Fermi paradox
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Contents 4
| Type | Term |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Where is everybody |
The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high likelihood that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the galaxy and the lack of any clear evidence of it. It is named after physicist Enrico Fermi, whose question "Where is everybody?" arose from a 1950 lunchtime conversation about flying saucers.[1]
Origin
In 1950 at Los Alamos, Fermi was walking to lunch with Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York, talking about recent flying saucer reports and whether faster-than-light travel was possible. After the talk had moved on, Fermi suddenly asked where everybody was. York recalled that Fermi then calculated that Earth should have been visited long ago and many times over; Teller remembered only a remark that the distances might be very great.[1]
Fermi never published on the subject, and some scientists argue the idea has been misattributed. Carl Sagan first mentioned it in print in 1963, and in 1975 Michael Hart published a detailed study concluding that humans are probably the first civilisation in the galaxy. Hart grouped possible answers into four kinds: travel is impossible, aliens choose not to visit, they have not had time, or they have already come.[1]
Proposed answers
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Explanations fall into several broad groups:[1]
- Rarity. Life, or intelligent life, may be extremely rare. The "Great Filter", proposed by Robin Hanson in 1996, is some step, such as the origin of life, that very few worlds get past.
- Short lifetimes. Civilisations may destroy themselves, or may only send out detectable signals for a short time.
- Choice. Aliens may choose not to expand, or deliberately leave Earth alone. As early as the 1930s the Russian rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky suggested that humanity is kept in quarantine to allow its culture to develop.
Relevance to UFOs
Hart's fourth possibility, that extraterrestrials have already visited, is where the paradox overlaps with claims about UFOs; Fermi's question itself began with a conversation about flying saucer reports. The paradox also had political effects: in 1981 Senator William Proxmire cited it when he helped end NASA's funded search for extraterrestrial intelligence.[1]
References
- Fermi paradox — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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