In response to a recent article on Discovery, I felt I should provide a few comments in response to that. While this topic is highly debatable, what I’m proposing is an objective open minded view that will look at not constricting possibilities but being fair to what we know to be true.

The main points that Ray Villard makes are:

  1. Throughout our history of UFO’s, there has not been a single credible source that has provided confirmation of the origin of would be aliens.
  2. From popular belief, the only possibility that has come forth so far is Zeta Reticuli, located some 39 light years from Earth.
  3. The twin star system is roughly 3 billion years older than our own sun, and therefore any life that has developed on Zeta Reticuli would be far superior than we are, presumably far superior to fall victim to simple earth tools and weapons and would be easily able to evade or overpower such efforts.
  4. Inter-galactic trade is not possible given the demands on resources to go from one star system to another.

First lets consider what we know about space–it’s big! While 39 light years seems like a large amount of time, even at the speed of light which we all know to be c or 299,792,458 meters per second, this trip in our current conventional wisdom would be impossible. First conventional wisdom tells us that the energy that is required to push an object with mass to the speed of light would be so great, that the object would have to be very small in order for all the energy that we could produce to push and continue to propel that object to Zeta Reticuli over the course of 39 years. Certainly not large enough for a human, and the necessary resources to keep that human alive for 39 years.

With that being said, let’s consider for a moment outside of our comfort zone–after all, these are all just theories, and theories are only good until someone disproves them through falsifiability. Consider for a moment the Geocentric model, where the Earth is at the center of the universe and the stars and universe revolves around us. Now this isn’t just something that came up and died down in rapid course as a scientific fad. This was a concept that was accepted by many/most in the scientific community for over 1500 years and wasn’t until the last several hundred years have we come up with more plausible explanations.  But until that time, we were firmly of the belief that we were the center of it all (how wonderful of us!). But then through research, observation, reasoning, and science, we have come to a new understanding of the universe (several actually).

Consider how up through the 14th century, scholars believed that the Earth was flat. This was until we achieved a higher understanding of our planet and began to understand this spherical concept. Up until that point, it would be impossible to convince anyone that the Earth was round.

Consider these major milestones in our history that we thought were impossible until we developed the technology or understanding necessary to achieve them:

  • Flying in general
  • Flying over an ocean
  • Flying faster than the speed of sound
  • Flying several times faster than the speed of sound
  • Leaving Earth’s gravity
  • Going to the Moon
  • Cars from horses
  • Metal ships (won’t they sink?!)
  • Guns from arrows
  • The internet

The list goes on and on and on. There isn’t a history of something until it actually happens. There were points in our history where the idea of going faster than the speed of a horse was outrageous and couldn’t be done. Now most people in America have at least 1 car and many have several cars. There was a point in time where talking about man flying would have gotten you into serious trouble, but now not only do we fly, we fly at speeds that are just absolutely absurd to think about. And we are still innovating there so we can travel faster than the speeds we have already achieved. We thought we’d never leave Earth’s gravity and now we have people living in space on the International Space Station, we have satellites in orbit and traveling to other planets. Nothing is possible until we actually do it, and before that point, we call it impossible and discourage innovation because of that supposed certainty.

While all signs currently point to the speed of light being the fastest thing in our Universe, I would argue that there has to be a force in the universe that goes faster than the speed of light. And I’d go as far as to say that not only should there be one, but many. What’s my reasoning for this? First off, the forces at work to arrange our universe would suggest to me that gravity or the forces involved with gravity (since we have yet to find that elusive graviton), can interact with each other over great distances (even the article states that the distance between these twin stars is some 800 million miles), well if the universe had to send a single to one star to be affected by the others forces and have to wait 800 million miles for a response back to that request, this whole universe concept is a gigantic failure. Imagine those days of turn based games and how long they took verses real time games. The universe has to be able to talk to itself and the things within it instantly. This by itself would almost guarantee that light speed is too slow, as we’ve proven at great length that the time it takes for light to get from one side of the known universe to the other would take just too much time.

Let’s look at this idea that if an alien from an advanced civilization came to earth, that they would provide us with details on where they came from. What do we know? We know that the universe as we know is is very very old. We know this because our current method of observation requires us to look at light that has traveled through space and is in itself quite outdated. If an alien who presumably would need to know how to get here and back home tried to convey where he was from, most likely they would not look up to the stars and point out his home–why, because it’s probably not there in our view of the universe! I give this example that most people will understand (although might not agree with). In biblical times, it was written that God communicated with man through a burning bush, and passed on two tablets that contained the ten commandments by which we should live our lives by. Now, if that same event happened today, I think that we would perceive that differently? Why? Because we have grown as humans, as living, breathing, thinking humans, and through our continual facination with science and proving the why’s and how’s, we would look to validate the burning bush by ruling out all earthly reasons that this could happen before resorting to the divine as the cause. Simply stated, man of Biblical times did not have the comprehension to understand the events that they were observing. Likewise, if an alien came to earth and tried to explain to a current earthling how they were able to come to earth and where they were from, we just wouldn’t have the comprehension to understand what they were saying. We are just so use to looking up at the sky and seeing something static, that we couldn’t understand it if someone told us that what we saw was not really the case. Or to say that they came from a far off land, something that only could be viewed through alien technology, the only thing that we could have is the approximate area in the sky that they were referencing. Beyond that the markers would just be an interpretation of a point in space, verses the exact origin.

