The Chance of Intelligent life forms, Other than Humans

The Fermi Paradox: the contradiction between the evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various estimates for the probability that they exist. Today I read a wikipedia article addressing the concept of extraterrestrial life and the probability of it existing in our universe. The article worked to develop multiple points and discuss numerous possibilities  on both sides of the argument of the existence of other highly intelligent life forms. One point that stood out to me, however, was a point that addressed one of the reasons that we may have not yet come in contact with extraterrestrial life. Mid-way through the article, the writer argues that one possibility of alien life is that intelligent life forms may be too far away from earth for any sort of interaction to be possible.

Earth is a planet, surrounded by other planets that make up our solar system, and millions of solar systems with millions of planets make up our galaxy, but it doesn't end there. The milky way, the galaxy that contains our solar system is one in trillions. There are more planets in existence than we can truly comprehend and one would argue that there are no intelligent life forms on any of them but earth? As the writer in the wikipedia article addresses this concept he discusses how intelligent life may be too far to reach. I strongly agree that somewhere in space, whether it be other solar systems or galaxies, that there must be other life forms that we are just too far from to ever reach. When put into perspective, we have travelled virtually nowhere in space. So, what makes it justifiable to believe that no other intelligent life forms exactly like us face the same dilema. It is highly likely that if other intelligent life forms do exist, that they also face similar problems to us: a lack of resources, technology, or understanding of space to travel through the universe.

In discussing this possibility, the article states that “If two civilizations are separated by several thousand light-years, it is possible that one or both cultures may become extinct before meaningful dialogue can be established (“Fermi”). Essentially, even if we could discover other complex life forms or if humans were discoverable to others, the chances of communication or acknowledgement of existence being successfully established are incredibly low. Any situation that involves travelling or communicating over a distance of millions of light years is unimaginable to humans and I feel that it must be the same for other life forms. Additionally, any attempts that may be made to communicate from one intelligent civilization to another could essentially only be received years and years after being sent, rendering many techniques that one could consider to use, useless.

When it comes to chance, the odds that other intelligent life forms exist may be small but they are not zero. We know that other life exists in the universe, and with the infinite possibilities and many factors that we have failed to consider, I believe that there truly is extraterrestrial life that will be too far away for us to ever discover.