A NASA scientist has detailed the bizarre reason aliens have stopped trying to contact humans, and the reason behind it might actually offend you.
While we have no actual proof aliens exist in a galaxy far, far away, the talk of UFOs dropping on our planet is something that is often brought up when discussing things out of this world.
And apparently, there's a reason why aliens are not in contact with anyone on Earth, and it's because of a certain reason that may offend many of us.
Scientists are mulling over the possibility that if aliens do exist, they simply got bored of us and stopped bothering trying to keep in contact.
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Embracing the principle of 'radical mundanity', a recently published paper suggests aliens are zipping around the universe with technology that is far more impressive than anything we see on Earth.
It focuses on something known as the Fermi paradox, which involves technology-using extraterrestrials civilisations (ETCs) within the galaxy.
Dr Robin Corbet, a scientist at the University of Maryland, who is based at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said: "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.
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"This feels more possible, more natural, because it’s not proposing anything very extreme."
But while you may think things are far more advanced out there, Corbet explained there may not be as many differences and leaps in tech that you may think.
He added: "They don’t have faster-than-light, they don’t have machines based on dark energy or dark matter, or black holes. They’re not harnessing new laws of physics."
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If this was to be the case, then experts warn aliens would become bored of space exploration and the information that is being sent back to them on planets.
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying," author Arthur C Clarke said, as per the Guardian.
Another expert, Prof Michael Garrett, who is the director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, also expressed reservations over the recently released study.
"It projects a very human-like apathy on to the rest of the cosmos. I find it hard to believe that all intelligent life would be so uniformly dull," he said.
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Garrett does discuss his own personal theory on the matter however, stating he favours a 'more adventurous explanation of the Fermi paradox'.
He added: "That other, post-biological civilisations advance so rapidly that they slip beyond our capacity to perceive them. I hope I’m right, but I could very well be wrong. Nature always has some kind of surprise for us around the corner."
Topics: Aliens, NASA, Science, Space, Technology
Callum Jones