“No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, *they* observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us.” so begins HG Wells's War of the World, where Martian invade the earth.
Many of us have our own version / speculation of the Little Green Men from Outer Space. In the later nineties, UFO enthusiasts were crazed with the concept of Antenna-head aliens descending on earth from Frisbee like flying saucers.
Hollywood went high over alien movies each one with a unique looking alien – Spielberg's E.T. had them as wobbly and lumpy headed golf-eyed weirdo. Planet of the Apes was an entire planet full of monkeys in moon-suites. Star Wars made a whole zoo in the space with all forms of chimeric cows, goats, dogs, apes standing on two legs and talking gibberish. Men in Black was the most hilarious of all – the cross-bred insect-cum-human aliens with super intelligence was a laughter riot. The movie Alien went a step further, portraying Aliens as giant Man-eater plants which breeds inside humans (as if it is biologically possible to have a creature the size of cauliflower inside your body without your knowledge). Micheal Crichton's Sphere was about mind-fuddling alien manipulating human thought process. Almost all of the movies had one thing in common as far as the alien physiology is concerned – they looked remarkably like the humans, usually a bilaterally-symmetrical body, one head with two eyes, one nose and a mouth. (with a rare except of the ones with their eyes in the stomach). But how much ever funny looking teddy bear like the aliens are, they are also either vicious cannibals or super intelligent or both.
So whats the real true behind the glamorous image of this entities from another planet?
Millions of dollars are spent on the radio telescopes transmitting signals in prime numbers, SETI observations, and space probes with gold plated gramophone records.
So whats out there? And why is it not showing itself? I think the question whether there are life on other planets is not merely a scientific but a philosophical one. Perhaps a proof of life of unknown origin might help us trace back our own origin. It is a reassuring that in this vast universe, we are not alone.
But, in reality, both (the proof of) presence or absence of extraterrestrial life is enough to send us in an existential shock. But the chances of evolution going bonkers and jellyfishes developing super-intelligence on some other godforsaken planet is a rarity. The evolutionary process on earth is still a mysterious and complex process. There are millions of different species of unicellular life-forms in this earth, and compared to that, number of species variations among invertebrate is considerably less. Species variation among vertebrates are even lesser than that. And there are just few types of intelligent life form – such as the dolphins, chimpanzees and humans. Among that too, the humans chimps and orangutans are the only three species known to have self-awareness. Contrary to the popular misconception, dolphins and apes do not have self-awareness.
So according to the evolutionary growth pattern in earth, the chances of finding a unicellular organism in space is much higher than finding Lil Green men with TV antennas protruding out of their heads. Then again, think of all the viruses and bacterium on earth, and the number of diseases they cause.
Indeed, an alien bacterium can carry a fatal-alien-incurable disease that you dont want to catch. Crichton's Andromeda Strain was on similar lines, about contamination of earth atmosphere with an extraterrestrial organism causing epidemic. Very plausible.
Parallely, lets just presume that in some Kappa-Kappa-Gamma planet of a Theta-beta Star system has been home to a highly evolved intelligent life-form which can be similar to ours or may be born out of entirely different composition. Life on earth is mainly made up of hydrocarbon. In Kappa-Kappa-Gamma planet, life may have been branched out of sulfur or potassium or even helium. They can have their brain neurones in their knees for all we know. Or maybe the roasted human-hydrocarbon might just be their daily vitamin supplement. Which is when they will look for us, as we are looking for them, and instead of shaking hands with us, bake us in the oven for a barbecue party.
But lets try to be optimistic and think that they will be civilized enough and passive enough for us and way advanced in technology than us (isn't thats what we want all along – tame puppy-like aliens coming to earth to teach us some innovative new technology, too be more precise, some new form of death ray gun).
Now, to be further more optimistic, lets just say that it really happens (for SETI funding sake, coz people are beginning to get tired of shouting “Hellooooo” over the phone when there has been no sound at the other end of the line for quite some time now), wouldn't it be like teaching calculus to your pet dog, for all your get is a woof and a wag. Similarly, wouldn't it be little trying for some philanthropist Alien professor teaching us some bombastic killer technology (lets say) to make weapons of mass destruction out of (lets say) cowdung. Thats like asking the dumbest guy in your class crack a national security code, of course its going to be futile, and the aliens will have the same feeling of sympathy and pity for us, as we have for the cows.
In other words, the technology takes time to mature and develop, it took a considerable time from the first gliders of Wright Brothers to todays MIG aircraft. We may scratch our heads at a alien spacecraft that landed in our backyard by a navigational error, we may never know the science to replicate it or even use it because we need to pass the tenth level Alien-Board exam to figure the step-one math.
Whatever happens, I hope that the Aliens don't think of us as cute little lumpy creatures with big eyes and limited intelligence, as we do of them, because if they do, we are in trouble. We think dolphins are cute and clever creature and we make them sing and dance for us in Sea-Worlds.
What happened to the Indians when Europeans arrived in America, or when the Spanish came to South America or when the English came to Asia? There was an inevitable clash of cultures, each one of the civilization thought of the other as barbaric and finally the one having a superior technology wiped out the inferior one. End of story.
Are we over-whelmed with remorse and guilt when we squish a spider or a roach? Or, we just think of them as pests coming in our way. But what if, the Little Green Man harbor similar sentiments about us and do not reciprocate our friendly jesters of sending gramophone records in space. Wouldnt that be an unwelcomed guest appearance?
