A NASA researcher has floated a plain answer to an old question: maybe other civilizations simply lost interest. It sounds almost casual, and that is part of the point.

Dr Robin Corbet of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center calls the idea “radical mundanity.” In plain terms, Corbet suggests alien societies might not be uncanny super-beings. They could be only a little more advanced than we are. After looking around their part of the galaxy, they might have decided planets like Earth were not worth more effort.

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That pushes back on the common image of eager cosmic neighbours broadcasting across the void. Corbet’s point is practical. Sending powerful signals or probes takes energy and time. If a world looks ordinary, the benefits of reaching out may not justify the cost.

Not everyone agrees. Prof Michael Garrett of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics warns this risks projecting human habits onto alien minds. “It projects a very human-like apathy on to the rest of the cosmos. I find it hard to believe that all intelligent life would be so uniformly dull,” he said. Any technological plateau could be far above our level, he added

The idea is speculative, but it reframes the Fermi Paradox in a slightly different light. Instead of asking why no one is trying to find us, we can ask whether anyone looked, judged, and then moved on. That question is quieter than the usual dramatic scenarios, but it may be closer to what a faraway civilisation would actually do.