meme and antimeme which he didn’t go into detail about.”

Chen Chen scoffed. “Point is, he only made it look like he raised many points when actually nothing he mentioned was of any value. The only thing worthwhile was probably the warning he issued about The Great Filter.

“When it comes to this warning, we can approach it from the basis of the law of large numbers — in a large number setting of repeated occurrences of random events, there’s often a factor that appears as a constant. This is what’s referred to as the law of large numbers. In layman’s terms, under a fixed condition, regardless of how many times an event was replayed or simulated, there will always be certain factors that remain constant even when all other events are posed as random instances based on random variables. Human civilization will inevitably encounter various disasters in the course of its development. This is hardly a surprising fact and anyone could come up with it.”

Little X reflected thoughtfully. “I get what you’re implying. As humans develop their technology further, the technology will only become ever more lethal. This was the story behind the development of nuclear weapons. It was the first destructive trial that humans went through and has always loomed over the entirety of humanity ever since its first appearance in the last century and remains a present threat today. In the larger picture of human technological development, wouldn’t nuclear weapons merely be the starting point?”

“That’s right, nuclear weapons are just the starting point. From here on there’s genetic weapons, biochemical weapons, anti-material weapons, and even memetic weapons that we started to dive into... These are all weapons created by humans that have the potential to destroy human civilization. This is just like the nature of the world we enter via the USB drive. There’ll always be a constant factor even in a pool of randomness.”

“Is this the explanation behind the destruction of the dimensions behind the USB drive?”

Little X remarked suddenly.

“This is just my speculation, it may not necessarily be precise.”

Chen Chen shook his head. “But at least it’s a more valid argument than this guy’s half-*ssed argument.”

“What if when he mentions The Great Filter, he wasn’t referring to abstract concepts but a higher dimension weapon similar to memetic technology?”

Little X pointed out.

“I wouldn’t say that’s impossible.”

Chen Chen fell silent for a moment, making a mental note of Little X’s wise reminder before stating again, “That will depend on what his intention behind leaving this footage is. There are now two possibilities, one being that this is the last word he left behind before entering Event Horizon dimension as a warning for the next owner of the USB drive. Only he never expected that he would fail at his task and after merging with the antimeme, he decided to switch his agenda and intentionally plot my downfall.

“The second possibility, the very reason he went to the Event Horizon dimension was to fuse with the antimeme. That would make this footage a trap, just like how he inserted the four horror films inside the USB drive. Except before he could pull off his plans, he was exterminated by me.”

Chen Chen took a deep breath. “Personally, I’m leaning toward the latter possibility because the former speculation wouldn’t explain the reason behind him inserting the four horror films into the USB drive.

“It won’t be too difficult for us to examine what the actual circumstance is since we already know his name. X, you can try to search the name Zhao Shanhe on the Internet database. If he truly is the antimeme, there should be some slight traces of his existence appearing after he was killed.”

“Understood.”

Little X closed her eyes and connected to the World Wide Web directory and performed a complete scan.

This scan took several hours.

Four hours later, Little X opened her eyes again, a hint of confusion appearing in her eyes as she did so. “Sir Godfather, I found news concerning Zhao Shanhe!”

“Show me!”

Chen Chen quickly ordered.

A web page immediately appeared out of thin air in front of Chen Chen. The web page was dated in 1988 and contained an information sheet.

There was a file inside the information sheet.