Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T04:29:34.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Galactic Club or Galactic Cliques? Exploring the limits of interstellar hegemony and the Zoo Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2016

Duncan H. Forgan
Duncan H. Forgan*
Affiliation:
Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9SS,Scotland
*
e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Zoo solution to Fermi's Paradox proposes that extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) have agreed to not contact the Earth. The strength of this solution depends on the ability for ETIs to come to agreement, and establish/police treaties as part of a so-called ‘Galactic Club’. These activities are principally limited by the causal connectivity of a civilization to its neighbours at its inception, i.e. whether it comes to prominence being aware of other ETIs and any treaties or agreements in place. If even one civilization is not causally connected to the other members of a treaty, then they are free to operate beyond it and contact the Earth if wished, which makes the Zoo solution ‘soft’. We should therefore consider how likely this scenario is, as this will give us a sense of the Zoo solution's softness, or general validity. We implement a simple toy model of ETIs arising in a Galactic Habitable Zone, and calculate the properties of the groups of culturally connected civilizations established therein. We show that for most choices of civilization parameters, the number of culturally connected groups is >1, meaning that the Galaxy is composed of multiple Galactic Cliques rather than a single Galactic Club. We find in our models for a single Galactic Club to establish interstellar hegemony, the number of civilizations must be relatively large, the mean civilization lifetime must be several millions of years, and the inter-arrival time between civilizations must be a few million years or less.

Keywords

Fermi's ParadoxSETIsimulationZoo Hypothesis
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 349 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Annis, J. (1999). J. Br. Interplanet. Soc. 52, 19.Google Scholar
Ball, J. (1973). Icarus 19, 347.Google Scholar
Brin, G.D. (1983). Q. J. R. Astron. Soc. 24, 283.Google Scholar
Carter, B. (2008). Int. J. Astrobiol. 7, 177.Google Scholar
Cirkovic, M.M. (2009). Serbian Astron. J. 178, 1.Google Scholar
Fogg, M. (1987). Icarus 69, 370.Google Scholar
Forgan, D., Dayal, P., Cockell, C. & Libeskind, N. (2015). Int. J. Astrobiol., in press, arXiv:1511.01786, available online, DOI:10.1017/S1473550415000518 Google Scholar
Forgan, D.H. (2009). Int. J. Astrobiol. 8, 121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forgan, D.H. (2011). Int. J. Astrobiol. 10, 341.Google Scholar
Forgan, D.H. & Rice, K. (2010). Int. J. Astrobiol. 9, 73.Google Scholar
Freitas, R.A. (1977). Mercury 6, 15.Google Scholar
Gowanlock, M.G., Patton, D.R. & McConnell, S.M. (2011). Astrobiology 11, 855.Google Scholar
Hair, T.W. (2011). Int. J. Astrobiol. 10, 131.Google Scholar
Hart, M.H. (1975). Q. J. R. Astron. Soc. 16, 128.Google Scholar
Lineweaver, C.H., Fenner, Y. & Gibson, B.K. (2004). Science 303, 59.Google Scholar
Martin, O., Cardenas, R., Guimarais, M., Peñate, L., Horvath, J. & Galante, D. (2010). Astrophys. Space Sci. 326, 61.Google Scholar
McDougall, I., Brown, F.H. & Fleagle, J.G. (2005). Nature 433, 733.Google Scholar
O'Malley-James, J.T., Greaves, J.S., Raven, J.A. & Cockell, C.S. (2013). Int. J. Astrobiol. 12, 99.Google Scholar
Raup, D.M. & Sepkoski, J.J. (1982). Science 215, 1501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rocha-Pinto, H.J., Maciel, W.J., Scalo, J. & Flynn, C. (2000). Astron. Astrophys. 358, 850, 869.Google Scholar
Rushby, A.J., Claire, M.W., Osborn, H. & Watson, A.J. (2013). Astrobiology 13, 833.Google Scholar
Snyder, D.L. & Miller, M.I. (1991). Random Point Processes in Time and Space. Springer-Verlag, New York.Google Scholar
Stevens, A., Forgan, D. & O'Malley-James, J. (2015). Int. J. Astrobiol. 15, 333.Google Scholar
Thomas, B. (2009). Int. J. Astrobiol. 8, 183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vukotic, B. & Cirkovic, M.M. (2007). Serb. Astron. J. 175, 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vukotić, B., Steinhauser, D., Martinez-Aviles, G., Ćirković, M.M., Micic, M. & Schindler, S. (2016). Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 459, 3512.Google Scholar
Wright, J.T., Cartier, K.M.S., Zhao, M., Jontof-Hutter, D. & Ford, E.B. (2015). Astrophys. J. 816, 17.Google Scholar