Life on planet Earth is abundant, resilient and pervasive. Billions of species exist on this planet, and it seems that life may well reside on other planets such as Ceres, Mars and Saturn's moon of Titan.
The question is, with so many hotspots for life, and so much potential across a galaxy with 400,000,000,000 stars, surely we should be seeing evidence of other civilisations either past or present?
Well, it's this eerie contradiction between what we expect to see and what we actually see that is called the Fermi Paradox. But what causes it?
Is there a great filter preventing all life from advancing? Are we just very early? What is going on?
Well, it seems we will never know for sure unless we find life elsewhere- but until that time, we remain in the dark.