What if aliens exist—but they’re just hiding from us?

The Dark Forest theory is one proposed solution to the famed Fermi Paradox , which has bewitched astronomers for more than half a century. To put it concisely, the paradox asks if the cosmos is nearly 14 billion years old, then where are all the interstellar societies? Why haven’t they popped over to say hello? Myriad solutions to this conundrum have been proposed, but perhaps none are more chilling than the Dark Forest theory.

As the supposition holds, the reason we can’t see these alien civilizations is because they’re all in hiding. Unlike humanity—whose radio transmissions have long echoed throughout our local galactic neighborhood—these societies have all concluded that it’s simply too dangerous to broadcast their location to potentially hostile neighbors.

It's a sobering though