I was never too interested in the Fermi Paradox, the solution just seemed too simple. Either they did not want to talk to us, or were skilled at hiding it.
After viewing some videos uploaded on youtube my opinion changed completely. The issue at hand isn't that the aliens aren't communicating with us, its that there is no sign of their existence, at all. Obviously the fact that we have never observed signs of life wasn't shocking to me. What was is why we should be, and just how ominous it is that we haven't.
The Dyson Sphere
Who needs infinite energy when your home solar system comes with a fusion generator that will run for billions of years whether you tap that energy or not? This thing would be the crowning achievement of any alien civilization, and there is little sci-fy about them.
Due to the name, people tend to view these as literal solid spheres. But that is not what most scientists are envisioning. Instead a Dyson Sphere (or Dyson Swarm) can be anything from swarms of satellites, to rings of continent sized habitats. All orbiting the sun for various purposes, but mainly to harness that absurd amount of energy.
This is not some futuristic concept, this is something we could begin working on today. Giant habitats aren't possible until we master building massive structures in space, but armies of satellites doing nothing but collecting energy and beaming it somewhere with lasers is very useful.
Nothing impressive, highly wasteful but the sun is already burning up that power whether we utilize it or not. The biggest restraint to doing this is the amount of material required, but even a partial Dyson Sphere would be very useful. And depending on how thin we can make the solar panels a large asteroid would be plenty for a complete swarm.
For bigger projects we could disassemble a planet like mercury, or as we will discuss later, gather the materials directly from the sun.
What can you do with them?
Travel
I am putting this section first because the idea is crazy, and yet very much low tech. With even a partial Dyson Swarm made up of satellites with no abilities other then reflecting light and adjusting their position, you could mobilize your entire solar system by causing the sun to reflect more light in the opposite direction. Take over enough stars and you could push even the entire galaxy.
We could also use the same method to focus all of that light into a beam capable of thrusting star ships with solar sales into near light speed, or just use it to fry an entire planet from thousands of light years away. All of this with technology we possess today.
Power collection
The first thing one would probably use a Dyson Swarm for complete or not would simply be as a means of power generation. This can be as simple as shooting lasers wherever you need them. Terribly inefficient, but you have the power of the sun at your disposal, power that would just bleed away regardless.
Considering how little matter that would be nessisary for these, I think this will surely be the first components of our future Dyson Sphere.
Star Lifting
You can mine our sun, and it would actually increase the life of the star. You won't be going out with a pick axe, but lots of matter, especially hydrogen and helium gets ejected from the sun's poles. Which we could increase through several different methods.
If we were able to harvest that matter then we have a source equal to hundreds of thousands of times what we would get if we dismantled earth entirely.
We could also send back the hydrogen but keep all the heavier elements and extend our sun's life for many millions if not a couple billions of years longer then it will live on its own. What we are left with is mostly helium which we have little use for, though we can turn that helium into pretty much whatever we need.
Until we master fusion, this is going to be very inefficient, but we have 3.86 x 10^26 watts of power to work with at any moment. And almost all of this power is doing nothing useful for us at the moment. Thats the real waste.
Habitats
Once you have succeeded in harnessing a decent chunk of the sun's power, and you are successfully collecting planets worth of matter your next step would probably be to build habitats for your colony. Assuming of course you are not a powerful network of AI, you probably have a population of considerable size. And as long as you can easily support that size, more is better.
You can never have too many researchers, or too big an army if you have the space and energy to support that population. Luckily you are colonizing the sun, mining multiple planets worth of matter, and harvesting a source of crazy amounts of power that won't run out for billions of years.
With all of these resources it would be trivial to sustain a population of many trillions of people. More potential researchers then every human currently on the planet, and still trillions of people to make sure everything else gets done.
Back to the Paradox
It may have seemed like I got way off topic here, but I think that this precursor was necessary. Hopefully you have come away from this with the same thoughts that I did which was "wow, we really need a Dyson Sphere". If so, then my point here should be a strong one.
Where are all the Dyson Spheres?
These things are the exact opposite of subtle. Even a partial sphere will quickly become apparent, you simply can't hide the dimming of your star. Nor can you hide an unnaturally dim star.
Even assuming the sphere was built before we could observe the brightness of stars in a meaningful way, and assuming they made it capable of extracting almost all of the stars energy like the Matrioshka Brain, it will still emit small amounts of infrared light in what would otherwise be a dark region of space. Not exactly blending in.
Why wouldn't every alien species eventually decide to make one of these? Can you picture us not having one if we gave ourselves a hundred million more years to accomplish the task even partially? Our earth has only been around for 4.5 billion years, thats only a third of the universes existence. And life as we know it could have existed for 9-10 billion years at the shortest estimates.
Perhaps there will be an advancement in science that throws all of this out the window, but unless we learn to just pull energy out of nothing then I don't see that happening.
Possibly Alone
There is a chance, a good chance, that life developing is an extremely rare event. That life then gaining intelligence is an extremely rare event. Then that life needs to learn to use tools, master fire, build rockets and then colonize space before a cataclysmic disaster either natural or self inflicted.
As humans, as intelligent beings, we should come to the realization that we may truly be the only creatures in this entire galaxy, perhaps even universe. We have no idea how rare it is for a civilization to reach the point that we have now. We have gotten reminded that we are not the center of the universe so often in the past, that we just assume that it will be the same in the case of intelligent life in the universe.
But we might really be alone out there, the universe by most models is not infinitely old, so just because we know it can happen doesn't mean it will ever again. If we die out, there is a possibility that no creature will ever make it to space again.
So it is our responsibility to keep intelligence alive, colonize the stars, and to do anything and everything in our power to continue our existence. Dying off now may mean that nobody will ever figure out how the universe works, and that is a sad thought.
Sources
As I said earlier I have been benging some videos on youtube. The author of those videos is Isaac Arthur, and each one of his videos will blow your mind. He goes through each of these ideas in seperate videos with even more depth, he also has many other amazing videos like how a civilization could survive for quadrillions of years after the death of the last star.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g
All images were sourced from Pixabay