A Theory Says We Can't Find Advanced Aliens Because They're Not Trying to Be Found
The Fermi Paradox ponders an endlessly fascinating question: If so many worlds exist in the universe, why haven't we detected any sign of extraterrestrial life?
A possible reason, called the 'Sustainability Solution,' argues that the search for technosignatures necessitates a particular human bias, suggesting that rapid growth is the only means of society expansion.
A new paper reexamining this solution suggests that many societies may face collapse due to the unsustainable aspect of an ever-expanding species, and so many of its technologies could be indistinguishable from nature itself.
For more than 40 years, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) organization has turned its gaze toward the cosmos in search for an answer to one of humanity's greatest questions: Are we alone? Often taking the form of the 'Fermi paradox'—a 75-year-old thought experiment that explores why there are so many worlds, yet seemingly no alien civilizations—this grand question has inspired a lot of possible solutions. Maybe life is much rarer than we imagine? Maybe it's incredibly difficult to evolve into a modern civilization like ours? Or maybe aliens are speaking in a language we simply don't understand.
However, there's one possible solution that eerily speaks to our current moment. Known as the 'Sustainability Solution,' this idea posits that endless economic growth may simply be impossible to sustain, so alien societies either adapt by creating sustainable civilization in harmony with their host planet, or they simply die out. First proposed by Pennsylvania State University scientists Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum in 2009, the 'Sustainability Solution' suggests that if aliens do exist, they likely wouldn't create the technosignatures we often attribute to advanced civilizations, such as Dyson Spheres or interstellar spacecraft. Instead, these structures (part of the 'technosphere') would blend with the natural world, making them difficult to distinguish.
In a new study uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, New York University researcher and philosopher Lukáš Likavčan revitalizes this solution to the Fermi paradox as a lens through which to view humanity's own development. The paper re-conceptualizes technology, history, and sustainability on a planetary scale.
'The ecological limits constrain the topology of viable planetary histories to those evolutionary trajectories where the technosphere successfully folds back into the biosphere,' Likavčan wrote. 'The major result of this reconceptualization is the problematization of the analytical import of technosphere as a category denoting some new geological layer—it seems to be more of a transitory armature of the biosphere's evolution and less of an emerging permanent layer.'
Humans play a strange, transitory role in this conceptualization. Of course, being primates, we are of the biosphere. But our creations—at least, as argued by this theory—become part of the theoretically detectable technosphere (whether this region is a permanent fixture or a temporary arm of the biosphere is up for debate). Drawing on a sample size of one (i.e. human civilization), it's easy to think that progress will continue unabated until we become masters of our own Solar System and beyond. However, as Haqq-Mistra and Baum originally stated in 2009, this 'Sustainability Solution' questions the assumption of the unimpeded exponential growth of such civilizations.
'It is still possible that slower-growth ETI civilizations exist but have not expanded rapidly enough to be easily detectable by the searches humans have yet made,' the original authors wrote. 'It is also possible that faster-growth ETI civilizations previously expanded throughout the galaxy but could not sustain this state, collapsing in a way that whatever artifacts they might have left have also remained undetected.'
Additionally, Likavčan's idea of 'folding back into the biosphere,' means that advanced civilizations might instead create technologies that are essentially biological in nature in order to remain in balance with their finite resources. To support this point, Likavčan quotes Canadian sci-fi author Karl Schroeder, who wrote that 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature,' itself a reformulation of sci-fi Arthur C. Clarke's famous words that compared technology to magic. This could also explain why we haven't found civilizations while looking for technosignatures alone.
Magic or no, the nature of the Fermi paradox makes it a 'we won't know until we know' kind of question. But the exploration of possible solutions can also provide a valuable lens through which to value our own society, its future perils, and how we might—against all odds—survive long enough to one day solve this perplexing question.
