Who: Enrico Fermi
- born in Rome, September 29, 1901
- died November 28, 1954
- became an American citizen in 1944
- physicist, initially working in Rome
- known for achieving the first controlled nuclear reaction
- worked on the creation and development of the nuclear bomb — the Manhattan Project
- “architect of the nuclear age” and the “architect of the atomic bomb”
When: “In the summer of 1950 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.”
What: As three of the men walked to lunch, [Edward] Teller writes . . . . that “we talked about flying saucers and the obvious statement that the flying saucers are not real”. . . .The conversation came to an end, with his colleagues assuming they had moved on from the topic, but later at lunch Fermi shouted in exasperation, “Where is everybody?” They found it amusing, but the question persisted, eventually being fleshed out with a formula that calculated the number of stars, solar systems, and planets in the galaxy and the supposed likelihood of life. It became known as the Fermi Paradox. Teller wrote, “The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi’s question coming from the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life.” [9]
Since that day, Fermi’s epiphanic moment has given birth to a number of potential solutions based on three premises: Any extraterrestrial life does not exist; extraterrestrial life exists, but has not yet contacted us; or extraterrestrial life is present, but we are unaware. [9]
- Our solar system, composed of nine planets, is located in the Milky Way Galaxy.[1]
- On the absolutely clearest of nighttime skies, the average person would see approximately 2,500 stars.
- Most all of them are approximately 1,000 light-years away — It would take 1,000 years, moving at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, to reach most of them.
- Scientists believe that there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the entire universe. [2]
- “Scientists have found thousands of Earth-like alien worlds, called exoplanets, revolving around remote stars, since the first one was discovered in 1988.” [3]. These “exo planets” are prime candidates for alien life.
- To date, there has not be found any other example of alien life on another planet or in another galaxy.
- The best scientific estimations are that there should be around 1,000 other alien civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy alone!
- However, there is no present-day awareness of any other civilization, even in our galaxy! [6]
- That has all lead to the Fermi Paradox!
- The Fermi Paradox is simply stated as follows — With all this vastness, galaxies, solar systems, planets, and exoplanets — ”Where is everybody?
. . . .
Key Biblical Thoughts:
- creation
- “by the word of His mouth”
- evolution
- vastness of creation
- general revelation
- the existence of God
- “eye has not seen”
- apologetics
- God’s greatness / Omnipotence
- finiteness
- the glory of God / heavens declare
- “the stars also”
. . . . .
Sermonic Example: There are several distinct ways that one can use illustrative material.
(use whatever you find useful in the above details)
It is called “The Fermi Paradox.” Enrico Fermi was an Italian-American physicist who worked on the development of nuclear reactions and the development of the Atomic bomb in the 1940s.
One day, Enrico Fermi was engaged in a lunchtime discussion of other worlds and alien life. As the lunchtime was being concluded, Fermi looked up and said to his fellow scientists and said . . .
“Where is everybody?”
The account indicates that they found it amusing. Edward Teller, one of the scientists present, wrote, “The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi’s question coming from the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life.”
That question has been asked over and over, and it became known as “The Fermi Paradox.” Where is everybody? Why can we not find other life in our solar system or in the universe? Why has there been no contact between civilizations after thousands and thousands of years, by them or by us — if there is a “them?”
That same kind of question has been asked for ages, by skeptics and scoffers when it comes to the return of the Lord . . . .
. . . .
Other Information & Links:
1. I understand the recent dispute about Pluto. I was taught in elementary school that Pluto was one of the nine planets of our solar system. If science can’t even figure out what planets compose our solar system, I have decided that I am just as qualified to conclude that Pluto is one of the planets of our solar system.
It should also be noted that no one has ever seen the Milky Way Galaxy. To see it or to take a picture of it, one would have to travel thousands and thousands of years, at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, to get outside of our solar system and out of our galaxy to take such a picture. We only imagine or “visualize it” by looking at other galaxies from the perspective of planet earth.
“If you have a telescope, point it to one of the many beautiful galaxies visible throughout the year. By looking at the nearest galaxies, we infer information about the structure of our galaxy. “[4]
“Most people don’t realize how incredibly difficult it is to know how the Milky Way really looks. It’s quite literally like mapping out a forest while forced to stand in one point inside the forest. You can see your immediate surrounding easily, but all the more distant objects are partly or fully obscured, and so are hard or impossible to see. . . .But even today, with our best space telescopes, we still only have a schematic idea of what the Milky Way looks like.” —Jonathan Devor, Ph.D. Astronomy, Harvard University [5]
2. https://www.space.com/25303-how-many-galaxies-are-in-the-universe.html
3. https://www.sott.net/article/294182-Potentially-habitable-Earth-like-planets-in-the-Milky-Way-Galaxy
4. https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/docs/VisualizeGalaxy2020.pdf
6. There is a great deal of present-day speculation about alien spacecraft. Interestingly, with all of our photographic abilities, there are no clear pictures of such spacecraft. Most images (like Bigfoot citings) are clouded, blurry, or so small as to defy greater clarity.
7. There are a good number of proposed reasons for the inability to discover or contact alien life.
- There are no higher civilizations in existence.
- We’re the first
- Super-intelligent life could very well have already visited Earth, but before we were here.
- The galaxy has been colonized, but we just live in some desolate rural area of the galaxy.
- The entire concept of physical colonization is a hilariously backward concept to a more advanced species. [Other aliens do not colonize]
- There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location.
- There’s only one instance of higher-intelligent life—a “superpredator” civilization (like humans are here on Earth)—that is far more advanced than everyone else and keeps it that way by exterminating any intelligent civilization once they get past a certain level. [They keep dying out.]
- There’s plenty of activity and noise out there, but our technology is too primitive, and we’re listening for the wrong things.
- We are receiving contact from other intelligent life, but the government is hiding it.
- Higher civilizations are aware of us and observing us.
- We’re completely wrong about our reality. [“This theory gained a lot of traction lately, even though it was first widely proposed in the premise of The Matrix — nearly 20 years ago. Since Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, and a slew of NASA scientists expressed their belief in this theory, it has become more popular. Maybe we haven’t made contact with extraterrestrial intelligence because we’re living in a computer simulation.” – gaia article]
- Higher civilizations are here, all around us. But we’re too primitive to perceive them. [We really don’t know as much about our universe as we think.] [8]
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
. . . .
Additional Material From This Same Article:
“The circumstances that led to our existence here on Earth today are pretty phenomenal, almost too much so. A laundry list of seemingly improbable events and circumstances allowed life to develop on Earth, one of which is our anomalous moon.
Our abnormally large moon is in near perfect orbit. Most planets our size don’t have moons this large and it is thought that without it, life on Earth wouldn’t exist. The tides, caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, play a key role in plate tectonics. Without plate tectonics, it’s theorized the continental crust would have covered the entire surface of Earth, preventing any oceanic crust. Without the moon, there might not be any oceans.”
— https://www.businessinsider.com/milky-way-galaxy-crystal-ball-image-2018-6
RhetoricAndHomiletics.Org 