Inside this big box that is our Universe there are about 10.000 stars for every grain of sand on Earth and orbiting around those stars there are from 2 to 10 planets. Some of these are proven to be suitable for life to exist and most of them are a lot older than Earth, so why didn’t we see any other form of life outside of our planet ? Are we really alone ?
This is the Fermi paradox and nobody has an answer to it. However we can make some assumptions.
Possible Solutions
First of all let’s talk about Filters, these are theoretical obstacles that life needs to overcome in order to survive, life on Earth has exceeded a lot of filters but not all of them, for example a fatal nuclear war or climate change. However, even if we manage to survive, there’s a chance of reaching a possible final filter that is not beatable. Maybe a lot of civilizations before us could have reached that barrier and elapsed or we could be the first to reach this level of evolution.
A second theory is the so-called “impossible communication”; imagine trying to explain all the recent discoveries of humanity to a squirrel, you immediately assume that is impossible, and that’s totally right, after all, everything the squirrel needs is a tree and some water to survive. This situation could repeat but with different roles: us being the squirrels and an alien civilization being us. Perhaps we don’t possess the right technology to communicate with extraterrestrial beings, maybe we are just speaking the wrong language!
A third and final theory regards a very different concept of Universe: what if we are inside a simulation? It seems crazy at first, but just think about it, video games from 50 years ago looked like this:
But video games nowadays look like this:
Considering the faster and faster technology growth in 50 years video games will be indistinguishable from reality, combine this with a powerful enough computer and you can create a simulation of life as we know it.
However the question that you are probably asking yourself is: “How does this relate to the Fermi Paradox? “ Well, why would you install apps that you don’t need on your phone, it would just slow it down and take up space; the same goes here, why would I simulate other types of life when the only civilization that I want to analyse is humanity?
Or maybe we are just alone, this thought might scare you, but remember, empty or not the Universe is full of other beautiful things that are worth being experienced and to do so we just need to ask ourselves questions and try to answer them.
A cura di: Roberto Zinna, III I
