Scientists Finally Solved The Fermi Paradox - And It's Not Good News

On a clear night, staring up at the stars induces a sense of simultaneous wonder and insignificance. Humanity time and time again finds itself lost amid the vastness of a universe that we are still struggling to understand. There are many questions we ask ourselves when looking toward the heavens, but one of them always feels just outside of our grasp: Across all the billions of light-years of starry sky above us, could we possibly be the only life?

Scientists have explored this question for years. In 1961 physicist Frank Drake developed a mathematical equation to help solve it:

N = R*fpneflfifcL