TRANSCRIPT: The Zoo Hypothesis

The human race has looked out into the night sky for decades with our radio telescopes hoping to find signs of life. And while that search is ongoing, we have yet to see anything. For all intents and purposes, our universe appears quiet and uninhabited by other technologically advanced civilizations.

This could change at any moment, all we need to do is discover evidence of one other sentient species to answer many of our questions about life in the universe, but until that happens we must entertain other possibilities to explain this apparent lack of intelligent life.

One of the possibilities that we face is that intelligent alien races do not advertise themselves, and indeed may hide their existence from us. Known as the zoo hypothesis, it is one of the plethora of hypotheses that offer answers to the Fermi Paradox. It also happens to be among the spookiest.

The Fermi Paradox, formulated by physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael Hart, is very simple. There are billions of stable stars in our universe, and many of them are far older than our own. There is also a high probability that some of these stars host earth-like planets, a notion that has only been strengthened in recent years by the discovery of numerous exoplanets. Likewise, many of those are going to be far older than earth.

Some of those planets would, presumably, develop life like ours that eventually achieves intelligence. Here I have a sticking point, in my opinion I think that ultimately we may well find that microbial life is common in the universe, complex life like our plants and animals scarce, and intelligent life very rare. But I digress. Assuming that civilizations are relatively common then some of those will develop interstellar travel.

Here I have another sticking point. I'm not sure that an advanced civilization would care about interstellar travel. This relates to Simulation Theory, the notion that our universe is a computer simulation of some sort. I cover that theory in my video "Is the Universe real? Or is it a Computer Simulation?" and whether it's actually the case is anyone's guess, though it does appear to be scientifically testable.

But let's say the universe is a computer simulation as a thought experiment. If a civilization concluded that it is a simulation, then they may also conclude that there is no point to messing around with the universe. In such a nihilistic scenario, why not center your society on pleasure and descend into virtual reality utopias that are better than our universe? Think about The Matrix, only as a utopia, though I suppose Agent Smith had a point when he said in the films that they actually did initially try to create a utopia but no one was happy.

But, it's worth noting that we ourselves are striving for interplanetary exploration and eventually interstellar travel. Our behavior is all we can study for now, and that does count for something. Given that habitable planets exist, and they eventually become inhabited and may have done so long before earth did, and those inhabitants eventually spread out into the universe, then the Fermi Paradox notes that the entire galaxy can be explored at sub-light speeds in only a few million years. So why don't we see evidence of alien civilizations everywhere?

This brings us to the Zoo Hypothesis. The idea here is that alien civilizations hide themselves from us, either permanently or will some day reveal themselves and make contact when we've reached a sufficient level of technological and social development.

This may make sense. If the universe is a hostile place full of aggressive species, and your basic nature would be aggressive in some way if you're out boldly exploring the galaxy, then perhaps it's safer to hide and not contact anyone. In this scenario, advanced civilizations simply play it safe and do not interact with one another other than perhaps clandestine interstellar spy missions.

Or a civilization may find value in galactic diversity and not contact anyone so that they may simply study young civilizations and their natural development. This is something we ourselves do, there are still to this day uncontacted stone age tribes on our world and we take care to preserve that both for their own safety and ethical concerns about first contact, which has seldom gone well in the past.

But, you also have to ask a question here. If advanced civilizations are common and hiding their existence from lesser civilizations, then surely at least one of those advanced species would break the trend and show themselves. If they are common, then they must all be hiding and that would imply that somehow everybody out there is in agreement to hide. How does that work?

Now, this is pure speculation, but say a single civilization developed in the Milky Way long before any others. Even a billion years or longer before anyone else is possible. Say they colonized the entire galaxy, but hide their existence until a civilization they're watching matures. As other civilizations mature and meet this ancient civilization, the old ones may impart their wisdom of hiding to all civilizations in the galaxy. As a result, developing civilizations think they are alone, until one day they find out that they are not.

While an interesting idea and I make this video as merely food for thought, I still suspect that intelligence is simply rare, and when it does develop it takes time and a lot of chance. Finding evidence of such a rare civilization is like searching for a needle in a haystack for SETI and that some day, perhaps sooner rather than later, we will wake up to a changed world where we know unequivocally that we are not alone.

Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently issuing a rebuttal to those that think I'm a robotic voice simulator. Not quite, but close. It's more like The Matrix, Mr. Anderson.

Just kidding, I'm really just a vulcan and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channel for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.