Fermi's paradox, Extraterrestrial Life and the Future of Humanity: a Bayesian Analysis
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2017

The Great Filter interpretation of Fermi's great silence asserts that Npq is not a very large number, where N is the number of potentially life-supporting planets in the observable universe, p is the probability that a randomly chosen such planet develops intelligent life to the level of present-day human civilization, and q is the conditional probability that it then goes on to develop a technological supercivilization visible all over the observable universe. Evidence suggests that N is huge, which implies that pq is very small. Hanson (1998) and Bostrom (2008) have argued that the discovery of extraterrestrial life would point towards p not being small and therefore a very small q, which can be seen as bad news for humanity's prospects of colonizing the universe. Here we investigate whether a Bayesian analysis supports their argument, and the answer turns out to depend critically on the choice of prior distribution.

Bayesian analysis

Fermi paradox

great filter

biogenesis

extraterrestrial life

Författare

Vilhelm Verendel

Chalmers, Energi och miljö, Fysisk resursteori

Olle Häggström

Chalmers, Matematiska vetenskaper, Tillämpad matematik och statistik

Göteborgs universitet

International Journal of Astrobiology

1473-5504 (ISSN) 14753006 (eISSN)

Vol. 16 1 14-18

Drivkrafter

Hållbar utveckling

Ämneskategorier

Astronomi, astrofysik och kosmologi

Sannolikhetsteori och statistik

Fundament

Grundläggande vetenskaper

DOI

10.1017/S1473550415000452

Mer information

Skapat

2017-10-07