Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/09/its-never-aliens-until.html
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It’s pretty simple why aliens haven’t arrived.
The programmer of the simulation we’re all in hasn’t included that scenario.
Obvious really.
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Or they just get a look at our media and go NOPE.
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Are they alien? Maybe they’re alien, maybe they’re from a parallel universe, maybe they’re from the future. Maybe a combination of those things.
My pet theory is these craft aren’t manned (hence the insane speed changes etc).
Maybe they’re here to observe, maybe they literally give zero shits.
But the American government said after project Blue Book they couldn’y definitely establish the explanation “aliens” but they had to admit something that seems to not be created by any country on earth can penetrate our defenses effortlessly.
The government doesn’t like unknowns and it doesn’t like not being the supreme authority. (Supreme authority, in the eyes of the government, comes from a monopoly on force)
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You know me well.
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Listening to Oh No Ross and Carrie’s summer of UFOs, they found Giorgio Tsoukalos (the guy from that meme) to be a relatively (as in, relative the the real bonkos in attendance) reasonable voice at the big UFO conference they attended…
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With this article, and with all others articles I’ve recently read about aliens, the survival of the human species and other big questions, I’m reminded of the story in the book Constellation Games: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13063050-constellation-games
I recommend this book to everyone! Really insightful book concidering the weird, almost petty seeming premise!
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Sadly, I think the likely answer as to why we haven’t observed any other civilization around other stars is the fact that we might just be ahead of the curve in terms of cosmological evolution. You gotta remember, most observations of the early universe are ones plagued by massive stars going nova and super massive black holes irradiating their host galaxies. This soup of ionizing radiation is linked with at least one major cataclysm in our planet’s history. So to think that the universe is kind to living beings like us is naive at best. And if we’re the first to get up to this level of capability then it really means we have a responsibility to ensure subsequent species here on Earth and other worlds have a leg up. We gotta be the ones to build the roads they may walk down. It sucks to imagine being alone for millions or perhaps billions of years but there’s plenty of us humans to keep ourselves amused (just so long as we don’t blow each other up between now and then).
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I’m partial to the Rare Earth hypothesis myself - the idea that the number of rather bizarre events it took to create the Earth might mean we really are alone, or at least close enough.
It would explain all the data, and have major ethical implications.
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I always think: the light we see from other stars took thousands or millions of years to reach us, so we’re looking a thousand years into the past and expecting to see evidence of intelligent life, except maybe when that light originated they weren’t advanced enough yet to make themselves known. If there were some kind of “now” we could relate to in terms of interstellar space, then now they might be at the same level as us, but all we see is light from their own pre-history. Basically we’re assuming they are thousands of years ahead of us, so we’re going to see evidence of a Dyson Sphere or something. Not likely, but then you never know until you look, so we keep looking.
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I think I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my favourite crazy theories is that the reason we can’t see “dark matter” is because the galaxy contains quite a few Dyson spheres. We can’t see enough starts to account for all the gravity out there, because a significant number of those stars are being tapped for huge amounts of energy.
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reminds me of my favorite big foot detail.
There are those who claim there aren’t any good photos or videos of Bigfoot. Because he’s an inter dimensional being. And thus our cameras can’t capture his image. The photos are perfectly clear. They’re just capturing him out of phase with things.
Which dove tails rather nicely with a very common joke about Bigfoot.
Bigfoot photos are blurry because Bigfoot is actually blurry.
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Constellation Games doesn’t work well as a novel in many ways, but at the same time it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read. How do that many bonkers ideas end up in one book? Sort of highly recommended.
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Maybe the galaxy has a powerful immune system and we’re just a very virulent infection?
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You stole that from Mitch Hedberg. Well, repeated it. I’m just crediting the dead master. He was FUNNY, that one.
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Maybe like solar systems, galaxies have habitable zones. We just had a flyby of an interstellar rock. Maybe closer into the galactic center, such encounters are way more common, thus extinguishing life with regularity and making it have to start over. On the outer rim, once the accretion discs are swept clear, planets have only rare encounters with large objects, allowing life the billion or two years it needs to become intelligent enough to 1. not destroy itself and 2. perform countermeasures to encounters with large objects.
I really don’t know.
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I get what you’re saying, the main story is a bit, chaotic? Sloppy? The format, with the blogposts, can feel a bit forced at times.
But overall I really liked it, it gives you so many new ways of looking at things, so many “how would you behave if this weird shit was thrown at you” scenarios. It pops up in my mind with high regularity.
Hedgberg is currently the most prominent person associated with the joke and his delivery was excellent.
But it’s an extremely obvious joke. That lots of people have been making for decades. I think the first time I heard was as a kid some time in the 80s. Maybe James Randi.
And I am being entirely serious. There are genuinely people out there. Who are claiming Bigfoot is literally blurry. They have a really complicated explanation for why. And they are totally serious.
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