Fermi paradox facts for kids
Enrico Fermi's paradox wonders why, given the age and size of the universe and that there are billions of stars and planets that have existed for billions of years, we have not detected any other alien civilizations. There have been attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox by finding evidence of alien civilizations, along with thoughts that such life could exist without humans knowing.
The physicist Enrico Fermi first asked the question in an informal discussion in 1950. A paper by Michael H. Hart in 1975 made scientists more curious and they began to study the question in more detail. This is why some people call it the Fermi–Hart paradox. Other common names for the same phenomenon are Fermi's question ("Where are they?"), the Fermi Problem, the Great Silence, and silentium universi (Latin for "the silence of the universe"; the misspelling silencium universi is also common).
Related pages
Images for kids
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Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States
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Enrico Fermi (1901–1954)
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Radio telescopes are often used by SETI projects.
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A composite picture of Earth at night, created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Large-scale artificial lighting produced by human civilization is detectable from space.
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Le Moustier Neanderthals (Charles R. Knight, 1920)
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Microwave window as seen by a ground-based system. From NASA report SP-419: SETI – the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
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NASA's conception of the Terrestrial Planet Finder
See also
In Spanish: Paradoja de Fermi para niños
