Aliens: Where Are They?

I don’t know; and irrespective of what you may have read, neither does any other human being. The trouble with almost all reported alien stories especially the silly abduction tales, is that they depend upon the ignorance of those reading them. And I mean “ignorance” in the sense that persons ignorant of what is possible, not possible, likely or unlikely will find it difficult to make a decision about the veracity of a story.

When we study the Universe, we see the laws of physics we have on Earth are applicable everywhere, it is reasonable to assume therefore, that an alien species will have the same problems as we have when faced with the difficulty of inter-stellar travel. These problems are not trivial, even for a species that may be far more advanced than we are. For various reasons I won’t go into here, it’s very unlikely that an advanced alien society could exist within a 200 light-year radius of the Earth, but for the sake of argument, let’s say one did. If they wanted to make the trip here they would have to find a way to travel really fast, even at the speed of light their life span would have to be at least a thousand years for any wanting to return home and tell the folks about it, alternatively, they would have to breed on the way.Yes, I know all about worm-holes bending space-time and that may be possible, but for us right now, it’s impossible and may always be, and I suspect that no matter how advanced a species becomes, some things will always be difficult and perhaps impossible. These circumstances pose a big problem for UFO buffs and alien-abduction fans, even if they solved the distance problems is it likely that aliens would come here just to tamper with us sexually – most of the stories feature this - then leave? I think not.

In fact, there is a good clue to the truth here, these stories tell us more about the storyteller than anything else. Even we are able to perform genetic feats without all the probing and primitive experiments, aliens advanced enough to come here would most certainly be far more sophisticated. As I said, insight is gained into the mind of the people inventing these stories.

These tall-tale spinners also display strong ignorance of evolution and biology and a significant lack of imagination. The chances of any alien species looking even slightly like us are astronomically slim, even if life on Earth was snuffed out and had to start over, the likelihood of anything like us arising again, is almost zero. Yet in every story there they are, very human-like and displaying remarkably human traits and foibles. Another nail in the UFO/Alien coffin I think, and while I’m at it, I’ll knock another one in.

A lot of us have been around long enough to see how the stories change. In the fifties and sixties the aliens were mostly reported as Martian or Venusian but now we’ve sent probes to Mars and seen nothing remotely like intelligent life; we found that the surface temperature of Venus is hot enough to melt lead. Lo and behold, the aliens no longer come from Mars or Venus, now it’s Boolshot or Krapton 69 or whatever, must I mention why?

I for one would be enthralled if we made contact with an alien species, it would be the greatest event in human history, but I would wait forever for the real thing rather than fall prey to silly tales.

I think all the alien brouhaha is simply the modern version of imps and demons, witches and fairies; these things seem to fulfil a deep-seated need in the human psyche.