Where are all the Aliens?
The universe is big…BIG. With approximately 2 trillion galaxies, containing about 200 billion trillion stars… and possibly 200 sextillion planets (that’s 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible planets). With such large numbers at play, why haven’t we found observable evidence of alien civilizations? This conflict has been addressed in the Fermi Paradox. Named after one of the architects of the nuclear age, Enrico Fermi, the Fermi Paradox is a conflict between the sheer unfathomable size of the universe, and the probability that even random alignments of matter and energy should create the right conditions to create life well throughout the universe, and the fact that humanity has found no empirical evidence of life anywhere in the observable universe. There are many interesting potential solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
The Dark Forest Hypothesis is one of the most terrifying.
Dark Forest Hypothesis
The Dark Forest hypothesis explains that the reason why we have not observed other alien civilizations is that those that make themselves known are destroyed by other civilizations. This is because the observing civilization perceives the observed civilization as a potential existential threat to the existence of the observing civilization. Their perception is that the best way to eliminate potential competition is to eliminate a competitor before it has the ability to eliminate them. As such, maintaining hidden is the best way to prevent other more advanced civilizations from observing and eliminating it from destruction. Several variations of this solution exist, but this hypothesis was made popular by the second novel in the Three Body Problem book series “The Dark Forest,” by author Liu Cixin. In that series, an alien civilization presents an existential threat to earth after earth makes itself observable.
Project Dark Forest is named after this hypothesis.
Project Dark Forest
So why is Project Dark Forest named after the Dark Forest Hypothesis? Partially a joke, mostly a mandate. Expanding humanity’s ability to thrive as a multi planetary civilization is important, but frankly such expansion today is not existential. Despite concerns about the environment and geopolitical conflicts, there is not a single place in the universe that we have observed that is better suited for human life than earth. However, driving innovation today for tomorrow’s problems is the solution to solve existential threats that are known, and hopefully for many of those that are yet to come.
By actively developing and implementing technological methods for humanity to persevere in the harshest environments in our solar system, we will also inadvertently develop technologies that can and likely will be used to mitigate environmental impacts on those who live here.