© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
One of the longest-standing mysteries in astronomy is why no alien civilisation has attempted to contact the green-and-blue world we call home. An expert has now offered a unique answer to this cosmic puzzle.
His perspective responds to the Fermi paradox, which asks why, in a Universe vast enough to host countless potentially habitable planets, humanity has yet to detect definitive evidence of intelligent life.
In a new article released on the preprint platform arXiv, still awaiting peer review, Dr. Robin Corbet of the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center proposes an unexpectedly simple explanation: mundanity.
Corbet argues that alien societies may plateau at moderate technological levels and lose interest in large-scale exploration. Instead of assuming that advanced civilisations are hiding from us, transcending physical reality, or dying out before making contact, his idea of “radical mundanity” suggests that “the most mundane explanation(s), if physically feasible, [are] most likely to be correct.”
In this “less terrifying” view of the cosmos, a few technological civilisations might be scattered across the Milky Way, but none have achieved—or cared to pursue—the galaxy-spanning feats often imagined in science fiction. That means no Dyson spheres, no planet-wide laser beacons, and no swarms of self-replicating probes roaming the stars.
Even if interstellar travel is physically possible, Corbet argues that “the benefits obtained must outweigh the cost and potential risks.” Civilisations might eventually find that encounters with other societies yield diminishing returns—“not much new was found from each encounter”—leading to a kind of galactic scientific burnout.
He likens this to cosmic habituation, where a creature’s response to a repeated stimulus gradually weakens. After reaching a technological plateau, many civilisations might decide that sending out probes or signals is risky, unproductive, or simply not worth the effort.
In such a universe, humanity’s radio searches would be more likely to detect faint, unintentional “leakage” signals rather than deliberate broadcasts.
“A detection… might not be too far off, historically speaking,” Corbet notes. But although such a discovery would be profound, he adds, it “may not lead to a huge gain in our technology level, and could leave us somewhat disappointed.”
In other words, the galaxy might be full of life—just not the kind that is interested in finding us.
