Hibernating Aliens

One explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that aliens may be undetected because they slumber, quietly hidden away in the galaxy. But how and why might such Extraterrestrial Empires hibernate?

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Credits:
Alien: Civilizations: Hibernating Aliens
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 325, January 13, 2022
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur

Editors:
A.T. Long
Dan Lavoie
Jason Burbank
Jerry Guern
Matthew Campbell

Cover Art:

Graphics:
Darth Biomech
Legiontech Studios

Music by:
Martin Rezny, "Lifelight"
Denny Schneidemesser, "Bridge Ambience"
Stellardrone, "A Moment of Stillness"
Aerium, "Fifth Star of Aldebaran"
Miguel Johnson, "Strange New World"

[harmonyspaceagency]

The ice caps melt and a giant alien awakens "thanks guys I was sleeping on my arm weird, okay here's a fusion reactor blueprint and some sun shade space ships now let me go back to sleep."

[CAMacKenzie]

Well, there are 17 year cicadas. There are bears. There are humans, who spend a third of their lives dormant. From the viewpoint of something with a life cycle as long as a bacterium, the human sleep cycle would seem a very long time, the hibernation of a bear eternity, and cicadas' life cycle time enough to evolve to something entirely else.

[harmonyspaceagency]

Be weird to think a civilisation could just be 1 guy per solar system, just popping out of their virtual reality every million years to make sure non of the other 100 guys in the star cluster took any of your stuff. Or started messing up your layers of defences. Then going back online and playing GTA 500 with them.

[raithelkarasu]

Always a good day when Isaac is talking about aliens.

[harmonyspaceagency]

10:30 in our first interspecies war while your top scientists are hacking into the universal code, then you see at the bottom left of your eyesight: "gamemode updated to creative"

[wk]

These discussions of hibernating aliens remind me of an old late 80s video game called Starflight. The bulk of this game consisted of exploration and resource management. Among the resources that you needed to find were high energy crystals for powering space craft. In this video game there was evidence of an ancient race in the galaxy but the ancients themselves had never been found. The plot twist is that the bodies of the ancient aliens being searched for we’re actually the high energy crystals needed for space flight. But, because the ancient race moved so slowly in relation to the upstart biological races no one noticed.

[LucasDimoveo]

Isaac is out here making Lovecraft's monsters 100x more terrifying

[SilverMKI]

The "Dancers at the end of time" series has an interesting possible take, with humans at some point in time having given up exploring space and have constructed machines which siphoned energy from the rest of the universe to allow the people of earth to do whatever they wanted. Eventually this kills off the entire universe and would also kill off the earth too except for them creating a bubble of time to exist in repeatedly for the rest of eternity.

The people of this world are utterly incurious about the universe as a whole and had no idea this was going on, even laughing at/mostly ignoring aliens who come to earth to warn them of the approaching doom.

[loveless]

Just had an idea. So, what if the aliens hibernate because they want other life to evolve naturally and gain intelligence so they can later assimilate new and unique consciousnesses and biologies? They don't want to influence the growth in any way in the hopes that new novel forms of life come about. I know there are counters to this and it certainly can't solve the Fermi paradox, but its just a thought I had at the start of the episode that might be addressed at some point in the video.

[morzovoidmaster]

Sleep little aliens

Cozy and warm

I'm coming to steal

Your Dyson Swarm

[genx]

Remember the Asgard from Stargate? They were sort of hibernating/hidden. But they ended up being good guys.

[davidroddini]

18:55 “There’s often an assumption that a sufficiently powerful computer, if built, would know all the answers to Life, the Universe and everything”
And as everyone knows, it would be 42.

[ethanwmonster]

What's scary is that if the limits of technology turn out to be insane and we're absolutely not even close. Then these aliens really could crush even k3 civilizations like ants.

[Conqueror]

What if the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that,
once a civilization reaches a certain size (in population or expansion) it will get so caught up in its inner affairs that it stagnates and can't expand any further?

[cannonfodder]

Certainly not hibernating when a new SFIA video comes out.

Watched this on Nebula, a fantastic episode as always Isaac.

[johnboettcher]

The Predator motive works for sleepers. They sleep as a response to boredom, waking only with the prospect of a challenge.

[dragon]

Just wanna point out that the reason the Reapers hibernate is to specifically harvest the cultures that arise in the time they are asleep, and preserve them, before anyone can build some super weapon that sterilizes the whole galaxy

[lareolanKFP]

The Necrons from Warhammer 40K is also a great example of hibernating aliens. A race that has only a few individuals in it, but each one is very much godlike.

[marlonlacert]

One reason for hibernating powerful Aliens, might be to mine creativity!
To awake and conquer, to find the newest foods, fashions, and toys..
Then return to your dreams, with new ideas..

[Mursaat]

I always figured a civilization that lived on a world that had a elliptical orbit around its parent star would go Into hibernation... Interesting thought.