Extraterrestrial

Could the 'sustainability solution' explain why we haven't found ET ?

By T.K. Randall
June 3, 2025 ·  15 comments

Alien civilizations may be inherently undetectable. Image Credit: Dall-E 3 The question of whether we are alone in the universe remains one of the biggest philosophical conundrums of our time. While it seems almost inconceivable that our civilization is alone in the cosmos, the fact still remains that we have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

The Fermi paradox, which highlights the contradiction between the likely existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the fact that we have still never encountered any, seems to suggest that either there are no aliens out there, or they are so rare that it is unlikely we would ever come across them.

But what if the real explanation is that alien technology is simply indistinguishable from nature ? Proposed back in 2009 by scientists Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum, the 'sustainability solution' suggests that advanced civilizations may not be motivated by spreading across the cosmos.

The kind of expansion we imagine from science-fiction, such as colonizing entire galaxies and building Dyson Spheres to harvest energy from stars, may be unsustainable.

Instead, alien civilizations that survive might have done so by seamlessly blending their technology with their environment and by favoring balance with nature over building high-tech megastructures.

Perhaps the universe is teeming with intelligent alien races that we have little chance of ever detecting because they have figured out how to live with their planet instead of consuming it.

If this is the case, it could also mean that this is the road on which our own civilization must ultimately travel in order to avoid its own destruction.

Source: Popular Mechanics | Comments (15)

Tags: Alien, Extraterrestrial