According to numerous scientists, especially in regards to the exploration, migration and colonization through the cosmos by extraterrestrial intelligences, outer space can be your ultimate no-man’s-land and quarantine zone. No exploration; no migration; no colonization CBD for sleep. Any intelligent life is pretty much likely to be confined with their own planetary abode or solar system.
That’s probably true if contemplating intergalactic (between galaxies) space where distances to your nearest galactic neighbour are measured in an incredible number of light years; that’s certainly not true for interplanetary (between planets) space where distances to your nearest neighbour are measured in light minutes to light hours; now that’s leaving a concern mark over the middle ground – interstellar (between stars) where distances to your neighbour are measured in a number of light years.
But while interplanetary travel is plausible with regards to reasonable travel times as witnessed by our own unmanned space probes to the planets and many moons in your solar system, exploration, tourism, or migration where we’re on the receiving end isn’t likely. We can’t expect any interplanetary visitors, those locals in your solar system, with itchy tentacles desiring to explore the neighborhood neighbourhood of which we’re part of, in the future calling. The era of the advanced Martian civilization, canals and all, not forgetting “The War of the Worlds” scenario, are now actually over, confined to a ‘what if’ history that never eventuated.
Visitors from other galaxies are out from the running as well because as noted above the distances must be crossed are many orders of magnitude greater relative to short-hop interplanetary trips. It’s a very important factor to swim several dozen lengths of the pool; quite another to swim over the Atlantic.
Without existing intelligent non-terrestrials of the neighborhood kind that may visit us, and extraterrestrials from other galaxies confined to those galaxies, well that also leaves several billion of stars in our own galaxy which E.T. might phone if far from home.
Of course phoning home will probably be considered a function of where you are in your star-stuttered galaxy. Towards the inner parts of our galaxy (like the inner regions, the CBD, of our cities), stars aren’t as far apart as where we (humans) are out in the suburbs, even perhaps out in the boondocks. It’s cheaper to phone home at local (CBD) distance rates; higher priced when dealing with those boondocks long-distance charges.
Regardless, whether you are within our galactic CBD or out in the suburbs as well as in the boondocks, I maintain it doesn’t take all that long to obtain in one (say the CBD) to one other (the boondocks).
I is now able to hear screams of ‘objection, objection’ to that. Galactic CBD to galactic boondocks; well it’s all obviously way past an acceptable limit and takes way a long time to obtain from there (wherever that is, say the galactic CBD) to here (Planet Earth; location: galactic suburbs if not the boondocks). Well, life wasn’t supposed to be easy! Seriously, if you believe about it a little while, any serious objections fade away. If you don’t want to consider it on your own, then see below!
Unfortunately for the sceptics, fact number 1 is that E.T. doesn’t need any wormhole or theoretical ‘warp drive’ or other ‘Star Trek’ type superluminal velocity techno-babble to explore the galaxy and boldly go where no alien went before. Sure, space is really BIG nonetheless it can also be very old. There’s plenty of time offered to explore and colonize starting a few light years outward at a time. Consolidate, and then expand some more. Repeat normally as required. The time it’d take to explore and colonize the Milky Way Galaxy (that is, via interstellar travel) is but a tiny fraction of age that galaxy even when a competition of E.T.’s never travelled at more that say 1% to 10% the speed of light. Such velocities, while pretty fast by our current abilities, shouldn’t be beyond the method of a technologically advanced race. After all to cross 100,000 light years of interstellar space, at 1% the speed of light, requires but 10 million years. Our galaxy is ten billion years old. If you doubt this, consult any elementary astronomy text for the relevant distances and volumes and ages and do the calculations on your own in the event that you like.
Regardless of this little mathematics, UFO sceptics would still have you imagine that interstellar space travel reaches best highly improbable, and at worst impossible. Therefore, UFOs cannot represent the technology of a space-faring race of extraterrestrials.
Hogwash! I can’t believe this old and totally outdated chestnut continues to be bandied about since there’s terrestrial equivalents and even a human parallel.
Okay, space is really BIG. Planet Earth really was BIG to human society too many centuries ago, but that didn’t stop our planet being explored from pole to pole, even when individual journeys took many years. And bacteria, insects, birds, and other terrestrial life forms preceded us in exploring and colonizing Planet Earth all in pretty quick-smart order.
While it’s proved relatively easy for humans to colonize Planet Earth, humans cannot go the stars because we can’t travel fast enough in your short life-spans to make the journey from start in order to complete, and I assume here that should you start the journey you want to be around in order to complete the journey.
Now there is no law in biological science that says a smart flesh-and-blood entity must kick-the-bucket after roughly three score and ten years. If you recall from mythology, the cosmic and sky ‘gods’ were (at least from a human perspective) as close to immortal as makes no odds. Quasi-immortality makes interstellar travel quite feasible.
Aliens could employ a long natural lifespan relative to us carbon-based terrestrial bipeds. Again, the purpose must certanly be emphasised that there’s no natural law that confines intelligent life forms to an existence of just three score and ten terrestrial years.
