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The Chrysalis Conjecture: The Digital Physics Solution to the Fermi Paradox?
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” -Arthur C. Clarke
The coming Cybernetic Singularity could pave the way to rapid space colonization sometime by mid-century, however, not exactly how Hollywood movies depict — fragile flesh-and-blood humans are unlikely to personally travel to other stars. Our postbiological descendants (AIs, uploads and hybrids), on the other hand, could roam the Universe on their tiny warp spaceships, via traversible wormholes, and colonize galaxies via self-replicating Von Neumann probes that would establish wormhole portals and communication with the core civilization. But what’s even more exciting, First Contact and networking with alien syntellects becomes a clear possibility.
There must be an incredibly large number of civilizations far ahead of us in development which could have colonized our Milky Way galaxy by now, as the argument goes, so that we must see signs of intelligent alien life out there but we don’t. Our Sun is relatively young in the lifespan of the Universe. There are far older stars with arguably far older Earth-like planets, which should theoretically mean civilizations far more advanced than our…
