Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

The great silence: why haven’t we found any aliens yet?

theguardian.com · 19h · first reportShare

Given the size and age of the universe, it should be full of species with technology far more advanced than our own. So where are they? • The summer issue of the Long Read magazine is out now. Click here to order During a visit to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1950, Enrico Fermi, one of the architects of the Manhattan Project, was having lunch with other physicists when the conversation turned to flying saucers. At one point during the discussion, Fermi blurted out: “Where is everybody?” – or, as another participant remembered it, “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” If aliens exist, in other words, why have we never encountered them? The episode has become famous, marking the moment when extraterrestrial life went from a theme for philosophical speculation to a serious scientific problem. For centuries, people had wondered whether life exists on the moon or Mars, but they accepted that we would never know for certain, since making contact with another planet was impossi