Lights in the Sky
Are we alone?
In 2017 the New York Times reported on a $22 million allocation of funds by the Department of Defense for a program known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Designed to examine military encounters with UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), this being the DoD and that word “Threat” being present, we're talking about money spent ensuring they detect, understand and neutralise danger from extraterrestrials before it gets to the stage where Will Smith is called upon to punch one in the face. Scary stuff, though $22 million is a relatively trifling amount, especially stateside - at home, Boris spaffed more than 2000 times that on a failed Test and Trace system (presumably Richard Blackwood was unavailable to simply lamp Covid in the chops... though I can't imagine he was too busy??)
Despite the sensationalist implications of the NYT's reveal, even in a country where more tin foil is expended on hats than sandwiches, the story caused little stir, failing to make a splash in the turbulent waters of Trump's first year. In the daily news cycle, little green men from other planets were simply no match for an orange one with little hands who merely behaved as such.
Four years later, the media once more latched onto the story in unison as June saw a Pentagon report released confirming government investigations into several military-observed UAPs proved “inconclusive”. Nevertheless, the scientific community's phones rang off the hook as perennially fringe concerns were temporarily mainstreamed. Might it once again be time to seriously ask ourselves whether we are truly alone in the universe? Like, more than two metre levels of separation alone!
Fermi's paradox is the seeming contradiction between the lack of real evidence extraterrestrials exist and the implicit likeliness they do, given the known vastness of the universe. At the end of a long lunch date with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski and Herbert York in the 50s, during which they discussed UFO reports and the probability of light-speed travel, Enrico Fermi is credited as asking, “But where is everybody?”. Whilst he may well have been talking about some people's propensity to disappear to the toilet when the bill's due, the somewhat grander interpretation that he was ruminating on the confounding absence of interstellar visitors is what he's now famous for.
On Earth (4.5 billion years old) we went from early organic molecules to self-replicating life in 100-200 million years. Not long later, that self replicating life had evolved to ride electric scooters, wield selfie sticks and build nuclear bombs. In a cosmic blink of an eye, this particular planet's (apparently) intelligent life has already achieved a level of technological advancement at least adequate enough to end its own existence. Given there are at least 100 billion planets orbiting starts in our galaxy (the Milky Way) and at least 200 BILLION other galaxies out there, even conservative scientific calculations place the likelihood of “intelligent” life occurring elsewhere in the essentially certain camp.
Of course, our own perceived intelligence is a quirk of fate as opposed to an inevitable consequence or evolutionary requirement of life on Earth. If the meteorite which wiped out the dinos 65 million years ago hadn't prised open an evolutionary niche for the small rodents science now knows we're descended from, today we'd still be scurrying around beneath the feet of gigantic reptiles with small brains, nary a selfie stick in sight.
Whilst our own journey towards sentience and technological mastery was undoubtedly dependent on a fluke, when you think of the universe in similar terms as the infinite monkey theorem, its mind-boggling vastness running trillions upon trillions of simultaneous experiments in the formation or otherwise of life, it's totally rational to assume the emergence of countless civilizations at myriad levels of sophistication. Assuming just one of these developed interstellar capabilities, travelling at even 1/10th the speed of light, replicating and diverging at each planetary stop, they could traverse and theoretically colonise the entire galaxy in just tens of millions of years. Still sounds a lot? Factored into the 13.6 billion year age of the Milky Way and that infinite monkey theorem, it's nothing. Which brings us back to the question, “Where is everybody?” Why is our best record of UAPs grainy, underwhelming, military footage of erratically moving dots when three billion smartphones are in near-constant operation around the world, just itching to create the next viral video sensation? Imagine the likes you'd get for a selfie with E.T.
The answer may be an extraterrestrial slap in the face for a species that's already been facepalming pretty hard of late - Perhaps we've been deemed unworthy of engagement. Of negligible scientific interest to superior minds. Not worth dropping in on.
Comparing the DNA of a human and a chimp, it's 99% identical, yet that 1% difference has us flying in planes and writing articles on our laptops whilst they throw faeces at each other and wank in tyres at London Zoo. We might think that gulf in behaviour and intellect is huge, but it's been manifested in a cosmic minute. Extrapolate that forcing vector for intelligence to a complex life form which got a billion year head start on us and it's easy to assume they'd laugh at notions we consider complex or human milestones we laud in our hubris. Viewed through the eyes (if that's what they use) of greater intelligences, our best efforts at civilization might be akin to ants scurrying back and forth with bits of leaves. Presented to our cosmic elders as evidence of our achievements, 5G, microprocessors and The Large Hadron Collider wouldn't even make the fridge.
God knows what they'd make of Brexit...