We Might Be Alone in the Milky Way
And it is a really great thing!
According to British writer Arthur Clarke, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Back in the fifties, physicist Enrico Fermi estimated that it would take a technologically advanced civilization a pinch of cosmic time to colonize the entire Milky Way, even without faster-than-light travel capability. Then, during lunch at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fermi brought this idea to some of his colleagues. According to them, the conversation ended with the famous question that would haunt scientists for years to come: “But where is everybody?”
Unfortunately, Fermi died of cancer a few years later without the opportunity to publish a paper on the subject. Regardless, his argument was so jarring that the question outlived him and became known as the Fermi paradox. The debate still rages today, books of objections and explanations have been published, but the question remains unanswered.
“In 1974, astronomer Michael Hart published the first paper building on Fermi’s argument. Hart proposed that if an alien civilization had evolved in our galaxy, it would have developed interstellar travel and colonized its neighboring stars. These colonies would, in turn, launch colonizing expeditions to their…
