Why the Fermi Paradox Was Too Optimistic
- chertzog3
- Oct 2, 2020
- 3 min read
The wikipedia article “Fermi Paradox” explores the passionate irritation of the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi over the lack of discovery of and communication with extraterrestrial life. The paradox itself is defined as “the contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability.”
The article highlights some criteria that serve the contradiction like there being billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the sun that even have Earth-like planets. Since these stars are billions of years older than the sun, it’s said that the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations. The article acknowledges that although this is true, there’s no concrete or even remotely solid evidence that proves they even exist, let alone ever visited.
The foundational aspect of the Fermi Paradox is the argument of probability. The paradox argues that intelligent life has the strong ability to overcome adversity, and thus the tendency to colonize new habitats. Therefore, it’s likely that at least some civilizations would be technologically advanced enough to colonize their own star systems. Like Enrico Fermi, many have been optimistic about the odds of other life-sustaining planets and extraterrestrials existing. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) scientists and advocates of the 1960s space project used astronomer Frank Drake’s Equation (aka the Drake Equation) to roughly calculate there to be thousands of extraterrestrial civilizations thriving in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Today, there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to sustain life, and there are estimated to be more. You’ll notice that shrinks tremendously the original planetary estimates of Drake, Fermi, and many others. In addition, all of these factors must be perfectly met or else it becomes just another planet with extreme temperatures and an atmosphere incapable of supporting anything living-- meaning otherwise, those planets remain vacant and void of anything remotely close to us. Then in 2006, Peter Shenkel, political scientist and author of many extraterrestrial intelligence books, wrote in the Skeptical Inquirer that “in light of new findings and insights, we should quietly admit that the early estimates may no longer be tenable.” There are a plethora of theories to speculate why we have not been in communication with “aliens” or if they even exist, but one thing remains: the chances of other life out in the galaxy is slim to none, and the chance of it visiting us is even smaller than that.
The more we learn about space science, the closer we come to openly acknowledging that the odds against intelligent life existing outside of Earth are astonishing and strong. All this in mind, some would ask, is it really so inconceivable that the only life-sustaining planet for light years in a galaxy that is also immaculately placed in accordance to several planet-sustaining factors, could have been designed by a higher power and not have simply come into being by coincidence? Does anything seem simple or accidental about the only consistently obvious example of perfection that we as humans have? Lastly I ask, does believing in that kind of giant-scale existence happening out of the blue with no purpose take less faith than believing it was intentionally designed to thrive? I would say it certainly takes more faith to think that all that exists not only beat the (quite literally) astronomically low odds, but perfectly too. How often do you get a perfect score on an impossibly complex exam? Except that exam is everything to ever exist.
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