The Fermi Paradox: Why Haven't We Detected Extraterrestrial Life?

Greetings to the Mes Science community,

It's @skyehi and I'm back again with another physics 101 blog post for everyone.

In my previous blog post I shared the simulation theory talking about whether or not our entire reality might just be a simulation or video game played by civilizations more advanced than us.

Now in today's blog post inspired by yesterday's blog topic, let's discuss the possibility of the existence of these other civilizations.

Original Image Source by KELLEPICS from Pixabay

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The big question for all of us is; Why haven't we detected extraterrestrial lifeforms yet?

Now the seemlingly endless search for extraterrestrial life has been a fascination in the science field for years.

I mean, with our eternal universe being so gigantic, filled with stars, planets and mysterious bodies like black holes and supernovas, it seems like there should be aliens out there somewhere, right?

Imagine this guys, we have billions of galaxies and in our Galaxy the milky way, we have life on earth. With all these billions of galaxy, is there not a chance that we may have other civilizations in these galaxies.

Let's take the closet galaxy to our Milky way. This galaxy is called the Andromeda Galaxy. Our milky way is relatively smaller compare to the Andromeda Galaxy. We have over 300 billion stars in the milky way Galaxy and over a trillion stars in Andromeda. Galaxy.

So if we could have the possibility of life in our Galaxy, imagine the higher chance of other civilizations existing in the Andromeda Galaxy.

But here's the confusion, we haven't found any yet! And no other distance civilization has found us as well.

This super big mystery is what we call the Fermi Paradox, and it's been puzzling scientists and space enthusiasts for quite some time.

The Universe is a really Mind-Blowing Place

Now in order to fully understand the Fermi Paradox, you've got to think about just how insanely huge and old the universe is.

The universe is as old as 13.8 billions years since the Big Bang Theory. When we talk about the size of the universe, well the short answer is, infinite because it's constantly expanding at an accelerating rate due to dark energy.

Now there are more than two trillion galaxies out there in the known universe, each galaxy with billions of stars, and who knows how many planets are around each star.

Our sun for instance is a star in the milky way Galaxy and we have nine planets orbiting the sun, well eight planets since pluto decided to take a break from all this show off events of the universe 😂😂😂. Of the eight planets we have earth that has life.

So imagine the possibility of having life in these other galaxies that exist.

I mean just our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has around 100 billion stars. With numbers like that, it sure seems like life should be somewhere either than earth.

We can even fairly claim that there could be one or two extraterrestrial lifeform in each galaxy

The Drake Equation

Back in the 1960s, a very smart scientist and physicist by the name of Frank Drake came up with a concept or equation called the Drake Equation.

It's basically like a math tool or equation to guess how many advanced civilizations might be out there in our galaxy that would be capable of shooting signals into space that we could pick up.

Now we all know that these civilizations would probably need to be advanced enough to shoot these signals that we can detect and prove their existence.

If it's true then that means that human beings on earth may not be the lords of the universe after all .

That also means Guardians of the Galaxy movie was right. They had extraterrestrial beings like Thanos who is obviously more advanced, stronger and smarter than the average Human being but hey we still kicked his butt😂

Okay enough with the science fiction movies.

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The Drake equation attempts to explain concepts like how fast stars are born, how many stars have planets, and how many of those planets might be conducive enough for life.

The Drake Equation really gave us hope that maybe we'd find some smart aliens or extraterrestrial beings.

We can finally send the US and Russian army before them and be the first to say "We come In Peace" 👽 with our machine guns. What a paradox, coming in peace with weapons of mass destruction 🤣. I don't trust these aliens.

However we're still waiting for these alien signals till today

So Why Haven't We Found Them Yet?

The Great Filter

One idea of the reasons why we still haven't detected aliens yet is something called the "Great Filter."

This is like an obstacle course that life has to pass through, and maybe the issue is that most civilizations in these galaxies don't make it.

These life resisting challenges could be anything from super tough conditions to tech hurdles, making it really hard for civilizations to survive and thrive.

Take for instance the age of the dinosaurs and their extinction

Assuming all life not just the really big organisms was affected and ended by the chaos that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. We wouldn't exist for other civilizations to detect our signals because there wouldn't be one.

Maybe this is what has happened to these terrestrial organisms.

The Rare Earth Hypothesis

Now there are those that think the Earth might be one-of-a-kind. It's like a cosmic unicorn because it's just right for life.

Just maybe, we were a super rare and unique mistake or coincidence that happened. Maybe things like the mix of elements, a nice climate, and a magnetic field with gravity acting at the perfect spots are super rare in the universe.

But come to think of it, in this really vast universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies, the possibility of rare earth happening again is quite high right?

Our Tech Isn't Up to the Task

Now I personally agree to the fact that our technology might not be advanced enough to detect extraterrestrial life form or even the kind of signals that these possible aliens shootout from their galaxy.

It's really possible that our gadgets aren't good enough to spot aliens yet. The universe is a really massive place, and other civilizations might be out there, but they may be way ahead of us in terms of technology to the point that the signals the shoot cannot be detected by our low tech.

If this is the case then we really have to go study some more science guys😩

They're Out There, But We're Missing Them

Now the truth is that scientists, physicists and spave explorers are just getting started with space explorations.

We've barely scratched the surface of our own galaxy not to talk of other galaxies too.

And besides guys, our universe is super old so maybe aliens are out there, but we just haven't bumped into them yet.

I'm pretty sure we will eventually do that.

Thank you all for taking the time to read today's blog post. I hope you enjoyed it and found it both informative and entertaining.

As always, my blogs are open for any question or comment regarding the blog topic. I'll be happy to respond to them guys.

Have a lovely day and catch you next time on Mes Science. Goodbye ❤️

You Can Follow Me @skyehi For More Like This And Others