Drake Equation/Fermi Paradox vs. Hubble/JWST

[Bystander]

Finally got around to reading Diablo Mesa (yeah, yeah---Lincoln & Child, not bragging about it), out of order w' Dead Mountain, and the punchline, spoiler alert, "Hide," got me noticing there's not been a lot of discussion about Drake/Fermi lately that I've been aware of/paid attention. Have people finally figured out the "universe" is reeaaalllllllyyyyyyy large?

 

[Filip Larsen]

Even though the steady increase in quantity and quality of observational data do seem to make some solutions less (or more) likely, there is, as far as I am aware, still no consensus on how to properly resolve the Fermi paradox. And sometimes a fresh take on the Drake equation adds more possible solutions, e.g. such as Dissolving the Fermi Paradox.

If you are saying that a) the universe is bigger than most people who gives the Fermi paradox some serious thought are aware of and b) this somehow resolves the paradox, then to me both of those claims seems false. If you are not saying this then perhaps you can clarify what your question is? (I am not aware of the story you mention, if that somehow is relevant to your question).

 

[Bystander]

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox doesn't appear to give Fermi a whole lot of credit for having enough intelligence to realize there's only going to be a finite time (centuries to millennia) during a civilization's/culture's development before that culture realizes that lightspeed/c limits the volume of "space" available to apply "Drake."

He certainly(?) was aware of the size of the universe? Or, not?

 

[Filip Larsen]

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox doesn't appear to give Fermi a whole lot of credit

The "important" part I remember from when I gave the paper a somewhat quick read over was that it tries to improve the relative low expected accuracy inherent in the Drake equation due to its formulation as a Fermi estimate. I found the approach interesting but did not come away from it with the sense that the paper really dissolves the paradox, but I did not try very much to understand why not (or rather, I think I "parked" it waiting to see if any consensus would form on this; to my knowledge, it hasn't).

To me, if the Drake equation is used to give an upper bound on the likelihood of observing intelligent life (just in our galaxy to keep it simple) given our current best (but still rough) estimates of the factors, then its difficult to see how you would get a low number. However, if it really is the case that we are the only civilization in our galaxy that so far has been able to pose and trying to resolve this paradox via observation, then obviously some of the (remaining) factors in the Drake equation must be much lower than we thought, but currently we do not convincingly know if that is true or not. I got the (probably completely unfounded) sense that the paper in question somehow sets out to find a model that will allow a fair probability (rather than near zero) to the scenario where we are alone. In any case, if we have a more detailed estimation model such as this that allows fair probabilities to both cases then it technically allows the paradox to be resolved by saying "here is a model that is consistent with our current observations", but unless this is also coupled with a strong independent explanation or understanding of how one (or more) of those remaining Drake factors really are near-zero then I would say we are are not in a position to clearly conclude we are alone.

 

[BillTre]