Chadderton’s and The University of Manchester’s Advanced Fellow of particle physics professor claims that we are unlikely ever to find aliens because the chances are that intelligent life destroys itself not long after it evolves.
The advances, he adds, in technology and science necessary to contact other life forms in the universe would destroy the development of political institutions able to manage them. Subsequently, this leads the civilizations to destroy themselves.
Cox is in fact referring back to the theories first pointed out by Enrico Fermi, the physicist who built the first nuclear reactor, in 1950. Fermi said that any civilizations with rocket technology, even a simple one, can colonize the galaxy in a few million years. However, since no one accomplished this, he concluded that we were alone in the Milky Way.
In a chilling warning to the human race, Cox says
“One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that,” says Cox. “It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster.We could be approaching that position.”
Professor Cox has just published a book written with his fellow Manchester University physicist Jeff Forshaw, Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos in which they explain the basics of physics, from Kepler to the Large Hadron Collider.
In the book they take the reader on an epic journey of scientific exploration and, in doing so, reveals how we can all understand some of the most fundamental questions about our Earth, Sun, Solar System and the star-filled galaxies beyond. Some of these questions – How big is our solar system? How fast is space expanding? – can be answered from your back garden; the answers to others – How big is the Universe? What is it made of? – draw on the astonishing information now being gathered by teams of astronomers operating at the frontiers of the known universe.
