I came to a conclusion the other day, as I was watching what used to be one of my favorite cable channels. The History Channel is dead, long live The UFO Channel.
Okay, I can hear you groaning now. "It's going to be one of those rants!" Yep. It is.
Seriously, though. UFO Hunters? The Truth Behind Roswell? The B-2 bomber was reverse-engineered at Area 51 because, presumably, we're not bright enough to figure it out for ourselves?
Next thing you know, they're going to start airing "documentaries" about "ancient astronauts" . . . Oh, wait. They have.
Look, I know that it seems like I enjoy kicking over other people's tea carts, but let's take a look at the whole UFO phenomenon. And for anyone who does believe that E.T. has been sneaking in without going through Customs first, I'll try to keep the words small.
Space is big, right? I mean, really big. The Milky Way - um, that would be the galaxy we live in - is 100,000 light years in diameter. That means if you started at one edge, could travel at the speed of light (which, by the way, is a physical impossibility), and wanted to cross the galaxy to get to the other edge, it would take you 100,000 years to do so. The nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, Andromeda, is over two million light years distant. And yes, that means to get from there to here would take over two million years.
Of course, that would be if you could move at light speed. You can't. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass you acquire, and the more power you need to move that mass. Until, finally, at the speed of light you acquire infinite mass, which then requires infinite power to move. Oops. Thank you, Mr. Einstein, and it looks like E.T. is SOL.
Do the math. At light speed, it takes you fifty years to get to a star fifty light years away. It takes a hundred years at light speed to get to a star a hundred light years away, and so on.
Space is big.
Ah, but E.T. is smarter than we are, right? So, obviously, he's figured out a way to move faster-than-light.
Erm . . . no. Aside from the fact that the only things that seem to move faster-than-light are my dogs at dinnertime, that's probably not possible. Sure, Relativity allows for things like wormholes in the fabric of space-time, but since those things, if they exist, occur only on the quantum level, they're probably not a practical means of travel. Unless, of course, E.T. also exists only on the quantum level, in which case he should have no trouble using them if he has the technology to do so. But that also means that no one would ever see a UFO, so I think it's safe to discard that notion.
Theoretically, it is possible to create a wormhole large enough for someone on our scale to use. Given enough power, that is, and since we are once again verging on the territory of infinite power, well . . . Besides which, the light show produced by the attempt would be truly epic, and some observatory somewhere would notice something like that.
So, unless E.T. is very long-lived, and exceptionally patient, chances are no one's dropped in for a visit. Physics, after all, aren't just physics here, it's the same everywhere in the universe, and E.T. would be just as bound by those laws as we are.
Then there is E.T. himself. Does anyone but me find it odd that every description of an alien is always of a humanoid creature? One head, two eyes, two arms, two legs. Really? Evolution on a planet x light years away worked in such a way to produce a being who's gross anatomy is identical to ours? Hmm. In that case, I'll bet E.T. even has smarmy game-show hosts and really bad reality television. No wonder he's trying to get away from home, but imagine his disappointment when he gets here . . .
And if E.T. is capable of overcoming the barriers to practical trans-galactic travel, chances are he's not going to be as friendly as the true-believers make him out to be. Look, folks, the "Prime Directive" only existed in Star Trek, and they (particularly Kirk) damn well broke it whenever it was convenient to do so.
Examine our own history for a moment. Every time an "advanced" culture encounters a "primitive" one, it devours the less-advanced culture. Do we really think it would be any different if the fine citizens of Persei Omicron show up here one day?
Culturally, it takes a certain amount of aggressiveness not only to develop your technology, but to pull up stakes and see what lies over the next hill . . . not to mention a few star systems away. Timid creatures tend to stay at home. And get eaten by other creatures that aren't so timid.
And why, oh why, if E.T. is capable of crossing such vast distances in any kind of practical time frame, would he do so only to give some poor hick an anal surprise? Seems to me that's an awfully long way to go just for a proctological examination.
Or for what amounts to bestiality, for that matter. Let's face it, there are tons of "alien abduction" stories out there that have E.T. performing "sexual experiments" on the "abductees." Uh huh. Seems that not only is E.T. curious, he's got a raging hard-on, too. But . . .
Why would an E.T. have any prurient interest in a human being at all? I mean, he didn't evolve here, he isn't biologically programmed to be sexually aroused by a human being of the opposite sex - or the same sex, this being the 21st Century and we being enlightened beings and all. Unless, of course, we're going to posit that there are some E.T.'s who are sexually attracted to what amounts to animals. Hell, we've got people like that, too . . . but we don't cram them into space ships and shoot them off into the Great Beyond. Although . . .
Now, don't get me wrong. I do, in fact, believe that there is other life out there in this galaxy, not to mention the rest of the universe. Some of it isn't as intelligent or advanced as we are, some of it is, and some of it makes us look like we're perpetual passengers on the universe's shorty bus. But the sheer distances between us and them are so great, it's unlikely that we'll ever know about them. Or that they will ever know about us.
The Day the Earth Stood Still and lots of bad 1950s science fiction notwithstanding, even if E.T. really is visiting us, how come he's never announced himself? One would think that terrorizing the occasional airliner or landing in the back woods someplace and ramming a probe up some hapless hayseed's ass would get old rather quickly. If the whole point of the exercise is to find the neighbours and say "Hi!" then one would have to believe the appropriate place to land is downtown Washington, D.C., or London, or Paris, or Moscow . . . or at least someplace where they don't brew their hooch in the backyard and sell it by the jug.
Ah, well. Space is big. Yes, yes, I know I've already said that, but it bears repeating. So big, in fact, that there's pretty much virtually no chance that E.T. has been zipping through our skies uninvited in his flying saucer.
Then again, I could be wrong. So, just in case . . . To all the E.T.'s who are more advanced than we are: please don't eat me. Nor is my ass all that interesting. And to the E.T.'s who may be further down the ladder than we are: the secret is to keep banging the rocks together.
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