the fermi paradox

the fermi-paradox says that based on the statistic of life, we should see hundreds of millions of advanced civilizations in our galaxy (billions in the universe), but we are unable to find any evidence at all of even a single advanced civilization. it's even more puzzling because, based on statistics, most of these civilizations should be much more advanced than our own.

the reasons why we don't see these civs are unexplained and why the fermi-paradox is sometimes called the "wtf are they?! paradox"

this paper posits that any advanced civilization that is 100+ years older than our own has figured out how to travel near the speed of light. as such, the reason we are unable to see these advanced civilizations is because of the relativity time dilation of these travelers going near the speed of light.

from our perspective, while they are traveling very fast (to go where they need to go), the relativity time dilation would make them appear to exist at a much slower rate.

so slow, in fact, that they would not be able to communicate with us (imagine if it took them 1000 earth years just to say "hello" to us and you can perhaps see part of the problem).

interesting to think about.

FTA:

"The [time] shift not only makes it impossible for us to communicate with any such advanced civilizations, but even to recognize the results of their cosmic activity, effectively hiding those civilizations behind an event horizon."