The topic for the second episode of my new podcast is (drumroll!) the Fermi Paradox! In 1950, famed physicist and Manhattan Project scientist Enrico Fermi asked the question that launched a thousand possible resolutions – “Where is Everybody?” Given that the Universe is immensely vast, incredibly old, and filled with the ingredients for life, it stands to reason that intelligent life and advanced civilizations have evolved many times in our galaxy alone. So why haven’t we heard from any of them?

This is the essence of the Fermi Paradox, which is still going strong 70+ plus years later. And the range of proposed resolutions is wide and varied. Are they ignoring us? Are they all dead? Are they so advanced that we can’t recognize them? Are we not looking in the right places and/or for the right things? Addressing this question forces us to think big, dig deep, and confront how little we know about life, intelligence, and our place in the Universe. And this episode is just the tip of the iceberg!

Check out the episode below!

Gee, that title kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, I am happy to announce that my latest chat with Marco Ciapelli and Sean Martin at ITSP Magazine was not only a good time, talking about exoplanet studies and science. It was also a chance to introduce Stories from Space, my new podcast at ITSP Magazine, which is all about the history, future, and people that make human spaceflight a reality.

The episode is part of Ciapelli and Martin’s series, Audio Signals, where we talked about the various methods astronomers use to detect, confirm, and study planets beyond our Solar System. We also got into how all of that is about to change thanks to next-generation telescopes like the James Webb, which will be releasing its first images on July 12th (one of which is of an exoplanet’s atmosphere)!

Check out the interview here and stay tuned for more!

Is it possible that humanity hasn’t heard from advanced extraterrestrials because they have us trapped in some grand simulation? Or perhaps they have enclosed our region of space and are simulating an empty Universe. This is known as the Planetarium Hypothesis, originally proposed by scientist and science fiction author Stephen Baxter in 2001. While this possibility is likely unprovable, it has an internal logic that is hard to ignore. If you were a super-advanced extraterrestrial intelligence, isn’t this what you’d do?