@oldFloyd -- Priorities improperly ordered.

@Ride_Captain That’s not even remotely what I was talking about. Did you read my entire comment or just the first sentence?

@indirect76 -- Though Fermi asked the question, it was Michael Hart who used it as an argument. In any case, the Fermi question/paradox was and is a foolish comment.

@evidentialist Well, I’m only aware of the Fermi paradox in the sense that we see no evidence of life in the galaxy despite it being so vast. What did Hart have to say of it? Google isn’t helping me here.

@indirect76 -- Sorry, I was just talking to John Hart on the phone before I typed my comment. It wasn't John. It was Michael Hart who did the damage attributed to Enrico Fermi.

Hart published in 1975 a detailed examination of the Fermi paradox: the contrast between the extreme likelihood of extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe and the total absence of any evidence for this. Hart’s work has since become a theoretical reference point for much of the research into what is now sometimes known as the Fermi-Hart paradox. Concerning Hart's contributions to the study of the paradox, Geoffrey A. Landis writes: "A more proper name for [the paradox] would be the Fermi-Hart paradox, since while Fermi is credited with first asking the question, Hart was the first to do a rigorous analysis showing that the problem is not trivial, and also the first to publish his results".

Below is an article I wrote for Perihelion Science Fiction Magazine that spells it out in a popular science way:

[perihelionsf.com]

@evidentialist Oh, no problem. I saw M. Hart on the Fermi Paradox Wikipedia page and figured that’s who you meant. Thanks for the link. I’ll give it a read.

@evidentialist Nice article. I think you soundly defeated the notion of aliens detecting us, then coming to visit.

Though there are other possibilities of detecting aliens than that. We could pick up ancient alien radio waves, or perhaps given an extra billion years head start, the galaxy would be saturated with alien probes that we could see.

In any case, perhaps bringing up the Fermi Paradox was not the wisest way to communicate my idea.

@indirect76 -- Oh, it's a valid observation. I was hanging around with the crowd when all of this transpired. Frank put together a rather clever little formula for Pearman to use at the meeting at Green Bank that gave an estimate of advanced alien cultures based on a series of assumptions, now known as the Drake Equation. They felt they needed something quantifying the search to support the SETI group. That meeting took place in 1961.

The Fermi Paradox was brought up sometime later and I remember Frank saying something on the order of (paraphrasing): "We'll see whose assumptions carry more weight, won't we?" Personally, I'm sympathetic to Fermi's observation with respect to when it was made. We have learned so much in the meantime, and that is why it is, by current standards, a bit laughable.

One of the things that Frank's equation did not take into account is the proportion of habitable planets where gravity will allow the residents, regardless of how advanced they are, to get into space in the first place. The problem would not be such a big deal if the manufacture and storage of antimatter were perfected, but failing that it is worth considering.

If they so much as find a single fossilized microbe on Mars, it will mean a big change in how we view ourselves and the possibilities of life elsewhere in the cosmos.

It would be another nail in the coffin of man-centred religions.

@Gareth you would think it would be another nail in the coffin, but we know how apologist can spin things.

@BcoachB -- There is a precedent from the more fundamentalist end. Anything we perceive as an alien being will be demons summoned by the Bad Guy Below.