Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

SO... WHERE IS EVERYBODY? WITH PROFESSOR DIABOLICA DOOMFIZZLE

HELLO? HELLO???? IS THERE ANYONE THERE? SORRY, THAT WASN'T ANYTHING TO DO WITH ALIENS. Just making sure you were still reading. What were we talking about? Ah, yes- we're trying to find out if we are alone in the Universe. We've talked a lot about looking for signs of life. Astronomers and supervillains alike have been scanning the sky for DECADES hoping to catch a glimpse of an alien. But the sad fact is that so far, we've found nothing. ZILCH. A BIG FAT ZERO. And, if you start thinking about it, this seems a little... STRANGE. Life on Earth is EVERYWHERE. You can't take a step on Earth without standing on something squishy and alive (err, WATCH OUT FOR THE LITTLE GUYS! sorry about that). Every drop of Earth water is FULL of living things. Every breath of Earth air is teeming with life. It seems like life should be EVERYWHERE.

And yes, lots of the planets we've found so far are pretty awful places to live. But across our Galaxy there should be MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of planets that are pretty much perfect for life. And as far as we can tell, we're alone. At least, our telescopes haven't found anything yet, and we've never found any "ALIENS WERE HERE" signs on Mars. Plus, nobody has bothered to drop by Earth to say "HI!." It's enough to make a species feel lonely.

WHAT'S UP WITH THAT? Once upon a time, a scientist called ENRICO FERMI was talking about aliens while having lunch with his friends. They chatted about how many planets there were in our Galaxy (more than one hundred thousand million!) and thought hard about whether aliens were real. Enrico Fermi then asked a question that was so important that astronomers named it after him: WHERE IS EVERYBODY? Even though this seems like an obvious question, nobody had put it like that before. So, it was named after Fermi and is now called the "FERMI PARADOX."

(MY OWN INVENTION, THE BOTHWELL PARADOX- A.K.A. "WHERE DID I PUT MY SANDWICH"- DIDN'T BECOME AS POPULAR FOR SOME REASON.) SO, WHAT'S THE ANSWER TO THE FERMI PARADOX? DRUMROLL... Nobody knows. Sorry about that. That doesn't mean lots of people haven't tried to come up with answers to the Fermi paradox. There are lots of fun ideas- we just don't know which one is right. LET'S LOOK AT SOME OF THE OPTIONS, SHALL WE?