"Where Is Everybody?": An Account of Fermi's Question

Eric M. Jones, Los Alamos National Laboratories

original source  |  fair use notice

Summary: Fermi's Famous question, now central to debates about the prevalence 
of extraterrestrial civilizations, arose during a luncheon conversation 
with Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York in the summer of 1950. Fermi's companions 
on that day have provided accounts of the incident.

Part of the current debate about the existence and prevalence of extraterrestrials 
concerns interstellar travel and settlement [1-3]. In 1975, Michael Hart argued 
that interstellar travel would be feasible for a technologically advanced civilization 
and that a migration would fill the Galaxy in a few million years [4]. Since 
that interval is short compared with the age of the Galaxy, he then concluded 
that the absence of settlers or evidence of their engineering projects 
in the Solar System meant that there are no extraterrestrials.

Newman, Sagan, and Shklovski [2,5] recall that a legend of science says that 
Enrico Fermi asked the question, "Where are they?" during a visit to Los Alamos during 
the Second World War or shortly thereafter. Fermi's question has been 
mentioned in several other recent publications, but historical basis for the attribution 
has not been established. Thanks to the excellent memory of 
Hans Mark, who had heard a retelling at Los Alamos in the early 1950s, we 
now know that Fermi did make the remark during a lunchtime 
conversation about 1950. His companions were Emil Konopinski, 
Edward Teller, and Herbert York. All three have provided accounts of the 
incident.

We begin with Konopinski: "1 have only fragmentary recollections 
about the occasion.... I do have a fairly clear memory of how 
the discussion of extra-terrestrials got started while Enrico, Edward, Herb York, 
and I were walking to lunch at Fuller Lodge.

"When l joined the party, I found being discussed evidence about flying 
saucers. That immediately brought to my mind a cartoon I had recently seen 
in the New Yorker, explaining why public trash cans were disappearing 
from the streets of New York City. The New York papers were making a fuss about that. 
The cartoon showed what was evidently a flying saucer sitting in the background 
and, streaming toward it, 'little green men' (endowed with antennas) 
carrying the trash cans. More amusing was Fermi's comment, that it was a very 
reasonable theory since it accounted for two separate phenomena: the reports 
of flying saucers as well as the disappearance of the trash cans. There 
ensued a discussion as to whether the saucers could somehow exceed the speed of light."

Teller remembers: "My recollection of the event involving Fermi . . . is clear, but 
only partial. To begin with, I was there at the incident. I believe it occurred shortly 
after the end of the war on a visit of Fermi to the Laboratory, which quite possibly 
might have been during a summer.

"I remember having walked over with Fermi and others to the Fuller Lodge for lunch. 
While we walked over, there was a conversation which I believe to have been quite brief 
and superficial on a subject only vaguely connected with space travel. I have a vague 
recollection, which may not be accurate, that we talked about flying saucers 
and the obvious statement that the flying saucers are not real. I also remember 
that Fermi explicitly raised the question, and I think he directed it 
at me, 'Edward, what do you think? How probable is it that within the 
next ten years we shall have clear evidence of a material object moving 
faster than light?' I remember that my answer vas ' 1 o-6.. Fermi said, 
'This is much too low. The probability is more like ten percent' 
(the well known figure for a Fermi miracle.) "

Konopinski says that he does not recall the numerical values, "except that they 
changed rapidly as Edward and Fermi bounced arguments off each other."

Teller continues: "The conversation, according to my memory, was 
only vaguely connected with astronautics partly on account of 
flying saucers might be due to extraterrestrial people (here I believe the remarks 
were purely negative), partly because exceeding light velocity would make 
interstellar travel one degree more real.

"We then talked about other things which I do not remember and maybe approximately 
eight of us sat down together for lunch." Konopinski 
and York are quite certain that there were only four of them.

It was after we were at the luncheon table," Konopinski recalls, 
"that Fermi surprised us with the question 'but where is everybody?' 
It was his way of putting it that drew laughs from us ."

York, who does not recall the preliminary conversation on the walk to 
Fuller Lodge, does remember that "virtually apropos of nothing Fermi said, 
'Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?' Somehow . . . we all 
knew he meant extra-terrestrials."

Teller remembers the question in much the same way. "The discussion 
had nothing to do with astronomy or with extraterrestrial beings. I think 
it was some down-to-earth topic. Then, in the middle of this conversation, 
Fermi came out with the quite unexpected question 'Where is everybody?' . . . 
The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange 
fact that in spite of Fermi's question coming from the clear blue, 
everybody around the table seemed to understand at once 
that he was talking about extraterrestrial life.

"I do not believe that much came of this conversation, except perhaps a statement 
that the distances to the next location of living beings may be very great and 
that, indeed, as far as our galaxy is concerned, we are living 
somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metropolitan area of 
the galactic center."

York believes that Fermi was somewhat more expansive and "followed up with a series 
of calculations on the probability of earthlike planets, the probability of life given 
an earth, the probability of humans given life, the likely rise 
and duration of high technology, and so on. He concluded on the basis of 
such calculations that we ought to have been visited long ago 
and many times over. As I recall, he went on to conclude that the reason we hadn't 
been visited might be that interstellar flight is impossible, or, if it is possible, 
always judged to be not worth the effort, or technological civilization 
doesn't last long enough for it to happen." York confessed to 
being hazy about these last remarks.

In summary, Fermi did ask the question, and perhaps not surprisingly, 
issues still debated today were part of the discussion . Certainly, the 
line of argument that York remembers became familiar a decade later 
as the Drake-Greenbank Equation [6,7].

A final point: the date of the conversation. York is clearest 
on the date. "The conversation was either in the 
summer of 1950, 1951, or 1952, very probably 1951, and took place . . . when 
I was visiting LASL in connection with the forthcoming 
Greenhouse tests - specifically, the George shot." The George test occurred on 
May 8, 1951, suggesting a 1950 date. Surviving correspondence 
from the time indicates that Fermi was an annual summer visitor during 
the years in question. Unfortunately, attendance and travel records for 
those years have been destroyed. However, we have the evidence of the cartoon 
Konopinski mentions. Drawn by Alan Dunn, it was published in 
the May 20, 1950, issue of The New Yorker. It seems quite probable that 
the incident of Fermi's question occurred in the summer of 1950.

I am grateful to Hans Mark and to the three surviving participants 
for their accounts. These accounts, together with my letters of inquiry, 
are reproduced in the following pages.