Caught In The Whirlwind
[Plinky] Signs Of Life
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mecookie/ / CC BY 2.0
Do you think alien life will be discovered in your lifetime?
Probably not. At least I hope not.
Ok, let me qualify that answer a bit. It would be cool to find alien life out there. I’m pretty sure that out of the billions and billions of stars and planets in the universe, we’re not the only ones out here. It’s a statistical impossibility. So, assuming the human race lasts long enough, we’re bound to run into other intelligent life eventually in whatever form that might take. Which leads me to the statistical part of my answer. Or the “Probably not” bit. The universe is SO huge that the probability of making contact with alien life in any given human life sized timespan is so tiny. It’s probably not going to happen.
That leaves the “I hope not” part of my answer. Right now I don’t think the world is ready for alien life. Somebody would probably try to blow our alien visitors up or dissect them to see how they operated. I don’t think we’ve progressed enough as a species to handle the idea that we’re not at the top of the food chain or some sort of chosen people or something. We can barely respect each other’s cultural differences, let alone a being from a totally different world.
It would throw religious establishments into chaos too. I’m not sure if the established major religions are compatible with the idea that life is not limited to our little planet here.
So I think it’ll happen eventually, but probably not in my lifetime. And when it does, I hope we’ve evolved to the point where we can handle such a discovery.
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Jason on September 2, 2009 at 12:33 pm, and is filed under plinky. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
