36-147 Freshman Seminar: Where is Everybody?

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

While eating lunch with colleagues in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi asked a seemingly innocuous question Where is everybody He was referring to extraterrestrials any advanced civilization with rockets, curiosity, and willpower should have colonized the entire Milky Way by now. But weve seen no evidence of life anywhere beyond Earth. Indeed, where are all the extraterrestrials Throughout this course, we will consider various answers to what is now known as Fermis Paradox, and use it as a springboard to learning about, among other things, exoplanets, astrobiology, and all the bad, extinctioncausing events that could happen here tomorrow and that could have wiped out extraterrestrials in the past. You will synthesize what you learn by using it to inform OpEdstyle articles and blog entries, as well as oral presentations. You will also be introduced to the statistical package R, which you will apply in simple data analyses. Note that in the multiverse, you have enjoyed taking this class an infinite number of times. Welcome back

Prerequisites: none listed

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