Register Lecture: Space Invaders and spamming the Final Frontier

Elon Musk dreams of life on Mars, but why stop there? Why not dream really big? What would it take for a group of creatures – not necessarily those living on Earth – to colonise the entire universe?

Enter the Fermi paradox – "Where is everybody?" Physicist Enrico Fermi, father of the nuclear reactor, in the 1950s noted that given the age and size of the universe there should exist a number of parallel civilisations. No contact means either no aliens – or that the job is too big, even for somebody like Elon.

Scientists have since sought to untangle the paradox – among them, Anders Sandberg of the Future Humanity Institute of Oxford University.

Anders delivered our May 2019 lecture discussing his work calculating what it would take for a "technologically mature" civilisation to conduct ongoing, large-scale settlement of the universe – and to do so using a fleet of craft in just six hours.

Strap yourself in and enjoy the video of Anders' video. ®