The Fermi Paradox - a casual look at why we are alone · Sunday March 15, 2026 by colin newell
The Fermi Paradox – I’ve have never written about it. Maybe the time has come. See what I did there?
The Fermi Paradox: sometimes pitched as “where are they?” – It is a question about the apparent lack of intelligent detected alien life in the universe.
The universe is very old relative to the speed of light so Light has been able to traverse our galaxy a thousand times since the ancient reptiles died out, and since radio waves travel at the speed of light (give or take…) too – why haven’t we heard anything?
I have some ideas on the subject…
We’re not looking very carefully.
We are a speck surrounded by the vast reaches of space – which stretches out almost infinitely in every direction – not quite “infinite” (as a subscriber of the big pa-boom theory…) we can only focus our attention on very minute segments of “the big out there…”
And living in the era of Tik-tok and the one minute Chinese internet drama, it is entirely unlikely that we have the staying power to find anything — that attention span issue is a subject for another day… Oh, look! A squirrel…
Suffice to say, all the stuff around us is huge, exponentially huge and with all that’s available to look at, it would be much like having a Mount Everest bin of popcorn dumped on us and trying to focus on one kernel.
So, with our astronomers wearing the equivalent of dental hygienist 7x googles, we’re not going to discover intelligent life unless it’s very close by… like a handful of light years away… with ET sending big radio signals formatted for talk radio, news and weather together or the Alpha Centauri equivalent of Fox News… modulated in a way that would make sense to us… you know… AM, FM, Morse code… and the like.
Interstellar travel might be impossible
Our galaxy, The Milky Way is huge… 100,000 light years wide. And currently, you and I walk around 1 meter per second. We can drive safely at 100 meters per second… and fly at 300 to 500 meters per second… and ride with Mister Bezos for 9 minutes in space at around Mach 3 (2300 mph…) – that, by the way, takes us 65 miles into the space… the distance you might drive for your fav ice cream cone on Earth. In short: You ain’t gone nowhere yet. The closest star is 4 light years away… 25 trillion miles… so you had better pack lunch.
The great equalizer.
One of the main foundations of the Fermi Paradox is the “reality” that civilizations will exhaust their resources or self destruct before they achieve the ability to get very far beyond their own planetary borough. Currently Planet Earth is a very good example of this. Wars, more wars and more rumors of wars, skirmishes, neglect of our environment and the fragility of our ecosystem are among some of the factors inhibiting our ability to evolve. Let’s face it, we can’t have nice things.
The peril of observational conclusions
Consider the Fermi Paradox perspective from Robin Hansen’s work on Grabby Aliens – the universe appears to be empty and that cultural selection on expansionist aliens would lead to their rapid spread if they did occur to conclude that intelligent life must actually be very rare or that evolution must be very slow. Or, in other words, we are not that much more evolved than primates… and we’ve discovered that raccoons like solving puzzles without the expectation of reward.
My Universal three states of being(s)
a.) We observe no aliens. Good luck with that. I got suspicious when that Irish family moved in next door. My point: In a perfect World we would not see colour, cultural differentiation or class distinction. This is not that perfect World. In our current World, space aliens would move freely among us.
b.) We are so busy expressing our own version of apartheid on the peoples around us that we wouldn’t detect anything truly out of the ordinary… although a flaming plasma head-dress might be a give away.
c.) We are alone. As outlined in my thoughts above, below and as of yet unexpressed.
All these factors are potentially under-estimated when discussing the Fermi Paradox.
- If most of the planets in the universe are too far away for us to see alien life, then if we see it at all we’ll be seeing their space ships as they come to us… less warning than an Amazon Prime delivery on a Saturday.
- We won’t even see them launch to us, even with perfect telescopes staring out into the galaxy, until they’re almost here.
- In practice this means that, in the grand scheme of human history, the phase between becoming aware of aliens and meeting them is vanishingly short.
Example - Expanding alien life capable of sub-light travel will arrive minutes or hours after reaching the outer orbits of our solar system. This periodic table only has the element of surprise!
Conclusion… in part…
Modern culture has been peppered with references to alien arrival in media and film. Truth be told, if our brightest minds are to be considered… is that first contact is arguably tens of thousands or millions of years away… if at all.Are we alone in the Universe? Depending on your statistical model, no… we are very much not alone. That said, there is an overwhelming unlikelihood of someone tapping on our planetary door looking for a cup of sugar any time soon. Leave your comments below.
