Have you ever heard of the Fermi Paradox? Scratch that, have you ever heard of Enrico Fermi? Fermi was a brilliant physicist who built an atomic reactor in a squash court. Seriously, the dude was freaking smart. So smart, in fact, that a simple conversation he had over lunch in 1950 has dominated the mind of every scientist at the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) for decades since.
Advertisement
While pondering the question of how many sophisticated extraterrestrial societies populated the galaxy over what we assume was a perfectly done meal, Fermi suddenly had a simple, but profound question – “where is everybody?”
Advertisement

After all, there an estimated 500 quintillion (500 billion billion) sun-like stars in the universe, which in turn necessitates that there are 100 billion billion earth-like planets out there. The very helpful people at Wait, But Why have explained the necessary math.
Advertisement
In any event, with all these earth-like planets, there must be “10 quadrillion, or 10 million billion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe. In our humble Milky Way galaxy, in fact, “there are 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilizations.”
Advertisement

That sounds like a lot except, if you think about it, the stars in our night sky consist of what amounts to a pinprick in the galaxy. Which begs the question – where is everybody?
Advertisement
Fermi and his colleagues had a couple of explanations for this fact:
- There’s nobody else out there (we’re alone!!!)
- There’s somebody out there, but for many reasons, we haven’t yet seen them.
Advertisement
Advertisement