{"id":28834,"date":"2023-07-30T10:05:41","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T09:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=28834"},"modified":"2023-07-30T10:20:47","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T09:20:47","slug":"where-is-everybody-its-called-the-fermi-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=28834","title":{"rendered":"Where is everybody? It&#8217;s called the Fermi paradox."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This week, various people in the United States Congress became very excited about possible evidence for extraterrestrials visiting Earth. I don&#8217;t believe it for a moment. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence &#8211; and so far there&#8217;s none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is a paradox associated with the Italian-American Enrico Fermi (who makes an appearance in the current blockbuster movie &#8220;Oppenheimer&#8221;): there ought to be many cases of intelligent life in such a vast universe, but so far we have absolutely no clear evidence that there is &#8211; or has been &#8211; even one such civilisation, still less than they have visited us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My own view, based on the current evidence, is that intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is probably extremely rare and that, even if there is (or was) such life, communication &#8211; let alone transport &#8211; between us would be so difficult as to conversationally meaningless but philosophically mind-blowing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read a brief discussion of the Fermi paradox <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fermi_paradox?wprov=sfti1\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, various people in the United States Congress became very excited about possible evidence for extraterrestrials visiting Earth. I don&#8217;t believe it for a moment. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence &#8211; and so far there&#8217;s none. It is a paradox associated with the Italian-American Enrico Fermi (who makes an appearance in the current blockbuster [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28834"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28837,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28834\/revisions\/28837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}