Please literally explain it like I’m 5! TIA
Edit- thank you for all the comments and particularly for the links to videos and further info. I will enjoy trawling my way through it all! I’m so glad I asked this question i find it so mind blowingly interesting
In: 4425
Enrico Fermi was a Professionally Smart Dude. He was a physicist and one of the dudes who worked on the Manhattan Project, the top secret American program to build the world’s first Atomic Bomb.
Interestingly, an atomic bomb is an **uncontrolled** nuclear reaction. Well, they all thought it would be a good idea, before they produced an UNcontrolled reaction, maybe they should try making a CONTROLLED reaction first, and Fermi was the dude they put in charge of that. He created the Chicago Pile, the first self-sustaining nuclear reactor. He called it a Pile because he was Italian by birth, spoke Italian as his native language, and he thought English was adorable. Like, what is it? I dunno man it’s just a bunch of nuclear stuff in a heap. A pile. A pile of nuclear stuff. He loved English because it could be direct and pragmatic like that.
Anyway Fermi was rare because he was good at making stuff (like the Chicago Pile) but he was also very good at thinking about stuff. There’s an entire class of subatomic particle named after him. The Fermion. Because he was the first dude to figure out how to statistically model the behavior of certain particles.
So Fermi is a professionally smart dude and he’s working at the desert lab where they originally developed the Atomic Bomb. He worked on the bomb in the 40s, they drop the bomb(s) in 1945, a lot of the people working there feel like “job done!” and go home, but Fermi wasn’t ever really bomb-oriented. He was the dude in charge of the first reactor and he, and a lot of the guys who kept working there, were interested in non-destructive uses of nuclear power.
The point is, when dude went to lunch in the cafeteria every day, he was sitting around eating egg salad sandwiches with some of the smartest guys on the planet. They talk about all sorts of stuff, baseball, movies. But something interesting has happened every since they dropped the bomb. People start talking about UFOs.
This wasn’t really a thing before 1945, but now suddenly people think there might be Space Aliens visiting Earth for no obvious reason. And the guys in the cafeteria talk about this.
Nowadays, we know a LOT about how the universe works, but back then, not so much. Still figuring it out. Fermi and those folks were among the first generation to **really** start figuring out the nuts and bolts of how reality works, and we owe much of our current understanding to the scientists of the 20th Century.
For instance, before about 1930, everyone assumed that all the lights you see in the sky are stars, and that “our universe” and “our galaxy” were basically the same thing. One galaxy, lots of stars.
Well Fermi is in the cafeteria with his buddies and it’s been about 20 years since humans have discovered that actually some of those lights in the sky are OTHER GALAXIES WTF?! Like, our galaxy has BILLIONS of stars in it, and it turns out there are literally BILLIONS of other galaxies!
Hang in there, we’re almost done.
One of the foundational assumptions of physics is “The universe is basically the same all over.” Whatever magnets do here on Earth, probably the same thing they’d do on any other planet anywhere else in the universe. Unless we have a reason to believe something’s unusual, we assume it’s not unusual.
Now, we are well aware that something MAY be unusual, but unless we have a reason to believe it IS unusual, we assume it’s not.
So, our solar system. Nine planets. One of them has people on it. Back in the 1950s, we had no evidence of planets orbiting other stars. But that was only because our telescopes weren’t good enough to see things like planets around other stars. Even the closest star is way too far away. And they knew that. They knew their telescopes were shit back then.
These guys knew A: we’ve never seen any planets orbiting other stars but B: that’s because our telescopes are shit. There doesn’t appear to be anything special about our solar system. There are *probably* lots of solar systems out there.” (spoilers, there are!)
So. Our solar system, not unusual. Universe, turns out to be massive with billions of galaxies each with billions of stars. And everyone’s talking about UFOs now because it’s the 50s and they don’t have Fortnite yet.
And one day at lunch, Fermi says… “So where IS everybody??”
That’s it. That’s the paradox. IF there’s nothing unusual about our solar system AND there are literally tens of trillions of solar systems out there…where are all the other people? Why isn’t the sky bursting with radio communication between interstellar civilizations? You know, maybe an actual visit would be a pain in the ass and there’s no reason for an interstellar civilization to know we’re here in the first place, but wouldn’t we be able to pick up there communications??
And it’s been SEVENTY YEARS and we have WAY BETTER tech than anyone back then and still…nothing. Zero.
So, that’s it. That’s the Fermi Paradox. Everyone has an idea about WHY we’ve never heard from anyone, or ever seen anyone. But no one…knows WHY we appear to be alone. Every IDEA you read about why we’ve never heard from anyone…is just a guess. And your guess is as good as theirs.
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