Fermi Paradox

Named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who posed the question "Where is everybody?" during a 1950 lunchtime conversation at Los Alamos National Laboratory with physicists Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York. The group had been discussing flying saucers and faster-than-light travel when Fermi's question emerged. According to Teller, everyone immediately understood he meant extraterrestrial life. Fermi followed with calculations on the probability of Earth-like planets, life, intelligence, and technological civilizations, concluding that "we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over"—crystallizing the paradox between high statistical likelihood and absent evidence.