The Cosmically Mundane Reason We Might Never Meet AliensCassidy Ward
SYFYWed, October 15, 2025 at 3:51 PM EDT
5 min read
Artwork showing the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a cool red dwarf. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechIn his classic science fiction novel Contact, Carl Sagan remarked, “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
Physicist Enrico Fermi is credited with formalizing the question so many of us have asked when looking out at the night sky: Where is everybody? The apparent tension between how many alien civilizations we ought to find (many?) and how many we’ve actually found (none) became known as the Fermi Paradox and scientists have offered plenty of possible solutions over the decades.
Many of those explanations rely on extreme circumstances like civilizations so advanced we wouldn’t even recognize them or intentional subterfuge on the part of extraterrestrials, but a new pre-print paper poses a more mundane possibility. Study author Robin H.D. Corbet, senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, proposes that extraterrestrials aren’t hiding, they just don’t have the power or the motivation to reach us.
Where are all the aliens? The Drake Equation and the Fermi ParadoxThe Drake Equation is an attempt to figure out roughly how many intelligent alien civilizations ought to be out there. You start with the number of stars, then ask a series of questions. What fraction of those stars have planets? What fraction of those have conditions suitable for life? On what fraction of those does life appear? On what fraction of those does intelligence emerge? What fraction of those develop detectable technology? And, finally, how long does the average technological civilization last?
We have a pretty good idea of how many stars are in our galaxy and we’re increasingly confident planets are common. We’ve found more than 6,000 and counting. The rest of the variables regarding the frequency of complex technologically advanced civilizations and how long they last, that’s all guesswork. Maybe complex life is common but they tend to be like dolphins, smart but free of technology. Maybe technological civilizations are common but tend to wipe themselves out through nuclear war, climate change, or some other mistake of their technological adolescence. The Drake Equation attempts to account for these variables and arrive at a number.
Even with modest assumptions, the Drake Equation often suggests the galaxy should be chock full of extraterrestrial neighbors. Yet, aside from things like X-ray blasts and naturally occurring radio signals, we seem to be living in an endless but utterly quiet universe, a phenomenon known as the Great Silence.
Some proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox suggest that there are a lot of intelligent aliens out there, but they’re so far away that they, their machines, or their signals haven’t reached us yet. Alternatively, aliens might be using technologies so far above our understanding that the signals whiz by unseen or they exist in a form we can’t perceive. We may be like ants trying to understand the machinations of the people in the city miles away.
Perhaps intelligent aliens have visited and cordoned us off for our own safety or theirs. Maybe they have a philosophy of non-interference similar to Star Trek’s Prime Directive. Another more horrifying possibility is known as the Dark Forest, which likens alien civilizations to hunters moving stealthily through a deadly forest. Those civilizations (like ours) which make noise, invite interstellar wolves to their door. It might be that the Great Silence is there for a reason.
A mundane universe filled with ordinary extraterrestrials
VLACorbet argues that many of the existing explanations for the Great Silence rely on extreme circumstances, when the silence could be explained by assuming that aliens have more or less the same technology we do.
They, like us, may be curious about the cosmos but lack the ability or the desire to explore broadly or carry out expansive engineering projects. In Corbet’s mundane universe, no civilization ever colonizes or explores a large fraction of the galaxy, even with robotic probes. Each civilization, humanity included, remains forever an island in a great, cosmic sea. We might one day make contact with aliens of this kind, but only as something like interstellar pen pals, not as visiting friends.
Corbet notes this scenario precludes a future in which humanity is conquered by a malicious alien intelligence, but it would also mean we’ll never travel the stars with our alien pals. The mundane universe is a mixed bag.
"Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is purported to have said: 'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying,’” Corbet writes. “Here the idea is explored that the truth may lie between Clarke’s two terrifying alternatives in a rather more mundane, and so less terrifying, Universe."
The mundane universe assumes a plateau to technological development not so far above our current level. Rather than piloting faster-than-light spacecraft, ETs might be operating under more or less the same limitations as us.
Corbet proposes that we haven’t met technologically advanced aliens not because there aren’t any aliens, but because there isn’t any advanced technology. There are no black-hole powered spaceships or Dyson spheres, no artificial wormholes or subspace communications systems, just a bunch of people (human and otherwise) scraping out an existence the best way they know how in their own corner of the cosmos. And that’s probably where they (and we) will remain.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cosmically-mundane-reason-might-never-195140879.html
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