My daughter is obsessed with the idea of alien life. She started off obsessed with the solar system when she was 2-3 or so; we took her to the planetarium and saw a show about the universe.  After that it was endless rounds of questions on the topic of astrophysics, most of which I knew but some I had to look up.  We spent time discussing how all elements in the universe, including those inside our bodies right now, were create by supernovae–we are all children of the stars to be romantic about it.

From there it moved on– I’m not sure exactly how–other than my husband and I spend a lot of time discussing this subject and subjects about space in general–she started asking if aliens were real (I think Scooby-Doo probably also had something to do with it).  And when I explained to her what we know about life in the universe: the commonality of the building blocks of life, the existence of life on Earth even in the harshest conditions, the size of the universe and the likelihood of other planets hospitable to life, she asked, “Where are they?”, which is of course, Fermi’s Paradox.

This is what happens when two geeks breed.