There is much talk about aliens in the newspapers as a result of this and debate about how long it will be before we meet them.
I have no doubt that life evolved elsewhere. Given the countless numbers of galaxies that exist, and given that each holds tens or hundreds of billions of stars, there are probably as many Earth like planets in the universe, as there are grains of sand on the average sandy beach. However - we will never get there. Inside twenty light years (next door in our galaxy) there are sixty one stars or brown dwarfs, but that distance is in round figures a hundred trillion miles. We can't travel that far, and probably never will.
We should be glad. If we did meet aliens they would have been shaped by the same universal laws of natural selection as we were, the first of which seems to be to kill and exploit creatures which compete. Remember how we treated those of our own species who were less well endowed with technology: the Native Americans, the Africans, the Australian Aborigines? More so, think how we treat other species: chickens, turkeys, fish and so on......
Do you really want to have the Aliens find us? I don't.
3 comments:
Over one year ago this article was posted?
I need to check the date first next time.
And it ate my first, and relevant, comment.
True, it's over a year old. I have a lot of things to say on this topic, but since this blog seems to be in suspended animation, I won't.
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