Over lunch at Los Alamos in 1950 Enrico Fermi blurted out "where is everybody?", and the question is still hanging. The Drake equation multiplies seven factors; the first few are now measured reasonably well thanks to the exoplanet harvest, while the odds of life arising, the odds of intelligence and the lifetime of a civilisation have exactly one data point, ourselves. Rare Earth, the Great Filter, the zoo hypothesis and the idea that we simply arrived early are speculations of equal standing. The one hard fact is that the sky stays silent.
Over lunch at Los Alamos in 1950 Enrico Fermi blurted out "where is everybody?", and the question is still hanging. The Drake equation multiplies seven factors; the first few are now measured reasonably well thanks to the exoplanet harvest, while the odds of life arising, the odds of intelligence and the lifetime of a civilisation have exactly one data point, ourselves. Rare Earth, the Great Filter, the zoo hypothesis and the idea that we simply arrived early are speculations of equal standing. The one hard fact is that the sky stays silent.
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