(I included the "astronomer" and "not astronomer" categories, because I am pretty sure the people who I interact with here skew pretty heavily toward astronomers so the yes's might dominate just because of that)
Oooo! One of the goats has some discharge! (I spend a lot of time checking goat backsides at this time of year... yes it's weird, but that's the only way to make sure they don't have babies out in the snow)
She's actually not due for another week, so it could be a false alarm. But she's also ENORMOUS so she could go early.
I checked on all the supplies and made sure the heat lamp is ready to go. Anytime now, goat mama! I am ready for goat babies!
My old mercury thermometer says -36C and the official weather report said it was "only" -42C with windchill this morning, so the busses are still running (they never cancel school ever, no matter how cold it gets. This place is wild.)
@mcnees I was actually taking a class from @Mikebrown when this all happened! (But I was a fairly clueless undergrad at the time so I wasn't aware of a lot of the drama until later...)
4. The only civilizations that survive long-term are the ones that realize that exponential growth is unsustainable, and completely reorient to a lower-energy state. This would make them undetectable to us.
2. There are other civilizations out there, but they don't travel. This could be because it's just too hard (our furthest probe has traveled something like 0.004% of the distance to the closest star). Or maybe the drive to explore/colonize is a human trait and other intelligent life wouldn't have that drive.
2.b The absolutely most depressing option: there are other civilizations, but technologically advanced civilizations just don't last very long, so the chances that we'd overlap with another civilization nearby and notice their presence is super unlikely.
3. A galactic civilization exists! But they are avoiding us, either because we're morally reprehensible, or because we're in a kind of "wildlife preserve" (though I find these ideas pretty weirdly human-centric...)
Today I'm talking about the Fermi Paradox in my astro-for-physics-majors class (and I'll talk about it again on Friday in my astro 101 class).
It's a really simple question with completely terrifying/mind-blowing implications, first asked by Enrico Fermi (who, ironically, was one of the Manhattan project scientists...)
Our universe is 13.8 billion years old, our Galaxy is at least 10 billion years old, other planets are surely much older than Earth, with more time to involve intelligent life.
A few possibilities for how to resolve the paradox. I'm going to list them all and put a poll at the end of this thread so you can vote for your favourite!
1. We are alone. We are the first intelligent life that has ever evolved in the Universe.
(Generally in astronomy any explanation that requires us to be special is a bad one. Then again, we are here asking this question, which is kind of the mother of all observation biases)
Tomorrow I have an interview with a local TV station talking about cool astronomy things happening in 2023 that are visible from Saskatchewan (Moon occulting Jupiter, partial solar eclipse, maybe Comet 2022 E3 ZTF, various meteor showers, auroras as we get closer solar max, did I miss anything?) and then I get interviewed about my research and career for a podcast. Hopefully will be fun and not stressful!
First interview happening in 3 minutes. Attempted to tidy up behind me since it's for TV, but man my kids are good at making thorough messes, even on bookshelves and vertical surfaces...
Aaaaannnd after all that last-minute worrying it turned out to be for a written article. Ha! Anyway, it was a great journalist who asked good questions so I'm looking forward to seeing what he writes up!