The paradox of the week for me is the Fermi paradox, named for the physicist Enrico Fermi, who first raised it at lunch with fellow scientists in 1950. I don't know if there was cigarette dangling going on at that lunch, but it's a good one: If Earth-like planets are relatively common, then where are all the Earth-like civilizations? There are billions of suns that are older than our own. If even a small percentage of those suns are orbited by a planet like ours, and if even a small percentage of those earth-like planets developed life, then theoretically speaking, the number of civilizations capable of space travel and communication would be large. One would expect to find artifacts, ships, signals and messages floating around in our galaxy. But no, at least not that we can see (with apologies to my Trekkie friends).
Which leads me to coin my own paradox for the week, first raised over tea with my friend Andrea on Monday. The Peg Paradox goes like this: if this is the only planet we know of that will support us, then how is it that we consistently choose technologies and habits that destroy it? In other words, we are fouling the only nest we have. That's stupid.
I've been rattling on about the Overview Perspective for a while now in previous posts, and I just can't get that image out of my head: our fragile planet, the only home in the solar system and potentially in the galaxy for us living breathing humans and the menagerie of plants and animals that we need to survive. Survive. As in breathe and eat.
Reading the book "The Age of Miracles" last week has me looking over my shoulder as I contemplate the Peg Paradox. As the story goes in the book (fiction, yet as with all good fiction it rides just close enough to the truth to send a chill down your spine), the earth's rotation begins to slow one day, gradually resulting in incredibly long days and nights. If you want to read the book before knowing any more, skip the next paragraph.
Crops can't grow at night, so people have to build greenhouses with lights powered by fossil fuels. The earth's magnetic field gets all screwed up, causing tides to go wild, and birds and whales to do weird and self-destructive things. Over time systems begin to shut down, and people realize that the planet is dying. They create a rocket called the Explorer to send out into the galaxy with a message encoded on a disc as a Whoville-like "We are here!" last ditch effort to communicate. Out into that apparently lifeless void, with the Fermi paradox alive and well, goes a disc of music and people saying "hello" in different languages. As the author, Karen Thompson Walker puts it, "Not mentioned on the disc was the smell of cut grass in high summer, the taste of oranges on our lips, the way sand felt beneath our bare feet, or our definitions of love and friendship, our worries and our dreams, our mercies and our kindnesses and our lies."
Pick a paradox, Fermi's or Peg's, and if you think like I do you end up with the same question about our choices here on Earth: If we are so smart, how can we be so stupid? Now, can you please pass me that ashtray?
P.S. For more on the Fermi paradox and its potential answers, I suggest Russ Douthat's article Worlds Away from Here. There is no source besides me for more on the Peg Paradox, at least not yet.
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