From time to time, there is a flurry of interest, anxiety, and sometimes even hope about the existence of intelligent aliens in outer space. This must have its roots in ancient religious beliefs, in which gods were supposed to occasionally dwell in the sky and visit Earth to cause trouble. In the modern age, this myth (if it is a myth) was taken up by science fiction writers like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and the 1940s and 1950s produced a huge increase in reports of alien spacecraft, many of them from commercial and military pilots. I had a book about flying saucers when I was a teenager, with some blurred photos that could have been anything from intergalactic spacecraft to bits of dust on the camera lens, and they have fascinated me ever since. ,
More recently you may remember the epidemic of alien abductions in the 1960s and 1970s that gave a few kidnapped earthlings an up close and personal encounter with the alien visitors. For some reason they never kidnapped anybody interesting. Even today, our local community website regularly reports inexplicable things that are seen in the sky. We see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe. It’s a free country. And perhaps we see what we need to see.
The latest surge of interest in these hypothetical aliens was created by the 63-page Pentagon Report on Unidentified Flying Objects released in March, which came to the usual ambiguous conclusion: maybe yes, maybe no.
We’ve been waiting a long time for a definite yes, for our visitors from outer space to reveal themselves. Their slowness is discouraging, but understandable. Even if they broke all the speed limits, including the speed of light, the journey from the nearest star could take 73,000 years. When you think of the bad mood that most of us are in after an eight-hour flight, it seems likely that the aliens will be in a very bad mood indeed after a flight of 73,000 years, especially if the drinks ran out a few light years ago. When they arrive, they will be as undocumented as any aliens could very well be and will probably be arrested and made to fill out a heap of forms. This will not encourage them to like us.
So we wait, caught between the hope of cosmic rescue and the fear of being left to look after ourselves. A few helpful, intelligent aliens might bring advanced wisdom that would release us from some of our crazy, self-destructive beliefs and obsessions and solve some of our most pressing problems like campaign finance reform and term limits on Congress, although that might be too much to hope for. They might have advanced technologies that will allow us to turn back climate change, find new sources of clean energy, and get decent reception on our cell phones.
Our galaxy has half a trillion stars, and nobody knows how many other galaxies. It's hard to believe that all the infinite worlds in infinite space have produced nothing more intelligent than us. If not, the entire universe would have been a complete waste of time. Somebody or something out there must have at least a scrap of common sense.
Of course, the aliens might have come and gone already, which would account for all those sightings in the past. You couldn’t blame them. But I hope they come back if only out of morbid curiosity. Some kind of cosmic rescue mission is becoming increasingly urgent as the November election approaches.
