The universe stretches across tens of billions of light years, lit up by the billion trillion stars, with planets of various sizes orbiting around them. That is a lot of space for life to appear, but why do we not see any? Why is Earth the only planet that we know has life on it? Where is everyone?

Alright, this started off like a Kurzgesagt video. Anyway, today I will tell you about my opinion on where everyone is.

There are 3 types of civilizations: Type 1 is a civilization which makes full use of its planet's resources (we aren't even Type 1, by the way), Type 2 makes full use of its system's resources, and Type 3 is a giant, galaxy-wide civilization. It is pretty safe to assume that there is no Type 3 civilization in our Milky Way, but is there any Type 1 or 2 civilization? If so, how far is it?

There are about 20 billion sun-like stars in our galaxy. About a fifth of them have an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone. And if only 0.1% of these planets harbored life, there would be a million populated planets in the Milky Way. But where are they, then?

The thing is, they are not advanced enough to fly around our universe in giant spaceships, nor are they close enough for us to easily see them, at least that is what I think. So right now our universe has plenty of life, but we are all isolated from each other by tens or even hundreds of light years, not knowing whether we are alone or not.

What I have just explained is the Fermi Paradox: and no one has a certain answer to it. Plenty of theories were brought up, but, as I said, none of them are confirmed.

For now, we are stuck on the wet rock that is Earth, watching the skies for anything interesting, while also making the life on our own planet even better. Will we ever find out whether we are alone or not?



Thanks for coming to my TED talk.