行星科学家为费米悖论提出了一个解决方案:超线性尺度导致奇点

诸平

Perhaps hypothetical Type III civilizations are in an inaccessible region of biotechnological–population size state space, where civilization trajectories are bounded by a "burnout horizon," and long-lived civilizations have consciously reoriented their trajectories away from growth in population size and length scales to explore other dimensions of biotechnological state space. Note that we do not rule out the possibility of some kind of channel that might allow a transition to the Type III region. Credit: Journal of The Royal Society Interface (2022). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2022.0029 

据物理学家组织网（Phys.org）2022年5月12日报道，行星科学家为费米悖论提出了一个解决方案:超线性尺度导致奇点（Planetary scientists suggest a solution to the Fermi paradox: Superlinear scaling leading to a singularity）。

一对研究人员，一个来自美国卡内基科学研究所（Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, USA），另一个来自美国加州理工学院（Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA），已经开发出一种可能解决费米悖论（Fermi Paradox）的方法。相关研究结果于2022年5月4日已经在《英国皇家学会界面杂志》（Journal of The Royal Society Interface）网站发表——Michael L. Wong, Stuart Bartlett. Asymptotic burnout and homeostatic awakening: a possible solution to the Fermi paradox? Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 2022, 19(190). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2022.0029. Published:04 May 2022. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0029

在此论文中，迈克尔·王(Michael Wong)和斯图尔特·巴特利特(Stuart Bartlett)提出，没有来自其他行星的外星人访问过我们的原因是超线性缩放（superlinear scaling），他们认为，这导致了奇点（singularity）。

几年前，物理学家恩里科·费米(Enrico Fermi)问一位同事，为什么来自外太空的外星人还没有造访地球。两人指出，由于宇宙的巨大规模，似乎不太可能只有地球有智能生命（ intelligent life）。所以费米问了一个著名的问题，他们在哪里?在这项新的努力中，这对研究搭档试图解开这个谜题。

他们开始研究人类文明在历史上是如何兴起和衰落的。接下来，他们研究了大城市的历史，他们也注意到，大多数城市发展到一定程度，然后崩溃。他们提出了一种假设，认为外星空间文明的兴衰会导致两种情况之一。首先，文明会逐渐意识到他们变得太大了，并将停止旅行或殖民其他世界。在第二种情况下，他们不会意识到自己的愚蠢，因此会崩溃。从我们的角度来看，这两种情况的结果都是一样的——外星人不会来拜访我们，甚至不会展示他们存在的证据。他们离我们太远了。

研究人员将他们的假设描述为超线性尺度——一个文明以指数级增长，殖民其他世界，直到它们无法维持其持续入侵的能源需求。最终，如果他们不采取行动，他们将到达一个奇点——一个无法返回的点，在那里他们无法拯救自己的文明免于崩溃。他们指出，如果不是因为距离遥远，我们很可能很容易发现外星文明即将崩溃的证据，因为它会释放出巨大的能量。

上述介绍，仅供参考。欲了解更多信息，敬请注意浏览原文或者相关报道。

如果我们想有机会听到外星文明的声音，人类需要生存大约40万年（Humanity will need to survive about 400,000 years if we want any chance of hearing from an alien civilization）

Abstract

Previous studies show that city metrics having to do with growth, productivity and overall energy consumption scale superlinearly, attributing this to the social nature of cities. Superlinear scaling results in crises called ‘singularities’, where population and energy demand tend to infinity in a finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever more frequent ‘resets’ or innovations that postpone the system's collapse. Here, we place the emergence of cities and planetary civilizations in the context of major evolutionary transitions. With this perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an ‘asymptotic burnout’, an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval time scale becomes smaller than the time scale of innovation. If a civilization develops the capability to understand its own trajectory, it will have a window of time to affect a fundamental change to prioritize long-term homeostasis and well-being over unyielding growth—a consciously induced trajectory change or ‘homeostatic awakening’. We propose a new resolution to the Fermi paradox: civilizations either collapse from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritizing homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no longer a goal, making them difficult to detect remotely.