The Fermi Paradox – a proposed solution

The Fermi Paradox – a proposed solution
By Frederic Friedel

The Fermi Paradox is a thought experiment that was conducted by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 and raises the question why, in spite of overwhelming statistical odds for intelligent civilisations in our galaxy, we have not encountered any alien artifacts or creatures. It is unreasonable to believe that the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way have spawned less than many thousands of civilisations, and even slow interstellar travel, which is nearly within the reach of Earth technology, requires just five to 50 million years to colonize the entire galaxy. So if we are not the only life form (monumentally unlikely) then hundreds of alien civilisations should have already visited earth, a fact that should, of course, be immediately obvious to us. But this is not the case. At the very least we should be receiving microwave communications from them. But again this has not occurred.

Various solutions have been proposed to the Fermi Paradox, which are mainly based on the assumption that extraterrestrial life may not be as abundant as we are assuming; that intelligent life and civilisation may be extremely rare; that technical civilizations tend to destroy themselves; or some combination of these factors. Technological civilizations may invariably self-destruct with nuclear or biological warfare, nano-technological catastrophe, badly-programmed super-intelligence, or a Malthusian catastrophe after the deterioration of a planet's ecosphere. Still, even if a few civilisations did not fall prey to such such catastrophies, they should be crawling around our planet.

We would like to propose the following specific solution to the Fermi Paradox: in our galaxy and in this universe in general, intelligent civilisations at some stage invariably start building large hadron colliders. Once these achieve a critical energy level (perhaps 14 TeV?) the scientists start generating miniature black holes, naively assuming that they will disappear due to Hawking evaporation. They don't, and a number migrate to the gravitational centre of their planets, where the pressure is large enough to lead to an exponential accretion process. And thus do all fledgling civilisations, all over the galaxy, end, a short time before it would have been possible to undertake interstellar space travel and colonisation of the galaxy: in the aftermath of an LHC experiment. Every time.

A vexing new paradox arises from this proposal: if our theory is wrong we will be rightfully ignored; if we are right, we stand to win major academic awards. But then we will no longer be around to actually receive them, right? It's a lose-lose situation.