Fermi paradox

In fact, that was rigorously proved later by Albert Einstein in 1926.

Was there anything that Einstein couldn't solve? One of the most famous paradoxes in science is the so-called Fermi Paradox.

Whilst working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the probability of alien life in the universe when he famously asked, so where is everybody? Fermi pointed out a seemingly logical contradiction.

If there are billions of stars and life even occasionally spawns, then surely we should see evidence for these aliens out there.

The Fermi Paradox is the subject of dozens of books, hundreds of lectures and countless number of after-dinner conversations, trust me.

Of course, it's only really a paradox though if one accepts the premise that alien life is common and should be evident to us.

And so, efforts to resolve the Fermi Paradox tend to focus on trying to refute some aspect of that premise.

For example, that life is rare or that aliens are shy.

Well, he certainly gets it named after him.

It's known as the Fermi Paradox.

There were probably other scientists who didn't get the credit 100

years ago.

But he got the headlines.

He gets credit, and it's called the Fermi Paradox.

And yeah, he's like, look, the universe and things are still in flux today.

There's the whole crisis of cosmology, which is beyond me, but it suddenly has put some kind of you know, things that we thought we knew into question.

Well, he certainly gets it named after him.

It's known as the Fermi Paradox.

There were probably other scientists who didn't get the credit 100 years ago.

But he got the headlines.

He gets credit, and it's called the Fermi Paradox.

And yeah, he's like, look, the universe and things are still in flux today.

There's the whole crisis of cosmology, which is beyond me, but it suddenly has put some kind of you know, things that we thought we knew into question.

Well, what I take away from this, and this is often just my approach, is I'm often asking, what did I get out of it? And what does the data actually show? And two things for me.

Yes.

Let's talk about the Fermi paradox.

So that's the question that asks, if the universe is so old, why don't we see any evidence of intelligent life out there? What's your take on that Fermi

paradox? Well, I think it was quite unfortunate that Enrico Fermi, who was an experimental physicist, asked the question this way back in 1950 while having lunch at Los Alamos and if I were there I would put my arm around his shoulder and said Enrico you're not that attractive you know that's a question that every lonely person asks and what you tell a lonely person is You know, you should be more proactive.

81.

Fermi Paradox.

Is Earth on quarantine? Someone asks me a year ago about what Fermi Paradox is.

And it's not a simple question, especially when you dig deeper.

So I'm sharing a list of excellent clips that you might enjoy.

All right, Adam, let's turn to the science behind this.

What is the Fermi Paradox?

Well, I should say first, as you said in the introduction, I'm not a scientist myself.

I'm a sort of journalist and someone who's interested in ideas.

So my learning about all of these things has been from the point of view of a lay person and a humanist.

But I think it's a subject that can be, you can grasp the outlines of it at least.

And the Fermi paradox is a sort of problem that was first formulated by the physicist Enrico Fermi in the very early 1950s.

He was one of the physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project, building the atomic bomb.

Exactly.

And that's... one of those what is the fermi paradox you ever heard of the fermi paradoxes the couple of physicists are sitting around not my area of expertise but ironically they're just sitting around having lunch these guys worked on nuclear weapons and all of that fermi was one of them physicist And he said, where is everybody? And he was talking about, you know, where are all the aliens? Where's the other life in the universe? If we're, you know, we've pretty much concluded that it has to be out there, but we haven't seen any evidence of it.

And that set off a whole bunch of inquiry by various philosophers doing some of it was mathematical and all that, trying to figure out the odds of success.

other life in our galaxy, in the universe, but also of our encountering it.