Space Time Stories

Speculation about life on Titan or other cold worlds is misguided because the chemical reaction rates are simply too slow.
All chemical reactions have a rate.  That rate has an exponential dependence on temperature as described by the Arrhenius equation.
rate = A exp (-Ea/kT)
Ea is the activation energy, k is Boltzmann’s constant, T is the temperature, [...]

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Just found the Fermi Paradox website. Good links but I’d like to see more content.

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Yet another answer to the Fermi Paradox (0)
Where are the aliens? (3)
Too cold for life (0)
More ideas on the Fermi Paradox (5)

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“Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in [...]

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The basic argument of an atheist is “If there is a God then prove it, where is the evidence?  I can’t see him, I’ve never seen a miracle, there is no evidence of supernatural powers or beings.”  Replace those words with aliens and you get the exact same argument.  Anyone who argues against the existence [...]

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Work published in 2008 from Israel claims detection of element #122.  If true the implications are stunning.  The only possible method of generating element 122 is by artificial nucleosynthesis, a technical feat beyond the capability of modern day humans.
While subsequent study may have disproven the theory this opens up a new method of proving the [...]

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For those who might misinterpret my prior comments on Darwinism here’s a clarification.
The philosophy of Darwinism leads many people to use the word “paradox” to describe the lack of alien visitors. They all “know” that the evolution of sentient life is easy, so facile, that the Milky Way “must be” teaming with intelligent life. [...]

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Many recent blog posts continue to try to explain the Fermi Paradox.  I’ll try to explain why these writers just don’t get it.
http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/the-fermi-paradox/
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html
http://www.entangledstates.org/2009/06/where-are-they-another-solution-to-fermis-paradox.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23604/
http://www.wunderkabinett.co.uk/damndata/index.php?/archives/1796-Alternative-solutions-to-the-Fermi-paradox.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408521v1
Many people still are confused on several points about the Fermi Paradox.  Let’s start with the name.
The word paradox is used because everyone “knows” it’s a “fact” that there are countless intelligent aliens [...]

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Reginald Smith from the Bouchet-Franklin Institute in Rochester, New York has written a paper which claims that every civilization in the Milky Way stops broadcasting EM after 1000 years.  Based on this assumption he shows that it is reasonable that our galaxy has multiple sentient species who never interact with each other.
This assumption seems very [...]

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Suppose the cosmologists have it wrong and dark matter really is composed of baryons.  It’s not like cosmologists have a great track record.  Most of their theories have been proven wrong over the past few centuries.  Comparing the track record of mathematicians with cosmologists is pretty much night and day.  When a mathematician says they [...]

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The Fermi Paradox allows for many explanations. One is that the human race encountered aliens in the past, we just don’t know about it. This anti-anthropocentric view does not offer an answer to the question “are they still here?”
If they came a long time ago then they probably went away bored. If [...]

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