Following On From Yesterday

[poliphilo]

Yes. I think it's very likely we have visitors. Planet Earth is at a crucial phase in its history: it's developing a global society, it has weapons of mass destruction, it has rudimentary space travel. We're no longer galactic peasants, we're becoming contenders. We're at an interesting age.  If I were an intelligent extraterrestrial I'd be motivated to drop by and take a peek- even perhaps violate the prime directive and give things a bit of a nudge.

We can no longer- plausibly- argue that we're alone in the universe. Our telescopes keep detecting planets in the orbit of neighbouring stars- and just the other day- for the first time-  we found one that replicates conditions on Earth. Actually there must be billions of them. 

Of course the visitors may not be coming from other planets. They may be sliding in from other dimensions. They may be hopping back from our own future. The old, mechanical universe our grandfathers had their heads in ruled such things out of court, but we're living in a quantum universe now. 

What would be really weird would be if everyone out there was ignoring us.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm an optimist. I think we'll survive our teething troubles. Give us a few more centuries and we'll be out there exploring the galaxy with the best of them.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Or, with us humans out of the way via our stupidity, some other sentient creature from earth will go exploring--maybe a highly evolved insect.

Hopefully, they'll figure out something more efficient and effective than a chemical rocket.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't believe we've developed this far only to fall at the last hurdle. We got through the 20th century without wiping ourselves out and that gives me hope that we'll last a good bit longer.