Fermi’s Paradox Suggests that We Are Not Attractive on the Interstellar Dating Scene
The human body is biodegradable. In a billion years, the leftovers from our burial sites might offer interstellar archaeologists some Neuralink chips which outlasted the human flesh in which they were embedded. The carbon footprint of all humans vanishes at death, irrespective of whether prior to that moment thousands of billionaires traveled on private jets and fancy yachts or billions of other humans just travelled on foot. The blow to the human ego delivered by the beginning and end of this non-negotiable contract for life-as-we-know-it, makes everything in between a temporary gift with an expiration date.
Given this underlying setup, it would have made most sense for humans to cooperate and turn this short life into a fulfilling experience for everyone. Instead, many spend most of their time on toxicity and conflicts, and derive a sense of pleasure from reducing the happiness of others on social media or in the real world.
It is presumptuous to imagine that aliens would be impressed if they were to find the Golden Record, a message in a bottle launched to interstellar space on the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft. Even if Voyager were to crash on an exoplanet in a million years, and a curious astrophysicist would recover its ruins from the ocean, the fascination of extraterrestrials with Earth would quiet down as soon as their powerful probes would reveal how badly we behave. It is difficult to gain respect from intelligent neighbors when they notice primal conflicts through the open windows of our home.
From the perspective of interstellar observers, our allocation of resources to acts of aggression in terrestrial geopolitics versus peaceful space exploration could have been handled far more intelligently. If aliens are truly intelligent, they would avoid us. They know that mud-wrestling gets you dirty and chess playing is better. Fermi’s paradox suggests that we are not attractive on the interstellar dating scene.
Finding partners in our cosmic neighborhood would teach us how to do better. Their space trash could be our treasure. For that reason, the Galileo Project is searching for extraterrestrial technological artifacts. The materials retrieved from the fireball site of the interstellar meteor, IM1, were analyzed over the past year and the findings were published last week in a new detailed paper. We plan another expedition in 2025 to retrieve larger pieces from IM1’s wreckage and decide whether it was a rock or a Voyager-like meteoroid. In parallel, the preliminary results from monitoring half a million aerial objects in the sky from the first Galileo Observatory at Harvard University are being summarized in a new paper that will be shared publicly soon. We plan to construct and operate two additional Galileo observatories in 2025.
Why is science so thrilling? Because new data allows us to learn unexpected facts about our cosmic neighborhood rather than stay limited within the boundaries of what other humans tell us.
Collecting evidence and analyzing it requires far more effort than expressing an opinion. This is why most people express an opinion on whether extraterrestrials exist rather than invest their time and money to seek the evidence. It is difficult to train an artificial intelligence (AI) system to follow the path of evidence-based reasoning on extraterrestrials, because there is very little documentation on humans following this path. The polarization between skeptics and believers discourages those who could have followed the hard work of seeking evidence. Common sense is not common on this topic.
But being a scientist is a great privilege. At the opening of a podcast recording yesterday, Erik Huberman asked me for my origin story. Towards the end, he wrapped up by asking what I would have advised my younger self to do. I said that if I entered a time machine, my advice to my younger self would have been to ignore societal toxicity and stay on course in pursuing my passion. We live for such a short time and we better focus on what matters.
Today, I received an email from a teenager who wrote:
“Dear Professor Loeb,
I am writing to express my admiration for your work on black holes. Your research on the future of the universe has been incredibly inspiring to me, especially as an 11-year-old with a passion for astronomy. I would also be grateful if you could provide me with some advice on study tips or fun facts about your research.
Sincerely, Victoria”
To which I replied:
“Dear Victoria,
Wonderful to hear from you. I would strongly encourage you to follow your dream and become a scientist because science offers the privilege of pursuing your childhood curiosity (while being paid for that).
Avi”
As a poor-man’s substitute for entering a time machine, I get a kick from helping young scientists. My service in leadership roles as chair and director of half a dozen research organizations and initiatives was intended to help other scientists fulfil their passion.
Science offers the privilege of staying curious from beginning to end. Yes, our brain is biodegradable but the lessons learned about the cosmos will stay forever in the minds of our followers. The unknown is unlimited and humans can pursue it forever.
My mother used to say that when she watched me as a newborn in the delivery room, I was looking up in wonder about the world around me while the other babies were looking at each other. If she had lived today, she would have been proud to see that I have not stopped wondering and that I have no footprint on social media.
Hey, humanity: take better care of yourself. Dress-up, put some make-up and get ready for your next encounter of the superhuman kind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