Additionally think about spacial references, our current method of referencing is very 2 dimensional, as we see space as a large canvas with points scattered about representing what we can see. And we can approximate distance to the earth by light that we are seeing. However, if an alien civilization has achieve true inter-galactic space travel, presumably their methods for mapping out the stars and various other space debris would be far different than our view of the visible universe. I go back to the flat earth argument, if all you see if a straight horizon, how would you know to think of it as a sphere? I dare you to go outside on the streets of Chicago and point to the location of Tokyo, Japan. This is the problem that we’d have if we went back in time to try and explain to humans in the 12th century locations on the other side of the world with their current level of understanding.

To think that aliens from far off galaxies would not trade is just preposterous. When we look at how human civilization operates, resources and the control of those resources is the primary driver for our economy. But at some point in time our resources will be used up. Take an element such as Helium. When we think of helium we think of Mylar balloons and birthday parties. But what we don’t think of is how scarce this element is. Because of the rate of consumption and the slower rate of renewal, we will get to a point where we are helium deprived. But we don’t think about what will happen at that point in time. Now think 3 billion years into the future and if we don’t have elements like helium and such, wouldn’t we find ways to resource those elements from neighboring planets or celestial objects? Sure we would. And why wouldn’t aliens? Stephen Hawkings was right to be paranoid and caution against the pursuit of actively looking for these aliens. But that’s not to say that aliens would be hostile. Certainly there are better sources of natural resources than on a planet that is feverishly consuming those resources as fast as we can get our grubby hands on them. Nonetheless trade would be necessary to ensure that resources that are rich in one area of the galaxy can be consumed in other area’s. The only obstacle that you have to get over is the lack of ability for us to travel between solar systems. Once you get past that and if you assume that such a feat is possible, trade becomes a no brainer and necessary to ensure the survival of a civilization.

The big question that comes to mind at this point in time is why haven’t aliens introduced themselves to the greater masses and only to the people who are least likely to be believed if they did announce to the world that they had made contact with life not of this world. I think the answer is pretty simple–humans are not ready to meet other life forms. This was one of the major themes in the movie Contact, as we can see the reaction of the people after the Jodi Foster character failed to come back with the necessary proof of her journey to the Vegans. The same applies here. If an alien species came and observed humans, they would quickly realize that we are still a savage race, hell bent on our own destruction and without enough self-restraint to deal with such a large issue. We are a world consumed by religion, something that would be put into question at all levels–those of faith and those without. We look around today and we see people who are willing to kill for religion, what happens with 6 billion people realize that the faith that they have is on such a micro scale that they feel that they have lost their faith? What would happen if the world realized that they were no longer on the leading edge of technology and in fact were on the more primitive side of things? What would we do as a species to gain new technology that had military applications? Would we use them against each other, or worse against those we fear and would try and stay at arms length with? There are so many questions that rely on the unreliability of the human condition that if I was an alien species I would think to myself how much humans would benefit from medical and technological improvements, but then think twice and stay to myself that they are just not ready–just not yet. Through time and growth as we overcome our own problems and grow will we become more appealing to the greater universe of life, but at the moment, we are the savage beasts who need to expend all our energies not to pull ourselves apart. Other aliens may just be waiting for the day that we annihilate ourselves and think why go through all the hassle when given time they will do the heavy lifting for them and leave a barren planet ready to be consumed?

Too often do we see portrayals of aliens as the slow moving, awkward, and socially inept creatures that we’ve come to fear and love in movies. I compare this to our portrayal of zombies as slow, dumb, and otherwise brainless creatures easily overcome by doors and guns and sheer force. Where are the representations of zombies that take into account that they have taken over human bodies so technically anything a human can do, so can a zombie–only difference is that a zombie is not worried about preservation of life, so the threat goes up. Likewise, aliens who have conquered space travel cannot be assumed to be like the traditional grey aliens like the Asgard that we see on StarGate and other shows. We have to assume them to be just as intelligent if not more than we are. And based on how we would react if we were the explorers finding creatures that we thought to ourselves to be lesser than us, we have to assume that they would do the same.

Perhaps in future generations we will learn to overcome our current understanding of the universe and allow us to join fellow travelers through the stars, but for now it’s just science fiction.