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Upper limits on the probability of an interstellar civilization arising in the local Solar neighbourhood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2015

Daniel Cartin
Daniel Cartin*
Affiliation:
Naval Academy Preparatory School, 440 Meyerkord Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island 02841-1519, USA
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

At this point in time, there is very little empirical evidence on the likelihood of a space-faring species originating in the biosphere of a habitable world. However, there is a tension between the expectation that such a probability is relatively high (given our own origins on Earth), and the lack of any basis for believing the Solar System has ever been visited by an extraterrestrial colonization effort. From the latter observational fact, this paper seeks to place upper limits on the probability of an interstellar civilization arising on a habitable planet in its stellar system, using a percolation model to simulate the progress of such a hypothetical civilization's colonization efforts in the local Solar neighbourhood. To be as realistic as possible, the actual physical positions and characteristics of all stars within 40 parsecs of the Solar System are used as possible colony sites in the percolation process. If an interstellar civilization is very likely to have such colonization programmes, and they can travel over large distances, then the upper bound on the likelihood of such a species arising per habitable world is of the order of 10−3; on the other hand, if civilizations are not prone to colonize their neighbours, or do not travel very far, then the upper limiting probability is much larger, even of order one.

Keywords

Fermi paradoxDrake equationlocal Solar neighbourhood
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 571 - 575
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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