First of all. As a member of the human race, I can think of no greater scientific discovery than discovering the existence of intelligent life in the solar system. However, when you really start to think about the implications the discovery would provide, it starts to sound like a discovery that isn’t all that fun.

Just think about it. The intelligent life that is discovered outside of the earth would be enormous. The greatest discovery of the century, possibly in all of human history. World religions and belief systems that say humans are the only intelligent life in existence would be shattered, there would be many skeptics and conspiracy theorists questioning it just like they do the moon landing. Every last detail released to the public about our visitors from the stars would be criticized and scrutinized.

Now there is already a lot of information and theories about what it would be like, but I want to find the realistic data and real facts about what it would be like. It was a bit difficult, but I think I found it and you probably won’t like it.

Let’s look at the main form of communication that we think would be effective in communicating with these other worlds. Radio waves. Also, for some reason many people think that our super powerful telescopes are capable of looking at the surface of a planet, what people don’t realize is that astrophysicists use these telescopes to look at a planet’s atmosphere. They do this to look for atmospheric signs of life. Like when you look at our planet, we have an atmosphere rich in oxygen and nitrogen because we have plant life and animal life that breathes it. There would never be a nitrogen and oxygen rich atmosphere for no reason, this puts a huge hole in the original Star Trek, because nature only does something for a reason. So let’s say we think there is life on Mars, we put our giant Earth satellites in position with Mars and send a signal there. We didn’t get a response, which is not very surprising, but why? Well, you have to look at it from the point of view that we expect extraterrestrial life to have intelligence, technology, innovation and advancement of that technology all at the same time and we hope that they can decode a message and send one back to earth. That is a great hope that aliens are as advanced as we are. Now let’s go back 200 years in human history and say that aliens find a way to send a radio wave to earth in the terrestrial year of 1800. Now according to our intelligence terms we were still considered an intelligent species in 1800 but didn’t have the technology and innovation at the time. So what makes us think aliens do it too? Earth has been around for 12.4 billion years (approximately), and intelligent life has only dominated this planet for the last two thousand years, and technology and innovation have been around for maybe a couple of hundred years. So you see the small window of time when intelligence and innovation and technology are all prominent in our world or any world for that matter.

Another point is that if you ask any UFO scientist or theorist, they will tell you that the salient features we are looking for in extraterrestrial life is intelligence. Let’s take a quick look at the definition of intelligence. Intelligence: the ability to apply knowledge and skills.

Now the word intelligence was created to communicate the concept of applying knowledge and skills, and until we find a better way to communicate these concepts, we will have to deal with primitive verbal language. The ONLY reason humans are considered intelligent is because we invented the word. On our own terms, yes, we are smart. But we don’t really have a way to measure intelligence because it’s this weird ambiguous concept. But what makes us think we’re smart for a being from another world? I’d like to add this little quote from my personal hero and rock star astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson that I think sums this up pretty well: “Our best scientists work with chimps for years and years, and after all this work, chimps can stack blocks and make very primitive tools which is what our toddlers and babies can do very easily Now what makes you think alien scientists wouldn’t push Stephen Hawking and say “this human can do quantum mechanical equations in his head , just like our little alien toddlers and babies.” Now what I take from this quote is that perspective is everything and that as a species we need to think about it more.

