The Guardian view on alien life: what if it’s not there?
衛報觀點：外星智慧生命離我們多遠
The universe is so big and full of stars that it seems obvious some must have evolved intelligent life. But it turns out we know so little we can’t know what’s obvious. Quite likely we are alone
Are we alone in the universe? Of all the billions of stars out there, is there none around which intelligent life has arisen, no other conscious beings who have looked at their sky and asked themselves whether there was anyone else out here? All we can know is that we don’t know of any others. But that has not stopped more or less well-informed speculation.
我們人類是在宇宙中是孤身一人嗎？ 在那數十億的星星中，沒有一個出現過智慧生命，沒有其他有意識的生物看著他們的天空並問自己是否宇宙還有其他人嗎？ 我們所能知道的是，我們不知道任何其他地外生命。 但這並沒有阻止或多或少一些論據翔實的猜測。
The universe is so unthinkably enormous and old that it seems almost impossible that only one of the stars in the universe has actually developed intelligent life.
宇宙是如此難以想像的廣袤與古老，以至於宇宙中似乎不可能只有一顆行星上已經發展出了智慧生命。
So where are they? So asked the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. If other intelligent species are out there, why haven’t we seen them yet? The mismatch between what we』d expect from the numbers, which is a universe full of spacefaring civilisations, and what we observe – nothing – is known as the Fermi paradox. Few of the explanations proposed for it are cheering.
那他們在哪兒？ 1950年，物理學家恩裡科·費米（Enrico Fermi）如是問道。如果那裡還有其他智慧物種，我們為什麼還沒見過它們呢？ 我們期望從數字中得到的結果------這是一個充滿了航天文明的宇宙---以及我們實際觀察到的「什麼都沒有」之間的這種不匹配性---被稱為「費米悖論」。 很少有人提出的解釋是說得通的。
Perhaps all civilisations advanced enough to develop space travel are also technologically capable of annihilating themselves as well, and perhaps they all do. Perhaps the first culture to develop interstellar travel has already snuffed out all its rival species as they emerge, and is at this moment watching our first tentative explorations of the solar system as a cat might watch a fledgling on the ground.
也許所有先進到足以發展太空旅行的文明在技術上也能夠消滅自己，也許他們都會這樣做。 也許發展出星際旅行的第一種文明已經扼殺了他的所有競爭物種，並且此刻正在觀看我們對太陽系的第一次初步探索，正像貓在觀察一隻在地面上的雛鳥。
This last explanation comes from three Oxford philosophers, whose recently published paper examines the equations that make the Fermi paradox look real. These have to do partly with the number of stars with Earth-like planets in the universe, and, more crucially, with the probabilities of life evolving there, then becoming intelligent, and finally exploring space.
最後的解釋來自三位牛津哲學家，他們最近發表的論文研究了使費米悖論看起來真實的方程式。 這些必須部分地與宇宙中具有類地行星的恆星數量有關，更重要的是，生命在那裡演化，然後獲得智慧，最後探索太空。
The Oxford paper shows that when you take these uncertainties into account and run hundreds of thousands of simulations exploring them, the probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps in the universe, rises to entirely reasonable levels. The Fermi paradox vanishes. There is quite probably no one out there to rescue or to care about us. What happens to our species is in our hands alone.
牛津大學的論文表明，當你考慮到這些不確定性並運行數十萬次模擬探測它們時，我們在銀河系中，或許在宇宙中獨自存在的概率上升到完全合理的水平。 費米悖論消失了。 很可能沒有人在那裡拯救或關心我們。 我們物種的變化就掌握在我們自己手中。