Alien's Aren't Visiting Earth

Using the most conservative estimate possible, I calculated that there are at least 1.75 trillion other planets in the universe. If we use a moderate (and more likely estimate) there are upwards of 45 trillion planets. (Science wonks are welcome to e-mail me better figures. I will probably stand by my position that the number of estimated planets in the universe is “a lot.”) If one percent of one percent of these has life, then there are between 175 million and 4.5 billion planets with aliens crawling around on them.

We haven’t confirmed to my satisfaction that there’s any intelligent life on Earth yet, so I can’t make formulas about how many civilizations these oodles of life-supporting planets have. But I imagine if there are over a billion planets with aliens, at least one or two have got around to making trash compactors and jet skis and things. Right now, as you’re reading this, somewhere in the universe an alien is mugging, selling carpets to or seducing another alien. Isn’t that weird to think about?

Sadly, though, none of those aliens are on Earth. Nobody likes paranoid conspiracy theories more than me, but they’re problematic in that they rely upon the underlying assumptions that the government is not only competent, but capable of shutting the hell up for decades on end. Wikileaks would appear to invalidate the latter. Congress firmly negates the former.

Ah, but aliens are super top secret, you say. Perhaps only the Pentagon knows about them, and the generals refuse to tell POTUS.

Possible. But is that also the case in every other country on the planet? All 196 or so? Even Sweden? Because I suspect that by now some uppity European socialist regime would have grown self-righteous and announced the coverup to the world in order to make everyone else feel bad. France. There I said it: France would do such a thing.

In the interest of even handedness, one or two high profile folks have confirmed extraterrestrial contact. Paul Hellyer is the former Minister of National Defense for Canada, from 1963-1967. In 2005 he made headlines by announcing that he believes in UFO’s and the alien nature of the Roswell crash, and called upon the American government to disclose its pilfered extraterrestrial technology so that we can use it to combat climate change.

I think we can all agree that a Canadian defense minister is perhaps one of the most important military officials in the world. American generals most definitely consider their Canadian counterparts as equals and would certainly keep them abreast of unfolding intergalactic conspiracies. So let’s not question Hellyer on his nationality.

Rather, let’s observe a critical fact: Hellyer never claimed to know anything about aliens first-hand from his time as a cabinet member (in Canada). Rather, he pieced together his position on extraterrestrials nearly forty years later, in his mid-eighties. So while he held an important office four decades ago, he is not a whistle-blower.

The other high profile people who spring to mind are astronauts Alan Shepard and Gordon Cooper. Alan Shepard was the sixth man to walk on the moon, and claimed quite openly that NASA made contact with extraterrestrials and has covered it up ever since. Gordon Cooper, who logged 222 hours in space, likewise claimed to have seen several extraterrestrial crafts first-hand, which the US government maintains strict silence about.

I have massive respect for astronauts, including these two men. I don’t know what to make of Alan Shepard. That’s actually quite a head scratcher. But I do know that Gordon Cooper is from Shawnee, Oklahoma, which more or less invalidates his UFO reports. I’m from Oklahoma, and too many of us have seen UFOs, Bigfoot or Elvis to be considered reliable witnesses. I would discount myself if subpoenaed to testify in court.

Finally we come to economics. In today’s money the Apollo Program cost $170 billion. We now estimate that for $20 billion we could send three guys and a hamster to Mars, and probably even get the hamster back. Should space travel continue to improve, leaving the solar system will nonetheless remain incredibly expensive.

By the time your civilization has technologically advanced to the point that you can build space crafts capable of traversing millions of light years at exorbitant prices, and you have a functional Congress which can pass bills to authorize such a feat, what could you possible need elsewhere from a trillion miles away? Oil? Gold? Slaves? The cost to get to another planet would always exceed whatever material goods you could possibly plunder from it.

There could be other incentives. Curiosity and scientific inquiry might jump the economic hurdle. Other less lofty motivations could include ego (perhaps an intergalactic empire might exile their space Napoleon here), or religion. But since you don’t see aliens standing around parks passing out pamphlets about the Quantum Buddha or how we should quit sodomizing each other so much, and even America’s most ardent whackjobs at least acknowledge that President Obama was born somewhere on Earth, that leaves us only the first option. That aliens have visited earth for inscrutable scientific purposes, most of which involve disreputable farmers and rectal experimentation.

For the reasons outlined above, this doesn’t convince me. Probably the best thing that could happen to mankind is to confirm that we are not alone in the universe, and thereby begin to perceive ourselves as a single team and race. But that discovery is more likely to come through SETI than shadowy Pentagon basements. The simplest explanation remains the likeliest, and UFO’s are probably neato technology the Air Force is trying out but doesn’t want to disclose.