The Fermi Paradox !

The Fermi Paradox seeks to answer the question of where the aliens are. Given that our star and Earth are part of a young planetary system compared to the rest of the universe — and that interstellar travel might be fairly easy to achieve — the theory says that Earth should have been visited by aliens already.

Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck by the epic beauty or blown away by the insane scale of the universe. Personally, I go for the old “existential meltdown followed by acting weird for the next half hour.” But everyone feels something.Physicist Enrico Fermi felt something too—”Where is everybody?”

On the very best nights, we can see up to about 2,500 stars  and almost all of them are less than 1,000 light years away from us but what we are actually looking at is a very tiny patch of the Milky way galaxy.The observable universe is very vast and consists of more than   1024 stars. Out of those 500 quintillion sun like stars and 100 quintillion earth like planets. Imagine that on 1% of those planets, the life advances to an intelligent level like it did here on Earth. That would mean there were 10 quadrillion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe.  

SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is an organization dedicated to listening for signals from other intelligent life. If we’re right that there are 100,000 or more intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, and even a fraction of them are sending out radio waves or laser beams or other modes of attempting to contact others, shouldn’t SETI’s satellite dish array pick up all kinds of signals?But it hasn’t. Not one. Ever.

  

There’s something called The Kardashev Scale, which helps us group intelligent civilizations into three broad categories by the amount of energy they use:

A Type I Civilization has the ability to use all of the energy on their planet. We’re not quite a Type I Civilization, but we’re close (Carl Sagan created a formula for this scale which puts us at a Type 0.7 Civilization).

A Type II Civilization can harness all of the energy of their host star. Our feeble Type I brains can hardly imagine how someone would do this, but we’ve tried our best, imagining things like a Dyson Sphere.

A Type III Civilization blows the other two away, accessing power comparable to that of the entire Milky Way galaxy.If a civilization on Planet X were similar to ours and were able to survive all the way to Type III level, the natural thought is that they’d probably have mastered inter-stellar travel by now, possibly even colonizing the entire galaxy.

Where is everybody?

Welcome to the Fermi Paradox.

Explanation Group 1: There are no signs of higher (Type II and III) civilizations because there are no higher civilizations in existence.

There is something called The Great Filter.The Great Filter theory says that at some point from pre-life to Type III intelligence, there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond.

That stage is The Great Filter.If this theory is true, the big question is, Where in the timeline does the Great Filter occur?It turns out that when it comes to the fate of humankind, this question is very important. Depending on where The Great Filter occurs, we’re left with three possible realities: We’re rare, we’re first, or The Great Filter is Ahead of Us.

Explanation Group 2: Type II and III intelligent civilizations are out there—and there are logical reasons why we might not have heard from them.

Here are 10 possible explanation:

1. Super-intelligent life could very well have already visited Earth, but before we were here.
2. The galaxy has been colonized, but we just live in some desolate rural area of the galaxy.
3. The entire concept of physical colonization is a hilariously backward concept to a more advanced species.
4. There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location.
5. There’s only one instance of higher-intelligent civilization that is far more advanced than everyone else and keeps it that way by exterminating any intelligent civilization once they get past a certain level.
6. There’s plenty of activity and noise out there, but our technology is too primitive and we’re listening for the wrong things.
7. We are receiving contact from other intelligent life, but the government is hiding it.
8. Higher civilizations are aware of us and observing us.
9. Higher civilizations are here, all around us. But we’re too primitive to perceive them.
10. We’re completely wrong about our reality.

Humanity is a lonely orphan on a tiny rock in the middle of a desolate universe, the humbling fact that we’re probably not as smart as we think we are, and the possibility that a lot of what we’re sure about might be wrong, sounds wonderful. It opens the door just a crack that maybe, just maybe, there might be more to the story than we realize.