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Why Haven’t We Met Any Aliens Yet?
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Jonathan O’Callaghan | IFL Science
It is estimated there are 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, itself one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. On one planet, Earth, we know life arose, but there should be millions of Earth-like habitable planets in our galaxy alone with the capability to support life. This begs the question: Where is everyone else?
This is a problem that has long plagued astrophysicists, and there’s no clear answer. It is known as the Fermi Paradox, having been first postulated by Italian astronomer Enrico Fermi in 1950. If life is so abundant, he said, why have we never heard from anyone?
There are a number of possible solutions, some more unnerving than others. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
Space is just too big
The first, and perhaps most popular, simply relates to the vast distances involved in the cosmos. Consider that habitable planets in our own galaxy can be thousands of light-years away, making two-way communication via electromagnetic radiation – the only way we know how to communicate – nigh on impossible. For galaxies beyond the Milky Way, millions of light-years away, this obviously becomes even more difficult. It may be that distances are simply too large for conversations to take place across space-time.
We haven’t looked hard enough
It may also just be that we haven’t looked hard enough. To date, most of our searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) have relied on limited hunts using a few telescope arrays around the world; the SETI Institute has performed most of this searching so far but, as of yet, nothing has been found.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2015/09/why-havent-we-met-any-aliens-yet/
