Fermi Paradox : Where are the Aliens?

The Universe started 13.7 billion years ago, and it is expanding rapidly. The expansion was linear at first, but throughout the time it became exponential. The observable universe is about 93.06 billion lightyears in diameters, with at least 100 billion Galaxies. I'm stating the facts to make you realise how big is our Universe, it is so big that we only can observe a fraction of it. And scientists Belive that if the universe is infinite, then there are high chances of your doppelganger on a planet far away from us. Life on earth started 4 billion years ago. Comparing to the age of the universe, we just came into existence a few minutes ago. So the point is that we can't be alone if the universe is expanding and infinite. Our galaxy alone has a billion stars containing a million earth-like planets. Then, where are all the aliens? 

Even if we had access to the advanced spaceship technology that would take us to other galaxies, we would only be able to go to the galaxies in our local group because the universe is expanding and the galaxies are drifting away from each other. So, for now, let's just Concentrate on our galactic home the Milky Way. Milky way has about 400 billion stars, and there are about 20 billion Sun-like stars. Estimate Suggests that every 5th of them contains an Earth-like planet. That makes about 5 billion stars which have Earth-like planets, the planets which are in the habitable zone of their stars. So if we assume only 0.1% of these planets contain life, it would conclude that there are approximately one million planets with life on it. But wait there is more, the milky way is about 13 billion years old. The starting phase of the galaxy was unhabitable because things exploded a lot. But after 1-2 billion years later, the first habitable planet was born. The earth is 4 billion years old, so there probably been trillions of chance for life to develop on the other planets in the past. And if only any single of them had developed into a space travelling super civilization, we would have noticed by now. So, are we Alone? This was the Fermi paradox, The Fermi paradox is named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi and refers to the probability of advanced civilization in the milky way, and Nobody has an answer to it. But we do have some ideas that we would discuss in this article.

The Great Filters

A filter in this context is a barrier that is really hard for life to overcome. There are many filters, and we as a human species have already overcome some of them. Dinosaurs, on the other hand, were not too lucky to survive a filter like an asteroid destroying almost every life form on the planet. We are on our way to destroy ourselves by taking part in great wars that have the potential to wipe out whole humanity. Maybe great like these are resisting life to expand and become a multi-planetary species.

The First Civilization in the entire Universe

Maybe we are the first of many intelligent life forms that have yet to be born. Or perhaps we are the only civilization in this entire universe. This would conclude that we are the first civilization to be born in this universe, and if we screw-up and wipe out our own species, there might not be any other life on any planet, maybe forever. If this is true, then we would be lucky to become the first advanced civilization in the whole universe.

There is a Type III civilization

This theory says that maybe there is a Type III species, that monitors the universe and once a civilization is advanced enough, it gets eliminated, in an instant.

In case you don't know what a type III civilization is, There’s something called The Kardashev Scale, which helps us to group intelligent civilizations into three categories by the amount of energy they use.

Type I civilization

This type of civilization would be able to access the total energy available on their planet. This indicates that we would need to boost our current energy production over one hundred thousand times to reach this status. Though, being able to harness all Earth’s energy would also mean that we could have control over all-natural forces. Human beings could control volcanoes, weather, and even earthquakes.  In case you're wondering we are currently a Type 0.73 on the scale and would be Type I civilization in the next 100-200 years.

Type II civilization

A Type II civilization would be able to sustain the energy of its home star. This would require some severe Science fiction, but it is possible in principle. Various methods for this have been proposed. The most popular of which is the theoretical ‘Dyson Sphere.’ . This device would encompass every single inch of a star, gathering most of its energy output and transferring it to a planet for later use. Nothing known to science could wipe out a Type II civilization. For example, if humans survived long enough to reach Type II Civilization, and a moon-sized object entered our solar system, and it is about to hit the earth. We’d have the ability to vaporise it out of existence.

Type III civilization

Type III is a civilization that basically controls its whole galaxy and its energy. An alien race like this advance would be godlike to us. A Type III civilization is also known as a galactic civilisation. This type of society would be able to control all the available energy in a particular galaxy. Here, a species then becomes galactic traversers with knowledge of everything having to do with energy.

My thoughts to the fermi paradox is that humanity is currently a newborn baby, which is trying to learn the environment around it. As soon as we become a teenager, we would be able to comprehend the hard questions and paradoxes such as fermi paradox. Even if aliens exist, we might not have the correct equipment to capture the communication signals or the traces of an advanced society. All we need is some time and patience, the big questions and the mysteries of the universe will soon be revealed.