The Fermi Paradox

Mert Salur
Jul 28, 2017 · 1 min read

I recently read about the Fermi Paradox, which states that the absence of evidence of extraterrestrial life suggests that there is no extraterrestrial life for us to discover. Here is a great entertaining video explaining the paradox.

In summary, the universe is incredibly large, so despite the conditions requiring life being extremely rare, there is likely to be life somewhere.

However that somewhere may be too far away in a universe that rapidly expands on its own. We cannot reach the aliens. The aliens cannot reach us. We both look up at the stars and wonder whether we are alone.

Without breaking the speed of light, we simply cannot travel the distance needed to find the others. If breaking the speed of light were possible, there had to be some civilisation somewhere in the universe that would have achieved this, and thus would have been able to reach us on planet earth. Sadly there is no such evidence.

It is a rather somber reality; that we might either be all alone in the universe, or just too far away to reach one another. This completely destroys a dream that I have had since childhood that we would meet other beings during my lifetime.

Mert Salur

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