Meditative Prose

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Tonight on an impulse I went on eBay and bought a t-shirt with a picture of three aliens and the phrase “I Believe” written across the top. At first this might sound like a joke, but it’s not: I believe in aliens.

I have actually been wanting a shirt like this for a few months now, ever since I watched the first episode of Carl Sagan’s PBS series “Cosmos.” In it, Sagan famously declares that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Now think about just one small beach that you’ve visited, and try, if you can, to fathom the number of grains of sand it contains. Once your headache subsides, check out this essay where an astronomer puts Sagan’s statement to the test and ultimately agrees with him.

I used to be skeptical. After all, the universe is so vast, so cold, so dead. Our instruments and techniques are just now becoming precise enough to detect Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. We can’t even see them, but we know they are there by the way the planet’s gravitational pull makes the star wobble ever so slightly. We are just starting to scratch the surface of this question, but there are an estimated 50,000 billion billion stars out there. With odds like that, I just can’t believe that ours is the only one with a planet that supports life. We are not alone.

How many planets are there like ours in the vast universe? How many are just the right distance from their star? How many have liquid water but no life? How many have life but no water? How many organisms are there that would shatter our idea of what an organism is, if only we knew about them? Are there any beings out there that can play physics like Yo Yo Ma plays the cello? How many alien civilizations have made the same mistakes we are making? How many have attained ecological enlightenment and become benevolent stewards of their world? How many would be awed by us, by our way of living, our music and art, if they could only meet us? How many would fear us?

Yeah, I believe in aliens. We may never meet them — the distances are so vast, and the worlds potentially so different from ours — but they are out there, I have no doubt. Then again, maybe we will meet them. Maybe it’s just a matter of time, and all we have to do is keep playing the game, if we can, and wait to be contacted. Maybe they are watching right now, dumbfounded, as we consciously cause the biodiversity of our planet to decrease, wondering if we’ll make it. Maybe all they want is to teach us the advanced lessons of the universe (“Lesson 41: Space, Time, and Other Illusions”), but we can’t master the easy stuff (“Lesson 1: Keep Your Planet Habitable.”) And so they wait, patiently, for humanity to mature.

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