I’ve been watching a lot of programs about aliens and space lately, like one that discussed the very important question of “Is NASA hiding evidence of aliens?,” which on the one hand I doubt that they are because why would they?, the knowledge of intelligent, spacefaring creatures from other planets would be a tremendous tool for the power structure to keep the general public in fear, and tighten their stranglehold on the reins of power. On the other hand, however, the government just lies to the people about everything, on general principle, it’s been going on for thousands of years, ever since there’s been people and governments, the alpha males didn’t get to be alpha males by sharing their plans for clubbing their opponents over the head with everybody, so it’s pretty ingrained by now. It’s totally counter to the idea of democracy, of course. There’s the rub. People who are in power, and want to stay in power (which they all do, pretty much), are automatically opposed to democracy because democracy means that power can change hands, and that’s precisely what they don’t want.
On the other hand
On the third hand (oh, that old saying about how there are two sides to every story is absolute bullshit, there are a million sides to every story and generally the truth is something nobody has figured out yet), just because they would lie to us if they had any evidence of extraterrestrial life doesn’t mean they do have any evidence of extraterrestrial life. They would lie to us if they had proof of Bigfoot, or ghosts, or reincarnation, too, and I’m pretty sure those things don’t exist.
Anyway, one scientist at SETI said something that I thought was real interesting, and more than a little bit disturbing. He was talking about how many stars we have already discovered, and how our rate of discovery doubles every couple of years, so in a very short time we will be able to look for radio signals from millions of stars and, to make a long story short, he said if we haven’t found them in the next two decades, it might be because they are not there.
On the one hand, that would surprise me a lot, just because of the huge number of stars, but on the other hand, look at all the factors that need to exist for a technological species to evolve. A planet, not too big and not too small, in the Goldilocks zone so it has liquid water, but the planet could not actually be covered with liquid water, because then no species would discover fire, so even if you had intelligent Octopi or something who had developed tools and language and a social structure, they would never develop metallurgy or rocket fuel, and those are two pretty important prerequisites for space travel.
So, maybe we are alone. On the one hand, I would find that to be a terrible drag, because humans aren’t so wonderful that I would be thrilled if we were the only intelligent species in the universe, but on the other hand, it would mean that the whole universe is ours, and that is a whole lot of real estate to colonize.
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