An idea that has been consistent throughout these blogs was if we were alone in the universe. As I’ve reiterated throughout the blogs, if the universe is truly infinite (or at the very least, extremely big), statistically there should have been some technologically advanced civilizations that have visited or contacted Earth. Enter the Fermi Paradox, named after Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist.
Fermi thought that there was proof we were alone in the universe, simply because we haven’t heard anything. According to sources like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Fermi made a simple remark over lunch one day that would go down in history. Most physicists at the time were reasonably assuming that alien civilizations exist. I mean, why wouldn’t they? The universe is vast, and religious ties to science had been a thing of the past. And if there were (statistically) many alien civilizations, any one of them could have been advanced enough to create technology that could colonize a galaxy. Given a timeline of ten million years, every star system in the Milky Way could’ve been colonized. And the universe has existed for a while, which gives ample time for at least one race to become the conquerors, right? So Fermi asked the question that would go down in history: “Where is everybody?”
Enrico Fermi asked the initial question, but it fell onto the shoulders of other scientists to find a plausible explanation. Scientist Michael Hart wrote an article titled “An Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth” in which he explores the Fermi Paradox, and how there are no other advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Of course, aliens could have visited earth, just before our written history.
Hart outlines four arguments regarding this paradox. The first states that aliens never came because of some physical complication that severely limits space travel. This one could be plausible, but it’s also somewhat depressing because that means humans would also never be able to realistically travel in space. Another line of thinking argues that maybe aliens never chose to come to earth. This one is easier to swallow because then space travel isn’t limited by science, but rather by choice. Maybe the rise alien civilizations relatively parallel our own rise. This way, it’s still yet too early for galactic colonization. The final reason I already mentioned above: aliens have visited earth in the past but we did not see them.
Whatever the reason for this lack of contact, it mostly lies within our own Milky Way galaxy. There are millions of galaxies in the universe, and give the amount of star systems each galaxy contains, at least one of them has to have birthed intelligent alien civilizations, right? Even if we never meet them, the statistical chance that we truly are the only intelligent beings in the entire universe (not just the Milky Way) is too daunting a thought to bear.