


This particular proposed resolution to Fermi’s Paradox question is a very recent addition. So really, is the “Great Silence” a problem or a blessing? Antennas of CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder with the Milky Way overhead. Words like Rim, Edge, Fringe, and Verge, Beyond, Perimeter, and Periphery all conjure up feelings of intrigue and anxiety – no doubt, in different measures for different people. And the sentiment is hardly lost when it comes to modern exploration. Rather, it was an anachronistic tool to convey how uncharted areas of maps contained potential dangers. Since Fermi’s time, there have been several proposed resolutions to his question, which includes the Dark Forest Hypothesis, where extraterrestrial civilizations are deliberately avoiding contact. This became the basis of the Fermi Paradox, which refers to the disparity between high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and the apparent lack of evidence. Into this, Fermi issued a statement that would go down in the annals of history: “ Where is everybody?“ According to various accounts, the conversation turned to aliens and the recent spate of UFOs. In 1950, Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with some of his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had worked five years prior as part of the Manhattan Project. Welcome back to our Fermi Paradox series, where we take a look at possible resolutions to Enrico Fermi’s famous question, “Where Is Everybody?” Today, we examine the possibility that Earth hasn’t been visited by aliens because interstellar travel is not very practical!
