We have launched four ships to the stars, Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2. They are backward and primitive
craft, moving, compared to the immense interstellar distances, with the slowness of a race in a dream. But in the
future we will do better. Our ships wil travel faster. There will be designated interstellar objectives, and sooner
or later our spacecraft will have human crews. In the Milky Way Galaxy there must be many planets millions of years
older than Earth, and some that are billions of years older. Should we not have been visited? In all the billions
of years since the origin of our planet, has there not been even once a strange craft from a distant civilization
surveying our world from above, and slowly settling down to the surface to be observed by incurious reptiles, screeching
monkeys or wondering humans? The idea is natural enough. It has occurred to everyone who has contemplated, even
casually, the question of intelligent life in the universe. But has it happened in fact? The critical issue is
the quality of the claimed evidence, rigorously and skeptically scrutinized--not what sounds plausible, not the
unsubstantiated testimony of one or two self-professed eye-witnesses. By this standard there are no compelling
cases f extraterrestrial visitation, despite all the claims about UFOs and ancient astronauts which sometimes make
it seem that our planet is washed by the waves of uninvited guests. I wish it were otherwise. There is something
irresistible about the discovery of even a token,perhaps a complex inscription, but, best by far, a key to the
understanding of an alien and exotic civilization. It is an appeal we humans felt when the Rosetta stone was uncovered
in 1799. |