The Fermi Paradox: The Phosphorus Problem

Humanity is too primitive for alien contact.

Staws

What is the Atomic decay chain to achieve phosphorous?

As the distance increases so does the chance for life.
This said, it may exist like 100.000 LY away, with it's
signature travelling to us at lightspeed and yet only
show itself to us in another 50.000 years.

If intelligent life is similar in evolution to ours it will no doubt self implode since technology exceeds mental capacity to control greed, hate, bigotry and egotism.. The result is war and annailation.

So this is 0ne more reason to engage in sea floor mining? The metalic nodules + phosphorus?

Good thing we can make it in reactors.
Worse worse case senario.

Univoooors 🤢🤢🤢

It was this episode that convinced me that we're unlikely to find anywhere else with life in our galaxy and perhaps intelligence anywhere ever. If life has all these other things against it, as detailed in many other IA videos, and requires a vanishingly rare element as well, we might as well forget it. We're it. The Universe is ours if we can but keep out hands off each other's throats.

What this tells us is planets need tectonic plate action to refresh Phosphates. So life can only form on planets with active tectonics. As a large orbiting body like our moon is very much needed to keep tectonic plate activity running. This will tell us that planets with a large moon would be needed.

Speech impediment or old timey American accent: Pick one!

It’s said mitochondria were once a free living thing, not an organelle in a cell.
Prior to becoming part of other cells how did those cells make a fire their life forces? Slower perhaps eking out sustenance where ever and how ever they could. So for life, basic life without ADP/ATP cycle existed. They still needed phosphorus for DNA 🧬 though. So might not life on a more basic form exist in a place with even less abundant phosphorus than our planet? Harder to arise and slower to develop advancement… plodding slowly forward… consuming its way up the ladder.
A world where a rotifer is the supreme overlord… or a paramecium.
Places like that may be the type of worlds with life. Rare uncommon worlds all the same.
To many rabbit holes to venture into thinking possibilities. Places life has gained but the littlest toe hold and hangs by a thread 🪡.

its not a paradox at all, its a simple equation. on every other planet in our solar system cataclystic events happen on a daily basis, there are more things in the universe that will definetely kill all living organisms than things that actually benefits living organism, let be alone entire functioning eco systems, also its highly unlikely to ever meet somebody at the other end because of the sheer size of space and time. lol

Couldn't an advanced civilization create phosphorus artificially and on an industrial scale with sufficiently advanced atomic engineering technology? Maybe one day our descendants will seed the galaxy with massive amounts of artificially created phosphorus and be the precursor race we always see in science fiction.

Perhaps they haven’t contacted us becuase they would then feel obligated to share their technology with us and therefore spoil our own journey to becoming an advanced civilization

People really do not understand the complex and utterly improbable factors needed for life to form. Where are they? They aren't.

"Then these humans showed up with their gaudy phosphorus. New Money, you know? They've been slinging it around and they have the galactic empire kissing their ass..."

This makes me think of an article written by Isaac Asimov; 'Fecundity Limited'

New meaning to pushing p

One possible explanation for the Fermi paradox I've not heard is that like humans perhaps as living standards increase and mortality rates plummet aliens birth rates plummet to at or even below replacement levels.

What pressures beyond curiosity would motivate humanity to make multi generational trips to the stars if our population is declining (as it is projected to do this century) and there's plenty of resources right here in our own system for a declining population at least until our star goes nova?

So, as phosphorous is a vital necessity for the formation of organic molecules, would the stars born of the same stellar nursery as our sun, by inclusion have the same basic concentrations of phosphorous?

But Mars has a lot of phosphorus

couldn't you use fusion or something to make more?

We shouldnt worry about aliens coming here for our Phosphorus, at current consumption levels, we will run out of known phosphorus reserves in around 80 years.

"Orth based life "

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction --- Life's Bottleneck --- April 1959 --- Isaac Asimov.
A reference would have been nice.

The absolute scariest answer to the Fermi paradox is that we are indeed alone. abiological genesis is incredibly hard, damn near impossible and unless our universe is basically infinite...it's almost impossible for life to arrive on in our observable universe just once by chance...let alone by chance on a planet that's habitable around a stable solar system around a tame star...More and more I lean towards the God hypothesis because you also have to consider the whole finely tuned universe thing...but I digress because...it only takes Nuclear war or 50 more years of fossil fuel burning for another mass extinction event to occur....in 250 million years the planet will be too hot for intelligent life...if it is to arise again...so we are probably it guys...the observable universes only chance....

From the future apparently phosphorus on venus was a false possative.

Recently, huge reserves of phosphates were discovered in Sweden. We don't have to worry about phosphorus being the bottleneck for our civilization. The rest of the galaxy can go f**k itself!

There are two scenarios not covered by this.

Panspermia, live was introduced from somewhere where the ecosystem was abundant in phosphorus. Live shouldn't use it but the introduced live was so far advanced already that it replaced anything that earth would produce.

Phosphorus gets lost. I know, it's an element and those are never destroyed in a normal chemical reaction. But did you consider: nuclear amoebas? Tiny live forms with nuclear reactors on their backs? I mean it's absolutely ridiculous. But also very, very cool. They died out when a group cuddle (for warmth and feeling loved) reached critical mass (I know this is not how critical mass works but you don't know how their reactors are structured so disproving that the nuclear cuddler caused the first mass extinction will create one heck of a paper).

The supposed "Fermi Paradox" does not exist; it's an artifact of an 'a priori' set of assumptions.

citation needed

So aliens invading earth and reaping all animal life forms could basically be a giant corporation that out of greed just harvests easy accessible lifeforms instead of expensive star-lifting. And they get away with it, just like big corps here on earth get around ethical and moral values.

When the aliens cone to conquer us, it won't be for our water. It will be for our phosphorus.

I think our scope is too small. There must be there things we haven't even considered yet.

Just mine mercury for the phosphorus duh!

Not a preposterous hypothesis. 🤔

The assumption is that life on other planets has precisely the same chemistry as we have here on Earth. That is by no means warranted.

the light we are looking at from various other systems is millions of years old... the lights of their advancements has not reached us yet...

As absolutely fascinating as this was, does anyone else think that the Fermi Paradox is moot? It seems quite likely that "aliens" are already among us.

What would happen if we add more phosphorus to earth?

It's the dark forest. Most likely imo.

Had to pause at the part when Isaac says...life and evolution being as inventive as they are...its counter intuitive to assume that an observed Process is intelligent. Because if you can say that of evolution, same can be said of photosynthesis. Or the phosporus cycle. Seems to dodge around the idea of intelligent design...looking around the interstellar neighborhood, earth seems like an air-conditioned house in the desert.

You could get a higher concentration of any minerals in a geothermal hot spring. Said hot spring could also drain directly into fresh or salt water which would give a wide variety of concentrations. I saw several features at Yellowstone Park that would fit hat description.

I'm pretty sure this could be the one!

The assumption that life on earth began having a requirement for phosphorus is akin to thinking that architecture began having a requirement for concrete.

So thats what the tyranids really want.