Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagAestivation Hypothesis

dragon-sleeps-in-a-cave-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpg
Dragon sleeps in a cave

Researchers: The aliens exist but they are sleeping…

And we wake them at our peril

Recently, science (and science fiction) writer Matt Williams has been writing a series at Universe Today on why the extraterrestrial intelligences that many believe must exist in our universe never show up. Last week, we looked at the hypothesis that the aliens’ advanced technology ended up destroying them all and… the machines may be coming for us because destroying is all they know how to do. This week, let’s look at a quite different idea that Williams outlines in “Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” V: What is the Aestivation Hypothesis?” (August 7, 2020). Aestivation is the summer version of hibernation in winter. The aliens, in this scenario are not dead; they are merely sleeping. Just as many life forms on Earth go Read More ›

3d-rendered-fantasy-alien-landscape-with-abstract-formations-3d-illustration-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpg
3D Rendered Fantasy Alien Landscape With Abstract Formations - 3D Illustration

Seven Reasons (So Far) Why the Aliens Never Show Up

Some experts think they became AI and some that they were killed by their AI but others say they never existed. Who's most likely right?

Science fiction author Matt Williams is writing a series at Universe Today that offers the leading explanations for why They never write, They never phone… It’s based on an incident in 1950 when Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) asked colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory a question: If space aliens are a sure thing, “Where is everybody?” As Seth Shostak puts it at Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi’s supple brain realized that if this was true, Read More ›