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I believe in aliens.
There, I said it. Call me a nut, call me a heretic, call me whatever you want. I believe there is life elsewhere in the galaxy.
My life-long interest in extraterrestrials has been reignited lately with new TV shows and movies about encounters with other-worldly beings. I realize they’re fictional, and that most of the reported UFO sightings we hear about (such as a few this week in the United Kingdom) are fakes, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t believe in life elsewhere.
It’s simple math. In fact, there’s even a name for it: the Drake equation. The Drake equation calculates the number of planets with which we might be able to communicate based on the rate of star formation per year in our galaxy, the number of stars that have planets, the average number of planets per star that might be able to support life and several other factors. Based on this equation, some believe there may be as many as 10,000 planets with intelligent life on them other than ours.
I’ll put it this way: Drive up to Lake Michigan and put a fence around an acre of water. If you’re lucky, your acre of lake might contain a nice lake trout. Now we know that not every acre of Lake Michigan is right for lake trout, and that lake trout are now somewhat rare. However, out of the remaining 14.3 million acres, would you be willing to concede that at least a few of those might contain lake trout?
If everything is made of the same stuff – meaning all of the same elements – then with enough chances, certainly the right mix of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous will come together more than once to create life as we know it. It’s the old “10,000 apes typing on 10,000 computers for 10,000 years will eventually create the works of Shakespeare” analogy. Or, if like me you prefer food analogies, think of it this way: If you randomly throw various amounts of flour, yeast, salt, water and honey into a thousand different bowls, you have a good chance one of those will end up being pizza dough.
But there’s another math problem that means none of us is ever likely to see extraterrestrials in our lifetimes.
The universe is just so incredibly vast, and the laws of physics are pretty firmly against travel that would get from one point in the universe to another in a reasonable amount of time. If we are to be the beings that seek out and find other life forms, we don’t exactly have a great track record. Consider that ocean-going wooden ships had been around for thousands of years before anyone sailed from the old world to the new. That was only a few thousand miles, not light years away.
In other words, I’m a believer in extraterrestrials, but not UFOs.
Logically, if you were traveling trillions of miles across the universe and found a planet with life, why would you not make your presence known in an obvious way? We planted flags on the moon, left rovers on Mars and dropped space probes on Venus and Titan – hardly stealthy missions. Why do we assume another civilization would choose to make contact with trailer-bound hillbillies and leave non-permanent circles in our cornfields? That would be like driving to your grandmother’s house 2,000 miles away just to play ding-dong-ditch.
All of these things do sound a little nutty, and I admit that, but the important thing is to keep an open mind. If we told cavemen that someday we’d be flying to the moon and walking around on it, they’d say it would be impossible. The idea of flight was laughable to some just over 100 years ago. Indeed, even the home computer seemed like impossibility just a short few decades ago.
Bryan Clapper is general manager of Leader Publications. He can be reached at 687-7700 or at bryan.clapper@leaderpub. com.
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Bryan, a civilization millions if not billions of years in advance of ours wouldn’t simply travel trillions of miles which at the speed of light would take years just to visit Earth. They would have much more advanced techniques of warping space or traveling through wormholes and are able to arrive at our planet very fast.
Second, let’s try and demystify aliens for a moment. The ones that are here are likely civilized well beyond humans. Let’s assume, for a moment, that humans have created technology that allows us to travel anywhere in the Universe, and that there are billions of intelligent civilizations out there.
There would have to be rules in place for engaging another intelligent civilization that does NOT have the ability of interstellar travel. We wouldn’t just pop out of the sky, scare the bejeezus out of everyone and announce we have arrived. We would want to make contact with the very top leaders first and make our intentions known. Our militaries were probably considered the leaders by our present day visitors because the military was concealing weapons of mass destruction and this was easy to recognize by our visitors.
The point of this is that there IS evidence, on radar, of quite a few events that clearly show technology far, far in advance of ours.
Also, insiders from the CIA have stated that their goal was to ridicule the entire notion of UFO’s and they have done their job well.
I won’t bother to share my evidence in this forum, which is considerable, but will leave you with the wise sage advice of a former NASA astronaut who is politically well connected. Please take a few minutes and listen to what he has to say about “the truth” and what is “out there”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhNdxdveK7c