Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 13, 2005

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The Fermi paradox is a paradox proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi that questions the possibilities of finding intelligent extraterrestrial life. More specifically, it deals with the attempts to answer one of the most profound questions of all time: "Are we (the Earthlings) the only technologically advanced civilization in the Universe?" The Drake equation for estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations with which we might come in contact seems to imply that we should not expect such contact to be extremely rare. Fermi's response to this conclusion was that if there were very many advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, then, "Where are they? Why haven't we seen any traces of intelligent extraterrestrial life, such as probes, spacecraft or transmissions?"

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