Delicate Arch at night; credit: Astronomy.com
Introduction
In 1950, while having lunch with colleagues Edward Teller and Herbert York, who were chatting about a recent cartoon in the New Yorker depicting aliens, physicist Enrico Fermi suddenly blurted out, “Where is everybody?,” a question now known as Fermi’s paradox. This article presents background on Fermi’s paradox, explains why many of the proposed solutions are not viable, and mentions a few promising new results and directions.
Behind Fermi’s question was this line of reasoning: (a) Given the vast number of stars in the Milky Way (not to mention the larger
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