The Question

In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi calculated that even slow-moving civilizations should have colonized the galaxy by now. He looked up and asked: "Where is everybody?" That simple question became the Fermi Paradox.

The Milky Way is 13 billion years old and 100,000 light-years across. A civilization expanding at just 1% light speed could colonize the entire galaxy in roughly 10 million years — a mere blink in cosmic time.