Colin Newell is a resident of Earth, a popular coffee drinker and talker on subjects far and wide… his brain blips have occupied this blog since the Year 2005!
Logic and reason requires critical thinking skills. · Saturday September 4, 2021 by colin newell
In a time rife with disasters, simmering regional conflicts, global warming, and out of control fires, when more people than ever can find an audience online, conspiracy theories seem to be growing more silly by the day.
We’re also more prone to believing such things under heightened stress, and there is no shortage of troubling issues confronting us, whether locally or globally.
Some conspiracy theorists pride themselves on being “critical freethinkers,” but a new study showing a trend between lower critical thinking skills and increased conspiracy theory belief suggests this may not be the case.
“Conspiracy theories refer to attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an important event (social, political, climatic, etc.), by accusing a hidden coalition of perceived malicious and powerful people or organizations of having secretly planned and implemented these events,” explain Paris Nanterre University psychologist Anthony Lantian and team in their paper.
Across two studies, the researchers assessed the critical thinking skills of 338 undergraduate students using a French version of the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test. They then scored the students’ tendencies towards conspiracy beliefs and their personal assessment of their own critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking – the objective analysis and evaluation of a situation – requires a collection of cognitive skills. These include the ability to discern relevant versus irrelevant information, think systematically, seeing other perspectives, recognizing and avoiding logical fallacies, look beyond the obvious, be aware of and avoid biases and changing your mind in light of new evidence.
“The more people believe in conspiracy theories, the worse they perform on a critical thinking ability test,” Lantian told Eric Dolan from PsyPost. “This test is characterized by an open-ended format highlighting several areas of critical thinking ability in the context of argumentation.”
Before anyone gets all superior and self righteous around this, we must keep in mind that some people may not have had opportunities to obtain or develop these skills. This doesn’t mean they’re any less intelligent, just that their lives have not as yet taken them on the critical thinking skill acquiring path. But it’s never too late to learn. Good thing!
The researchers didn’t find any evidence for a higher (or lower) subjective critical thinking ability (as opposed to that evaluated more objectively by the test) among those who subscribe more to conspiracy theories.
“This is not in line with the cliché of the conspiracy theorists who see themselves as critical thinkers,” Lantian said.
All this is not to say those with high critical thinking skills can’t also be sucked into believing things that may not necessarily align with reality. The way our thinking is wired as an obligatorily social species makes us very vulnerable to believing those we identify with as part of our own cultural group – no matter how much education we have had that boosts science literacy.
Trust plays a massive role in who we believe; we also have a tendency to believe each of us is above average at detecting misinformation. And that is a clear case of self deception if there ever was one!
Researchers have also linked this need to feel special to greater belief in conspiracies. This is the classic, “I know something that you don’t!” Or, “There is this guy that has a YouTube channel that knows stuff that no one else knows!”
Lantian and team point out that while their study suggests critical thinking lowers people’s chances of believing in unfounded conspiracy theories, the findings don’t determine if these skills can help people detect true conspiracies.
Photo above: Our COVID-19 journey has been rife with speculation and a lively source for “conspiracy theorization”, in part, because of the elements of calamity, the “perceived” volumes of unanswered questions, the complexity of the varied impacts on society and so on.
Furthermore, the uniformity of their sample population (all French-speaking undergraduates) means these findings may not necessarily be an accurate reflection across wider society, nor have the researchers demonstrated a causal relationship.
However, previous research has also suggested more highly educated people are less prone to conspiracy beliefs. Another study, specifically designed by Yale University psychologist Dan Kahan and team to untangle within-group bias from levels of understanding, found similar results: Participants who scored highest in science comprehension – which requires critical thinking skills – displayed higher scores in independent thinking.
Kahan and colleagues have also found that curiosity can play an incredibly powerful role in counteracting within-group biases by leading people to consume “a richer diet of information”.
Lantian and team conclude in their paper that “critical thinking ability could help individuals to seek contradictory evidence rather than blindly trusting a conspiracy theory as long as it challenges an established version.”
They hope that this and further research on the topic will help develop better ways to teach more people these vital skills. Critical thinking, along with fostering curiosity and a sense of belonging and community to counteract the forces of cultural biases, may help us nudge each other back towards a smarter and wiser reality.
