Michael Byers
About Michael Byers
Michael Byers is a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law. A former professor of law at Duke University, he now co-directs the Outer Space Institute—a new international network for transdisciplinary space studies.
Did climate change destroy the aliens?
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi had a knack for back-of-the-envelope calculations. In a famous lunch-time conversation in 1950, Fermi used his knowledge of astronomy and probability to highlight a problem: If intelligent life exists elsewhere in the galaxy and if long-distance space travel is achievable, then Earth should have been visited by aliens by now.