Are We Alone?

That’s perhaps the biggest question put forth by mankind since immemorial times and yet there’s no answer to it. 

Let me make this comprehensible. Imagine, at some point, you put down your gadgets and gizmos and decided to look up at the night sky. It’s been waiting up there, all the time. You set your gaze on those innumerable number of stars (not many, due to our cities' light pollution). Each star out there is a sun and each sun may have its own set of planets, and if at least if some of those planets could harbor life, just like ours, think about it, there could be many. Nonetheless, a physicist, Enrico Fermi had already done the math and hypothesized, that number is actually huge, which means this universe is teeming with life. But then, where are they? 

When I say ‘life’, it signifies complex, intelligent beings that possess self-awareness (like the one you saw in ET, Prometheus), not some microscopic form of life which I believe could be lurking within our neighboring planets or moons. Now, returning to the question, first thing we must realize that our universe is huge, very huge. So huge, that the light you receive from stars today, actually left the stars some millions of years back. And mind it, light is the fastest thing in this universe. So even if there are planets with life, the distances between them are so vast that they’re localized within their star systems. Another parameter to be considered is the duration of life. Consider this, it took 4.5 billion years for the first life on Earth, to become what we are today. Now what if, a big meteor (the size of a city) impacts Earth. It could trigger a mass extinction event that could wipe out almost all life, including us, from the face of this planet. We would be all but dust. And in the future, if an alien spaceship passes by Earth, they’ll have no idea that this planet which was once full of flora and fauna, under a dominating species who built the great pyramids, fought countless wars, tried to demonstrate the power of the sun, had ever existed. That could much likely be the case when we ourselves venture out and find barren planets.

Scientists and astronomers spend days and nights listening to the skies for any such evidence. Those results could be revolutionary or could go in vain. But the chief issue they’re facing is funding. People are not ready to spend millions just to find out answers to such questions, all we desire are profits. It may be contradicting, some could ask, ‘why spend so much, when there are much bigger problems here on Earth, global sea levels are on the rise, poverty is everywhere’, yes, these are indeed real issues that we must govern our attention to. But this is not just what humanity is all about. Now, in a hypothetical case, if we could encounter extraterrestrials, ‘what would they look like’, ‘would they be kind or barbaric beings destroying everything that comes in their way’. Whatever may be the outcome, all that matters are our curious minds that asks such questions in the first place. It was in our veins, to explore, to find what lies ahead is why we are here. Glad we’re a part of something so profound. All we have to do is to look up and wonder.