If E.T. is out there, why doesn't he visit us?

 

We cock our radio dishes and listen to the skies and nobody out there seems to be interested to let us know of his existence. Seems, we are the only noisemakers in the Universe. Scientists, considering the question, have even suggest a "cosmic censorship," some kind of quarantine, imposed on our planet until the human race is mature enough to learn the truth.

Perhaps.

But then again, given time and distance, E.T. may have already visited our planet, only at the wrong time, when dinosaurs still walked the earth or even more likely a billion years earlier when life had lingered on in slimy deposits of microorganisms. Life on our planet could have gone extinct some 800 million years ago, before the evolution of higher organisms, and there would still have been a long history of life: the history of microbes that have preceded us for three billion years. But the actual reason for our cosmic solitude could stem from Einstein's famous equation (energy equals mass by light velocity to the square power).

A spacecraft making its way through the Milky Way would traverse mists of tiny particles and interstellar dust. At near light velocity, the mass of each such particle approaches infinity. How do you defend a spacecraft against such bombardment? It is like traveling at light-speed through solid concrete. Which seems to rule out inter-stellar space travel for just about everybody.

Yet, for argument’s sake, let us assume we get around the obstacles; why should we think that advanced intelligence out there is inevitable? Look at life on Earth: apart from us, we know only two other groups of species of comparable intelligence: the apes and the whales. Although able to communicate and comprehend, neither has shown any interest to do so without coaching and coaxing. Numerous species survive without any brain at all. And what chance is there that intelligent life actually cares to develop science and technology?

Apart from the odd discovery, the scientific method was neither discovered nor welcomed by the indigenous cultures of Africa, Asia and America. In Europe, too, science was received in the face of organized hostility.

We like to think that a free market economy and democracy are the necessary foundation of scientific progress. The historical records are ambiguous. Without the Cold War no man would have gone to the moon yet, and at present the most ambitious nation in space, it seems, is communist China. So all things considered the odds are that our Milky Way may produce a technological civilization once in a million years.

This doesn't count the far greater number of primitive civilizations with only the bare minimum of technology.

The universe out there could be teeming with life, but for all practical purposes we are alone. The lifespan for any advanced civilization is just a few millennia, and how likely can it be that two of such cultural lifespans not only overlap in time, but find themselves located in physical proximity to each other - close enough to make contact?

© - 1/14/2008 - by michael sympson,

550 words, all rights reserved