Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

第五章

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

所以…大家都到哪里去了？和恶魔教授一起

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.

喂?你好吗? ?有人在吗？ 抱歉，那跟外星人没有任何关系。 我只是想确定你还在看书。 我们刚才在说什么？ 啊，是的——我们想知道我们在宇宙中是否孤独。 我们已经讨论了很多寻找生命迹象的问题。 几十年来，天文学家和超级反派们一直在扫描天空，希望能瞥见外星人的身影。 但可悲的是，到目前为止，我们什么也没找到。 无价值之物。一个大大的零。如果你仔细想想，这似乎有点…… 奇怪。地球上的生命无处不在。 在地球上，如果没有站在又软又活的东西上，你就走不了一步（哦，小心那些小家伙！）很抱歉)。 地球上的每一滴水都充满了生物。 地球上的每一口空气都充满了生命。 似乎生命应该无处不在。

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.

是的，到目前为止我们发现的许多行星都是非常不适合居住的地方。 但在我们的银河系中，应该有数以百万计的行星非常适合生命存在。 据我们所知，只有我们一个人。 至少，我们的望远镜还没有发现任何东西，而且我们从未在火星上发现任何“外星人曾在这里”的迹象。 再说了，没人会顺便来地球打声招呼。 这足以让一个物种感到孤独。

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."

这是怎么回事？从前，一位名叫恩里科·费米的科学家在和朋友们吃午饭时谈论着外星人。 他们聊着银河系里有多少颗行星（超过10亿颗！），并认真思考外星人是否真实存在。 恩里科·费米问了一个非常重要的问题，以至于天文学家以他的名字命名这个问题：人都到哪里去了？ 尽管这似乎是一个显而易见的问题，但以前没有人这样提出过。 因此，它以费米的名字命名，现在被称为“费米悖论”。

(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?

(我自己的发明，博斯韦尔悖论-又名 “我把我的三明治放在哪里了？”——由于某种原因没有那么流行。)那么，费米悖论的答案是什么呢？ 击鼓声……没有人知道。很抱歉。 但这并不意味着很多人没有试图找到费米悖论的答案。 有很多有趣的想法——我们只是不知道哪一个是正确的。 我们来看看有哪些选择，好吗？