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What do you think the Great Filter is? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

247 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it's photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (21 children)

But surely generational ships would get us over that?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (13 children)

AFAIK there is no known energy source that would keep a generation ship powered for the duration of an interstellar flight.

The person to whom you responded is half right. The speed of light is half of the barrier to interstellar travel. Entropy is the other half.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Also, you'd need to know for certain that the planet you're sending your generation ship to is habitable for your species. While this may be technologically trivial for a society that can build a functional generation ship, the timescales for such projects (literally hundreds or even thousands of years from the launch of the probe to the yes/no signal) makes it extremely difficult to actually organise.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

That and you won’t even know if the destination civilization is still there by the time you arrive.

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