by Shilpa Saravanan, opinions editor
If you enjoy mental somersaults, drop whatever you’re doing–right now!–and go read the Wikipedia article entitled “Fermi’s Paradox.”
I first encountered this gem while clicking arbitrarily around the planetary science section of Wikipedia well past midnight on a lazy July weekend. It’s best read under those conditions, really. A state of few worries and even fewer obligations is ideal for the kind of mind-opening, worldview-altering experiences that a Wikipedia overdose can induce.
The premise of the article is intriguing in itself: humans have been actively searching for real extraterrestrials for decades–the general argument generally goes like “if the universe is so darn big, someone must be out there somewhere“–but unless the government’s hiding things from the general public, we haven’t found even a hint of the potential existence of these unknown quantities yet. They haven’t contacted us, and we haven’t contacted them. Hence: Fermi’s paradox, or (less enigmatically put)–where are all the aliens?
Scientists who specialize in the field, of course, have a number of real-world hypotheses with which they can respond to this question. More interesting, however, are the theoretical implications of the paradox: the current search for extraterrestrial intelligence is called just that, SETI, implying that humans are an intelligent species. And we are, by our own definition of intelligence. But we have nothing to compare ourselves to–so, for all we know, we could be mere cockroaches to any passing extraterrestrials who are advanced enough for interstellar space travel. Indeed, we would be, considering that the farthest we’ve ever sent a human being into outer space is to our own moon–that is to say, merely a fraction of the distance it might take a highly advanced alien race to come calling from their home planet.
Our lack of contact with any beings outside Earth has, naturally, resulted in our becoming a very self-centered civilization in more than one way. Having conquered just about everything else on Earth, we humans tend to have a collectively high opinion of ourselves as a race (in addition to our notion of “intelligence,” see every single cheesy quote about the audacity and inventiveness of humans on the human-created Star Trek). This collective optimism doesn’t extend much beyond talk, though: international politics are a hot mess, and humans, as we’ve seen throughout history, aren’t afraid to kill each other in droves. The fact that we use the word alien to refer to members of our fellow species who live on another side of the same planet, as well as to potential members of species unknown who may very well exist light-years away from us, is telling. Human differences are magnified because we don’t have anything major to band together against.
That’s not to say that humans spend all their time fighting one another. The International Space Station is, on a small scale, an impressive example of what humans can accomplish against an unknown beyond Earth. Outer space, really, has played host to the greatest examples of international cooperation yet: where else have the United States, Russia, and China all worked together so peacefully? Space exploration will take humanity far, and if–dare I say when?–we do find aliens (or they find us, for that matter), we’ll progress to presenting ourselves not as a conglomeration of nations, but as a united planet.
In short: fund your national space agency, don’t underestimate aliens and be nice to your fellow humans. It’ll all come in useful down the road.
