science fiction – Sheila Kennedy

The Aliens Are Here

Sometimes, you have to laugh or you’ll cry….

Let me begin this post with some confessions: I love science fiction. I’ve read tons of it since I was a child. I’m a huge Star Trek fan, currently fixated on “Strange New Worlds.” My scientific knowledge is admittedly limited, but the odds have convinced me that humans cannot be alone in the universe–it’s really inconceivable that only one planet among billions has generated (semi) intelligent life.

But really, idiot Congress-critters!

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post had the story:

The aliens have landed. And they have a gavel!

That is as plausible a takeaway as any from this week’s House Oversight Committee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, the curiosity formerly known as UFOs. The panel’s national security subcommittee brought in, as its star witness, one David Grusch, a former Defense Department intelligence official who now claims:

That there are “quite a number” of “nonhuman” space vehicles in the possession of the U.S. government.

That one “partially intact vehicle” was retrieved from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1933 by the United States, acting on a tip from Pope Pius XII.

That the aliens have engaged in “malevolent activity” and “malevolent events” on Earth that have harmed or killed humans.

That the U.S. government is also in possession of “dead pilots” from the spaceships.

That a private defense contractor is storing one of the alien ships, which have been as large as a football field.

That the vehicles might be coming “from a higher dimensional physical space that might be co-located right here.”

That the Roswell, N.M., alien landing was real, and the Air Force’s debunking of it was a “total hack job.”

And that the United States has engaged in a nearly century-long “sophisticated disinformation campaign” (apparently including murders to silence people) to hide the truth.

I’d tell you more, but then they would have to kill me.

I actually have a more plausible theory: there are aliens among us, and they are currently serving as Republican Right-wingers in the U.S. House of Representatives. (I mean, really, who thinks that Marjorie Taylor Green and the other loonies currently preventing anything remotely resembling governance are sentient members of the human race? Unlikely, I tell you!! They’re here to effectuate the paralysis of Earth’s governments–and they’re doing a pretty good job of it!)

Although the star witness in this hearing was unable to provide any evidence whatever to support his claims, Milbank noted that several Republicans on the panel greeted those claims with “total credulity, using them as just more evidence that the deep-state U.S. government is lying to the American people, covering up the truth and can never be trusted. Their anti-government vendetta has gone intergalactic.”

I’d almost like to believe that the U.S. has a government capable of pulling off a cover-up of this magnitude. Think about the thousands of people who would have had to be sworn to silence and the fact that their compliance would need to be closely monitored over decades…It’s a theory right up there with Robert N. Kennedy, Jr.’s insistence that the entire medical establishment must be “in on” the “truth” about those nefarious vaccines.

I love science fiction, but I’m getting pretty tired of following the clearly alien MAGA life-forms controlling today’s GOP.

Maybe I should just use my Space Laser to wipe them out…..

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The Fermi Paradox

Ours is a science-fiction family.

That fandom probably explains our fascination with the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, and conversations in which we exchange theories about why no representative of other civilizations has ever contacted us. (I continue to assume that reports of alien abductions and Roswell conspiracies are evidence of something other than intergalactic visitations.)

Which brings me to an article my middle son recently shared about the “Fermi paradox.”

The article begins with the math. Using the most conservative estimates, there are 500 quintillion, or 500 billion billion sun-like stars, a 100 billion billion earth-like planets, and 10 million billion potentially intelligent civilizations in the observable universe. If we limit the calculations to our own galaxy, and use the lowest estimate for stars in the Milky Way (100 billion), that would come to 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 potentially intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. (The bases for these estimates is in the article.)

So: why hasn’t anyone called? Written? Why hasn’t SETI picked up any signs of such civilizations?

Welcome to the Fermi Paradox…

In taking a look at some of the most-discussed possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox, let’s divide them into two broad categories—those explanations which assume that there’s no sign of Type II and Type III Civilizations because there are none of them out there, and those which assume they’re out there and we’re not seeing or hearing anything for other reasons.

