Word.ws English Dictionary

dark forest hypothesis

dark forest hypothesis noun: a proposed explanation for the Fermi paradox that suggests extraterrestrial civilizations are abundant but remain silent and hidden, positing that any intelligent civilization views others as potential threats and thus actively avoids revealing itself.

Noun

dark forest hypothesis (uncountable)

  1. A proposed explanation for the Fermi paradox that suggests extraterrestrial civilizations are abundant but remain silent and hidden, positing that any intelligent civilization views others as potential threats and thus actively avoids revealing itself.

Origin of dark forest hypothesis

From dark + forest + hypothesis. From the title of the novel The Dark Forest (2008) (黑暗森林), by Liu Cixin (刘慈欣), from Chinese 黑暗森林, from 黑暗+森林. Coined by Chinese author Cixin Liu originally in Chinese, then translated into English.

Questions about dark forest hypothesis

What does dark forest hypothesis mean?
Dark forest hypothesis means a proposed explanation for the Fermi paradox that suggests extraterrestrial civilizations are abundant but remain silent and hidden, positing that any intelligent civilization views others as potential threats and thus actively avoids revealing itself.
What part of speech is dark forest hypothesis?
Dark forest hypothesis is a noun.

Words near dark forest hypothesis in the dictionary

  1. dark flight
  2. dark flights
  3. dark flow
  4. dark flows
  5. dark fluid
  6. dark forest hypothesis
  7. dark fuck prince
  8. dark fungi
  9. dark fungus
  10. dark funguses
  11. dark galaxies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dark forest hypothesis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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