Posted: Nov 13, 2010 10:26 pm
hackenslash wrote:The Fermi paradox isn't a paradox, and isn't even a real issue for those with a real understanding of the size of the cosmos, which was only just being understood in 1950, when Fermi uttered his famous question 'Where is everybody'. The problems faced in crossing large distances in space in manageable time frames are not insignificant. Even travelling at close to light speed, so that the time experienced in the inertial frame of the traveller is reasonably small, the time outside that frame is still ridiculous. For example, a round trip to Andromeda at a snip below lightspeed would take only about 50 years from the frame of the traveller, while outside that frame, 6 million years would pass.
I was thinking explicitly of you, hackenslash. The fact that Douglas North Adams had this "real understanding" has always been satisfactory to you. Meanwhile, numerous actual scientists, as opposed to a solitary science-fiction writer, are benighted according to your quantitatively unsupportable dogma. When I suggested (eons ago, it seems) that you read the wikipedia article on the Fermi. Paradox, your response was that you essentially know all there is to know about the subject. Now, no doubt, you can at least find a scientist who believes as you do. When you name him or her, I'll address the opposing viewpoint.