The myth of the martians and the golden age of Hungarian science

Abstract

Enrico Fermi was a man with outstanding talents, hehad many interests outside his own particular field. Hewas credited with asking famous questions. There arelong preambles to Fermi's questions like this: --- `Theuniverse is vast, containing myriads of stars, many ofthem not unlike our Sun. Many of these stars are likelyto have planets circling around them. A fair fractionof these planets will have liquid water on theirsurface and a gaseous atmosphere. The energy pouringdown from a star will cause the synthesis of organiccompounds, turning the ocean into a thin, warm soup.These chemicals will join each other to produce aself-reproducing system. The simplest living thingswill multiply, and evolve by natural selection andbecome more complicated. And eventually active,thinking creatures will emerge. Civilization, scienceand technology will follow. Then, yearning for freshworlds, they will travel to neighboring planets, andlater to planets of nearby stars. Eventually theyshould spread out all over the Galaxy. These highlyexceptional and talented people could hardly overlooksuch a beautiful place as our Earth'. And so Fermi cameto his overwhelming question, --- `If all this has beenhappening, they should have arrived here by now, sowhere are they?' It was Leo Szilard, a man with animpish sense of humor who supplied the perfect reply toFermi's rhetoric: `They are among us', he said, `butthey call themselves Hungarians'.