Lord Shadow

Chapter 912: The fermi paradox (3)

Peter then focused his thought about another possibility which is the Great Filter could be the jump from simple prokaryote cell to the complex eukaryote cell.

After prokaryote came into being they remained that way for almost two billion years before making the evolutionary jump to being complex and having a nucleus.

If this is the Great Filter it would mean the universe is teeming with simple prokaryote cells and almost nothing beyond that

And there is also the possibility that even the most recent leap humanity has made from the medieval life to the Industrial Revolution is a Great Filter candidate.

While the leap from semi intelligent life to intelligent life doesn’t at first seem like miraculous step, some scientist rejects the idea of an inevitable climb upward of evolution.

Since evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, it uses the adaptation most useful for a given ecological niche and the fact that on Earth led to technological intelligence only once so far may suggest that this outcome of natural selection is rare and hence by no means a certain development of the evolution of a tree of life

Mots leaps actually do not qualify as a Great Filter candidate.

Any possible Great Filter event must be one in a billion type thing where one of more total freak occurs need to happen to provide a crazy exception.

And for that reason, something like the jump from a single cell to multi cellular life is ruled out because it has occurred as many as forty-six time before the fall and in an isolated incident, just on Earth alone.

For the same reason if humanity were to find a fossilized eukaryote cells on any of the planets around Earth, it would rule the above simple to complex cell leap out as a possible Great Filter as well as anything before that point on the evolutionary chain because if it happened both on Earth and on the other planet, it is almost definitely not one in a billon freak occurrence

Of course, this argument is broken after the Fall since humanity find out we are not rare as we thought we are and there is a lot of more civilization out there that evolve the same way we are.

And then there is the argument that we, humanity itself is the first.

For the subscribers to this idea, they held hope that if the Great Filter is not behind us, the one hope humanity have is that the condition in the universe are just recently, for the first time since the Big Bang, reaching a place that would allow intelligent life to develop.

In that case, humanity and many other species scattered all over the Universe may be on our way to superintelligence.

And it just hasn’t happened yet. This idea believe that we happen to be here at the right time to become one the first super intelligent civilization in the Universe.

There is an example of this.

One example of this phenomenon that could make this realistic is the prevalence of gamma ray burst, and insanely huge explosion that humanity have observed in distant galaxies.

In the same way that it took the early Earth a few hundred million years before the asteroid and the volcanoes to died down and life became possible, it could be argued that the first chunk of the universe existence was full of cataclysmic events like gamma ray burst that would incinerate everything nearby from time to time and prevent any life from developing past a certain stage of evolution.

And the idea was that humanity is in the midst of an astrobiological phase transition and this is the first any life has been able to evolve this long, uninterrupted without any disaster like the gamma ray burst of some cataclysmic event to wipe them all out in one second

Of course, this is also debunked since humanity learn that they are not the first. Here are others before them like the Asgardians and the Olympians.

Then if the two out of three possible realities for humanity has been debunked, then there is only one possibility left and it is one of the possibility that would chill everyone heart

The last possibility is that the Great Filter is ahead of humanity evolutionary progress and that means humanity is fucked.

Since humanity is not rare nor is it early, then we could conclude that the Great Filter is in humanity future

Right now, both Loki and Peter had stopped walking. Loki only look at his disciple face expression that changes every few seconds.

Peter is actually accessing this mind trying to dig out the information that is in his memory

Then suddenly, Peter look toward his teacher and then he asks

‘It is in the future?’

Loki nodded as he understood what Peter is trying to say. Peter also had new understanding of the Destroyer from the words of his teacher.

Of course he is not sure yet whether his speculation is right or not so he still has to do some thinking. But he believes he is approaching to that perfect conclusion.

Loki then said

‘It seems you will have to digest this information. Let us resume our walk’ Peter nodded as he needs to think more.

Peter did not realize that the scenery around him had changes, as he is caught in his own thoughts.

There is no longer any tall grass or the colorful flora before around him. It seems that he had arrived at another part of the garden.

This part of the garden seems like it had been stripped of life. The fruits and the trees all seems like they were extracted from some kind of horror books. Some of them could kill and many of them are parasitic in nature.

But Peter did not seem to notice, engrossed in his thinking. Loki only smiles.

To him, this is also fate and destiny. Maybe, his disciple would notice. Maybe, he would not. This is the cause and effect.

Loki question had send his disciple into his thinking mode. And Peter, while he would abhor to admit it, he felt pretty safe with his teacher.

Hence, he could dive deep into his memory without caring much about his surrounding

Loki is God of Mischief…that is true. But he is not a God of Death. Many worlds have this idea that Loki is antagonistic toward the Aesir. That is not the case.

A smear campaign in the shared consciousness of living beings all across the Omniverse by his enemies.

‘They are just jealous’ Loki thought to himself.

Loki only smirks as he continues walking and Peter follow from behind, still thinking of many things

When Peter had gained the answer from his teacher, stating that the great Filter is in the humanity future, Peter went back into his mind and thought about that possibility in a deeper way

His teacher statement would suggest that life regularly evolves to where humanity is, but that something prevents life from going much further and making it unable for any civilization to reach super high intelligence in almost all cases and humanity is unlikely to be an exception

But that is clearly not the case? thought Peter.

After all, Olympus, Asgardians, Orvanians and many other civilizations did reach past Type II civilization

But…. hmmm. He thought to himself

In the theory before the Fall, the possible future for humanity Great Filter is a regularly occurring cataclysmic naturally event like a gamma ray burst

Maybe, there were millions of civilization like Earth and they were all destroyed by this gamma ray burst before they could reach to the levels of those interplanetary civilization.

This possibility means that it is just a matter of time before all life on Earth is suddenly wiped out by such event

Another candidate for a future Great Filter vent is the possible inevitability that nearly all intelligent civilizations ends up destroying themselves once a certain level of technology is reached.

This is something that is very possible.

Peter saw many worlds in the Multiverse.

He saw a world affected so badly by global warming that by the time everyone had acknowledges the problem, it was already too late and the constant disaster that keep on piling up destroy that world and causes the humans in that world to go extinct

Peter sighed for a second. He thought about the space outside of the Milky Way galaxy and the world that is outside Earth galaxy and he could not help but sigh again

One scientist once said that when it is about the space “no news is good news”

The discovery of even a simple life on the planets around Earth would be devastating, because it would then cut out a number of potential Great Filter behind humanity.

Peter of course did not find it very terrifying.

But that is because the changes of perspective. Peter witnessed the end of the Omniverse, fought in the Final Battle where he faced the Destroyer.

As such the impact of seeing aliens and acknowledging their existence was not as impactful. Peter himself was no scientist and he did not know how dreadful the feeling was for someone like the Grand Researcher.