Surely, you have repeatedly looked into the night sky and asked yourself: “Are we alone in the Universe?” This question more than 70 years ago tormented the famous physicist Enrico Fermi. Thus his famous paradox appeared. He says that only in the Milky Way galaxy hundreds of billions of stars live, many of which are billions of years older than the Sun. Even if there are only a small part of the planet, we still need to get billions of possible worlds, where civilizations developed, which have begun stellar explorations.

Why then do not earthlings hear of such worlds? Where did everyone go? For many years, scientists could choose between “All aliens are hiding under water,” “They died,” or “We are aliens who once came to Earth on a comet long ago.” Alexander Berezin (a Russian theoretical physicist) also decided to make a contribution. He suggested a new answer to the Fermi paradox, which not everyone will like. After all, if his hypothesis is true, then our future becomes even darker. He begins with an assumption: what if the first life, developing to the level of interstellar travel, necessarily destroys all competitors in order to stimulate its own expansion? That is, humanity is able to search for another life and thereby destroy it with its own arrival. What if we are those “bad guys” who are so afraid of fantastic films and books?

The first one came in, the last one came out

Berezin believes that it is necessary to narrow the parameters of what makes life intelligent. It doesn’t matter what life looks like. It can be a biological organism, like humans, a highly developed intellect or even a giant planetary mind. But it is important to study her behavior. For the Fermi paradox to work, extraterrestrial life must be capable of development. That is, theoretical aliens must have the ability to move between the stars, or at least send us signals at large distances.

Here lies the main trick. For a civilization to achieve the ability to communicate through systems, it must reach a high level of development. And for this you have to step over many forms. It is unlikely that a highly developed civilization will purposefully destroy life. But this is how to build a house and accidentally touch an anthill, which is not able to protect itself. Unlimited growth leads to the fact that we are able to fill the galaxy with its own clones, turning each system into our likeness.

Worse than fading

It turns out that we do not even have to fight the Martians or resist another alien invasion. The bad news is that we ourselves are capable of playing the role of these invaders. After all, while we are the first to come to the possibility of space travel and on the path of colonization we will destroy all other possible species.

Of course, this is only a theory and Berezin assures that he is capable of making mistakes. We can learn this only by further studying the Universe and searching for another life. Perhaps one day we will be “lucky” to face a powerful competitor.