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A Theory Says We Can't Find Advanced Aliens Because They're Not Trying to Be Found
The Fermi Paradox ponders an endlessly fascinating question: If so many worlds exist in the universe, why haven't we detected any sign of extraterrestrial life? A possible reason, called the 'Sustainability Solution,' argues that the search for technosignatures necessitates a particular human bias, suggesting that rapid growth is the only means of society expansion. A new paper reexamining this solution suggests that many societies may face collapse due to the unsustainable aspect of an ever-expanding species, and so many of its technologies could be indistinguishable from nature itself. For more than 40 years, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) organization has turned its gaze toward the cosmos in search for an answer to one of humanity's greatest questions: Are we alone? Often taking the form of the 'Fermi paradox'—a 75-year-old thought experiment that explores why there are so many worlds, yet seemingly no alien civilizations—this grand question has inspired a lot of possible solutions. Maybe life is much rarer than we imagine? Maybe it's incredibly difficult to evolve into a modern civilization like ours? Or maybe aliens are speaking in a language we simply don't understand. However, there's one possible solution that eerily speaks to our current moment. Known as the 'Sustainability Solution,' this idea posits that endless economic growth may simply be impossible to sustain, so alien societies either adapt by creating sustainable civilization in harmony with their host planet, or they simply die out. First proposed by Pennsylvania State University scientists Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum in 2009, the 'Sustainability Solution' suggests that if aliens do exist, they likely wouldn't create the technosignatures we often attribute to advanced civilizations, such as Dyson Spheres or interstellar spacecraft. Instead, these structures (part of the 'technosphere') would blend with the natural world, making them difficult to distinguish. In a new study uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, New York University researcher and philosopher Lukáš Likavčan revitalizes this solution to the Fermi paradox as a lens through which to view humanity's own development. The paper re-conceptualizes technology, history, and sustainability on a planetary scale. 'The ecological limits constrain the topology of viable planetary histories to those evolutionary trajectories where the technosphere successfully folds back into the biosphere,' Likavčan wrote. 'The major result of this reconceptualization is the problematization of the analytical import of technosphere as a category denoting some new geological layer—it seems to be more of a transitory armature of the biosphere's evolution and less of an emerging permanent layer.' Humans play a strange, transitory role in this conceptualization. Of course, being primates, we are of the biosphere. But our creations—at least, as argued by this theory—become part of the theoretically detectable technosphere (whether this region is a permanent fixture or a temporary arm of the biosphere is up for debate). Drawing on a sample size of one (i.e. human civilization), it's easy to think that progress will continue unabated until we become masters of our own Solar System and beyond. However, as Haqq-Mistra and Baum originally stated in 2009, this 'Sustainability Solution' questions the assumption of the unimpeded exponential growth of such civilizations. 'It is still possible that slower-growth ETI civilizations exist but have not expanded rapidly enough to be easily detectable by the searches humans have yet made,' the original authors wrote. 'It is also possible that faster-growth ETI civilizations previously expanded throughout the galaxy but could not sustain this state, collapsing in a way that whatever artifacts they might have left have also remained undetected.' Additionally, Likavčan's idea of 'folding back into the biosphere,' means that advanced civilizations might instead create technologies that are essentially biological in nature in order to remain in balance with their finite resources. To support this point, Likavčan quotes Canadian sci-fi author Karl Schroeder, who wrote that 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature,' itself a reformulation of sci-fi Arthur C. Clarke's famous words that compared technology to magic. This could also explain why we haven't found civilizations while looking for technosignatures alone. Magic or no, the nature of the Fermi paradox makes it a 'we won't know until we know' kind of question. But the exploration of possible solutions can also provide a valuable lens through which to value our own society, its future perils, and how we might—against all odds—survive long enough to one day solve this perplexing question. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
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Behind the Scenes on the Science of The Last of Us
