Fermi Paradox

Extracted Attributes

• Field

  Astrobiology, Astrophysics

• Nature

  Discrepancy between likelihood of extraterrestrial life and lack of evidence

• Named after

  Enrico Fermi

• Core Question

  "Where is everybody?"

• Proposed Resolutions

  Intelligent extraterrestrial beings are extremely rare; lifetime of such civilizations is short; they exist but remain undetected; humans are incapable of perceiving them

Timeline

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle's writings include early formulations of the paradox. (Source: Wikipedia, web_search_results)

  1686

• Jules Verne's writings include early formulations of the paradox. (Source: Wikipedia, web_search_results)

  1865

• Enrico Fermi informally posed the question "Where is everybody?" during a conversation at Los Alamos. (Source: summary, Wikipedia, web_search_results)

  1950

• The Fermi Paradox first appeared in print in a paper by Carl Sagan. (Source: Wikipedia, web_search_results)

  1963

Fermi paradox

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. Those affirming the paradox generally conclude that if the conditions required for life to arise from non-living matter are as permissive as the available evidence on Earth indicates, then extraterrestrial life would be sufficiently common such that it would be implausible for it not to have been detected. The paradox is named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who informally posed the question—often remembered as "Where is everybody?"—during a 1950 conversation at Los Alamos with colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York. The paradox first appeared in print in a 1963 paper by Carl Sagan and the paradox has since been fully characterized by scientists. Early formulations of the paradox have also been identified in writings by Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1686) and Jules Verne (1865), and by Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. There have been many attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox, such as suggesting that intelligent extraterrestrial beings are extremely rare, that the lifetime of such civilizations is short, or that they exist but (for various reasons) humans see no evidence.

Web Search Results

• Fermi paradox

  The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. Those affirming the paradox generally conclude that if the conditions required for life to arise from non-living matter are as permissive as the available evidence on Earth indicates, then extraterrestrial life would be sufficiently common such that it would be implausible for it not to have been detected. [...] ## Basis [edit] The Fermi paradox is a conflict between the argument that scale "Scale (spatial)") and probability seem to favor intelligent life being common in the universe, and the total lack of evidence of intelligent life having ever arisen anywhere other than on Earth. [...] The paradox is named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who informally posed the question—often remembered as "Where is everybody?"—during a 1950 conversation at Los Alamos with colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York. The paradox first appeared in print in a 1963 paper by Carl Sagan and the paradox has since been fully characterized by scientists including Michael H. Hart. Early formulations of the paradox have also been identified in writings by Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

• A non-anthropocentric solution to the Fermi paradox

  The Fermi paradox is the conflict between the argument that the enormity of the universe seems to favour intelligent life being common in the universe, and the argument that humans have no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Attempts to solve the Fermi paradox abound and this paper will briefly go over the most relevant ones in the second section. In the third section, an original alternative solution to the Fermi paradox will be proposed. [...] The formulation of the Fermi paradox is actually too narrow. The paradox is indeed why humans have not perceived extraterrestrial life in a universe that is enormous, but the question is much broader: what may exist around humans that humans cannot perceive (‘around’ meaning both terrestrial, extraterrestrial in our universe, as well as extraterrestrial in other universes)? That is the key question. The Fermi paradox is only an anthropocentric formulation of one aspect of this question: an [...] As a consequence of what has been discussed in this paper, the solution to the Fermi paradox, but also to various other phenomena humans cannot explain, can be found in the possibility that humans are incapable of perceiving a variety of other dimensions of space and especially time, as well as other universes which exist without humans perceiving them. Hence, the Fermi paradox is a paradox only from an anthropocentric epistemological perspective.

• Fermi paradox | Definition, Resolutions, SETI, & Facts

  The Fermi paradox emerged from a conversation between physicists Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, and Herbert York at Los Alamos in the summer of 1950 about flying saucers and the likelihood of faster-than-light interstellar travel. The conversation moved on to other subjects, but Fermi brought the discussion back to aliens with, as Teller put it, “the quite unexpected question ‘Where is everybody?’” York recalled later that Fermi argued that when considering various probabilities [...] Fermi paradox, contradiction between the seemingly high likelihood for the emergence of extraterrestrial intelligence and the lack of evidence for its existence. The paradox has two broad forms: (1) Why has Earth not already been visited? and (2) Why is there no evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence at all? [...] The paradox has expanded since Fermi’s original question to encompass not only that Earth has not been visited by aliens but also that there is no communication from or evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The negative results of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) that has taken place since 1960 have been dramatically called the Great Silence.

• Fermi's Paradox

  Fermi's Paradox (i.e. Where are They?): The story goes that, one day back on the 1940's, a group of atomic scientists, including the famous Enrico Fermi, were sitting around talking, when the subject turned to extraterrestrial life. Fermi is supposed to have then asked, "So? Where is everybody?" What he meant was: If there are all these billions of planets in the universe that are capable of supporting life, and millions [...] In general, solutions to Fermi's paradox come down to either 1) life is difficult to start and evolve (either hard for the process or hard to find the right conditions) or 2) advanced civilizations destroy themselves on short timescales. In other words, this is an important problem to solve in the hope that it is 1 and not 2. The Big Picture: [...] of intelligent species out there, then how come none has visited earth? This has come to be known as The Fermi Paradox. Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. While interstellar distances are vast, perhaps too vast to be conquered by living creatures with finite lifetimes, it should be possible for an advanced

• 6 Mind-Bending Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

  The Fermi paradox, which assumes that we should have detected intelligent life in the universe by now, remains an all-time most bedeviling lunchtime remark. It relies on four fairly simple assumptions: 1) There’s nothing special about our sun. It’s ordinary and relatively young, and there are billions of stars in our galaxy that are much older.

• Instance Of

  Q482994