Scientists in large part agree that the prospects are rich for life in the universe. Perhaps less intuitively, they’ve noted that given the billions of years the universe has existed, even the slowest space-faring society could still spread galaxy-wide in a few million years — the cosmic blink of an eye. So why aren’t they visiting us on the regular?
This line of questioning is called Fermi’s Paradox, named for Enrico Fermi, a Nobel laureate and architect of the atomic bomb who also pondered the existence of alien life along exactly these lines. While many a thought has been given to possible answers, whether while stargazing, writing a scientific paper, or staring at one’s ceiling too late at night, a few theories commonly recur:
The Great Filter. While the prospects…
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Astronomy (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2025