Written by: Sashwat Paudel - 2022019, Grade X
Posted on: 24 November, 2020
This universe is a massive place. Words cannot describe how big it is. The universe is told to be 93 billion light years in diameter. Let me remind you, a light year is the distance a ray of light passes in a year. To be more clear, a light year is 9.46 x 10^12 km. That’s 9.5 trillion kilometers. And again, we are talking about the observable universe. We don't know if there is much more. For every grain of sand on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there. And, for every star in the milky way, there is a galaxy in the universe. This shows how massive and huge our universe actually is.
So, have you ever thought about the fact that we may not be alone in this universe? Are aliens really true? Have there been civilizations in the past or is anyone living right now, on a planet millions of light years apart from us? Let's take the universe out of this question because even if there were any civilization very very far from us, there would be no way to communicate with them. Even if we would have the technology to communicate, we wouldn’t be able to physically travel to the place.
It's also not certain that there have been civilizations in the past. What we do know is that there have been and there are planets that are suitable for inhabitants. This means that if life were to occur there, they would be able to sustain themselves. So, why does the universe seem so empty if there are millions of planets that have conditions just like earth that can sustain life? Have there been civilizations and they have died out? Or is it that we are the only living things in this whole universe?
This is the fermi paradox, no one has an answer to it. There are only ideas, as it is a paradox. And, there are many possible explanations for these kinds of things. We really don't know what is right and what is wrong. The only thing we can do is to come up with the explanation that makes the most sense for us. The answers to these questions may be much more ridiculous than we have thought it is.
An explanation to this question might be that something like a “Great filter” exists.
The great filter is a theory that there is a boundary to a civilization.It is a concept that eventually there is a time when there is no way for a civilization to advance more.The great filter is said to be impossible to overcome.It is said that many civilizations evolve to a certain point but they eventually come to an end, and that end being the great filter.
If this is true, we are either safe and will be a civilization that can be able to visit the whole universe, or we may be coming closer and closer to our end.
So if there is a great filter, we may have already passed it, without even noticing it. Maybe this is the reason we are living and we are alone. Maybe life is not easily formed, and we are the only living beings in the whole universe. If this is the case, we are the civilization that has passed the great filter and this is good news.
But, are we thinking ahead of ourselves? Maybe complex lifeforms are not rare at all. Maybe we are one of the civilizations that are yet to cross the great filter. Because of the heavy odds against us, we are most likely not to cross the filter.
But, there are not only these outcomes to this paradox. There are many more which we can study about. The universe is massive and we don't know what it holds, we don't know anything about the universe right now. It seems that to get the answers to these questions, the only thing we can do is wait, and wait, and wait until we get a reliable answer that everyone can agree with.
