“Bailout” never has been a dirtier word that it is right now, thanks to Wall Street, deficit hawks and political demagogues. But I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that the last, best hope for our beleaguered planet is a bailout of massive proportions. By space aliens.
Hear me out. I’ll concede that there are two gigantic, mutant flies in the cosmic ointment when it comes to the idea of rescue by an advanced civilization from beyond our galaxy. There are the not-insignificant matters of existence and intent. For one thing, however likely it would appear that humankind has at least some company in the vast universe, definitive proof has yet to emerge. For another thing, should such evidence ever surface, TV and the movies have taught us to be extremely wary of interstellar travelers bearing gifts.
I mean, let’s say the flying saucers arrive tomorrow, populated by life forms seemingly eager to prove their goodwill by showering us with cancer cures, ozone patches and chill pills to ice our warring nature—other-wordly versions of the benevolent uncle who quiets a whining kid by producing a pocket-full of candy. Anybody who’s ever seen the “To Serve Mankind” episode of the old Twilight Zone series or has watched the current series V knows that if the bounty of alien amity seem too good to be true, it may indeed be just that. So, there you are, feeling sated by a magic pill that provides a year’s worth of nutritional sustenance in one swallow and promises to end world hunger, only to realize too late that it simply has fattened you up to become a bulbous-headed ET’s entree. Or, maybe you’re having out-of-this-world sex with a sultry chick from Alpha Centauri, but then she Frenches you with a forked tongue, sprouts a lizard tail and coos that what she finds orgasmic is consuming her mate.
But never mind all that. Maybe that’s just so much ironic scriptwriting by Rod Serling and his legions of imitators. Who’s to say that our Visitors, if and when they finally arrive at the third rock from our puny sun, won’t be sufficiently evolved in benevolence, too, to lean more toward the Dalai Lama school of community than the Darth Vader variety? Maybe they’ll want nothing more than to lend us a bony or possibly ooze-covered hand. It might be that, having observed from afar our appalling behavior toward each other and Mother Earth, our Brothers and Sisters From Another Planet will determine that we’re suffering from collective PTSD that has turned us impulsive, mean and not our true selves, and that all we really need is love. And perhaps a ray gun that turns brussels sprouts into chocolate.
Anyway, we can start seriously worrying about intent when the guys at SETI are awakened some night from deep-space silence by an encoded voice asking if 10 pm would be too late to drop by, and by the way, do they have any beer? In the meantime, there’s some good news for those of us who pray that a deus ex machina will save us from ourselves. Citing a variety of recent revelations and developments, Carl Pilcher, director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, stated this week that evidence of life elsewhere in the universe is "just getting stronger and stronger.” In fact, he declared, “I think anybody looking at this evidence is going to say, ‘There’s got to be life out there.’”
“This evidence” comprises a variety of things, according to the Associated Press science article that featured Pilcher’s quotes. “In the past several days,” the story noted, “scientists have reported there are three times as many stars as they previously thought." The article continued, "Another group of researchers discovered a microbe can live on arsenic, expanding our understanding of how life can thrive under the harshest environments. And earlier this year, astronomers for the first time said they'd found a potentially habitable planet.”
According to the AP story, the latest estimate of the number of stars out there, calculated by a Yale University astronomer, is 300 sextillion. That’s a one followed by 21 zeros. (Thanks, Google.) Last week’s news of a lake bacterium scientists can train to thrive on arsenic instead of phosphorous has altered and broadened the very definition of life. Furthermore, number-crunchers at NASA have come to the conclusion that life may exist on planets orbiting red dwarf stars—not just planets orbiting stars like our own sun. That conclusion, according to the AP, “didn’t just open up billions of new worlds” to the possibility of sustainable life, but “many, many times that.”
“Then, the question is,” the article continued, “how many of those planets are in the so-called ‘Goldilocks zone’—not too hot, not too cold? The discovery of such a planet was announced in April.”
The upshot of these findings is that 10 scientists interviewed by the AP agreed that “the probability of alien life is higher than ever before.”
Now, of course there’s “life,” and then there’s “intelligent life.” (No political jokes, please.) While the sheer numbers suggest we’re far from the only inhabited planet in the universe, other planets’ inhabitants might be nothing more than microbes incapable of lighting a cigarette, let alone traveling light years to reach us. But let’s say for the sake of argument that some ETs are at least as “advanced” as we are. The thing is, if that’s as good as it gets across the galaxy, those populations, like us, might be expending all their resources on environmental degradation and warfare. (This seems as good a place as any to note that we Earthlings haven’t so much as returned to our friendly neighborhood moon since 1972.)
So, I’m not saying it’s likely that benevolent space aliens with kickin’ technology will arrive in time to prevent our self-imposed apocalypse—which, it seems to me, edges closer every day. I recognize that the advanced civilizations we’ve come to imagine through science fiction may exist only in that genre. And I know there’s no guarantee, at any rate, that other-wordly brainiacs would deem us more than booty, of one type or another.
Still, when I read that chances of extraterrestrial life are looking better than ever, I have to feel at least a little encouraged. Because if space aliens aren’t ultimately going to bail us out, who or what is?
Best-case scenario? We step back from the brink, learn from our alien mentors and, eons down the road, peaceably depart aged-out Earth for some hospitable new planet.
Worse-case scenario? We’re vaporized. But wouldn’t that be better than the slow, ugly death already well underway?
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