Behavioral ecologist David Hughes, who consulted on the video game that inspired the hit TV show The Last of Us, speaks about how our experience with the COVID pandemic changed the way we relate to zombie fiction By & Nature magazine The year was 2013, and the release of a hotly anticipated zombie-apocalypse video game was on the horizon. The game, called The Last of Us, invited players to explore what then seemed a fanciful scenario: a world devastated by a pandemic in which a pathogen kills millions of people. Unlike in many apocalypse fictions, the pathogen responsible wasn't a bacterium or a virus, but a fungus called Cordyceps that infects humans and takes over their brains. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The writers at game studio Naughty Dog, based in Santa Monica, California, were inspired by real fungi — particularly Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, known as the zombie-ant fungus. The fungus infects insects and releases chemicals into the animals' brains to change their behaviour. Ahead of the game's release, Naughty Dog turned to scientists, including behavioural ecologist David Hughes, a specialist in zombie-ant fungi (he named one after his wife), to field questions from the media about the fungal and pandemic science that inspired the story. Hughes, who is at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, has since moved to studying climate change and food security. The Last of Us spawned a sequel game in 2020 and a critically acclaimed television show, the second season of which concludes on 25 May on HBO. Hughes spoke to Nature about his experience consulting on the game and why COVID-19 changed our appetite for zombies. What was your involvement with the game? Naughty Dog studios asked me and a few other people who were notable in this space, including psychologists, to talk about whether we could have a global pandemic. Of course, in the intervening period, we all learnt that the answer was yes. They asked us to go around Europe and do a series of lectures to stave off critique and provide support to the idea that infections that jump from one species into another — zoonotic infections — are not only possible, but actually they're the predominant mechanism by which humans are infected with new parasites that cause disease. I had the good fortune to go to the studios and see the artistry that was involved, and meet the team and the voice actors of the video game. What did you make of the science in the game? I was really impressed by how much the game's writers got into the science of it and started to understand things like fungi and slime moulds, and just trying to think about the ways in which these organisms do their business. They really took it by themselves and incorporated those elements into the game. I think they were even mail-ordering slime moulds so they could just leave it out on a petri dish and examine it. And you see that throughout the game. And now in the TV programme, in the intros, they have these slime balls. The writers were geeky, and understanding fungi is not complex, so they ran with it. Did you play the games? I tried and I failed miserably! I'm just a typical hopeless scientist. Is the idea of a Cordyceps pandemic realistic? It is not unrealistic that fungi can infect humans if they come from animals. It is unrealistic to think that they could cause the behavioural changes in humans. The writers took liberties. They had different stages about how the infection changes over time. That's all fanciful, of course. Looking at the second season of the TV show, it was interesting that they have this communicative nature of the spores or the fungal hyphae. That's interesting because we know fungi are connected like that over many kilometres — for example, the mycorrhizal fungi, which are underneath root systems in trees, do that effectively. Have you been impressed by the science in the TV show? I often find that's the wrong question, because I dont think the job of the entertainment industry is to impress scientists. Scientists are highly problematic individuals. It's called the Carl Sagan effect. The more you popularize science, the less good your science is. It's an inverse relationship. I think it doesn't really matter. Science belongs to society, and people should tell stories about that. And, you know, snooty scientists saying, 'Oh, you didn't get this exactly right,' — like, who cares? What was your reaction when the COVID-19 pandemic happened? I told you so! In The Last of Us lectures, I talk about the same thing. I said, the problem is not whether we'll have zombie-ant fungi manipulating humans. It's not going to happen. The problem is if we lose 5% of our population, and the global economy shuts down, which we saw. Do you think the COVID-19 pandemic changed our appetite for zombie-apocalypse media? It's very interesting. You build a game about a dystopian future based on a pandemic, you live through a pandemic, and then what's the relevance of the game or the movie? I think our appetite for being scared by pandemics has receded because we all have PTSD. Or, we don't have PTSD and realized that some of us just don't care about other people. So it's interesting to look at the history of zombie lore. Back in the 1950s and 60s, it was all about nuclear weapons, because we were all collectively fearful of that. And then it moved into diseases, because we had an over-populated society. Then we had a pandemic, and we shrugged and moved on. So the fascinating thing is, The Last of Us is nice, but it's not what it used to be. first published on May 23, 2025.
