I love this quote by Arthur C. Clarke:
“Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”
When I comprehend the size and scale of the universe, it is inconceivable to me that humans are the only intelligent life that seeks to understand and explore the stars and worlds beyond our own. It just seems staggeringly beyond possible that we could be alone in the universe.
I also think about Arthur C. Clarke’s 3 Laws. From Wikipedia:
British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three adages that are known as Clarke’s three laws, of which the third law is the best known and most widely cited. They are part of his ideas in his extensive writings about the future.
These so-called laws are:
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When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
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The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
His most famous of these is the 3rd one. Imagine being born 2000, 1000, 500, or even 150 years ago and being shown an iPhone or a self-driving Tesla. It would surely seem like magic or witchcraft.
I truly doubt that we will have any significant technology leap in my lifetime to see any meaningful human space travel beyond revisiting our moon. Our technology won’t get that magical so quickly. Therefore, if we were to meet aliens in my lifetime, it would be because they poses technology that seems magical to us.
So, at least in the short term, if we are visited, it will be from highly advanced aliens. I wonder what they would think of our divided, polluted planet? Would they see a primitive species? Which, if any, of our cultures would they look at and say, “I think they are on the right track”?
When I think of the idea that we are not alone, and that if we are visited, the visitors will be highly advanced compared to us, what would they say about how we treat each other? How we treat other species? And, how we treat our world?
