Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Extraterrestrial intelligence
Summary
Extraterrestrial intelligence (often abbreviated ETI) refers to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial life. No such life has ever been proven to exist in the Solar System except for humans on Earth, and its existence on other star systems is still speculative. The question of whether other inhabited worlds might exist has been debated since ancient times. The modern form of the concept emerged when the Copernican Revolution demonstrated that the Earth was a planet revolving around the Sun, and other planets were, conversely, other worlds. The question of whether other inhabited planets or moons exist was a natural consequence of this new understanding. It has become one of the most speculative questions in science and is a central theme of science fiction and popular culture.
Intelligence is, along with the more precise concept of sapience, used to describe extraterrestrial life with similar cognitive abilities as humans. Another interchangeable term is sophoncy, first coined by Karen Anderson and published in the 1966 works by her husband Poul Anderson.
Sentience, like consciousness, is a concept sometimes mistakenly used to refer to the concept of extraterrestrial sapience and intelligence, since it does not exclude forms of life that are non-sapient.
The term extraterrestrial civilization frames a more particular case of extraterrestrial intelligence. It is the possible long-term result of intelligent and specifically sapient extraterrestrial life.
The Copernican principle is generalized to the relativistic concept that humans are not privileged observers of the universe. Many prominent scientists, including Stephen Hawking have proposed that the sheer scale of the universe makes it improbable for intelligent life not to have emerged elsewhere. However, Fermi's Paradox highlights the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilization and humanity's lack of contact with, or evidence for, such civilizations.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.