Posted by Bob on 7/31/2007, 8:22 am, in reply to "Re: Fermi's Paradox, Cosmology, and, Are We Alone?" I am utterly mystified by your stance on this. Atoms are everywhere. They are for all practical purposes in limitless supply. With sufficient technology, they can be transmuted into almost any other form, removing the need for finding any material resource, since they can all be fabricated. Perhaps I am just misunderstanding you here. "...we can then assume an exponential population expansion similar to what we have seen on earth..." That disregards the tendency toward eugenics, which we see in some forms here on earth. Population control efforts could quite plausibly prevent overpopulation in a highly advanced techno- society, especially if political power had become centralized, as we see that happening here on earth. One might even envision genetic engineering of a sterile worker class, or of life forms that could only reproduce when "enabled," or even in vitro. The possible solutions to overpopulation are virtually endless. Of course, once we achieve direct evidence of ET civilizations, the Fermi paradox is resolved, at least to a major degree. Right now, the paradox is this: We can reasonably posit that life exists elsewhere, and that it has had time to populate the galaxy. But this reasonable hypothesis is apparently contradicted by a complete lack of evidence. That lack of evidence has a hierarchy of possible explanations, each of which should be considered and ranked among the others. We have not been able to rule out the possibility that we are the only technologically advanced life form in the galaxy, however counter-intuitive that possibility seems. Nor can we rule out the possibility that the lack of evidence has an explanation, and the possible explanations are many. There is a great deal of writing on this available on the internet, including a well organized overview on wikipedia (search Fermi's Paradox). It may be of little practical value, but I find the philosophical implications very engaging, especially the theory about transformation of humans into a post-human life form.
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"Any society advanced enough to transmute elements would still have need to colonize for resources, because even with transmutation, there is still not a limitless supply of elements for usage."
