Where is Everybody?
Originally published in December 2012, “Where Is Everybody?” is a celebrated essay by Egyptian writer and novelist Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, later collected in Coffee with Uranium, first published in 2012. With his characteristic wit and skepticism, Tawfik explores the enduring fascination with extraterrestrial life and the Fermi Paradox, asking what it really means if, after all our searching, we are truly alone in the universe.
Where is Everybody?
By Ahmed Khaled Tawfik
December 3, 2012
Translated by Melissa Krawczyk
Area 51. The Roswell alien. Crop circles. Alien abductions. Flying saucers. Laser guns.
This is the vocabulary of outer space culture that each of us has carried in our minds since roughly the beginning of the twentieth century—a culture that has become deeply embedded and very powerful. In 1898 H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, the matter was settled, and people began to see aliens everywhere. Science fiction stories and magazines spread, and flying-saucer culture took over. These aliens would come from Mars, in particular. They’d be green with three eyes and antennae on their heads and have guns that shoot green goo. They were bastards who wanted to conquer Earth because our resources were still pristine, unlike theirs.
Superman comics appeared and with them a universe teeming with planets. Here’s the planet Zos, and here’s the planet Balgor, and there’s the planet Yotan. The inhabitants of this planet are invisible, and inhabitants of this planet fly, and on this planet they breathe ammonia, etc. Every extraterrestrial being was monitoring us with a surveillance device and was therefore fluent in our language. (Which language? English, of course.) Science fiction films completed the mission. Many people began capturing images of flying saucers and aliens began abducting people—people who would return to tell about strange devices and weird syringes penetrating their bodies—and at the same time, extraterrestrials began drawing crop circles with who knows what purpose.
Later Star Trek and other series engulfed people’s minds—a brainwashing project that lasted decades until aliens were everywhere. Then came the Star Wars films. With them, every child came to know the history of the Empire, the Force, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader—these characters are more real than any of us.
And so, over time humanity formed a general concept of the extraterrestrial beings that would come. They would most likely be evil bastards who want war. On rare occasions the aliens discover that we’re an aggressive planet and leave. There are other rare cases, such as E.T., a small, gentle alien finds himself on Earth, and flees in panic, hoping to return to his home world. But let me assure you that E.T. is not like the others. Don’t trust any other alien—they’re scum.
Scientists never stopped searching the skies for these bastards, our cosmic neighbors. Where are they? The universe can’t be just for us. But where are they? Why don’t they show themselves? What impudence! When you’re expecting guests and you wait but they never arrive—it’s poor manners, for sure.
Scientists pointed sound amplifiers out into the galaxy, searching for voices, there’s a whole story by Carl Sagan about it—the famous SETI program that searches voraciously for extraterrestrial intelligence. Aliens grew more violent in Hollywood films, and we saw flying saucers burn the White House in the movie Independence Day.
As time passed, people began to worry about the delay.
People dream about evil aliens arriving from Mars, ravaging our planet and occupying it. For a hundred years they’ve toyed with this dream, and it has toyed with them. They’ve waited for it, and now it seems clear that the dream is nonsense. People’s attitudes seem to be: Why aren’t the aliens doing all of this? Such laziness!
So, one scientist cautiously opened his mouth and said:
“There’s a strong possibility that we are alone in the universe. And that there are no al…”
At this point someone brought a bottle down on his head, while someone else shoved a shoe in his mouth, and a third delivered a kick to his gut. One can’t be so cruel and strip people of their dream. These days it seems that saying there are no aliens is like denying an article of the true faith.
There is a group of scientists that believe the chances of an encounter are very high, and it will inevitably occur. Among them is the great British scientist Stephen Hawking, the one who is paralyzed. The man is a genius and what he says should not be taken lightly. He believes first contact will be similar to when Columbus first encountered the Native Americans. Naturally, we will be the Native Americans in this encounter, and every last one of us will be annihilated. That’s why he advises us not to send signals into space because it will draw the aliens to us. Keep your heads down and pray.
Another group believes the chances of contact are high, but that it will be with single-celled organisms, or organisms with no cells at all. In other words, the anticipated first contact will be—please take no offense—with a virus or bacterium. A depressing picture, but some have claimed that HIV actually constituted our first contact.
One group of scientists believes that we really are alone in the universe and that the other planets are uninhabited. Of course, this has been my opinion for a long time, and before you accuse me of being the only fool who thinks this, I would like you to read the opinions of some prominent scientists on the matter. Incidentally, I relied on a Soviet book on space, articles in a British magazine, and a bit of Wikipedia for this.
Among holders of the view that there’s nothing out there is Harvard astronomy lecturer Howard Smith. He believes that the planets in all the solar systems we’ve detected are either very near to or very far from their suns, and that this rules out the possibility that life exists. Life would burn up or freeze.
It’s an old problem and the famous physicist Enrico Fermi discussed it—which is why scientists call the issue the Fermi Paradox. The sun is a young star and there are billions like it in space. There are eighty billion galaxies in the universe. Surely, there are planets around these suns that must have gone through conditions similar to Earth’s. And certainly, some of the inhabitants of these planets were able to travel through space by means that surpass our imagination. Therefore, we should have encountered space-dwellers around us at least once. This is why Fermi asked: “Where is everybody?”
This tragic question has reverberated since the year 1950.
