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Why We Haven't Met Any Aliens
The story goes like this: Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence with some other physicists. They were impressed that life had evolved quickly and progressively on Earth. They figured our galaxy holds about 100 billion stars, and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years. They reasoned that extra-terrestrial intelligence should be common by now. Fermi listened patiently, then asked, simply, "So, where is everybody?" That is, if extra-terrestrial intelligence is common, why haven't we met any bright aliens yet? This conundrum became known as Fermi's Paradox.
Since then, the paradox has become ever more baffling. Paleontology has shown that organic life evolved quickly after the Earth's surface cooled and became life-hospitable. Given simple life forms, evolution shows progressive trends toward larger bodies, brains and social complexity. Evolutionary psychology has revealed several credible paths from simpler social minds to human-level creative intelligence. So evolving intelligence seems likely, given a propitious habitat—and astronomers think such habitats are common. Moreover, at least 150 extrasolar planets have been identified in the last few years, suggesting that life-hospitable planets orbit most stars. Yet 40 years of intensive searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence have yielded nothing: no radio signals, no credible spacecraft sightings, no close encounters of any kind.
Yet 40 years of intensive searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence have yielded nothing: no radio signals, no credible spacecraft sightings, no close encounters of any kind.