Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. My son the astronomer recently told me that

there seems to be reason to believe that it takes long enough for intelligent technological civilizations to develop, that we may possibly be the very first one in this galaxy.

It could also be that intelligent life develops but for various reasons never creates the kind of technology that would be obvious or findable by outside observers. Not to mention, all species eventually go extinct, and the possibility of actually overlapping in time and being close enough to discover each other, let alone get in touch, is probably unlikely at best. The getting in touch part is especially problematical. It is probably not ever going to be possible to travel faster than light, which means that even if we develop a means of travelling at 99.9% of light speed, it will still take years to get to nearby stars. Our galaxy, Milky Way, is 100,000 light years across. So to travel from one edge to the other (although we are not ourselves all the way on the edge) is 100,000 years at light speed. Interstellar distances, let alone inter-galactic distances, are far vaster than most people appreciate.