Fermi paradox
The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."
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"But where is everybody?"
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Sci-fi writer Andy Weir says in his interview with Adam Grant (link):
- "the nearest life might be like two million light years away"
- "They are too far away"
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I totally agree with Andy's view.
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There are 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
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Each galaxy has 100 billion stars.
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Solar system is just a speck in the Milky Way Galaxy.
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Nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away.
It is indeed too far away. Without factoring all the theories why we haven't found aliens, the distance alone is the greatest factor of all in my opinion.
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Brian Cox believes civilisations are very rare, and that the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, a prerequisite for complex multicellular life, only happened once (fateful encounter hypothesis). (link)
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Adam Frank: 'there is no fermi paradox' (because, if the sky is an ocean, we've only looked at a hot tub's worth of the ocean). (link)