Today i watched Steven Hawkins program on discovery about aliens. Fairly interesting questions were addressed: are we alone in the universe? If you ask me i think it would be fairly naive of us to think we are alone, knowing how many billion of galaxies there are and also that today we do know that life without oxygen, sunlight and water is possible. We often limit our thinking in that in order for life to exist it has to be carbon based and need water. But why do we exclude different forms of energies? We often think of aliens as little men but in reality alien life can be as complex or simple as such. The intriguing idea of astroids spreading alien life around the galaxy by hitting planets and letting the fight of survival of the fittest. Why not? Im sure there are organisms that can survive the temperature and the vacuum of space.
A question addressed in the episode was that its a scientific problem that we have not heard from any aliens. That if they do exist why haven't they contacted us? Firstly with that thought we have to assume that they do have some form of intelligence to communicate...and yes why wouldn't there be other intelligent life forms out there? That though requires the simple fact that they do speak the same "language" as us. Wether its sound, radio waves, language, images and so on. Cause really what is communication? Its merely sounds that we have given a symbol. We know the letter A is pronounced A cause we have set rules for it. We know different symbols have different meanings and as i am sure we all have experienced we know that it is difficult to communicate and understand each other if we come from different countries, social and culture backgrounds. How hard would it then not be to understand a message from outer space? It would require that aliens communicate with roughly the same symbols and sounds as we do. Maybe they even have been trying to talk to us for decades but we are just not on the same "wave length"? One possible sign of extraterrestrial life though, was the Wow-signal from 1977, apparently coming from a place 200 lightyears away. Well there is another problem...communication and conversations with the universe is not an easy task. It is not like a face to face, phone to phone dialog. It takes a long time for the message to arrive and just as long for it to be sent back. So by the time the message arrives the world has probably changed significantly...i mean look at us and where we were 200 years ago.
But then lets play with the idea that aliens will visit us or already have. That in itself implies that they are much highly evolved and more intelligent then us. Their technology would be far more advanced then ours, as it would have allowed them to travel such distances in space. Then would they come in peace? Some say that probably not. The argument is that if they have the technology to travel in the universe then they probably have experiences the atom bomb and its lethal outcome. So they would be capable to exploiting and destroy their own and other worlds. But why do we assume that? Firstly that limits our thinking in that they would be like us. That they would have to be a social life form in order to perform such a task. But then again maybe nuclear explosion are common in their world? Maybe its a natural phenomenon, like the El Nino heat wave? Maybe it is like fire works for them? Maybe such a thing occurs often on their planet and they have developed a resistance? Furthermore why do we even think that they would come down to earth and say "Well, hello their neighbour?". I mean why wouldn't they want to visit earth? We are aliens to them, must be fascinating to explore another life form, no? We could learn from each other...Then again maybe space travel is common for them and they check on us now and then, thinking we are just a little ant farm that think we are so smart? Im mean really what could we offer high intelligent aliens, that posses the technology of traveling in space and maybe time (assuming they come in peace)? If i was an alien, i would check out earth first. I would see what we are capable to do to each other, to our planet and its life. Heck i would think twice in landing here...imagine what our governments would do if one little alien would visit us? " ...nope, it is better to be safe then sorry!" I am sure there is an alien saying like that! "I will come back in lets say a billion years and see if they have learned anything...or next time I pass this place I will make sure I bring the whole fleet just in case...!
