Intelligent Life in the Universe

Intelligent Life In the Universe

We have launched four ships to the stars, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They are primitive and backward craft, moving, compared to the immense interstellar distances, with a slowness of a race in a dream.

In the future we will do better.. Our ships will travel faster. There will be designated interstellar objectives, and sooner or later our spacecraft will have human crews.

In the Milky Way Galaxy there must be many planets millions of years older than Earth, and some that are billions of years older. Should we not have been visited? In all the billions of years since the origin of our planet, has there not been even once a strange craft from a distant civilization surveying our world from above, and slowly settling down to the surface to be observed by iridescent dragonflies, incurious reptiles, screeching primates or wondering humans?

I wish it were otherwise. There is something irresistible about a discovery of even a token, perhaps a complex inscription, but best by far, a key to the understanding of an alien and exotic civilization. It is an appeal we humans have felt before. Image : © Elena

The idea is natural enough. It has occurred to everyone who has contemplated, even casually, the question of intelligent life in the universe. But has it happened if fact? The critical issue is the quality of purported evidence, rigorously and sceptically scrutinized – not what sounds plausible, not the unsubstantiated testimony of one or two self-professed eyewitnesses.

By this standard there are no compelling cases of extraterrestrial visitation, despite all the claims about UFOs and ancient astronauts which sometimes makes it seem that our planet is awash in uninvited guests.

Our Sisters and Brothers

On some planets, intelligent life may have evolved, reworking the planetary surface in some massive engineering enterprise. These are our sisters and brothers in the Cosmos.

Are these creatures very different from us? What is their biochemistry, their form, neurobiology, history, science, religion, politics, technology, art, music, philosophy? Do they have long haired ears? Is their sky blue and their soil red? Perhaps some day we will know them.

How do these creatures look? Photo : © Elena

There must be many worlds scattered through space, but our search for them just begins now, with the accumulated wisdom of the men and women of our species, garnered at great cost over a million years.

And finally, at the end of all our wanderings, we return to our tiny, fragile, blue-white world, lost in a cosmic ocean vat beyond our most courageous imagining. Our world is a world among an immensity of others. It may be significant only for us. Or it may be the center of the Universe.