the Science of Great Filter

Somewhere in the universe, there may have been a civilization that invented mathematics, discovered electricity, built radio telescopes, split the atom, developed artificial intelligence, argued endlessly about politics, and then accidentally converted its home planet into an extremely expensive archaeological site. If so, it may not have been unusual. It may simply have encountered what scientists and philosophers call the Great Filter: some extraordinarily difficult step, or collection of steps, standing between lifeless matter and a civilization capable of spreading throughout the stars.The Great Filter is one of the most fascinating and disturbing ideas connected with the Fermi paradox. The basic problem sounds almost embarrassingly simple. The universe is enormous. It contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, and those galaxies contain staggering numbers of stars. Planets appear to be common. Many planets and moons contain at least some of the chemical ingredients associated with life. The universe has also been around for roughly 13.8 billion years, which is an outrageously long time if you are waiting for somebody to invent a spaceship. Given enough planets and enough time, intelligent technological civilizations ought to have appeared somewhere besides Earth. Some of them should have arisen millions or even billions of years before us. Even traveling considerably slower than light, an advanced civilization could theoretically spread across a galaxy on a timescale far shorter than the age of the Milky Way.And yet, so far, the neighborhood appears suspiciously quiet.