where is everybody?

LAST AUTUMN, THE NEW YORK TIMES PUBLISHED A REPORT OF REPEATED, MID-FLIGHT ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN U.S. NAVY PILOTS AND IMPOSSIBLY FAST, UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS. That story, packaged with grainy footage of strange objects, raised a considerable commotion. After all, this was the newspaper of record giving its imprimatur to a real-life X-File. It was also the latest instalment in a larger, ongoing saga: our culture’s deep and enduring obsession with aliens. Yet despite our centuries-long fascination with E.T., we still have zero proof he exists. Decades of new-age religions, fantastical claims of ancient astronauts’ visitations, YouTube videos of cigar-shaped spaceship fly-bys, intent listening to distant space noise and good old-fashioned science – all have failed to answer the question first pondered by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950: “Where is everybody?” Fermi supposedly asked the…