Silence is made up of paradoxes, it holds both questions and answers, mysteries and the keys to unlock them. It is the moment before the reveal, a prelude; it is also nothing — a black hole in which climax falls flat. The Fermi paradox is a great example of this — it encapsulates the contradiction between the probability of the existence of advanced extraterrestrial civilisations and the lack of evidence to support the idea. In this Great Silence, as the paradox is colloquially referred to, humans can imagine themselves all alone or they can dream of an extraterrestrial kinship. A new paper titled ‘A Less Terrifying Universe? Mundanity as an Explanation for the Fermi Paradox’, awaiting peer review, places its bets on option two.
In it, scientists explain the lack of detectable extraterrestrial civilisations (ETCs) through the theory of “radical mundanity”. Robin Corbet, senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, argues that perhaps aliens have not found Earth because they are not as far ahead technologically, or different behaviourally, from humans, as scientists imagine. “The idea is that they’re more advanced, but not much more advanced. It’s like having an iPhone 42 rather than an iPhone 17,” says Corbet. According to him, such extraterrestrial life does not have the tools to reach human beings — perhaps they are not even interested.
Corbet asks people to consider the possibility that instead of being light-years ahead in their technological capacity, aliens are simply fed up — of space exploration, of human beings, of things just being too boring. Among many fantastical theories about alien life, “radical mundanity” offers a soothing middle ground. One that bets on similarities, not differences. This fills the Great Silence with a refreshing new possibility: Aliens may be far away, but in their commitment to the mundane, they are closer to humans than ever before.
