new church life: september/october 2014
galaxy is so great. Indeed, a recent estimate
(Petigura, Eric A., Howard, Andrew W.,
Marcy, Geoffrey W. “Prevalence of Earthsize Planets Orbiting Sun-like Stars.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, October 31, 2013) suggests that
there may be as many as 40 billion earthlike planets in our galaxy.
So, the reasoning goes, even if the
fraction of the 40 billion that have life is
very small, and even if the fraction of these that have life intelligent enough
to emit radio signals is even smaller, there should still be millions of planets
in the galaxy broadcasting radio signals. Yet none has yet been detected. This
brings us to the “Fermi Paradox.”
Enrico Fermi won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938 for his work in
nuclear physics. Shortly after leaving Italy with his family to escape the fascists,
he was drawn into America’s Manhattan Project, becoming one of the leading
theorists. After the war, Fermi continued with the scientific team at Los
Alamos.
It was there, over a lunch during the summer of 1950, that the subject
of flying saucers came up. With his companions at lunch he speculated as
to whether flying saucers could exceed the speed of light. The conversation
eventually turned to lighter matters, but then, out of the blue, Fermi asked:
“Where is everybody?” (E. M. Jones. “Where is Everybody? An account of
Fermi’s question,” Physics Today, August 1985, pp.11-13.)
Fermi had clearly brought together two things – a rough calculation along
the lines of the Drake Equation, and the absence of any unmistakable evidence
of extraterrestrial visitors – and enunciated a paradox: If the probability of
advanced technological civilizations is as high as it seems it should be, then
why haven’t they been heard from?
New Church doctrine
not only allows for the
existence of intelligent
life elsewhere in
the universe, it
insists upon it.
Terrestrial Exceptionalism
There has been much discussion of the Fermi Paradox, especially over the last
30 years. Over that time, dozens of solutions have been suggested. (Stephen
Webb. If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens… Where Is Everybody? Praxis
Publishing, 2002) Most of these involve challenging one or more of the factors
in the Drake equation, such that the number of civilizations in the galaxy
capable of radio communication is whittled down to earth alone. Many argue
that either the probability of the origin of life or the probability of intelligent
life evolving is vanishingly small, having happened only once.
Before the Copernican Revolution, most people believed that the earth
was the center of the universe. After the heliocentric model was widely
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