Elements of this research was published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Your web writer, Colin Newell, has lived on the radical Wet Coast of North America and has been writing stuff, totally believable stuff, since 1996!
The Leeming Effect - stop dragging my timeline around · Sunday April 11, 2021 by colin newell
Around two decades ago I was in the parking lot at the University of Victoria – likely on a Saturday – doing some extra chores.
I finished up about mid-day and was about to set off for some downtown routine to-do items when a strange man appeared in front of my car. He was quite distinguished and around 60 years old – give or take.
I tapped the brake to a stop and he stood by the drivers side window as I rolled it down.
“Hello…” I said, if offering some help to someone appearing very lost.
“Hello…” he paused, and continued. “Do you know someone by the name of John Smith?”
“Why yes, I do…” relieved that this interaction was about to start making sense.
The man looked up over the hood into the sunshine, squinting and paused for around 30 more seconds.
He then returned his very serious looking gaze to me. Another pause of around 30 seconds began. This time the seconds seemed to tick by much more slowly.
“You have coffee at the Finnerty Express most weekdays do you not?” he pointed out with crystal clarity.
I now felt like I was having a very cautious conversation with a CSIS officer.
“Uhm, yes… yes I do… and…”, I slipped back into the conversation.
He then addressed me by name, which surprised me. “Colin, you are Colin, yes? I shall see you for coffee next week…”
He turned on his heel and vanished as quickly as he appeared.
I had a funny feeling that his presence manifested itself at that moment to impede my progress downtown.
In some small (or profound) way he was interfering with the passage of time or my timeline, that if not interrupted, would have lead to some major or minor catastrophe.
These are regular (I guess if you can call them that…) encounters with regular people who, for the moment, are a form of guardian angel arriving just in a nick of time to prevent something really bad from happening.
And yes, the very next week, “David” appeared for coffee – and has appeared for coffee ever week (vacations occasionally interrupting) since that fateful encounter 20 years ago.
Today a young man stopped me at the Root Cellar farmers market in the very same fashion.
He was drawn to a very special sweat shirt that I was wearing. It was the classic blue sweatshirt from the very old and no longer in existence Victoria College from well before 1963! I won’t include the entire conversation (and for the record I was in no hurry…) but he had so many questions.
So this is what it felt like to be a pop star encountering a fan that I could simply not shake. But in this instance, the shirt was the attraction.
He was with his wife or girlfriend but it seemed that the Victoria College shirt took center stage.
Nothing mattered but the shirt I was wearing.
Within a minute or so of answering a barrage of questions, the answers to which he did not appear to be absorbing, I broke away to go through my grocery shortlist.
Within a minute he re-appeared and the questions began again. I quietly and calmly answered and then satisfied, he returned to his shopping… as if nothing had happened.
In an odd coincidence, the elderly man at the beginning of this story was a Victoria College student and a faculty member!
I could not help feeling that I’d just had some kind of alien encounter – but in a good way. I mean, I am, by and large, a science guy, but very occasionally, lost in the glint of bright sunlight or hidden in the shadows of a rainy Victoria afternoon, rests something very likely between science… and the Twilight Zone…
Colin Newell lives and works in Victoria B.C. Canada and has been writing about coffee and food culture for what feels like an eternity…
Long lost Gibson Guitar Les Paul Gold top stolen from ago · Sunday March 21, 2021 by colin newell
A very long time ago (1985) I was a Gibson guitar player – The Gibson Les Paul guitars are awesome for Rock, Blues, Jazz, pretty much whatever you want to play.
And I played this one in a few eighties bands… in a life a long time ago.
That said, I was not a big fan of this for some reason. It might have been the colour or the weight.
Ah, the weight! It was like carrying around a large dog draped around your shoulder – like a Lab or a Bull Mastiff -
The sound of the Gibson Les Paul is unmistakable – it snarled like a cornered tiger and effortlessly took charge of any musical performance it was involved with.
But the weight got me down… literally… and one day I sold it to a notable and successful gigging musician and session player. That was in 1990.
The new owner traveled the World with it – and the old Gibson took on a new life of its own. Click photo for bigger view
Then one day in 1992, it was in the locked trunk of of the owner, “Sean’s” 1980 Buick in underground, gated parking beneath the Seagate Apartments on Esquimalt Rd. He came home after an afternoon practice and had left it for around two hours before he had to head out to another practice. Two hours in a locked basement garage. It could have been an inside job, an unscrupulous neighbour… someone that clearly did not appreciate the fact that this particular guitar playing fellows livelihood depended on those 6 stringed instruments. Guitar be gone.
