Lecturas

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WHY WE DON'T NEED THE 'MEN IN BLACK'


'Protecting the Earth from the scum of the Universe' isn't so hard when you've got the Fermi Paradox on your side.


We are constantly beingtold that our galaxy must be swarming with alien civilizations, yet there seems to be a distinct lack of evidence as to their whereabouts.
This contradiction is at the very core of a conundrum known asthe "Fermi Paradox" -- a problem that was highlighted in the 1950's by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. Six decades later and the movie "Men in Black 3" has just been released -- the third movie in atrilogy about aliens living on Earth, interacting with us and safeguarded by a covert organization called the "Men in Black."

Movie culture seems obsessed with the possibility of finding alienintelligence, yet the Paradox asks: 'where are they?'
The Fermi Paradox attempts to understand why we haven't found any extraterrestrials considering we live in a Universe that's 13.75 billion years oldand unimaginably vast. Given the sheer scale of things, it's hard to imagine that the Universe isn't teeming with life. Why is there no evidence for it?

Even if we just limit the focus on the MilkyWay, which is thought to host over 300 billion stars, then if only 1 percent of those stars possess planets hosting life, and a smaller number of them host intelligent life, then there should bethousands, if not millions, of civilizations out there. Surely that's enough to hire some real-life MIBs to protect us! Alas, it seems the evidence suggests not.
We could consider the Paradox in anotherway and wonder why it's not just the aliens that seem absent, but there also seems to be a distinct lack of their artifacts, too. After all, the Universe has been around for so long and our sun isconsidered to be a third generation star; surely at least second generation stars would have produced enough heavy elements to facilitate the formation of life?

This would mean that there should...