Aliens Got "Bored" So Stopped Trying To Contact Humans, Claims Scientist

Dr Robin Corbet, a NASA scientist, has claimed that aliens might have stopped trying to contact humans due to boredom or lack of motivation.

The question of whether we are alone in the universe is a complex one that has puzzled scientists for centuries. While there's no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life, the search is still on.

Some experts say that there are many compelling reasons to believe that the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the universe is quite high.

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In a new paper, A Less Terrifying Universe? Mundanity as an Explanation for the Fermi Paradox, Dr Corbet talks about the principle of "radical mundanity".

The paper mentions that the extraterrestrials don't have unbelievably advanced technology. Instead, the civilisations have technology not more impressive than what we have.

"With this principle, the prospect that the Galaxy contains a modest number of civilizations is preferred, where none have achieved technology levels sufficient to accomplish large-scale astro-engineering or lack the desire to do so," he wrote in the paper, which is yet to be peer reviewed.

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"The idea is that they're more advanced, but not much more advanced. It's like having an iPhone 42 rather than an iPhone 17," Dr Robin Corbet, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said as quoted by The Guardian. "This feels more possible, more natural, because it's not proposing anything very extreme."

The idea is based on the Fermi Paradox, which questions why we haven't yet detected signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Dr Corbet, who is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, suggests that advanced civilisations might be capable of sending high-power beacons or probes, but it would require a huge amount of power and take millions or billions of years to receive a response. Hence, they got bored as it became unappealing to pursue.

"They don't have faster-than-light, they don't have machines based on dark energy or dark matter, or black holes. They're not harnessing new laws of physics," Corbet said.

The scientist believes that it's either a "rather more mundane" or "less terrifying universe", and any contact "could leave us somewhat disappointed".

Are aliens real?

Over 5,500 exoplanets have been discovered, and many of these planets are believed to be located in the habitable zones of their stars, where conditions are suitable for life as we know it.

Scientists are actively searching for signs of life, such as biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets or signals from advanced civilisations.