The “Wait But Why” blog takes an in depth look at something some of us were discussing on another thread: the Fermi Paradox.
Everyone feels something when they’re in a really good starry place on a really good starry night and they look up and see this:
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?”
full article at The Fermi Paradox – Wait But Why.
I’ve written myself about the Fermi Paradox, and my belief that the simplest explanation is that intelligent life is very rare. But I’ll fully admit that this is an area where there’s still lots of rooms for possibilities. That said, I think we can be pretty confident from the paradox that the Star Trek version of reality, with scores of alien civilizations within a few dozen light years of Earth flying around faster than light, doesn’t exist.
Tagged: Earth, Enrico Fermi, Extraterrestrial life, Fermi paradox, Milky Way, Search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Space, Star Trek, Where Is Everybody?