For his part, my son is convinced that civilizations get to a certain point in their development and destroy themselves–that technological innovation outstrips social progress/maturation, and they self-destruct. (As he notes, perhaps they are unable to combat climate change in time)… In the Fermi Paradox, this theory is called The Great Filter.

The Great Filter theory says that at some point from pre-life to Type III intelligence, there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond.

There are more comforting theories.

Super-intelligent life might have already visited Earth before we were here. Sentient humans have only been around for about 50,000 years (assuming we can consider humanity sentient–see Wednesday’s post)…Or we might live in the galactic equivalent of “the sticks”–some out-of-the way part of the galaxy. Perhaps civilizations that endure lose interest in exploration. Or on the other hand, maybe there’s only one such civilization, and it’s a “superpredator” (the Borg??) devoid of what we would consider ethics, that exterminates (or assimilates) other intelligent civilizations once they get past a certain level.

Or maybe there’s plenty of activity and noise out there, but our technology is too primitive to hear it, or because we’re listening for the wrong things.

Like walking into a modern-day office building, turning on a walkie-talkie, and when you hear no activity (which of course you wouldn’t hear because everyone’s texting, not using walkie-talkies), determining that the building must be empty. Or maybe, as Carl Sagan has pointed out, it could be that our minds work exponentially faster or slower than another form of intelligence out there—e.g. it takes them 12 years to say “Hello,” and when we hear that communication, it just sounds like white noise to us.

Of course, it’s also possible that super-intelligent civilizations have created a tightly-regulated galaxy–sort of like Star Trek’s Federation– in which Earth has been labeled a “no go” zone because we’re part of a strict “Look but don’t touch” rule applicable to still-uncivilized planets.

As the author of this explanatory piece notes in his conclusion,

Beyond its shocking science fiction component, The Fermi Paradox also leaves me with a deep humbling. Not just the normal “Oh yeah, I’m microscopic and my existence lasts for three seconds” humbling that the universe always triggers. The Fermi Paradox brings out a sharper, more personal humbling, one that can only happen after spending hours of research hearing your species’ most renowned scientists present insane theories, change their minds again and again, and wildly contradict each other—reminding us that future generations will look at us the same way we see the ancient people who were sure that the stars were the underside of the dome of heaven, and they’ll think “Wow they really had no idea what was going on.”

Hard to say.

I’m just hoping my son’s theory is wrong–and if it’s right, that we don’t hit the Great Filter for a while…

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What If?

Like many Americans, I’ve been semi-obsessed with the plane that disappeared over Malaysia. Apparently, it just vanished without a trace. As the days go by with absolutely no good information, the mystery grows.

In the absence of real data, a science-fiction devotee (I plead guilty) can let her mind run wild.

What if?

What if the aircraft was snatched from the skies by aliens from another planet? And what if, after examining the passengers and crew, the aliens returned them all unharmed and proceeded to make their existence—and the existence of many other inhabited planets—known?

How would we quarrelsome, primitive Earthlings react to the knowledge that we are (a) not alone; (b) not superior; and (c) vulnerable?

How would the clerics and high priests of Earth’s multiple religions incorporate this new information into their theologies? What measures would our “We’re number One!!” politicians advocate? (John McCain and Dick Cheney would probably go on Fox News, blame Obama, and urge a nuclear attack; Putin might actually put his shirt back on. Who knows?)

And what about all of our unhappy, modernity-rejecting bigots? The Aryan Nation, KKK and other white supremacists, the assorted “pro-family” homophobes, the good “Christians” who think all Muslims are terrorists, their Taliban counterparts, the anti-Semites and innumerable others who see Earth as an assortment of tribes forever divided between “us” and “them”? Faced with a new “them,” would they be able to adjust their definition of “us” to include all of humanity?

How would the civic, religious, intellectual and political life of our planet change if we had to confront irrefutable evidence that we are not alone, not unique, and not the Center of the Universe?

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