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Where Is Everybody?
Why the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation don’t actually help us to know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
Back in the summer of 1950 four physicists were walking to lunch; among their number was Enrico Fermi who was famous for creating the world’s first nuclear pile — the precursor to the atomic energy plants that would be built over the coming decades around the world to provide cheap electricity. Over the preceding months the mass media had been doing what it always does: creating empty sensationalism by means of irresponsible reportage. In this particular year, the hype was all about UFOs and alien invasions. The four physicists chatted about the possibility of technologically advanced alien life for a while before moving on to topics of greater interest. But over lunch, Fermi is reputed to have asked, “but where is everybody?”
The point of his question was simple: if the premise that one or more technologically advanced alien civilizations existed and that the absurd UFO reports in the national media were true, then where indeed was everybody? Why was there not abundant and irrefutable evidence of such life, rather than risible stories in trash newspapers and magazines?
Just over a decade later, in 1961, Frank Drake used a crude mathematical formula to act…
