Space Aliens Dominate Fiction but Are They Real?
We think about them all the time. If books and movies are any indication, space aliens preoccupy us and will continue to do so even though we have never met them. Extraterrestrial life is not only a staple of science fiction but is a dominant theme in the genre. Life on other planets in fiction actually dates back to the 19th Century. H. G. Wells published The War of the Worlds in 1898. It is about an invasion of Earth by Martians with hopelessly superior technology. Since then we have, through our movies, dreamed of space aliens coming to Earth to literally eat us, conquer us like Earth civilizations have conquered each other throughout history, or extend a hand of friendship.
But are they real? Let me start with the example of the aforementioned The War of the Worlds. That book, later made into a movie of course, has intelligent, or at least technologically advanced, Martians landing on Earth. In reality, scientists will be lucky to find evidence of microscopic life on Mars, past or present. In fact any discovery of life on any planet, even microscopic life, would be the story of the century.
God made Earth just right. We are at a perfect distance from the sun. Our atmosphere has the right gases in our atmosphere for us to live. We are blessed with an abundance of water. There are many more “just right” Goldilocks conditions on Earth. So why didn’t God make all the planets in our solar system suitable for life? I am not going to try to get into the mind of God, but I will point out that some seemingly worthless things in space have an apparent purpose to benefit folks on Earth when closely examined. For example Jupiter sweeps comets away from Earth with its gravitation pull. In short, God doesn’t make junk.
Frank Drake, an astrophysicist and astrobiologist, came up with an equation to estimate the number planets with life intelligent enough to send us a signal. The equation involves the number of stars that have planets, the fraction of those planets capable of sustaining life, how many actually develop life, whether such life can send us a signal, and how long it would take us to get that signal. The conditions necessary for life are extremely thin. But consider this. There are roughly 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. That means that even if only one in a million planets have life on them, there are 200,000 life hosting planets in our galaxy alone.
So why haven’t we heard from them? Why are their spaceships not landing in our back yards right now? Maybe it is because since the universe is an estimated 12 billion years old, the chances of these ET civilizations existing at the same time we do are extremely small. Maybe it is because they are advanced enough to hide our existence from us and don’t want to be bothered. Maybe life is harder to sustain than we think.
If we did meet these aliens, what would happen? In the animal kingdom, predators are generally more intelligent than preys. Humans are an example of a predator species with predatory tendencies. That would likely also be the case with space aliens. That makes it more likely they would try to conquer and destroy us. On the other hand, we probably don’t have anything that extraterrestrial people want. They probably can easily make any food or natural resource the Earth has to offer. In fact they may be so advanced that they have no more interest in us than we would have in an anthill that we walk by. What is no mystery is that predator aliens sell more box office tickets.
Scientists are increasingly confident that we will make contact with extraterrestrial life in this century. But this dream has proven elusive in the past. Meanwhile, keep your eyes on the news.