- Series:Astronomy, Transcript English
Genesis 1:1-2
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
We have commented before on what is often called Fermi’s Paradox. This well-known scientific paradox concerns the lack of intelligent life in the universe. It has been suggested that one way to phrase the paradox is simply to ask the question: “Where is everybody?” If there are intelligent life forms out there, shouldn’t we have come into contact with some of them by now?
Douglas Adams, in his hilarious book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, calculated the population density of the universe thus: There must be a finite number of intelligent life forms, but space is infinite, so the population density is a finite number divided by infinity. Any number divided by infinity is zero. Therefore, the intelligent population of the universe is zero, and any that you might meet are just the products of a deranged imagination.
A new idea, mentioned in New Scientist, is that we haven’t been looking long enough yet! Other suggestions that they quote are: “There’s also a chance aliens are hiding from us. They may live in parts of the galaxy we struggle to see, such as deep in the galactic center around the supermassive black hole.”
It is worth reminding ourselves that God made the Earth unique. He made the Earth on the first day of creation, whereas other planets and stars were made on day four. The uniqueness of Earth is part of God’s plan. The paradox of empty space is not a paradox after all. Author: Paul F. Taylor
As we look at the heavens that You have made, Lord, we are reminded with the psalmist: what are we, that You are mindful of us? Amen.
Ref: Why haven’t we heard from aliens? < https://www.newscientist.com/article/2180945-why-havent-we-heard-from-aliens-because-weve-barely-started-looking/ >, accessed 9/28/2018. Image: ESO, CC BY-SA 4.0.
