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Aliens may be too lazy to make first contact
BBC Science Focus
|January 2026
Space is big, so aliens may be kicking back, relaxing and waiting for us to come to them
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A NASA scientist has proposed an unexpectedly down-to-Earth solution to one of astronomy’s most enduring questions: why haven't we heard from other alien civilizations yet?
In a study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, Dr Robin Corbet of the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center argues that it could simply be because they're not interested in finding us.
Corbet’s theory offers a unique, if somewhat disappointing, answer to the Fermi paradox, which asks why, in a Universe vast enough to host countless potentially habitable worlds, we've so far found no clear evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
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