Where is Everybody?

When NASA discovered Earth 2.0, it was big news:

“(The planet named) Kepler 452b orbits a star similar to our sun, and at about the same distances as Earth orbits the sun, meaning it has a similar length year and exists in the “habitable zone” where liquid water can exist on a planet.”

We’ve now found more than 1,900 exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) and SETI has been scanning the skies for so long, but hey, where are the aliens?

This contradiction (expected probability of finding life in a universe this big v/s never having found signs of alien life) is called the Fermi Paradox. There are many explanations that are given (all involving probabilities; so I won’t bore you with the details), but I found this one by Karl Schroeder interesting:

“Either advanced alien civilizations don’t exist, or we can’t see them because they are indistinguishable from natural systems. I vote for the latter.”

And so he says:

“If the Fermi Paradox is a profound question, then this answer is equally profound. It amounts to saying that the universe provides us with a picture of the ultimate end-point of technological development. In the Great Silence, we see the future of technology, and it lies in achieving greater and greater efficiencies, until our machines approach the thermodynamic equilibria of their environment, and our economics is replaced by an ecology where nothing is wasted. After all, SETI is essentially a search for technological waste products: waste heat, waste light, waste electromagnetic signals. We merely have to posit that successful civilizations don't produce such waste, and the failure of SETI is explained.”

Or as Kevin Kelly paraphrases it:

“His theory suggest that what technology wants is to be “natural,” not just biologically natural, but geologically natural.”

Their technology became one with nature. Or rather, one with the entire universe. Doesn’t that remind you of Hinduism/Buddhism…except it talks about the ultimate end “goal” of technology rather than humans?

So I guess we don’t need to worry about the robot overlords that will take over our planet eventually: after all, they’re headed the same way as us: to be one with nature!