The Still and Silent Stars: An Exploration of the Great Silence in the Search for Galactic Civilisations Paperback – November 9, 2024

We live in a universe which is more than thirteen billion years old, in a galaxy which contains a hundred billion stars at the very least. Among those stars, planets are widespread, and the building blocks of life are too. Yet when astronomers study those stars, and scan the skies for radio emissions of either natural or artificial origin, they find no sign whatsoever of alien intelligence or civilisation.Except we are here, the human race is here, so we know that intelligent life can exist, in a form which can build space probes and send out radio waves and create other telltale signs of its presence. And still, the stars remain silent.This is the so-called Great Silence, also known as the Fermi Paradox, the idea that if intelligent life is possible then it should be widespread. As things stand, its apparent absence remains to be explained.This book explores the potential reasons for that, using the findings of a galaxy-wide simulation study to show how life can emerge, and spread, and increase in complexity, all the way from microbial slime to spacefaring intelligence. Along the way the likely sequence of events is described, including the processes and probabilities associated with each step, leading, ultimately, to an explanation for why we seem to be alone, and how that might change in the future. Read more