ET is not interested - Earth holds no appeal to aliens, NASA scientist puts forward 'boredom' theory

Scientists have been looking for aliens for decades, and yet we have never been able to find them. A NASA scientist has proposed a theory which explains why we have never found another civilisation in the universe, and also why they have not reached out to us yet. According to the Drake equation, several other civilisations are residing near Earth, and are capable of contacting us. It states there is a high chance of coming into contact with intelligent life. However, this has still not happened. Dr Robin Corbet, based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, has claimed that the Milky Way hosts a decent number of extraterrestrial civilisations. But the problem is that their technological advancements are on a scale similar to humans.

A new paper titled "A Less Terrifying Universe? Mundanity as an Explanation for the Fermi Paradox", looks at reasons for why there is a lack of evidence of extraterrestrial civilisations (ETCs) in the galaxy who use technology, also called the Fermi paradox. Corbet writes that their technology is limited, just like ours, which is why neither civilisation can detect the other. Also, there is a chance that they are just not interested in contacting us. He wrote that "none have achieved technology levels sufficient to accomplish large-scale astro-engineering or lack the desire to do so." If there were such a technologically advanced civilisation out there, it would have sent out powerful beacons. But that hasn't happened, so they are just as inferior to us in technology.

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A higher civilisation won't be interested in Earth

This lack of interest stems from the fact that their technology is also not so advanced that they could cut down on the response time from another civilisation. Besides, ETCs would need to send out high-power beacons or probes to contact other civilisations. But this requires a huge amount of power and a wait time of millions or even billions of years for a response. This has possibly led them to give up on finding another living civilisation since the technology and the resources do not permit that to happen.

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Corbet also thinks that, considering there are a reasonable number of ETCs in the universe, Earth would hold little appeal to them, and is "not likely to be a very interesting place to visit." The lack of interest in Earth and boredom mean that we are not likely to face an alien attack, probably ever. "This consideration also leads to the expectation that no ETC will colonise a large fraction of the Galaxy, even using robotic probes, and that there are no long-duration high-power beacons," he wrote. However, there is still a likelihood of a much more advanced world that is simply too advanced for humanity to detect and knowingly stays away from us.