The Fermi Paradox and the Search for Extraterrestrials

Not that it will stop the true believers. Massive search for alien life among billions of stars comes up empty - Study Finds

While absence of evidence is not definitive, believing is something with no evidence is not scientific.

PERTH, Australia — The quest to find alien life in the cosmos has come up empty in one of the biggest searches to date. Researchers in Australia say their latest project scanned billions of stars and 144 known exoplanets for signs of alien broadcasts — but ultimately found nothing.

A trio of scientists used the Murchison Widefield Array, a collection of more than 4,000 spider-like antennas in the Western Australian desert, to listen for alien “technosignatures” near the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.

Now maybe the evidence exists, and the Men in Black are covering it up, but it doesn't look that way from the official data.

As for The Fermi Paradox, Enrico Fermi asked, way back in 1950, "Where is everybody?"

Fermi grasped that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within a few tens of millions of years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Tens of millions of years may sound like a long project, but in fact it’s quite short compared to the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly a thousand times more.

So what Fermi immediately recognized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, we don’t see any clear indication that they’re out and about. We don’t see any obvious evidence of a galactic empire or a United Federation of Planets.

This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: “where is everybody?”

It doesn't matter if the colonizers could travel at 1% the speed of light, or 10%. If you make any "reasonable assumptions" about the spread of civilization we should see signs everywhere. Instead, we see signs nowhere.

Don't expect SETI to close up shop any time soon, but this is the 4th survey to come up empty. And it is also the largest of the 4. The standard explanations trotted out by SETI include...

• We are using the wrong communications technology
• The aliens are hiding from us (the Zoo hypothesis)

SETI doesn't usually claim that the Men in Black are hiding stuff from us, but then then if there are Men in Black they control SETI; they would have to.

At some point however, we are going to have to own up to the fact, that given the publicly available data, it looks like we have the same amount evidence for the Easter Bunny as we do for extraterrestrials. (Hat tip to Don Surber.)