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The Fermi Paradox addresses this discrepancy between the lack of evidence of alien life despite the high likelihood of its existence. Physicist Brian Cox offers various theories, like the extinguished civilizations hypothesis, for why we have never found any extraterrestrial neighbors.
There's a chance that human civilization arrived before any other life, and aliens will soon emerge. If this is the case, there's also a chance for a competition to rule the universe.
Area 51 is a highly-classified US military facility located in Nevada. Because of its remote location and secrecy, many Americans have speculated that the location hosts aliens. However, critics of this theory believe the UFO sightings are actually just military aircraft.
A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51. They Can't Stop All of Us," spawning countless memes. Millions marked themselves as "going," and seven were arrested at a gate into the area. It also inspired a music festival attended by more than 7,000 people.
Humans tend to imagine aliens as humanlike, but that's probably unlikely. From small space spiders to metallic carnivores, it's difficult to imagine what life would be like on other planets, and how we could interact with it.
Housed aboard Voyager 1 and 2, each record serves as a time capsule of human culture and a peaceful introduction to any intelligent life. Even if never played, the records can outlast humanity and travel through space for a billion years.
The Golden Record holds what is essentially a human "time-capsule," featuring music, nature sounds, and greetings from around the world. NASA used the radiation period of hydrogen’s simplest transition as a baseline to convey timing and structure. The first coded image is included on the cover as a test so aliens can check if they decoded it correctly.
The film series created by James Cameron raises several interesting questions about whether certain technological advancements are feasible, and if extraterrestrial life could thrive on a moon orbiting a distant gas giant. While Pandora, the moon that the Na'vi people live on, could in theory exist, it's unlikely that its residents would be so human-like.
Research suggests there could be a point where the energy required for new scientific breakthroughs grows faster than our ability to supply it. This may explain why humans have not yet found signals of intelligent life in the universe.
The hunt for extraterrestrial life is often associated with traveling far into the depths of space for clues. But answers could be closer than we think. Modern space missions have demonstrated our capability of sending probes beyond the solar system, making it plausible that other civilizations could do the same.