What Is the Biblical Response to the Fermi Paradox?

Introduction

Enrico Fermi was born 125 years ago today in Rome, Italy. Who was Fermi? During the first half of the twentieth century, Fermi was one of the most important figures in the development of modern physics. Fermi’s brilliance was demonstrated at an early age. Largely self-taught, Fermi earned his PhD in physics at age 20. At age 37, Fermi won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Traveling to Stockholm to receive the award in 1938, Fermi did not return to Italy but traveled on to the USA, where he asked for asylum. The reason? The Fascist government in Italy was persecuting Jews, and though Fermi was not Jewish, his wife was, which endangered his wife and children. Many Jewish German physicists had already fled Nazi persecution in their country, which was allied with Italy. For several decades, Germans had dominated the development of modern physics, but since many of them were Jewish, in the 1930s, Germany had a serious physics brain drain, from which Germany has never recovered. Upon his arrival in the USA, Fermi received several offers of employment at prestigious universities. Fermi originally settled at Columbia University, but he soon moved to the University of Chicago, where he remained the rest of his career.

What Did Fermi Do?

Fermi was one of the most important figures in the development of modern physics.

Fermi conducted much research in the development of nuclear energy, which included nuclear weapons. For instance, late in 1942, Fermi constructed a nuclear pile that produced the world’s first sustained reaction. Fermi was present at several important milestones of the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the World War II program to develop the world’s first nuclear bomb. Fermi was present at the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site in New Mexico early in the summer of 1945. Fermi’s work with the radioactive pile eventually took his life, for he died of stomach cancer at the relatively young age of 53. Two of his graduate students who assisted him also died of cancer. Though suspected at the time, the danger of radioactive substances was not fully known until much later (in the 1950s, thousands of US soldiers were within two miles of aboveground nuclear bomb tests and then ordered to march toward ground zero immediately after detonation—there are many more examples of how cavalierly radiation and nuclear power were treated early on).

In 1925, Wolfgang Pauli elucidated his exclusion principle, which states that no two electrons in a single atom can share all four quantum numbers that describe electrons. The following year, Fermi applied the exclusion principle to an ideal gas and helped generalize this principle to particles with half-integer spin. Paul Dirac further developed the idea and proposed that particles that follow the Fermi-Dirac statistics of the Pauli exclusion principle be called fermions. To honor Fermi’s contribution to nuclear and particle physics as well as his association with the nearby University of Chicago, the premier particle laboratory in the USA is the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab for short).

Some early particle decay experiments indicated that energy was not conserved. To preserve the principle of energy conservation (the first law of thermodynamics), in 1930, Pauli proposed that a previously unknown particle was emitted during decay that carried away the excess energy. This particle had to be electrically neutral. Fermi further developed this idea in 1933 and proposed the name “neutrino,” meaning “little neutral one” in Fermi’s native Italian. Neutrinos were first directly detected in 1956. Neutrinos figure into astrophysics because they are produced in reactions that power the sun and other stars. Fermi made further contributions to astronomy. For instance, Fermi’s work with fermions paved the way for others to explain the structure of white dwarf stars. Fermi investigated the origin of cosmic rays, which led to our current understanding of how they are produced. Consequently, the Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope (launched in 2008 and still operating) was named after him.

The Fermi Paradox

In popular culture, Fermi is probably best remembered for the Fermi paradox. In 1950, Fermi was eating lunch with three other famous physicists (Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York) at Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico. The relatively new subject of flying saucers and extraterrestrial life came up. The conversation soon shifted to a new topic, but Fermi continued to mull over ETs, for according to Konopinski, Fermi blurted out, “But where is everybody?” (Teller and York reported slightly different wording of what Fermi actually said.) This account circulated among physicists and astronomers for years, but the term Fermi Paradox was not coined until David Stephenson did so in 1977. As it turns out, other people raised this question before Fermi did, but Fermi happened to ask it at the right time.

What is the reasoning behind the Fermi paradox? It has several integral parts:

1. Planets are common in the universe.
2. Even if most planets are not earthlike, there are so many planets that the number of earthlike planets must be huge.
3. There is nothing special about the earth (the mediocrity principle).
4. Since intelligent life (humanity) is on earth, intelligent life must be common in the universe.
5. Since humanity has developed space travel, intelligent life in the universe will inevitably develop space travel.
6. Since the universe is 13.8 billion years old, many alien civilizations must have developed space travel long before humanity.
7. So why haven’t aliens visited the earth?

Some clarification and updating are helpful. The Space Age did not begin until October 1957 with the launch of the first artificial satellite. However, by 1950, it was well known among informed people that rocket science was progressing with the goal of launching satellites—and eventually people—into space. So, Fermi and his three colleagues were certain that space travel would soon become a reality. The term mediocrity principle was not coined until 1995 by Alexander Viliken, but, like the Fermi paradox, the mediocrity principle had been discussed much earlier. The first exoplanet (planets orbiting other stars) was not discovered until 1992, but the idea that such planets are common turned out to be correct, because more than 6,000 exoplanets are now known. In 1950, most scientists thought that the universe was eternal. A finite age for the universe did not become widely accepted until the late 1960s, when the big bang model for the origin of the universe became popular. The current estimate of the age of the universe within the big bang model is 13.8 billion years. The age of 13.8 billion years is much less than eternal, but within the assumptions of the Fermi paradox—that probably more than enough time has passed for alien civilizations to have conquered space and visited earth—where are the aliens?

The Biblical Response to the Fermi Paradox

Although it is not usually explicitly stated, the assumption of evolution is hidden in the Fermi paradox.

Although it is not usually explicitly stated, the assumption of evolution is hidden in the Fermi paradox. The naturalistic origin of planets, life, and intelligent life (people) is assumed. The mediocracy principle stands in stark contrast to the care that God took in preparing a special environment (the earth) for man’s existence. In the biblical creation worldview, the earth is exceedingly special, so the mediocrity principle is a false premise. And science supports the biblical worldview—none of the 6,000+ exoplanets are even remotely earthlike. For the naturalistic worldview, at best, science indicates that planets like earth are very rare. But that is a huge problem for the naturalistic worldview. If the earth is unique as the biblical worldview indicates and the science implies, then what is the probability that life arose on the one planet where life is possible? And what is the probability that once life arose on earth that life would eventually evolve to produce intelligent life capable of developing space travel? When these very low probabilities are multiplied together, it boggles the mind how “lucky” the earth was. Hence, the resolution of the Fermi paradox is that the aliens have not arrived on earth because there are no aliens. For those people committed to naturalism, it is crushing to believe that we are truly alone in the universe.

But we are not alone in the universe. The Bible reveals that God made man. Furthermore, God made man in a very special way that we are unique in creation—God created man in His image and after His likeness (Genesis 1:26). Why did God do this? The Bible makes it clear that it was so that God could have a relationship with us. Unfortunately, the introduction of sin in the Garden of Eden marred that relationship. But in His love, God provided a way of salvation by the finished work of His only Son, Jesus Christ, to reunite man with Him. The ultimate mission of Answers in Genesis is to share this good news with a lost and dying world.