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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]

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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] 69 points 4 months ago (26 children)

Sadly it may be the speed of light.

All these intelligent species are simply trapped in their own solar systems for all eternity by an unbreakable natural law.

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

But surely generational ships would get us over that?

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

Until we figure out how that is possible outside of theory, it is just that. We have no plans that address actually keeping a spaceship working on such a timescale, and keeping the crew alive on top of it.

Considering we haven't seen any generational alien ships visit, it seems like nobody else has figured it out yet, either.

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