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The likeliest reasons why we haven’t contacted aliens are deeply unsettling

Started by Unbeliever, October 23, 2015, 02:49:51 pm

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Unbeliever

The likeliest reasons why we haven't contacted aliens are deeply unsettling

QuoteEven on the clearest, darkest night far from city lights, you can see only about 1% of the Milky Way galaxy's 100 billion to 400 billion stars.

Here's the real trip though: For every star in the Milky Way, there's a unique galaxy drifting through the universe, each with its own billions of stars, and approximately one planet orbiting each of those stars. That's billions and billions and billions of worlds.

And yet decades' worth of missions by Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), an organization which listens for signs of life in space, have come up completely empty handed. Every. Single. One.

Physicist Enrico Fermi is famous for posing the natural question that follows: Where is everybody? The scale of the universe and basic math tell us alien life must be common, yet there's no evidence for it.

Welcome to the Fermi paradox.

"Some say God is living there [in space]. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect either angels or gods....I don't believe in God. I believe in man - his strength, his possibilities, his reason."
Gherman Titov, Soviet cosmonaut, in The Seattle Daily Ti

The Professor

Do we have enough data now to project that, on average, stars have about one planet?