A more frightening implication of the fermi paradox.<\/p>\n
The berserker hypothesis<\/b>, also known as the deadly probes scenario<\/b>, is the idea that humans have not yet detected intelligent alien life in the universe because it has been systematically destroyed by a series of lethal Von Neumann probes<\/a>.[1]<\/sup>[2]<\/sup> The hypothesis is named after the Berserker<\/i> series of novels<\/a> (1963\u22122005) written by Fred Saberhagen<\/a>.[1]<\/sup><\/p>\n The hypothesis has no single known proposer, and instead is thought to have emerged over time in response to the Hart\u2013Tipler conjecture<\/a>,[3]<\/sup> or the idea that an absence of detectable Von Neumann probes is contrapositive evidence that no intelligent life exists outside of the Sun\u2019s Solar System<\/a>. According to the berserker hypothesis, an absence of such probes is not evidence of life\u2019s absence, since interstellar probes could \u201cgo berserk\u201d and destroy other civilizations, before self-destructing.<\/p>\n In his 1983 paper \u201cThe Great Silence\u201d, astronomer David Brin<\/a> summarized the frightening implications of the berserker hypothesis: it is entirely compatible with all the facts and logic of the Fermi paradox<\/a>, but would mean that there exists no intelligent life left to be discovered. In the worst-case scenario, humanity has already alerted others to its existence, and is next in line to be destroyed.[4]<\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A more frightening implication of the fermi paradox. The berserker hypothesis, also known as the deadly probes scenario, is the idea that humans have not yet detected intelligent alien life in the universe because it has been systematically destroyed by a series of lethal Von Neumann probes.[1][2] The hypothesis is named after the Berserker series [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}