Dating back to 1961, the Drake equation attempts to calculate the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. I won’t explain the equation because it’s complex, but obviously it gives us a very large number. So where are they? The first possibility is that there are no civilizations at all. The second possibility is that civilizations advanced to the point of self-destruction – Carl Sagan believes this.
One scientist simply said that aliens don’t exist. The evidence? If they existed, they would be here already, at this very moment! Not to mention that radio waves have been traveling through space regularly for a hundred years—there is a band of electromagnetic waves around the Earth, about 200 light-years across. Surely any civilization must have managed to produce its own radio waves. There are civilizations in our galaxy that are ten billion years old. This means that we would have been swimming in electromagnetic waves coming from other civilizations. We’d be sitting down in the evening to watch their romantic TV series instead of Turkish ones.
Conquering the entire galaxy would take five million years for civilizations such as these, and this is insignificant compared to the age of the entire galaxy. So where are they now?
There are a number of theories that try to explain Fermi’s strange paradox.
Some scientists believe that perhaps there were extraterrestrials, but they weren’t scientifically advanced to the point where they could contact us. And some embrace the Zoo Hypothesis—in other words, these beings see us, watch us, and they don’t interfere in our affairs but leave us every opportunity to evolve and grow. We are like monkeys in a cage, exercising our freedom under eyes that never sleep.
There are those who believe—as we’ve said—that these great civilizations ultimately destroyed themselves. And this is the happy fate that awaits our civilization if nuclear war breaks out or pollution worsens. This image is engraved on the minds of the people together with the explosion of the planet Krypton where Superman was born. That is, there were other civilizations, but in the present, we are alone.
Another view holds that natural disasters eventually destroy life. Earth witnessed the extinction of the dinosaurs in a similar way, and this happens constantly throughout the universe.
Do aliens exist but contacting them is impossible? Maybe they’re on a completely different wavelength or use radio waves we don’t know about or that we aren’t able to detect. Or maybe they don’t want to contact us. There are those who believe that aliens exist, but that they won’t reach us because faster-than-light travel is impossible— in other words, it’s impossible for them to get to us.
It’s possible that humans haven’t searched space enough. In fact, eavesdropping on the sounds of space only began in 1936, and so they might find something before long.
There’s a possibility that space-dwellers are much stranger than we anticipate. Maybe they’re closer to an amoeba or spectral beings. Perhaps they speak extremely slowly, so their speech sounds like noise.
There’s a conspiracy theory beloved by the American citizen: “They know more than they’re telling us.” This means that the American government received signals from space and possibly had contact with aliens but is hiding it. It’s a nearly constant theme in episodes of The X-Files, as well as the reason for the American public’s interest in Area 51. And there’s a theory that “they are actually among us, but we don’t know who they are.” It’s a frightening theory suitable for films like Men in Black and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I am personally ready to list twenty individuals for you in Egypt who I suspect are aliens. In fact, this theory attempts to explain the origins of religions as encounters with extraterrestrials whom ancient people believed were higher powers and angels.
The final possible explanation for Fermi’s Paradox, which I lean toward personally, is “the Rare Earth hypothesis”—there are no other civilizations. We are completely alone. The conditions on Earth are extraordinary and led to the emergence of life and civilization, and this is difficult to replicate—or maybe it’s never happened again.
Imagine life without aliens or flying saucers—how boring it would be! A terribly distressing loneliness.
It’s a cruel idea but I see it as an important step for the maturation of humanity. A hundred years ago the world was talking about fairies with wings. An important author, Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote a book called The Coming of the Fairies and in it discussed their traits and habits, and everyone hoped it would all come true. Today we know it is nonsense. This was harsh, and shattered the dreams of many, but we must admit that most of the pictures of flying saucers that we have were either intentionally faked or optical effects presented in bad faith. And let’s remember that the Roswell alien autopsy film was fabricated, and the makers admitted it.
I convinced myself long ago that there are no aliens on other planets and that we are completely alone and isolated. This comforts me and I have built my life on this. I’ve stopped reading the ridiculous news stories about crop circles and girls being abducted and taken to Mars, and a flying saucer appearing above Spain. I believe that humanity has advanced and this will lead it to throw children’s books whose covers are decorated with drawings of flying saucers out the window and devote itself to its own affairs. If a flying saucer lands on our street and green men with antennae come out and steal me away to their planet, only at that point will I know that I was mistaken—but at least I won’t be here to apologize!
Ahmed Khaled Tawfik (1962-2018) was an Egyptian author and physician who wrote more than 200 books, many of them genre novels popular with young readers. The Netflix series Paranormal was based on his popular ما وراء الطبيعة books.
Melissa Krawczyk is an Arabic-to-English literary translator who has studied Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) for more than twenty years and has a diverse academic background, holding degrees in Arabic Language and Culture as well as Materials Science and Engineering. She has a deep passion for languages, literature, and scientific literacy. In addition to Arabic, Melissa has studied Spanish, French, German, and American Sign Language (ASL). She avidly consumes science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction while staying up to date on developments in medicine, science, and technology. She resides in Southern California with her family of four and is currently translating مكاكي دي أفريكا (Makaki de Africa) by Mukhtar Saad Shehata and E.S.P. by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik. Please contact her at melissaktranslates@gmail.com for a translation sample and publishing rights information.