Reflections on the Fermi Paradox

An article by Morten St. George

Email: morten2@mortenstgeorge.info
Website: http://www.mortenstgeorge.info

In a period of less than one hundred years, humankind advanced from traveling by
horse and buggy to making a trip to its planet's satellite. Just imagine what t
he humans might be able to accomplish over the course of the next ten thousand y
ears! That is possibly enough time to develop techniques for long-term human hib
ernation, to build extremely fast spaceships, and to explore every planet within
a thousand light years.
Many years ago the famous physicist Enrico Fermi, when asked about aliens, repli
ed: Where are they? Fermi makes a strong point. Stars in our galaxy range up to
ten billion years in age and our own planet has more than four billion years of
history. Within such of time scale, ten thousand years is hardly the blink of an
eye. Indeed, there were even intelligent humans ten thousand years ago, and wha
t if the alien civilizations have been around for even longer, maybe even for mi
llions of years? Aliens, if they are out, would have visited us long ago, and wi
thout any visible signs of alien visitation, Fermi concluded that we are alone.
Fermi's logic, however, relies on a couple of underlying assumptions that have y
et to be proven. First, it assumes that alien technology is no more advanced tha
t what we can imagine for ourselves in the future. Second, it assumes that the a
lien visitors, once they got here, would want to immediately and directly announ
ce themselves. In other words, it is possible (even likely) that aliens have bee
n here and we just do not know it.
The moral of this story is that the quickest road to finding aliens might come f
rom looking into our past rather than looking into deep space. Every plausible s
ign of alien contact needs to be investigated. Of course, it is now well-known t
hat the Egyptians did not need alien help to build the pyramids and so forth, bu
t other phenomena are not so easy to explain. Among these stand the mysterious d
rawings on the desert floor near Nazca, Peru, drawings that were clearly intende
d to be viewed by an intelligent creature from the sky.
Scientists have determined, via radiocarbon dating of wooden stakes used to mark
out the drawings, that the Nazca Lines date from around 600 A.D., but science h
as made little progress on determining why the people of Nazca drew those lines.
Dozens of explanations to counter alien notions have been put forth but none ar
e convincing. Sadly, even the late Carl Sagan, one of the great proponents of th
e search for extraterrestrial intelligence, felt compelled to join the debunking
effort, suggesting that they merely worshipped the Moon and made those drawings
to entertain their god. I think it unlikely that Sagan, even with his powerful
telescopes, found eyes of the Moon and so it is highly doubtful that the people
of Nazca, with the naked eye, were able to see eyes on the Moon. As anyone who h
as studied the ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle would know, humanki
nd has acquired a lot of knowledge over the years but we remain no more intellig
ent than our ancestors.
By no means does evidence of alien visitation have to be exclusively archaeologi
cal in nature. If the aliens are far advanced (it seems likely that their techno
logy would exceed the mere ability to travel across the galaxy), they could easi
ly assimilate the basics of the our mentality and absorb our spoken languages. I
n general, therefore, every major instance of supernatural phenomena in past his
tory needs to be carefully scrutinized for signs of alien involvement. One such
instance in post-mythological times was Muhammad's encounter with the archangel
Gabriel, which produced far more than what could be attributed to ahallucination
s. I'm sure almost everyone in the world (who is not a Muslim) would instantly w
rite Muhammad off as a quack, but let's be careful. From the other side of the w
orld we see another sign of potential alien contact, namely, the Nazca Lines, ar
ising during Muhammad's lifetime.