Fermi Paradox
Do aliens exist?
In 1950, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was having his usual Tuesday tacos with his colleagues, Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski from Los Alamos National Laboratory, when they started babbling about UFOs. Alien and spaceship sightings were all the rage at that time and hijacked every conversation, movie, and tabloid.
Fed up with all the theories about extraterrestrial life and interstellar travel, Fermi interjected the discussion with "Where the fuck are they then?".
This is known as the Fermi Paradox — an illogical statement that questions where the aliens are, given that the universe is 13.8 billion-years-old, and that interstellar travel should be achievable by now.
Fermi scoffed that any civilisation with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonise the entire galaxy. Yet, no such thing has occurred yet. This apparent contradiction between expectation and reality thus became the core of the Fermi Paradox.
To date, there has been no conclusive evidence of any extraterrestrial life. Even the recent US congressional hearing on UFOs last July yielded more questions than answers. Grainy footage in today's 4K world, top-secret evidence that no one can see, and nostalgia for The X-Files, will simply keep UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists happy.
“Fuck Fermi”, they say. “We’re gonna make another alien movie!”
