The discovery of a mysterious interstellar object called "3I/ATLAS" and its transit through our solar system has set off all kinds of speculation about whether the fairly massive visitor could be some kind of alien probe. But now one NASA scientist has suggested that extraterrestrials might not be able to visit our little corner of the galaxy because, well, their technology may be just as crummy as ours.

In a research paper titled "A Less Terrifying Universe? Mundanity as an Explanation for the Fermi Paradox," NASA and University of Maryland astrophysicist Robin Corbet argues that the reason we haven't closely encountered any aliens is because they actually lack warp drives or access to wormholes. In fact, Corbet says, they likely don't possess any tech that's significantly more advanced that what humans have:

Applying a principle of "radical mundanity," this paper examines explanations for the lack of strong evidence for the presence of technology-using extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) in the Galaxy.... With this principle, the prospect that the Galaxy contains a modest number of civilizations is preferred, where none have achieved technology levels sufficient to accomplish large-scale astro-engineering or lack the desire to do so.

The paper's "Less Terrifying" reference is in relation to a comment from sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, who is said to have once postulated that we are either alone in the universe or we aren't, and that both possibilities are equally scary.