Fermi Paradox

The above picture shows the radius of the current Kepler telescope.

Kepler was designed to identify Earth-like planets in our galaxy. The

Milky Way is one of about 100 billion galaxies in the known universe.

"Where is everybody?"

This famous and scientifically enigmatic question was first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. Fermi was discussing the likelihood of the existence of intelligent societies throughout the galaxy and wondered why we haven't seen any yet. He reasoned that any sufficiently advanced alien society would have perfected space travel within about 10 million years. When comparing that amount of time to the age of the universe, it's actually quite small and thus very likely. Fermi reasoned that because we have yet to find evidence of such a society, then perhaps no such society exists. This is, after all, a logical assumption.

The key to answering Fermi's paradox is not in other intelligent civilizations, but in our own. It's a matter of how long we've actually been listening. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) is our main source of correspondence with our intelligent cosmic neighbors. SETI has been searching for extraterrestrial radio waves for over 50 years, and has yet to find anything. However, I want to put this 50 years in perspective for you. Here is what's known as the Cosmic Calendar.

The calendar's purpose is simple: to convert all of the universe's existence into that of 12 Earth months (or 1 year). You'll see that the last day of the month of December comprises all of humanity's existence - from our ape ancestors to now. That 28 million years is actually less than one day on the cosmic calendar. According to the calendar, we could've missed an entire 10 million year old advanced alien civilization...by a few hours.

Another suggestion is that these civilizations may be so advanced that they see our attempts at intelligence and contact comparable to that of ants. We may not be important enough for them to acknowledge us. Perhaps there's this universal "test" that analyzes an intelligent civilization's ability to survive. Maybe after we pass this intelligence test, advanced alien civilizations will open their doors and finally want to talk to us. This is known as The Great Filter:

Fermi's paradox is certainly an interesting question. However, I have a much more positive outlook on its answer and would recommend that we just keep listening. Good things come to those who wait.