[Great Filter], there must be something that prevents non-living matter in the universe from creating life

Since Copernicus displaced the Earth as the center of the solar system, advances in astronomy have shown that our beloved planet is more ordinary than we thought. That means there should be plenty of planetary space for life to arise, however, which makes the Great Silence all the more confounding.

Enter "the Great Filter." First coined by the economist Robin Hanson, the Great Filter posits an explanation for the Fermi Paradox that is vitally important to our future on this planet. Hanson theorizes that there is, essentially, a great filter somewhere along the evolutionary path from the emergence of organic molecules on a life-supporting planet to the development of a civilization capable of leaving a mark on the stars. Whether that Great Filter falls before humanity's current point of development or after it is, as the philosopher Phil Torres puts it, "the ultimate question for existential risk scholars."

Picture the Great Filter this way. Imagine that you're a year away from your fortieth high school reunion. You look around and realize that no one from the class ahead of you—the class that would be having its own fortieth reunion this year—is still alive. What happened? If most of the deaths occurred when the alumni were 25 years old, or 35, or 45, that's tragic—but you can take some comfort in the fact that you've already passed those thresholds. But if most of the deaths occurred a year ago—when those alumni would have been the same age you are now—you should be very worried, as it would mean that you're about to hit the Great Filter of, in my case at least, Central Bucks High School East.