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Originally Posted by Harmon
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The Sun is a typical star, and relatively young. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are billions of years older.
With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets.[2] Assuming the Earth is typical, some of these planets may develop intelligent life.
Some of these civilizations may develop interstellar travel, a technology Earth is investigating even now (such as the 100 Year Starship).
Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the galaxy can be completely colonized in a few tens of millions of years.
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Fermi based his paradox on assumptions. First he assumes Earth is typical. Next he assumes interstellar travel is possible/cost effect. And he assumes there would be reason to colonize/explore everything and that it happened in the past 200,000 during human existence. Last he assumes millions of years is short time frame for an advanced species to survive and remain advanced.
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I don't think humans are typical. I think there was spark required to make life then a separate spark to make human life. Maybe we are the only lifeforms that can travel to space. Maybe others came here and brought dinosaurs home as pets. Maybe their stealth is so advanced they're undetectable.
We just learned to fly about 50 or 60 years before we left the atmosphere. But, for at least 200,000 years before that we humans, the most advanced of all species (in our own minds) didn't know much about flight or space flight. That doesn't mean intelligent advanced life didn't exist on Earth. We just hadn't figured out how to fly yet. Now we've known how to for about 0.1% of the estimated time of our existence.