One solution to the Fermi paradox is that there's evidence around us and we just haven't noticed it yet. An estimate of 20 MA for colonizing the whole Milky Way has been advanced, and if von Neumann probes (VNPs) are possible, then they should be around us. We have a tendency to think of VNPs as industrial-age metal objects like Apollo 11, but organic VNPs could
diffuse between low-gravity bodies when interstellar comets or asteroids pass through solar systems. Therefore, when we start finding some interesting high molecular weight organic polymers with non-random monomer sequences in the
sample-return specimens from asteroids like Bennu, we should seriously consider that this might be what we're looking at. It is therefore interesting that Bennu is ejecting material (see
here and
here), which would be required if the VNPs are cellular- or molecular-scale chemical replicators that spread passively.
Here ends the serious part.
Admittedly this is an extraordinary hypothesis, and it requires consistent extraordinary evidence to support it. However, noticing that asteroids have boulders on them isn't extraordinary.
Look! Boulders! And they're circled! Gosh, that MUST be alien tech!
One excitable UFO-hunting schmendrick insisted (after doing a complex analysis in Microsoft Paint, i.e. circling the boulders) that
Bennu is "littered with alien tech". Then so is the construction site near my house! So is the desert! There are boulders all OVER the place - my gosh, we're surrounded by alien tech! Run! Apparently
skulls have also been spotted. Space pirates? This is a particularly morbid form of pareidolia.
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