Q: Are we the only technologically advanced civilization in the universe, and if we are not, then where are they?
Q: Why haven’t we seen any traces of extraterrestrial life such as probes or transmissions?
Q: Why haven’t we found their artifacts on Earth or in our solar system?
Fermi (not unreasonably, based upon his evolutionary precepts) also suggested that intelligent aliens would be curious explorers just like us.
*In a 14-billion-year-old universe, he said,
--there should have been plenty of time for at least the very first advanced race to send starships to colonize planets.
--Even if the first colonizing expedition took a million years (assuming numerous generations of explorers), the new colony, once established, and the original civilization, could then both send out another expedition apiece to colonize other planets, doubling the number of new colonies every million years.
--After 10 million years, there would be 1,023 alien colonies, and after 20 million years, there would be one million.
--At that rate, in 40 million years, there would be one trillion civilizations.
--After 14 billion years, the number of alien civilizations in the universe would be tripping over each other—and this overpopulation assumes the evolution of only one race of intelligent aliens. The problem would be compounded further if intelligent life had independently evolved in more than one planetary system.
This is a nagging problem for those who believe in the big bang and the evolution of life on Earth.
This ‘lack of ETs’ idea has become known as the Fermi paradox—in short, “Where is everybody?”There is a simple answer to why we have not found (or been visited by) intelligent, sentient life that is like, or even more advanced than, humans—there is none! There was no big bang and no billions of years, and it is no accident that the earth occupies a special position and appears unique. It is because it was uniquely designed that way by a unique Creator God. Isaiah 45:18 reminds us:
“For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is God!), who formed the earth and made it (He established it; He did not create it empty, He formed it to be inhabited!): ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other.’”
CMI