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If life on Earth had to achieve n 'hard steps' to reach humanity's level, then the chance of this event rose as time to the n-th power. Integrating this over habitable star formation and planet lifetime distributions predicts >99% of…

Other Quantitative Biology · Quantitative Biology 2021-12-08 Robin Hanson , Daniel Martin , Calvin McCarter , Jonathan Paulson

As we discover numerous habitable planets around other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, including the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, one cannot help but wonder why have we not detected evidence for an advanced alien civilization as of yet.…

Popular Physics · Physics 2018-01-23 Abraham Loeb

The question of whether intelligent life exists elsewhere is one of the fundamental unknowns about our Universe. Over the past decade more than 200 extra-solar planets have been discovered, providing new urgency for addressing this question…

Astrophysics · Physics 2010-10-27 Abraham Loeb , Matias Zaldarriaga

In this article an analysis of the fundamentals used to search for extraterrestrial artificial signals in the galaxy, which have been developing for more than five decades, is presented. It is shown that the key factor for the success of…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2010-12-14 Guillermo A. Lemarchand

Our Universe is a vast, tantalizing enigma - a mystery that has aroused humankind's innate curiosity for eons. Begging questions on alien lifeforms have been thus far unfruitful, even with the bounding advancements we have embarked upon in…

Popular Physics · Physics 2023-02-20 Jonathan H. Jiang , Philip E. Rosen , Kelly Lu , Kristen A. Fahy , Piotr Obacz

In this paper we consider the Fermi's paradox (FP) and propose a possible resolution in the context of super-advanced alien civilizations. In this sense it can be regarded as to be the weak Fermi paradox (WFP). By assuming that…

Popular Physics · Physics 2021-04-09 Zaza Osmanov

It is shown that, contrary to an existing claim, the near equality between the lifetime of the sun and the timescale of biological evolution on earth does not necessarily imply that extraterrestrial civilizations are exceedingly rare.…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 Mario Livio

We investigated the habitability of the Milky Way, making use of recent observational analysis on the prevalence of Earth-sized planets, in order to estimate where and when potentially habitable star systems may have formed over the course…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-09-10 Daniel Legassick

Over a period of several decades a concerted effort has been made to determine whether intelligent life exists outside of our solar system, known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI. This has been based primarily upon…

General Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Fred H. Thaheld

One of the most interesting unsolved questions in science today is the question of life on other planets. At the present time it is safe to say that we do not have much of an idea as to whether life is common or exceedingly rare in the…

Popular Physics · Physics 2008-08-21 Brendon J. Brewer

The concept of a rapid spread of self-replicating interstellar probes (SRPs) throughout the Milky Way adds considerable strength to Fermi's Paradox. A single civilisation creating a single SRP is sufficient for a fleet of SRPs to grow and…

Popular Physics · Physics 2019-11-20 Duncan H. Forgan

Popular culture (movies, SF literature) and witness accounts of close encounters with extraterrestrials provide a rather bizarre image of Aliens behavior on Earth. It is far from stereotypes of human space exploration. The reported Aliens…

Popular Physics · Physics 2012-07-13 Pawel Sobkowicz

As of 2025, over 6000 planets are known to orbit stars other than our Sun. We can measure their sizes and orbital periods, infer their masses and temperatures, and constrain their compositions. Based on these data, about 1% of extrasolar…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-13 Floris van der Tak

It is often suggested that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect…

Popular Physics · Physics 2011-04-05 Adrian Kent

The existence of multiple regions of space beyond the observable Universe (within the so-called "multiverse") where the vacuum energy density takes different values, has been postulated as an explanation for the low non-zero value observed…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 Abraham Loeb

At this point in time, there is very little empirical evidence on the likelihood of a space-faring species originating in the biosphere of a habitable world. However, there is a tension between the expectation that such a probability is…

Popular Physics · Physics 2015-06-04 Daniel Cartin

The Drake Equation has proven fertile ground for speculation about the abundance, or lack thereof, of communicating extraterrestrial intelligences (CETIs) for decades. It has been augmented by subsequent authors to include random variables…

General Physics · Physics 2023-01-10 Reginald D. Smith

I propose a unified framework for a joint analysis of the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox, which enables a simultaneous, quantitative study of both of them. The analysis is based on a simplified form of the Drake equation and on a…

Popular Physics · Physics 2015-06-12 Nikos Prantzos

This paper investigates the possible use of space probes to explore the Milky Way, as a means both of finding life elsewhere in the Galaxy and as finding an answer to the Fermi paradox. I simulate exploration of the Galaxy by first…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Rasmus Bjoerk

If advanced civilizations appear in the universe with an ability and desire to expand, the entire universe can become saturated with life on a short timescale, even if such expanders appear rarely. Our presence in an apparently untouched…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2016-04-25 S. Jay Olson
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