UFOs - Leslie Kean [145]
Given that little systematic science has been done, the case for rejecting the extraterrestrial hypothesis out of hand rests on an a priori theoretical conviction that extraterrestrial visitation is impossible: “It can’t be true, therefore it isn’t.” Skeptics offer four main arguments to this effect.
“We Are Alone.” Human beings have debated for centuries whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, and with the recent discovery of over 400 extrasolar planets,4 this debate has heated up considerably of late. Good scientific reasons exist to think that intelligent life does not exist elsewhere, but increasingly there are equally good scientific reasons to think that it does. Bottom line: We don’t know yet.
“They Can’t Get Here.”5 Skeptics argue that even if there is intelligent life elsewhere, it’s too far away from Earth to get here. Relativity theory tells us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). At .001 percent of light speed, or 66,960 miles per hour—already far beyond current human capabilities—it would take 4,500 Earth years for any vehicle to arrive just from the nearest star system. And at speeds much closer to light a single spaceship would need to carry more energy than is presently consumed in an entire year on Earth.
Physical constraints on interstellar travel are often seen as the strongest reason to reject the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but are they clearly decisive? Computer simulations suggest that even at speeds well below light, any expanding advanced civilizations should have reached Earth long ago.6 How long ago depends on what assumptions are made, but even pessimistic ones yield encounters with Earth within 100 million years, barely a blip in cosmic terms. Additionally, there are growing doubts that the speed of light is truly an absolute barrier.7 Wormholes—themselves predicted by relativity theory—are tunnels through space-time that would shorten greatly the distances between stars. And then there is the possibility of “warp drive,” or engineering the vacuum around a spaceship to enable it to skip over space without time dilation.8 Such ideas are highly speculative, but given how far we humans have come in just 300 years since our scientific revolution, imagine how far another civilization might have advanced 3,000 years (much less 3,000,000) after theirs. In light of these arguments, if anything, visitors from other civilizations should be here, which prompts the famous “Fermi Paradox,”9 or “Where are they?”
“They Would Land on the White House Lawn.” So skeptics often take the argument one step further, by asking: If visitors from other planets have come all this way to see us, why don’t they land on the White House lawn and introduce themselves? After all, if human beings were to encounter intelligent life in our own space exploration, that’s what we would do. On this basis, the fact that UFO occupants have not done so is evidence that they are not here.
But is it? It is not at all clear that space-faring humans would land on an alien equivalent of the White House lawn if they journeyed to a distant planet. Perhaps advanced explorers would maintain a policy of noninterference toward lower life forms. Regardless of what human beings might do, however, on what scientific basis can we know the intentions of alien beings, whose nature and agendas might be utterly unimaginable to us? There is none, and as such one cannot rule out the possibility that extraterrestrials might have reasons for avoiding contact.
“We Would Know If They Were Here.” This final argument appeals to human authority—that, due to our vast surveillance