Talk:Fermi paradox

I removed the following from the article (under sub-heading "Current Data" just after mention of SETI):

The rationale behind such a search is the observation that seen from several light years away, the solar system would appear to be extremely peculiar in that terrestial broadcast causes the solar system to radiating in the radio spectrum at serveral orders of magnitudes more energy than can be taken into account through natural means.

First, the "several orders of magnitude" comment needs substantiation (I am not aware that we had passed that threshold yet). Second, the sentence needs a bit of copyediting. Third, this statement would be more appropriate in the SETI article because it is stating the rationale behind SETI and not the topic (Current Data). Fourth, it is redundant; a similar sentence is already the topic sentence of "ET Phone Home". maveric149

This was also removed (From the end of "ET Phone Home"):

A counter-argument to this points out how rapidly terrestrial civilization is moving from broadcast to cable transmissions; 100 years is a tiny fraction of the history of a planet, and we might not be in the right place and time to pick up the radio leakage of any star close enough for it to be distinguishable from noise. Still others contend that it would not be feasible for a civilization to depend upon cable-based communication for very long -- given the vast distances between moving bodies in even a solar system (let alone the distance between solar systems).

The first part of this statement is misleading: Just because cable television appears to be making broadcast television obsolete, doesn't mean that the radio signature of the Earth is going to diminish whatsoever. Satalites are receiving and beaming increasingly strong signals to and from the Earth -- causing very significant and growing "leakage". The second part of the removed section states additional fallacies.

This was also removed:

Yet another explanation which has been advanced by some science fiction writers is that civilizations are deliberately hiding themselves in order to avoid destruction from some danger that we are not aware of.

I incorporated this statement into an early one a few sentences before. maveric149

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Proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi, the Fermi Paradox attempts to answer one of the most profound questions of all time: 'Are we the only technologically advanced civilization in the Universe?'.

How does the Paradox attempt to answer the question? The paradox shows only that our estimates contradict our observations, for whatever reasons.

Fermi's response was that if there were very many advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, then, "Where are they? Why haven't we seen any traces of intelligent extraterrestrial life?". Those that adhere to the premise behind the Fermi Paradox often refer to that premise as the Fermi Principle.

What premise are we talking about here? That there are lots of civilizations out there? Did Fermi subscribe to that principle? If not, it shouldn't be called "Fermi Principle". AxelBoldt 01:55 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)