• Question: What are the chances for there being extra terrestrial life

    Asked by Madly to Lisa, Mark, Rachel, Sammie, Stephen, Tim on 13 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Sammie Buzzard

      Sammie Buzzard answered on 13 Mar 2018:

      There is something called the Fermi Paradox (named after the physicist Enrico Fermi who worked on loads of things including the atomic bomb but he must have thought about aliens white a bit too) which suggests that although the chances are high, there are probably no aliens.

      Fermi said:
      1-There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun,and many of these stars are billions of years older than the Solar system.
      2-With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets and if the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life.
      3-Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.
      4-Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

      So essentially even though the chances of aliens existing are high, if they do exist why haven’t we heard from them??

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