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FILE 031 · VOL IV · They Are Not Visiting
We Mailed Our Address to the Stars. Something Wrote Back.
The universe is silent for a reason. We are the only ones who did not get the memo.
Based on: The Voyager Golden Record
Intake record
| Recovered from | Home office of a retired radio astronomer, Green Bank, West Virginia |
|---|---|
| Contents | A copy of the Voyager pulsar map, a hydrogen-line printout, a handwritten letter to the transcriber |
| Finder | Executor of the estate of Dr. M. Adebayo |
| Status | The printout's signal has not been independently confirmed. Confirmation has not been sought. |
Recovered file
In 1950, at lunch with colleagues at Los Alamos, the physicist Enrico Fermi suddenly asked a question that nobody has answered since. The universe is billions of years old. It has hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone, many with planets. If intelligent life is even slightly common, someone should have spread across the stars by now. So, Fermi asked: where is everybody? [1]
The silence has a name now: the Fermi paradox. There are dozens of proposed solutions. Life is rare. Intelligence is rare. Civilizations destroy themselves. Distances are too vast. And one, popularized by a Chinese science fiction novel in 2008, which has kept a great many serious people awake at night. [2]
It is called the dark forest. The universe is not empty, it says. It is quiet. Every civilization out there is a hunter moving through a dark forest, holding its breath. Because in a forest like that, any light you show, any sound you make, is an invitation to whatever is better armed than you. The ones who survive are the ones who never say a word.
In 2010, Stephen Hawking warned publicly that if aliens visited us, the outcome might be like Columbus arriving in the Americas, which did not turn out well for the people who were already there. [3]
We had already sent the invitation. We sent it in 1977.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 031 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.