Welcome back to our Fermi Paradox series, where we take a look at possible resolutions to Enrico Fermi’s famous question, “Where Is Everybody?”

Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

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2021-07-15 05:00:08

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!

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. According to various accounts, the conversation turned to aliens and the recent spate of UFOs. Into this, Fermi issued a statement that would go down in the annals of history: “Where is everybody?“

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. 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.

For most of us, the starry skies and the heavenly orbs that are the planets of our Solar System are awe-inspiring and make us feel at peace. To imagine that there are similar worlds out there in neighboring star systems, where other forms of life look at the sky and experience similar feelings, is especially inspiring! But what if this is just a whole lot of naive romanticism, and the Universe is actually a dark and dangerous place?