Many of us have our own version / speculation of the Little Green Men from Outer Space. In the later nineties, UFO enthusiasts were crazed with the concept of Antenna-head aliens descending on earth from Frisbee like flying saucers.
Hollywood went high over alien movies each one with a unique looking alien – Spielberg's E.T. had them as wobbly and lumpy headed golf-eyed weirdo. Planet of the Apes was an entire planet full of monkeys in moon-suites. Star Wars made a whole zoo in the space with all forms of chimeric cows, goats, dogs, apes standing on two legs and talking gibberish. Men in Black was the most hilarious of all – the cross-bred insect-cum-human aliens with super intelligence was a laughter riot. The movie Alien went a step further, portraying Aliens as giant Man-eater plants which breeds inside humans (as if it is biologically possible to have a creature the size of cauliflower inside your body without your knowledge). Micheal Crichton's Sphere was about mind-fuddling alien manipulating human thought process. Almost all of the movies had one thing in common as far as the alien physiology is concerned – they looked remarkably like the humans, usually a bilaterally-symmetrical body, one head with two eyes, one nose and a mouth. (with a rare except of the ones with their eyes in the stomach). But how much ever funny looking teddy bear like the aliens are, they are also either vicious cannibals or super intelligent or both.
So whats the real true behind the glamorous image of this entities from another planet?
Millions of dollars are spent on the radio telescopes transmitting signals in prime numbers, SETI observations, and space probes with gold plated gramophone records.
So whats out there? And why is it not showing itself? I think the question whether there are life on other planets is not merely a scientific but a philosophical one. Perhaps a proof of life of unknown origin might help us trace back our own origin. It is a reassuring that in this vast universe, we are not alone.
But, in reality, both (the proof of) presence or absence of extraterrestrial life is enough to send us in an existential shock. But the chances of evolution going bonkers and jellyfishes developing super-intelligence on some other godforsaken planet is a rarity. The evolutionary process on earth is still a mysterious and complex process. There are millions of different species of unicellular life-forms in this earth, and compared to that, number of species variations among invertebrate is considerably less. Species variation among vertebrates are even lesser than that. And there are just few types of intelligent life form – such as the dolphins, chimpanzees and humans. Among that too, the humans chimps and orangutans are the only three species known to have self-awareness. Contrary to the popular misconception, dolphins and apes do not have self-awareness.
So according to the evolutionary growth pattern in earth, the chances of finding a unicellular organism in space is much higher than finding Lil Green men with TV antennas protruding out of their heads. Then again, think of all the viruses and bacterium on earth, and the number of diseases they cause.
Indeed, an alien bacterium can carry a fatal-alien-incurable disease that you dont want to catch. Crichton's Andromeda Strain was on similar lines, about contamination of earth atmosphere with an extraterrestrial organism causing epidemic. Very plausible.
Parallely, lets just presume that in some Kappa-Kappa-Gamma planet of a Theta-beta Star system has been home to a highly evolved intelligent life-form which can be similar to ours or may be born out of entirely different composition. Life on earth is mainly made up of hydrocarbon. In Kappa-Kappa-Gamma planet, life may have been branched out of sulfur or potassium or even helium. They can have their brain neurones in their knees for all we know. Or maybe the roasted human-hydrocarbon might just be their daily vitamin supplement. Which is when they will look for us, as we are looking for them, and instead of shaking hands with us, bake us in the oven for a barbecue party.
But lets try to be optimistic and think that they will be civilized enough and passive enough for us and way advanced in technology than us (isn't thats what we want all along – tame puppy-like aliens coming to earth to teach us some innovative new technology, too be more precise, some new form of death ray gun).
Now, to be further more optimistic, lets just say that it really happens (for SETI funding sake, coz people are beginning to get tired of shouting “Hellooooo” over the phone when there has been no sound at the other end of the line for quite some time now), wouldn't it be like teaching calculus to your pet dog, for all your get is a woof and a wag. Similarly, wouldn't it be little trying for some philanthropist Alien professor teaching us some bombastic killer technology (lets say) to make weapons of mass destruction out of (lets say) cowdung. Thats like asking the dumbest guy in your class crack a national security code, of course its going to be futile, and the aliens will have the same feeling of sympathy and pity for us, as we have for the cows.
In other words, the technology takes time to mature and develop, it took a considerable time from the first gliders of Wright Brothers to todays MIG aircraft. We may scratch our heads at a alien spacecraft that landed in our backyard by a navigational error, we may never know the science to replicate it or even use it because we need to pass the tenth level Alien-Board exam to figure the step-one math.
Whatever happens, I hope that the Aliens don't think of us as cute little lumpy creatures with big eyes and limited intelligence, as we do of them, because if they do, we are in trouble. We think dolphins are cute and clever creature and we make them sing and dance for us in Sea-Worlds.
What happened to the Indians when Europeans arrived in America, or when the Spanish came to South America or when the English came to Asia? There was an inevitable clash of cultures, each one of the civilization thought of the other as barbaric and finally the one having a superior technology wiped out the inferior one. End of story.
Are we over-whelmed with remorse and guilt when we squish a spider or a roach? Or, we just think of them as pests coming in our way. But what if, the Little Green Man harbor similar sentiments about us and do not reciprocate our friendly jesters of sending gramophone records in space. Wouldnt that be an unwelcomed guest appearance?
And after reading through this, would you still be that excited about the prospect of an E. T. knocking at our door asking for donation to make a new inter-steller highway?
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