So I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about the possibility of intelligent life in the universe.
Note, I did not say elsewhere in the universe.
Since the universe is so huge, I figure the odds that intelligent life, and even life at all, developed here and absolutely nowhere else are astronomically low. There simply has to be some other place with life, and probably intelligent life, though possibly not by our understanding.
But then there's the problem that the universe is, in fact, so huge. The most distant stars are 14 billion light years from us, which means that even if light speed travel were possible, lots of other things would have to fall into place for any intelligent species to travel such great distances and survive. Suspended animation, extreme longevity (of both individual and species), highly efficient fuel sources, and so on.
Even if you assume there'd be life nearby, the closest star system that even might be able to sustain life is around 4 light years from here. OK, that's actually potentially doable if you can reach say, 0.5c and survive in deep space for 8 years. But again, how are you going to reach and sustain the kind of propulsion required to get up to even half the speed of light? (Not to mention slow down again, since friction isn't exactly a Thing in space.)
That isn't to assume that if we haven't figured it out, no one else has, but there's another problem, even if intelligent aliens do exist.
Why would they come here? There are trillions of trillions of stars in the universe (almost - the estimate is around 300 sextillion, which is a third of a trillion trillion, or 1024) and potentially even more planets, so the odds of an intelligent species capable of long distance space travel landing on the planet of another intelligent species are absurdly low.
Even if you take into account the idea that 'candidate' planets could be detected, so the presumably uninhabitable gas giants like Jupiter were ruled out, there are still trillions of planets to try, and people or aliens are more likely to try the nearby ones first.
The fact that we haven't determined that we could survive on any nearby planets leads me to think that anyone searching for us has run into similar difficulty. We aren't alone, but I think it's a safe bet we won't be found, either.
And interestingly, all this makes me a lot more comfortable with the premise of The X-Files. This is pure fiction. There is simply no way the government is covering up the arrival of intelligent aliens in real life. But that's what makes the show great. We can accept that it takes place in an alternate universe very similar to ours, but possibly one where the laws of physics are slightly different, or the universe is smaller, or the aliens just happen to all live in the Alpha Centauri system.
The alternate universe idea also makes it easier to appreciate the other paranormal stuff going on that I'm pretty sure doesn't actually exist. It's easy to suspend disbelief by saying, "Oh, it's obviously not taking place in our universe."
In a way, I'm more interested in the idea that there might be a massive government conspiracy to cover up genetic testing and illegal medical research on unsuspecting children. Our own so-called intelligent life developed that without any need for interstellar travel.
And that's kind of terrifying.
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