Culture Extraterrestrial life Science

Still no space aliens? That’s because they are keeping us in a zoo!

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Alien tripod by Alvim Corréa, 1906 French edition of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”

Some say it’s time to consider the zoo hypothesis: “They can see us but we can’t see them. The idea revisits a theory proposed in 1973 by radio astronomer John Ball:

Ball went further, proposing that we may live in a metaphorical zoo — a kind of cosmic Eden. The aliens of the galaxy have somehow arranged things so that our planet is shielded from them by one-way bars: They can observe us, but we can’t observe them.

One nice thing about this conjecture is that it offers a solution to a long-standing puzzle known as Fermi’s Paradox. Broached nearly 70 years ago by physicist Enrico Fermi, it rests on the fact that the universe is very old. Consequently, if intelligent life is commonplace, then some of it is surely advanced enough to have colonized the entire galaxy. We should see evidence of aliens everywhere. The fact that we don’t might be explained by Ball’s hypothesis — we’re being deliberately isolated.

The zoo hypothesis has been in the news recently because it also provides justification for an activity known as METI, short for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Seth Shostak, “ ‘Zoo hypothesis’ may explain why we haven’t seen any space aliens” at NBC News

The most reasonable explanation for why we never hear from them is still that They ain’t Out There. But here, as so often with current science, the most reasonable explanation is just not acceptable.

And yes, it is April 1, but Seth Shostak is not kidding. Neither is NBC. See also: What? Oumuamua was just a comet? After all the ET hype? Let’s not lose sight of the fact that it was orthodox science media (Scientific American, we are looking at you… ) who were marketing the space alien thing, not some crackpot in a tinfoil hat. And yet the same people have the nerve to sponsor reams of stuff on why “people” believe in pseudoscience.


Tales of an invented god The most important characteristic of an AI cult is that its gods (Godbots?) will be created by the AI developers and not the other way around

One Reply to “Still no space aliens? That’s because they are keeping us in a zoo!

  1. 1
    EDTA says:

    FTA: “Diversity is something that everyone in the cosmos is assumed to value, so life-bearing worlds should be left to their own evolutionary development.”

    Seriously? We’re so sure of our postmodern values that we’re even going to project them onto alien civilizations we haven’t even met yet??

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