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 April 27, 2017, suggests that 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 10³⁰ 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.[1][2][3]

Advanced alien civilizations may have other intentions. If the intent is creating large amounts of "happiness", then energy resources may be used to generate perfect computer simulations of "the maximal number of maximally happy minds". If the intent is knowledge, resources may be focused on information storage. Such civilizations may go through a time of exploration and then remain dormant until the conditions of the universe are more energetically favorable to best achieve their objectives.[1]

The theory has been disputed by a subsequent paper by Charles H. Bennett, Robin Hanson and Jess Riedel, who claim the notion that more computations could be performed later in the universe's history is based on a misunderstanding of the physics of computation.[4]