It’s one of the biggest unanswered questions in science: if there’s life beyond Earth, why hasn’t it contacted us yet?
Now, a scientist claims to have the answer – and it suggests aliens are more similar to us than we thought.
Dr Robin Corbet, an astrophysicist at NASA[1]‘s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland[2], thinks aliens[3] got bored of trying to find us and simply stopped looking.
In a new paper, he suggests extraterrestrial civilizations are only a little bit more technologically advanced than us.
As a result, they reached the upper limit of what their technology is capable of, gave up and lost interest.
‘In the mundane perspective, where other civilizations are not that much more advanced, a limit to exploration would arise,’ said Dr Corbet.
The expert says Proxima Centauri b – a planet in another solar system 4 light years away – could be a ‘promising’ location for life to exist[4].
However, with humanity’s present spacecraft speeds, it would take around 100,000 years to reach it.

Films like ‘ET’ (pictured) and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ suggest aliens are sophisticated enough reach other worlds – but an expert claims they might only be a bit more clever than us
For decades, sci-fi films and comics have depicted aliens as sophisticated civilizations using technology beyond our comprehension.
This may have fueled the assumption that they are capable of successfully beaming messages to other planets, including our own.
For example, they could send out ‘swarms of interstellar robotic probes’ or powerful beacons in the form of light or sound that could be detected across the galaxy.
Films like ‘ET’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ even suggest they’re able to visit other worlds in their high-powered spaceships.
But according to Dr Corbet, extraterrestrials might not be able to do this because their technology level is only a bit ahead of us – akin to ‘an iPhone 42 rather than an iPhone 17’.
In fact, their technology may not include ‘significant leaps equivalent to harnessing electricity or rely on as yet unknown laws of physics’, he says in his paper.
Even if aliens do have a capable beacon transmitter, it is not clear that there would be ‘much motivation’ to operate it for millions or billions of years until their signal is noticed.
What’s more, significant colonization or exploration of the galaxy would ‘have to have benefits that outweigh the costs’, he adds.

In ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, an Indiana man finds his quiet and ordinary daily life turned upside down after a close encounter with a UFO
If life on Earth is any indicator, costly projects would get ditched if they soon prove too difficult.
Dr Corbet’s theory, known as the ‘radically mundane’ theory, offers an answer to the ‘Fermi paradox’ – the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for alien civilizations and high estimates for their probability.
In effect, the paradox asks, if there is so much extraterrestrial life, why have we not found any evidence for it?
Simply, it could be that lifeforms in the universe are stuck in the same boat, in the sense that no one quite has the capacity to do so.
Alternatively, some aliens do have the technology but are so far away from us to make it impossible.
‘The Fermi paradox may be explained if the galaxy contains a modest number of technological civilizations, with technology levels that, while more advanced than contemporary Earth, are nowhere near the ‘super-science’ levels that could result in readily detectable astro-engineering,’ Dr Corbet concludes in his paper[5], yet to be peer-reviewed.
While it might sound compelling, Professor Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Manchester, voiced reservations regarding the radically mundane theory.
‘It projects a very human-like apathy on to the rest of the cosmos,’ he told the Guardian[6].

Extraterrestrial life has never been discovered, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist (file photo)
There are already several possible answers to the Fermi paradox, including extraterrestrial life being too scared of ‘dangerous’ and ‘violent’ humans[7] to want to come here.
Dr Gordon Gallup, a biopsychologist at the University of Albany, said in a 2022 paper: ‘If there is intelligent life elsewhere, they may view humans as extremely dangerous.
‘Maybe this is why there is no proof or compelling evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence – we pose too great a risk, and they do not want to be discovered.’
Alternatively, aliens are unrecognizable because they are so far advanced and have transcended to a different realm, another theory alleges.
Read More
Why haven’t aliens contacted us? Scientists reveal their theories
Regardless of the answer to the paradox, successfully sending and receiving messages between aliens could one day happen.
On Earth, scientists have already tried to beam messages towards other solar systems in radio or light signals, akin to sending information in an email via the internet[8].
According to Mark Buchanan, a physicist and writer in the UK, the best way to make contact with alien life would be to send light signals because they travel so fast.
‘And there are many ways to send signals of a kind that do not get changed by any natural process, so another civilization would see them as coming from an intelligence,’ he told the Daily Mail.
References
- ^ NASA (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Maryland (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ aliens (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ could be a ‘promising’ location for life to exist (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ paper (arxiv.org)
- ^ Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ being too scared of ‘dangerous’ and ‘violent’ humans (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ in radio or light signals, akin to sending information in an email via the internet (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ WHAT IS THE FERMI PARADOX? (www.dailymail.co.uk)