What Is the Fermi Paradox?

Will Marshall says the universe is remarkably silent, which is the Fermi paradox. His co-founder worked on NASA's TESS mission. Astronomers have found over 6,300 planets in the nearby galaxy, and none of them show an obvious sign of life. Enrico Fermi's question was why a universe that large has not produced a message.

His expectation is a chemical hint of life off Earth within about six or seven years. He first put the horizon at ten years and has shortened it. Telescopes on the ground and the James Webb telescope can read an atmosphere the way Planet's Tanager satellites read the ground. Earth's air is about 20 percent oxygen. Oxygen binds to iron and to almost everything else, and it stays that abundant only because plants keep releasing it. A similar signature on another planet would be a sign of life, not a photograph of an alien, and that life might not be intelligent. Radio searches have not shown obvious technology. One possibility he takes seriously is that civilizations reach nuclear weapons and AI and then destroy themselves. He hopes that is not the pattern. Earth is the only place known to have life, about eight billion people on what Buckminster Fuller called spaceship Earth, so taking care of it is a cosmic responsibility. Planet's own images have not shown aliens, and that silence is why he treats the responsibility as more than local.