[ExI] A new answer to the Fermi paradox?

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:10 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 17/07/2026 12:34, Jason Resch wrote:
> > It is from 2017 but it was new to me:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestivation_hypothesis
> >
> > The aestivation hypothesis is a hypothesized solution to the Fermi
> paradox conceived in 2017 by Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong and Milan M.
> Ćirković. The hypothesis, published on 27 April 2017, suggests advanced
> alien civilizations may be storing energy and aestivating (hibernating in
> times of heat instead of cold), until the universe cools to better make use
> of the stored energy to perform tasks.
> >
> > As the universe cools, the potential work producible by stored energy
> can increase by a multiplier of 10^30 per Landauer's principle. If the goal
> of an advanced civilization is to maximize the number of calculations done,
> to generate information processing for tasks like mass-producing
> simulations, then aestivation would be purposeful to achieve this end.
>
> The aestivation hypothesis (congratulations on spelling it right,
> incidentally)


Thanks I copied and pasted it I think.


never made a lot of sense to me. There may be advantages in terms of
> theoretical calculations possible, but the downsides seem much more
> important. If you are inactive and unaware, you are vulnerable.


I don't think it requires perfect inactivity. Think of a sentinel probe
sent to every star system running on comparatively low power, rather than
an all out race to exploit every piece of energy now, sending a hyper
intelligent von Neumann probe out to every seller object to protect itself
and stake out resources for later exploitation.


Simple considerations of survival seem to dictate that you'd need at least
> a minimal consciousness and ability to act, to defend against natural
> disasters, and attacks from anyone who regards you as competition for
> resources, either now or in the future.
>


I agree, and none of that is precluded.


> Another factor is all the energy that you are letting go to waste. If this
> cosmic era is so much more energy-dense than future eras, why not remain
> active and make your primary activity storing as much energy as possible
> for future use?


The energy waste from stars fusing elements is a fraction of a percent. The
bulk long term energy is in the rest mass of these objects.

On long enough time horizons, the universe cools to a temperature far lower
than the hawking temperature of even galactic center black holes, and black
holes convert their entire rest mass to energy.

Computations become many orders of magnitude more efficient at these low
temperatures operating at slow speeds. To exploit energy resources now is
like picking and eating fruit before it's ripe. You might get some
nutritional benefit, but you would get so much more if you simply waited.



I imagine that might look like engineering collisions of stars so as to
> make black holes, so we might see many more black holes than expected. I
> don't know if we have, but I imagine that activity on a scale that would
> enable this, would be easily detectable.
>

Actually there is more exploitable energy (neg entropy) in matter before it
falls into a black hole, such that if the aestivation hypothesis is true,
we might expect any any active sentinels to prevent objects from creating
black holes now.


> Anyway, I don't buy this as an explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
>


It's just another possibility to consider.

Jason
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