Now another really interesting little fact about civilizations is that when you look at a civilization that wants to expand into an interplanetary species, you run into a lot of problems. Any civilization that wants to expand in that way is self-destructive and self-limiting. The question then arises whether an advanced alien civilization would even want to explore and become an interplanetary species. Let’s look at an example using the human race, we want to colonize Mars. Now if we look at the physical and financial effort required to completely colonize an entire planet, we have to see the reason why we want to colonize another planet. We want to move away from earth because, say, if earth is destroyed, we still have another planet with the species thriving for the species to continue. So let’s say that to do this we send a billion people to Mars, but before that, we need to become the dominant life form on Mars, we need to stabilize the atmosphere to support that huge amount of human life, and we need to perfect space. travel far enough that we can move large numbers of the human population to another planet. That by the way the trip to March is approximately 9 months. So we need to perfect the supplies of air, artificial gravity for these spacecraft that transport the population. In addition, the human condition must be taken into account. Now seeing all those factors that you have to take into account, the idea of ​​traveling and living on another planet becomes very cloudy. Now onto the self-destructive section of things. When you look at the approach that we would take to be an interplanetary species, you can look at our countries on earth as an example. Every country wants to be powerful, have influence and acquire territory. It’s kind of a flaw in our thinking, we’re greedy and we have a pretty bad track record when it comes to staying in power because at any moment someone stronger can take you down and then disappear from existence. And when you get into the same species on different planets, you will run into the problem of competition. We humans have this strange desire to seek out competition and we tend to be destructive in our desire to seek it out. A lot of people argue that competition fuels innovation and new discoveries and yes that may be true but from a sociological point of view it can also lead to territorial disputes and if you and a species work together towards a common goal I think that will progress faster. than competition between the same species. Now, any species that understands that competition leads to destruction, and destruction leads to war, this species will be ahead of the curve and may not even feel the need to explore.

Now taking all this is. It makes me think of Elon Musk’s quote “We want to go to Mars because a future without Mars is boring.” I agree with him on that, a future as an interplanetary species is really exciting. Thinking about it fills my imagination with spaceships and a sense of adventure as we, as a human race, grow more and more. It seems like a child’s dream though. Now another big question is whether aliens visited our planet and determined that there were no signs of intelligent life. Just like the point I made earlier, we are an intelligent species based on our definition of the word intelligence. What gives us the right even to speculate that we are a relentless force of intelligence seeking to discover other life forms like ourselves? We can’t even get over our own man-made dilemmas here on earth, but we think we’re ready to expand our horizons and explore the galaxy. He seems ignorant and naive.

You also look at Stephen Hawking, who is one of the most intelligent humans alive today, he has even speculated that if an alien life form discovered our planet. Either they would enslave the human race, or they would just kill us all like a child with a magnifying glass for ants. Now what makes you think this? The reason he thinks this way is that he sees human hostility throughout our thousands of years on this earth and it is plagued by war after war after war. He’s not wrong in the sense that he gets looking at human history, he sees war and it’s not wrong of him to expect that same hostility from another life form, but there is literally no evidence that aliens are hostile like us. Also, if we do find another form of intelligent life, then there are strong predictions that they are not like war, the reason for this hypothesis is that if a species is really intelligent and really advanced, then it would not see war as a primary form. to gain territory or influence. They would most likely be very content, as they wouldn’t see the scientific gains from things we humans do as quests out of sheer curiosity.

This brings me to my final point. What if we’re just not worthy in terms of intelligence or innovation as a species, that these aliens deem us worthy of contact? I mean, think about it, what’s the main drive behind wanting to find extraterrestrial life? It is curiosity and a feeling of being afraid of being alone in the universe. I’m about to ask some important questions, but the only way to find the important answers is to ask the right important questions. Should we strive to be an interplanetary species? Would it benefit our world as a whole? Shouldn’t we be focused on trying to protect our species’ only home, or should we keep window shopping to find a new one? I think it would make our species self-destructive in the sense of how many things can go wrong. I mean, let’s say we successfully colonize Mars, which by the way, if we have the capabilities to terraform Mars, then we have the technology to make Earth healthy again. My big concern is that people start arguing and before we all know it. We humans are waging an interplanetary war with ourselves and in that sense we would be counterproductive. I feel like we’re entering the space age in hopes of benefiting our species and I think we could succeed in that dream in some way, but in the long run I don’t see it being beneficial to the continuation of our species.

As humans, we are the most successful and destructive species on the planet that has ever existed. We have to realize as a species that the only way we can all have a home is to properly care for the only home we have.

PS Actually, astrophysicists believe that in about 5 billion years our sun will implode and completely vaporize the earth and the rest of our solar system will be left as a black nothingness, a graveyard for the 8 divine planets. So it doesn’t really matter if humans die tomorrow or 1000 years from now. Just say.