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Aliens: Facts about extraterrestrial life and how scientists are looking for it
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Quick facts about aliens Has extraterrestrial life been discovered?: Not yet! Where are scientists looking for aliens?: Water-rich bodies in our solar system, like Jupiter's moon Europa, and Earth-like exoplanets — planets outside our solar system How many planets in the Milky Way have the right conditions for life? An estimated 300 million E.T., Stitch, Chewbacca, Groot — humans have a lot of ideas about what aliens might look like. But what is the science behind extraterrestrial life? Is it possible that humans will ever experience "first contact" with an alien species? Many scientists hope so. They're looking for extraterrestrial life on planets with conditions that look like Earth's. A life-friendly planet would probably have water, for example. And for water to be a liquid, the planet must be the perfect distance from its sun for that water not to freeze or turn into a gas. There's no evidence yet for life on other planets, but as scientists discover more and more planets outside our solar system, they're hopeful that some of these worlds will be "just right" for life to exist or evolve there. Scientists have been listening for alien signals with special radio receivers since 1992. They haven't picked up any yet! Mars might have once hosted life — most likely tiny things like bacteria — but scientists can't say for sure. Jupiter's moon Europa has an ocean, and it might have hydrothermal vents, or cracks in the seafloor where hot water seeps through. Scientists think life on Earth may have evolved in hydrothermal vents. The "Goldilocks zone" is the space around a star where temperatures allow liquid water to exist. Many scientists think planets in the Goldilocks zone are those most likely to host life. The oldest known life on Earth is 4.2 billion years old. Sci-fi aliens like Baby Yoda are fun to imagine, but scientists are serious about extraterrestrial life. There are some 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and at least 2 trillion galaxies in the universe we can study. If most of those stars have at least one planet around them, there could be up to 20 billion trillion extraterrestrial worlds out there. Given those numbers, it would be shocking if only a single planet — Earth — had life. But our closest neighbors in the solar system, Mars and Venus, don't seem to have any life. Some moons of Saturn and Jupiter have water, so they could have life — most likely tiny creatures the size of germs. If Earthlings ever meet aliens face-to-face, they'll probably need a microscope to say hi. Until scientists find some firm proof, such as a communication signal from an alien world or fossilized microbes from Mars, Earth remains the only planet where life is known to exist. What aliens would look like would depend on where they came from. For example, on the icy moons in our solar system (Jupiter's Ganymede and Europa, and Saturn's Enceladus), life could thrive around hydrothermal vents in the oceans under the ice. This life might look like the weird creatures of the deep ocean seen on Earth. There could be primitive microbes, like Earth's single-celled Archaea. There might be relatively simple creatures with many cells in their body, sort of like Earth's tube worms, which live off chemicals from the vent fluid. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and we think the first life existed by about 4.2 billion years ago. But life on Earth started simple and stayed that way for a long time. The first microbes that produced carbon evolved at least 3.7 billion years ago. (Carbon is an element that is a part of all known life.) But the kind of cells that gave rise to animals, plants and other complex life-forms didn't evolve until between 2.7 billion and 1.8 billion years ago. Life-forms made of many cells didn't show up until 600 million years ago. And modern humans came on the scene only around 300,000 years ago. That means that, if other planets with life are like Earth, the time period in which they might host intelligent life (or even something as cuddly as a koala) is pretty brief. But there's a good chance that human life might overlap with microbial life on another planet. Scientists do think that life on other planets would be driven by the same processes as it is on Earth, namely evolution. Changes to the environment drive living things to change, leading to new and more complex species. So a planet out in space that is like Earth and has been through many changes in its surface, rocks and climate would probably have complex life, too. In that case, aliens might face similar challenges and needs as here on Earth, and thus might evolve similar features. Eyes, for example, have evolved independently dozens of times on Earth, and they might evolve in life on other planets, too. Some scientists still hold out hope that life exists elsewhere in our solar system. If it does, it's probably on one of the these moons: Ganymede: Jupiter's largest moon is bigger than Mercury and hides a giant ocean under its icy surface. Europa: Another moon of Jupiter with an ice-bound ocean, Europa has liquid water, heat generated by the pull of Jupiter's gravity, and chemicals that are the building blocks of life. Enceladus: This Saturn moon spews water vapor that contains carbon compounds from its surface. One of these compounds, hydrogen cyanide, is important for the origin of life. Titan: This moon of Saturn is very cold, but it does