Anyway – occasionally I make a shout out to the World about this missing guitar – likely in the wrong hands, maybe getting played, maybe not or in the hands of someone that is not aware that it is hot.
Click Photo for a bigger view.
Anyway – here is the picture of the guitar stolen years ago – and somewhere out there, this guitar is waiting to come home to its owner. If you see it, please send it on its way.
The original owner thanks you!
This was a 1971 or 1972 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe with hard case stolen from the Seagate Apartment parking lot in 1992. The serial number is 171568 –
Any intel on this item would likely be rewarded with cash or whole bean coffee! Or both!
Book review - A Strange Little Place - the haunting and unexplained events of one small town · Friday September 2, 2016 by colin newell
Revelstoke: Where the worlds of the living, dead, and extraordinary collide.
Brennan Storr, of Revelstoke, British Columbia, a rustic, rugged and alpine town in Western Canada, considers his hometown something of a magical place. But that was not always the case.
Brennan was not a believer in much of anything in the spirit world apart from what he could see in front of him and hold in his hand. Slowly but surely he would be converted to a new reality.
On the rare occasions when Brennan Storr’s family, on his mother’s side, would get together, they would tell ghost stories about the house where they all grew up.
He did have a few personal stories of the unexplained. Nothing dramatic, really, apart from a small collection of inexplicable things that had happened throughout his life. Brennan offered “Understand, I didn’t believe in ghosts or the paranormal, but I got a lot of mileage out of those stories – both my family’s and my own – at parties.”
But in his debut book, A Strange Little Place – the haunting and unexplained events of one small town – Brennan reveals, in 33 succinct chapters, the unusual fabric of time and space that permeates Revelstoke.
“I’ll be straight with you – If you believe that UFO’s, Sasquatch and the like are all nonsense of the highest order, I have no intention of trying to convince you otherwise. Before starting this book in April 2012 I was in the exact same boat.”
Revelstoke, an internationally recognized destination for winter sports and becoming increasingly popular in the spring and summer for its cultural and outdoor activities, harbours something of a dark secret. If the examples within this 240 page paperback hold any greater meaning, it could be that this little town lies in the focal point or nexus of some mysterious force.
The history and progress of Revelstoke plays a very important role in this tale and Brennan thoroughly documents this relationship while unveiling 70 years of the town’s paranormal fabric. In A Strange Little Place Brennan offers several explanations for these odd events. There are a lot of unusual phenomenon here. There may be some inexplicable connection that links these events together. Clearly, Revelstoke has a quantity of spiritual baggage because of its very colourful and, initially, optimistic future.
Tales of missing time, shadow people, spectral light and sound, UFOs and ghosts spill from the pages in a jaunty kind of way that will leave you questioning your own reality and looking over your shoulder a little more often.
“Assuming he had fallen asleep without turning off the kitchen light, Nelles sleepily rose from bed and returned to the kitchen where, sitting at the table in front of him, was none other than the recently deceased Louis Bafaro.”
Brennan’s style is at once charming, folksy then gritty with a 1940’s gum shoe sensibility.
Perhaps coming from a similar upbringing to the author, I found his stories of the unexplained resonated with me. I was left reanalyzing some of my own experiences. I was opening chapters of my own life that I had often dismissed as “false memory”. I liked Brennan’s book because it made me think about the world around me – and had me squinting more objectively at things I might have not given a second look.
A Strange Little Place is a frisky and fast paced read on a subject that I have always been fascinated with. These stories left me wanting more and asking more questions.
Brennan Storr, now a Victoria area resident, is an active story teller, researcher and journalist who has written on many subjects including pop culture, pro wrestling, his own itinerant life and his fascination with dark places. He works in a haunted office building in one of the most haunted cities in North America. His book is readily available on Amazon online (in Canada) and a growing number of small book stores in Western Canada.
You can meet Brennan in person and buy an autographed copy or two of his book at Chapter’s book store, 1212 Douglas St – downtown Victoria on Friday, September 30 from 2 to 4 pm.
Colin Newell is a Victoria area resident and long time writer of non-scary stories about coffee and pop culture.
