Edward Snowden believes he has answered the Fermi paradox: Encryption.
Why, with such a vast universe that has been around for billions of years, has no alien entity been able to send any signal to us? Snowden suggests, in an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, that alien signals are too well encrypted to be distinguished from random noise.
"When you look at encrypted communications, if they are properly encrypted, there is no real way to tell that they are encrypted. You can't distinguish a properly encrypted communication, at least in the theoretical sense, from random noise," added Snowden. "So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society where all of their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means."
"When we think about everything we're hearing from our satellites, or everything they're hearing from our civilization, if there are indeed aliens out there, all of their communications are encrypted by default. So what we're hearing -- which is actually an alien television show or a phone call or a message between their planet and their own GPS constellation, whatever it happens to be -- is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation."
Tyson seemed receptive of the suggestion but did note that we have to assume that the aliens "have the same security issues we have here on Earth" for encryption to really be an issue. To that, Snowden admits alien entities could be "politically a little bit more enlightened" than us humans.
Source:
Guardian
"When you look at encrypted communications, if they are properly encrypted, there is no real way to tell that they are encrypted. You can't distinguish a properly encrypted communication, at least in the theoretical sense, from random noise," added Snowden. "So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society where all of their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means."
"When we think about everything we're hearing from our satellites, or everything they're hearing from our civilization, if there are indeed aliens out there, all of their communications are encrypted by default. So what we're hearing -- which is actually an alien television show or a phone call or a message between their planet and their own GPS constellation, whatever it happens to be -- is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation."
Tyson seemed receptive of the suggestion but did note that we have to assume that the aliens "have the same security issues we have here on Earth" for encryption to really be an issue. To that, Snowden admits alien entities could be "politically a little bit more enlightened" than us humans.
Source:
Guardian