have carbon-rich liquid on its surface. Any life found on Titan would have to thrive in conditions not seen on Earth. Triton: Neptune's moon Triton is very, very cold, but it might have an ocean under its surface layer of ice. It also has geological activity in the form of geysers that erupt when the sun heats the nitrogen ice on the planet's surface. And our next-door neighbor, Mars, may have hosted life in the past, because it used to have liquid water and an atmosphere. Today, any life would have to persist in deep pools of water below the Red Planet's surface. Outside the solar system, scientists are continually discovering new exoplanets. They can learn things about these planets' atmospheres by studying the types of light waves they see using superpowerful telescopes. One promising exoplanet for life is called K2-18b. This world is too far for humans to visit, but the light from the planet has reached Earth. This light tells us the planet has an ocean. Scientists think they've detected some chemicals in K2-18b's atmosphere that could be made by marine life, but they don't know for sure. Scientists look for aliens in a few different ways. First, they listen for alien signals. This is called "passive SETI," for "search for extraterrestrial intelligence." If aliens are smart like we are, their technology might send signals into the cosmos. On Earth, for example, all of the radio waves from our phones, satellites and TV station communications "leak" into space, and these leaking radio waves could be picked up if anyone were listening. So Earthlings use telescopes designed to pick up radio waves from space, hoping to find extraterrestrial signals. That only works for tech-savvy aliens, though. Scientists also use light to look at the kinds of molecules that are present on far-off planets and moons. On Earth, some molecules are usually or always made by living things, so if those molecules are found elsewhere, they could be a sign of life. This kind of research lets scientists look for hints of life on exoplanets that are too far away to reach with a spacecraft. Scientists also send spacecraft to the nearby places where life might exist. The Mars rovers, for example, collect rock samples that could contain evidence of fossilized ancient Martian microbes. (They haven't found any yet, but you never know!) NASA is planning to send a drone with propellers, called Dragonfly, to Saturn's moon Titan in 2028. Dragonfly would reach Titan by 2034 and search for chemicals tied to life. The European Space Agency would like to send a mission to Enceladus, also to search for signs of past or present life. Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are things in the sky that aren't explained. The first modern UFO sighting goes back to 1947, when a U.S. fighter pilot reported seeing flying saucers in Washington. Not every UFO sighting can be explained, but many turn out to be events with an Earthly origin. For example, the famous "UFO crash" from Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 was actually debris from an experimental military balloon that was supposed to pick up sound waves from atomic bomb tests in the Soviet Union. More recently, strange videos have shown seemingly quick-moving, hovering objects. These "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAPs) don't have an official explanation. However, they could be normal objects that seem to be moving quickly due to optical illusions, or things that aren't what they appear to be. The pilot who took the videos might have been seeing drones, weather balloons or even birds. Any alien civilization with the kind of technology to build spacecraft has to be an enormous distance away, given that the closest exoplanet that has the right conditions for life is Proxima Centauri B, which is 24 trillion miles away. Proxima Centauri B isn't very close, and it might not have an atmosphere. So it might not have life at all, much less life that could travel to us. And we would need some seriously advanced way to get there: With current Earth technology, it would take 6,300 years for a spacecraft to travel from Earth to Proxima Centauri B. In other words, no, UFOs probably aren't aliens. An alien civilization could send a spacecraft to our planet, but it would mean the aliens who sent it in the first place — and their kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, great-great-grandkids and so on — would probably be long dead before the craft reached us. So it's a lot more likely that UFO sightings are cases of mistaken identity. Image 1 of 4 When NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, they included these Golden Records, which contain images and sounds from Earth. These include greetings in 55 languages, music and pictures of life on Earth. The idea is that if aliens ever encountered them, they would understand what human culture was like. Image 2 of 4 Landscapes like this one suggest Mars once had a wet surface. Here, a track cut by water in Jezero Crater ends in a fan of sediment that has likely been chemically changed by water. Image 3 of 4 Jupiter's moon Europa might harbor life beneath its icy surface. This moon has a deep ocean beneath a shell of ice, and perhaps hydrothermal vents where life could evolve. Image 4 of 4 This artist's conception shows the exoplanet Kepler-1649c. This planet is similar to Earth in size and temperature and is in its star's habitable zone, the distance where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. What could aliens look like? What's the best evidence we've found for alien life? Are aliens real?
