In less than seventy years, humanity went from being unable to fly to walking on the moon. It took more than a century to move from the first basic computer to a smartphone that is in every person’s pocket and provides access to all information. Based on these comparisons, it can be thought that humankind’s technological possibilities are unlimited.

But the question arises: where are the many space civilizations that have achieved unlimited development and colonized the entire galaxy, as in movies or science fiction books? This question has puzzled scientists for many years; It was stated by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. Fermi’s paradox sounds like this: “Why is the universe so quiet?”.

Perhaps this is because there is a technological limit to development that prevents civilizations from spreading throughout the galaxy and beyond. 24 Channels It publishes a retelling of Space.com’s article on why we haven’t met aliens.

An obstacle that cannot be overcome

If our solar system is young compared to the rest of the universe and humans will one day be able to travel interstellarly, shouldn’t we see signs that other intelligent beings have already spread throughout the cosmos? Fermi is often asked where the aliens are.

Scientists now suggest that there is a universal limit of technological development (ULTD) for every intelligent species in the universe, far below one civilization’s ability to colonize the entire galaxy. Brazilian researcher Antonio Gelis-Fillo put forward this idea in a paper recently published in the journal Futures.

If the ULTD hypothesis is true, then there has never been, is not, and never will be anything like interstellar civilization or interstellar speech.
– commented Helis-Filo to Space.com.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman once said: “I don’t understand what I can’t create.” The simplest explanation for this statement is that our technology (what we can create) is limited by our own knowledge.

• Human technology has natural limits; For example, we cannot travel faster than the speed of light.
• There are other obstacles as well; human biology. Of course, humanity has created technologies that can help overcome limitations: microscopes, telescopes, computers. However, the more complex these technologies are, the more they cost humanity.

Projects such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which costs $4.75 billion to build and $286 million per year, the International Space Station ($3 billion per year), and the international fusion study at ITER (estimated $18-20 billion under construction) It shows that efforts to explore our horizons require more energy and resources.

To be honest, the truth is that the last major fundamental breakthrough in cosmology (macro- and microspheres, cosmology and quantum mechanics) is almost a century old.
– says Helis-Fleet.

Of course, black holes and other phenomena are much better understood today than they were a century ago, says Helis-Fillot, but their theories have not had as significant an impact on human technology as relativity and quantum mechanics.

Compare the scientific evolution from 1830 (no theory of evolution, no theory of electromagnetism) to 1930 (the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics already exist) and from 1930 to 2024 (still no unifying theory) to see that the rate of progress is as follows. At least it’s slowing down. The low-lying fruits have already been picked. The rest appear to be hanging from impossibly high branches.
– says Helis-Filio.

Price already limits the development of science. The European Commission recently canceled a plan to select several billion euros of cutting-edge research projects, including plans to convert solar and wind energy into fuel and use cell and gene therapy in clinical settings.

In this case, our dreams of becoming an interstellar civilization will come to a halt, as will the development of new technologies that will provide new breakthroughs in our understanding of reality.

Helis-Fillot says any intelligent civilization in space would have to face the same scenario. They will need to decide whether to build a Milky Way-sized particle accelerator to test a new theory or build the infrastructure necessary for civilization to survive.

How does society affect the fading of civilization?

Helis-Fillo also believes that the history of the rise and fall of various human civilizations can be applied on a galactic scale. Complex societies expand, their structures become more complex in order to produce more “energy” for further growth. However, after a certain point, complexity does not work and the return decreases.

If we recall a hunter-gatherer society, the number of social roles (chief, hunter, gatherer, etc.) is minimal; In the late Roman Empire it was much higher, and in our industrial society it was extremely high,
– explains Helis-Fleet.

With additional specialization, more complex societies can produce more; This applies, for example, to agriculture. With the development of technology, new cultures and employment have been created. However, as the level of complexity increases, the need for expensive infrastructure also increases.

Helis-Figlio takes this claim from archaeologist Joseph Tainter, who has studied many complex societies throughout history. Tainter argues that although the death blow to a society may vary (such as war, drought, epidemic, or astronomical event), the root cause is always the same: diminishing returns from complexity, which makes the society fragile.

I apply this concept to any technological society anywhere in the universe. Progressive spatial technologies require the development of legacy infrastructure. This infrastructure is only part of the social complexity… It is possible that many extraterrestrial civilizations may have collapsed due to the diminishing returns of social complexity even before they encountered the constraints imposed by energy.
– points out Helis-Filio.

Cosmic messages in a bottle

Despite everything stated, Helis-Filio does not exclude the possibility that humanity is still receiving messages from aliens. The Universal Limit to Technological Development prohibits technological development beyond a level that would prevent the organized, self-sustaining expansion of a civilization beyond the solar system.

Voyager probe / NASA

But that doesn’t mean there are stray dead space probes (think “Voyager-1” that will silently pass our galaxy in a hundred thousand years), individual messages (the Wow signal is one of them), or dead alien Voyagers we might find (no matter how unlikely that event is).
– lists the author of the hypothesis.

Such attempts to communicate with other intelligent civilizations in the vastness of space are akin to cosmic messages in bottles. Gelis-Fillot says it’s like the captain of a shipwreck stranded on a remote island trying to send a signal to the outside world with his possessions.

The Helix-Fillot hypothesis is a possible explanation for why our efforts to find another cosmic civilization are in vain. Yes, for just a few decades humanity has been searching for signs that we are not alone in space. Maybe we’re looking for the wrong thing, but not for long enough. The definitive detection of an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization would clearly disprove the ULTD hypothesis, as would a sudden leap of knowledge that could facilitate the expansion of human civilization into the stars. But until then the hypothesis of technological limitations has a right to exist.