What’s The Fermi Paradox?

For those of you who are not familiar with the Fermi’s paradox, the first thing we will have to do is explain who Enrico Fermi is and what his initial idea was. To avoid any confusion about the matter, we will simply imagine a nuclear physicist, gazing at the sky, wondering: “what are the chances that there is no life anywhere else in the universe?” In 1949, Enrico Fermi published a work called On the Origin of Cosmic Radiation, where he stated the fact how relatively young our planet was, how old our galaxy actually is, and to conclude this problem, he finally came up with a question: “well, where the heck are all the aliens?”

To understand this problem further in details, we will take a look at an actual equation, developed by Frank Drake, who actually asked the same and answered: “well, what are those chances?” This is the answer:

N = R*• f_p • n_e • f_l • f_i • f_c • L

Confused? Well, let’s go through the equation together. N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy that we know of. R* is the rate of the development of stars that could actually sustain an intelligent life similar to ours. f_p stands for the fraction of the previously mentioned stars with their planetary systems. n_e is the actual number of those planets that are also environmentally friendly and they could allow species to evolve and survive in the given conditions. f_l is the fraction of planets that are essentially possible to sustain life. f_i is the fraction of the same planets plus the possibility of finding an actual intelligent life. f_c is the division of civilizations that could develop a technology similar to ours and send messages if nothing else that we could pick up. L, the most important factor, is the length of time that those civilizations had to transmit signals into the universe. If you are still thinking “huh,” we will break this problem down in a single sentence:

There is no possibility, whatsoever, that there wasn’t an intelligent and technologically advanced civilization before us, and the fact that we haven’t heard about it, and received any sort of communication or a message from them, is absolutely bananas.

Of course, the problem emerges with one disappointing fact: there is no way for us to know the exact numbers of the variables presented in the above equation. At least not yet, this is a simple problem of the modern astronomy, but still a problem that is holding us back. But even the numbers that we are working with tells us that we are missing something really big. This paradox puzzled Fermi and Drake both, and in fact everybody has an opinion why this is so, but no one has a reliable answer. However, there is one answer that is extremely popular, and we are going to address that amazing possibility in the following section.

There was a contact?

The UFOlogists all across the globe love to believe in the fact that aliens are here among us, and that we are communicating with them on a daily basis. We are all well aware of the wide range of wild theories about the government facilities that are harboring aliens and extraterrestrials of all kinds, keeping us from finding out that there is an intergalactic war at hand. However, there are those UFOlogists who take this matter seriously and we want to distinct them from the above mentioned crowd. If you have any propositions and answers that we can actually comprehend as possibilities and not just theories of paranoid schizophrenics, please enlighten us and present your work. All jokes aside, one of the solutions of the Fermi paradox is actually that the alien race is well aware of our presence, but they don’t want to disturb us, or they don’t have any need to talk to us whatsoever. Don’t feel left out, if they don’t want to come to our party it is their loss.

Another solution is that they actually were here, and you can’t even go through all your TV channels without stumbling upon a show that suggests a theory about our previous involvement with ancient astronauts and their supreme technology that helped us to build pyramids et cetera. However, we have to acknowledge the fact that there are too many open questions about our past that we cannot comprehend in any possible way. If you’ve watched the movie Prometheus by Ridley Scott, you know where we are going with this. If you didn’t, please do, it is a good movie.

There are simply too many unanswered questions. A not so recent discovery of the mysterious Longyou caves in the province of Zhejiang in China, is just one of them. We can’t even assume how and who carved these monumental buildings and we are not even sure when did this happened, the best assumption is the year 212 BC. And if that is true, there is still a question of how and who. Moving on, there is a finding of the alleged pyramids in Bosnia, and although this discovery is still strongly disputed, there is a matter of 30, 000 years old cement stones that can’t be disputed. If this is true, everything we ever thought about our ancient technology is false. This list can go on to the infinity, let us not forget the Peruvian “alien” head which is still waiting to be explained. Really, what the heck is that thing? At this moment there are assumptions that it’s just a skull deformation, which certainly doesn’t explain the way how the body was buried. So what is this all about? There are in fact aliens on earth? Even better!

What if we are that same advanced civilization?

There is an obvious distinction between us and any other species on this planet, and our history is reliable as much as one would like to believe. Sure, man is a rational animal and all that, but didn’t we believe that this surface is flat just a few hundred years ago? And Pluto is not a planet actually? We keep insisting that we have a firm grasp of what we are and who we were, but how certain we are about anything at this point? Yes, the most obvious solution of the Fermi Paradox could possibly be exactly that: We are the aliens, and we came here from a planet that we’ve demolished beyond any chance of restoring, and now we are preparing to find yet a different home and a new planet to occupy. Look it up, we are actually doing that at this very moment. How funny it would be that the worst nightmare of the galaxy, and the most vicious intergalactic villains from all the sci-fi movies, is actually us?

Just to make sure that we are on the same page, we are not proposing anything. One answer is good as the other and we are sitting back, just enjoying our stay. Plus, just in case that we are not invading other planets – we are living more environmentally responsible and you should inform us if we are leaving any time soon.

Keep looking at the sky, true-believers.