Are We Alone?

by Bob Sparrow

Just the Milky Way galaxy

Haven’t we all wondered at one time or another . . . are we alone?  Yes, you may very well be alone while reading this blog and hopefully you were alone when you went to the bathroom this morning, but the graphic gives us the real intent of the question: Are we the only people in the universe, in all of space?

If we include ‘all of space’, first we don’t even have a clue as to how big ‘all of space’ is, but what we do know is that just in our Milky Way galaxy, there are trillions of planets with many of them orbiting stars just like our sun.  And if you consider space beyond our galaxy, the odds are pretty good that there is intelligent life out there somewhere; and to complicate matters in our search for intelligent life, lately we’re not even sure we can find intelligent life here on Earth!

A comment from famous American-Italian and Manhattan Project physicist, Enrico Fermi, is one of my favorites when contemplating the mystery of intelligent life ‘out there’..  After hearing how vast space is and the probable odds of having life out there somewhere, he said, “Where is everybody?”  This is known as the ‘Fermi Paradox’.

The process of ‘looking for life’ out there, includes first looking at how life on Earth began, which we’re really not sure about; we do know approximately when life started here on Earth (about 4 billion years ago), but we don’t know how it started!  Which complicates things when looking for life elsewhere. It’s been said that “If we played Earth’s history again, the emergence of intelligent life as we know it, is actually somewhat unlikely.”

Apollo 12 astronauts

However, there is a story that claims that when Apollo 11 reached the surface of the moon, Armstrong expressed astonishment at finding two unknown spacecraft already present on the moon. Armstrong further described these UFOs as being huge and lined up on the far side of the crater’s edge observing the Earth.  The theory originated from NASA’s claim about losing transmission from Apollo 11 for roughly two minutes. Did Armstrong really see aliens during that time?  Apollo 10 astronauts, Stafford, Young, and Cernan heard a certain whistling sort of music while circling the moon. The music lasted for almost an hour and creeped the living daylights out of the astronauts.  The Apollo 12 astronaut, Allen Bean saw a mysterious shining object on the moon.  American astronaut Leroy Chiao was the commander of the International Space Station in 2005, after seeing a series of lights outside the ISS, claims he is 100 percent convinced he was visited by aliens.

These are well-respected, educated men who did not just take up space in school.  So, if we assume that we are being watched, let’s look at some of the theories of how ‘they’ may be watching us:

1. The ‘Dark Forrest Theory’ says that the reason we can’t see these alien civilizations is because they’re all in hiding. Unlike humanity—whose radio transmissions have long echoed throughout our local galactic neighborhood—these societies have all concluded that it’s simply too dangerous to broadcast their location to potentially hostile neighbors.
2. The ‘Snow Glob Theory’ says that yes, there are aliens, but they are so much more advanced than us, that they have no interest in watching us for very long. It’s like looking at a snow globe and every once in a while, you’ll turn it upside down to see something a little different, and then leave it alone.
3.  3. The ‘Zoo Theory’ says that aliens can and are watching us with some interest, but are so much more advanced than we are, that they are really not bothering to interfere with our simple, mundane existence. It’s sort of like us watching an ant colony.
4. The ‘Been There, Done That Theory’ This is believed by people who can’t otherwise explain things like the Great Pyramids, saying that aliens were here for a while, built some stuff, got bored, and went home.

Fermi, “Where is everybody?”

The fact is that the universe is so vast and the building blocks of life are so abundant in the cosmos, and the number of planets in the cosmos is so large that it’s very unlikely that life on Earth is the only form of life that exists out there,

Whether you believe any of this stuff or not, it is with us to stay.  Earlier this year, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified that he had been told that the United States is in possession not only of crashed spacecraft of “non-human” origin but also alien “biologics.”