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Related papers: Life Before Fermi - Back to the Solar System

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Within the SETI community, a school of thought holds that ET might prefer to send information physically in so-called "probes," rather than by radio or optical beacon, in effect, a message in a bottle. In this paper, a related solution to…

Popular Physics · Physics 2021-06-09 John Gertz

The Great Filter hypothesis is an extension of the Fermi Paradox: "If life is so common in the universe, why don't we see it?" The Great Filter theory posits there are multiple obstacles or filters life must pass through which ultimately…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2026-02-10 Darren J. Dougan

Motivated by recent developments impacting our view of Fermi's paradox (absence of extraterrestrials and their manifestations from our past light cone), we suggest a reassessment of the problem itself, as well as of strategies employed by…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-09-29 Milan M. Cirkovic , Robert J. Bradbury

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

A series of astronomical observations obtained over the period 1986 to 2018 supports the idea that life is a cosmic rather than a purely terrestrial or planetary phenomenon. These include (1) the detection of biologically relevant molecules…

I introduce the Fermi Paradox and some of its solutions. Then I present my own solution which includes two proposals called the Subanthropic Principle and the Undetectability Conjecture. After discussing some consequences of this solution,…

Popular Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Beatriz Gato-Rivera

Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…

Fermi's Paradox is the contradiction between the fact that it would seem to be highly probable that there are other technologically advanced species beyond the Earth, and the fact that there is no generally accepted evidence for their…

Popular Physics · Physics 2018-12-19 Kent A. Peacock

The Great Filter interpretation of Fermi's great silence asserts that $Npq$ is not a very large number, where $N$ is the number of potentially life-supporting planets in the observable universe, $p$ is the probability that a randomly chosen…

Popular Physics · Physics 2015-11-19 Vilhelm Verendel , Olle Häggström

I shall present three arguments for the proposition that intelligent life is very rare in the universe. First, I shall summarize the consensus opinion of the founders of the Modern Synthesis (Simpson, Dobzhanski, and Mayr) that the…

Popular Physics · Physics 2015-05-13 Frank J. Tipler

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

Context. Astrobiological evolution of the Milky Way (or the shape of its "astrobiological landscape") has emerged as one of the key research topics in recent years. In order to build precise, quantitative models of the Galactic…

Popular Physics · Physics 2019-05-22 Vladimir Đošović , Branislav Vukotić , Milan M. Ćirković

In the past 15 years, astronomers have revealed that a significant fraction of the stars should harbor planets and that it is likely that terrestrial planets are abundant in our galaxy. Among these planets, how many are habitable, i.e.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2013-05-09 Francois Forget

Many hypotheses have been raised to explain the famous Fermi paradox. One of them is that self-replicating probes could have explored the whole Galaxy, including our Solar System, and that they are still to be detected. In this scenario, it…

Popular Physics · Physics 2013-10-01 M. Gillon

This paper suggests that a universal solution to the Fermi paradox exists and can be derived directly from the definition of life and/or intelligence, therefore eliminating the need for any questionable assumptions and even for the…

Popular Physics · Physics 2019-03-29 Alexander Berezin

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

Applying a principle of "radical mundanity", this paper examines explanations for the lack of strong evidence for the presence of technology-using extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) in the Galaxy - the Fermi paradox. With this principle,…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2025-12-02 Robin H. D. Corbet

The aim of my dissertation is to investigate habitability in extra-Solar Systems. Most of the time, only planets are considered as possible places where extraterrestrial life can emerge and evolve, however, their moons could be inhabited,…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2017-04-26 Vera Dobos

A simple stochastic model for evolution, based upon the need to pass a sequence of n critical steps (Carter 1983, Watson 2008) is applied to both terrestrial and extraterrestrial origins of life. In the former case, the time at which humans…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2011-04-22 Michael McCabe , Holly Lucas

It is not currently possible to create a living organism ab initio due to the overwhelming complexity of biological systems. In fact, the origin of life mechanism, this being how biological organisms form from non-living matter, is unknown.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-04-09 Darius Modirrousta-Galian , Giovanni Maddalena