Someone on Twitter/X asked a very interesting question: “Why do you think we haven’t been visited by aliens yet?”
There are many possible answers to the Fermi paradox, which is the contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial intelligence and the lack of evidence for it.
Researchers using the JWST recently detected the heavy element tellurium in the ejecta of two colliding neutron stars whose cataclysmic merger was detected in March this year by several observatories.
Neutron star mergers create gamma-ray bursts, gravitational waves and many elements with large atomic weights.
In the spectral data below, a distinct peak can be seen in the region of the spectrum associated with tellurium.
The neutron star merger studied by JWST was first detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope as Gamma Ray Burst GRB 230307 on March 7, 2023. This is the 2nd brightest GRB observed in over 50 years, ~1,000x brighter than a typical gamma-ray burst.
Duration = 200 seconds!
z = 0.065 (estimated)
Distance = ~1b ly
JWST obtained mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy 29 and 61 days after the burst, using its NIRSpec instrument.
📆 1950 the question "Where is everybody ?" occurred to #Fermi at lunch 🍽️ one day.
• The #MilkyWay 🌌 contains hundreds of billions of stars 🎇, and billions of them are similar to the #sun ☀️.
• It is highly likely that some of these stars will have planets 🪐 that are similar to #Earth 🌏.
• If we assume – via the #Copernican principle – that Earth is not particularly special, then #intelligent life should also exist on some fraction of these Earth-like #planets.
• Some of these intelligent life-forms might develop advanced technology, and even #InterstellarTravel.
• #Interstellar travel would take a long time, but as there are many sun-like #stars that are billions of years older, there has been plenty of time ⌛ for such #travel to have occurred.
• Given all this, why haven’t we met or seen 🔭 any trace of #aliens 👽 ? https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/exploration/what-is-the-fermi-paradox/
@spaceflight part the answer to the #Fermi#paradox the other part is most intelligent species don’t make it past type 1 Kardashev scale ( EX : humans aren’t even managing #ClimateChange a basic level test )