Stephen Hawking recently discussed his new 100 million dollar project aimed at discovering extraterrestrial life (aliens), titled “Breakthrough Listen.”
Frank Drake, chairman emeritus of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, produced an equation in 1961 for calculating the amount of alien civilizations capable of communication with humans. When Drake plugs modern data into the formula the number he comes up with is 10,000, according to the Washington Post.
“But if the universe is so full of the ingredients for alien life, why haven’t we found any yet? Or, more pertinently, considering how young humans are (100,000 years) compared to the age of the universe (13.8 billion years), why haven’t any aliens found us?”
The question above is known as the Fermi Paradox, which was created by Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist.
“So far, notwithstanding the arguments of conspiracy theorists, we’ve seen no evidence of those probes. SETI experiments searching for radio signals or other broadcasts from possible alien civilizations have turned up empty,” researchers noted.
“There are three broad categories of explanations for Fermi’s paradox, each of which contains several of what you might call a “sub” explanation. Those range from reasonable — intelligent life is sending out signals, we just don’t know how to listen — to seemingly absurd — Earth is just a “zoo” built by aliens to hold us for their entertainment. Some come from astronomers and biologists, other from philosophers and economists. Still others seem to have more in common with science fiction than science. All of them are entertaining to think about, at least in the abstract sense,” according to the Washington Post.
The three explanations for this paradox include the following: Humans on Earth are really alone; other life is out there but Earth hasn’t heard from it yet; or the extraterrestrial are uninterested in humans.
