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A Step Closer to Solving the Fermi Paradox


Finding evidence of complex life elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy hinges on locating rocky planets with plate tectonics and a mixture of landmasses and oceans, new research suggests.

The team suggested that the lack of evidence of complex extraterrestrial life is due to the scarcity of planets hosting long-lived plate tectonics and an amalgam of watery and dry environments. Plate tectonics and the presence of both oceans and continents are critical to the development of complex life, the team argued, and the likelihood of a planet having those attributes should be incorporated into the Drake equation. Doing so reduces the number of predicted communicative life-forms in the Milky Way by several orders of magnitude, the team showed, which is a step toward reconciling the so-called Fermi paradox that no extraterrestrial civilizations have been found to date.

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