If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life

by Stephen Webb

The Cambridge cosmologist John Barrow has introduced a scale of inward manipulation, which one can argue would be just as applicable to ETCs as the Kardashev energy scale. A civilization at the BI level of advancement can manipulate objects at its own size, or about 1 m (assuming that intelligent beings exist, as we do, at this size). A BII civilization can work with objects at the m scale, which would allow it to manipulate genes. A BIII civilization can work with objects at the m scale, which would allow it to manipulate molecules. Barrow argues that human civilization is now at the BIV level, since various technological advances are allowing us to manipulate individual atoms at the m scale. But, as Richard Feynman once remarked, “there’s plenty of room at the bottom”; in other words, there’s more to explore at small scales than at large scales. Indeed, there are 35 orders of magnitude between the human scale of 1 m and the smallest possible scale defined by quantum physics—the Planck scale; there are “only” 26 orders of magnitude between the human scale and the size of the observable universe. Perhaps, then, as ETCs advance in sophistication they choose to investigate the microworld instead of, or at least in addition to, the macroworld.