The Great Silence

Fermi asked where everybody is. Every answer is worse than the question.

Fermi's 1950 lunch question — where is everybody? — sharpened by the Drake equation into a paradox: the galaxy is old enough for expansion to have reached us many times over. Sixty years of radio searches have returned one unrepeated candidate (the Wow! signal) and silence. The solution space is the real file: rare earth, great filters ahead or behind, zoo hypothesis (quarantine — the Galactic Federation lore in academic dress), dark forest deterrence, or transcension. Each answer is a worldview with math attached. Connects the Wow! signal, the dark forest, and the disclosure question of whether the silence is observational or administrative.