Episode 13 - The Great Voids

Release Date: 18 May 2014

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This is our third episode to directly address the Fermi Paradox. Given some reasonable assumptions, the

Earth should have been colonized by a superior technological civilization. We see no evidence of this. Why is that?

No one knows, but the Fermi Paradox serves as a wonderful mental lens to probe our assumptions and ask deeper questions about how well we really understand our universe and its tendency to give rise to long-lived, technologically sophisticated societies with both the ability and drive to colonize their galactic neighborhood.

We talk to Dr. Daniel Cartin about his recent follow up to Geoffrey Landis' percolation framework for understanding the Fermi Paradox, using the well known census of stars in the local solar neighborhood:

Quantifying the Fermi Paradox in the Local Solar Neighborhood

We also talk about the life span of technological civilizations, and I speculate how accidental contact could be important to understanding how this life span could increase over time.

See the Detailed Show Notes

Season 2, Episode 2 of the Wow! Signal by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.