What if you have a strange race with life-spans way, way surpassing ours? The idiotic assumption by the anti-UFO boldly going skeptics is, really anthropological way, that E.T. of necessity must have a lifetime equal to that particular of humans, or is confined to technologies comparable to our own 21st Century technologies. E.T. would have, and probably did have, a multi-billion year head start us since our galaxy had been some 5.5 billion years of age before Planet Earth (plus Sun and associated solar system) even formed out of interstellar gas, dust and associated debris.
That 21st Century technological equivalency that aliens must have relative to us is more hogwash: any alien intelligence that may visit us can have technologies far beyond our own. There’s a possible likely alternative to a naturally longer life span relative to humans: what of a little bit of the old fashion genetic engineering to improve endurance? Or there’s the likelihood of enhanced bioengineering (part flesh; part machine) to perform the same goal. Imagine if an exploring race were to adopt those old stand-by sci-fi concepts of suspended animation or perhaps a multi-generation interstellar spaceship? Let’s have a review of those in turn.
Genetic or other forms of bioengineering could artificially extend life-spans by many orders of magnitude. Perhaps flesh-and-blood has morphed into almost all silicon-and-steel; turning an organic body into something that’s more machine than flesh-and-blood, perhaps similar to the Daleks as featured in “Doctor Who” ;.Given advances in artificial areas of the body for humans, albeit it hip replacements or dentures as well as mundane tooth fillings, that’s certainly a valid possibility if one extrapolates ahead from today to mere decades to centuries ahead.
But why stop there? Send 100% machines – artificial intelligences (AI) in the proper execution of cybernetic ‘organisms’ or robots or androids or tiny nanotechnology machines. One obviously thinks of Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, or something similar to the first TV’s “Battlestar Galactica” Cylons. Consider the savings in devoid of to offer life support and other life essentials for biological organisms. We’ve made a start already down this path. There’s nothing different in principle between a Cylon and our Pioneer 10 & 11; our Voyager 1 & 2 space probes. It’s just that the Cylon is more sophisticated. The afternoon can come when our Pioneers and Voyagers will morph into something approaching a Cylon, or any among multi-dozens of similar ‘beings’ in the sci-fi literature. Since AI is almost immortal (relative to flesh-and-blood), that takes care of travel time arguments, and the possible environments fit for relative easy exploration (colonization?) are expanded greatly. Artificial intelligence can boldly go where no man (flesh-and-blood) went, or could go.
There’s the conventional sci-fi scenarios of the multi-generation starship or hibernation that passes enough time away without much additional aging. Even though E.T. includes a biological lifespan roughly comparable to our own, advanced extraterrestrials may have perfected various hibernation techniques. Put your spaceship on autopilot and sleep the long journey away. That sort of scenario is a huge staple of science fiction for generations, as an example consider the movies “Alien” or “2001: A Space Odyssey” or the first “Star Trek” TV episode that featured Khan.
There’s another sci-fi staple that may get E.T. from there to here. Like that is via the old sci-fi chestnut, the multi-generation interstellar spaceship. While I’m that’s an unlikely concept, especially for exploration, it might not be quite so far out if the objective is interstellar colonization.
Then too perhaps a super-civilization of the extraterrestrial type has been able to approach luminal velocities; perhaps they’ve knowledge of physics and engineering that may even go superluminal. Maybe, just maybe, sort of warp drive, faster-than-light spaceship is possible. Aliens whose technological science is thousands, tens of thousands, and even beyond that in years more complex than ours just might have gotten around Einstein’s faster-than-light speed limit. I wouldn’t desire to wager hardly any money onto it, but I’d be less than open-minded to not admit the possibility, however remote. Add to that particular theoretical but allowable ‘gateways’ between distant points of our Universe, possibly even to other universes – wormholes and Black Holes. Maybe, just maybe, an advanced alien civilization has got the ways and means to manipulate such objects and forces to facilitate easy travel in space (and time travel too maybe). A fantastic hardcore science-based sci-fi work that doesn’t depend on pseudo techno-babble that illustrates this is the novel by Carl Sagan, “Contact” ;.
But one doesn’t need such extreme possibilities. All it requires is the very first initial journey. It’s like migrating from New York City to Sydney, Australia. Once in Sydney, it’s all local commuting. So once here, our quasi-immortal, technologically advanced E.T. (yesteryear the ‘gods’ of mythology; today UFOs) creates shop, say some type of artificial space colony out in the asteroid belt, possibly even a lunar outpost. No more interstellar journeys required. So in a roundabout way, one interstellar journey by E.T. from someplace else within our galaxy, morphs into just short-hop interplanetary journeys from the period on. There may possibly not be intelligent Martians that come a-calling, but that doesn’t mean our solar system doesn’t play host to a different alien intelligence – they’re simply not originally an indigenous native, but instead an interstellar migrant.