Everyday life in the Milky Way Galaxy

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Scientists recently reported that there may be as many as 50 billion planets in our own Milky Way Galaxy alone.

 

 

I, for one, am delighted.

 

 

An astronomer named Frank Drake came up some years ago with an informal way of calculating how many civilizations there might be in the galaxy. It depends on a lot of variables: how many stars, how many planets, etc. If you put in the new number of planets – well, boy howdy. I twiddled around with the calculator on the above link, and I came around a thousand intelligent civilizations!

 

 

Stephen Hawking, among others, has warned that this might not be cause for celebration. If any of these civilizations has mastered interstellar travel – well, we're probably done for. Our own terrestrial explorers spread nothing but trouble from continent to continent on Earth over the past few thousand years; can you imagine what advanced extraterrestrials might do to Earth's civilization, wittingly or unwittingly, if they came to visit us?

 

But there are other scenarios.

 

 

For one thing, the Drake equation allows that life doesn't always produce intelligence, or civilization. Gorillas are perfectly nice, but they're not building skyscrapers, or death rays for that matter. Ditto border collies. Ditto paramecia.

 

Science fiction authors have portrayed lots of different kinds of extraterrestrial life, both intelligent and unintelligent (and in-between, like us). Talking plants. Humanoid geese. Slow-moving heaps of liquid nitrogen. Lumps of telepathic protoplasm. Giant delicious superintelligent slugs. (If you’ve read science fiction, you may be able to guess which stories and novels I'm thinking of.)

 

I'm sure there are lots of freaky geese and slugs and plants out there. They're just planetbound, the way we are: trapped in our fishbowls, not ready (or able) to jump over the side yet.

 

 

I am encouraged to think that, with science constantly improving our ability to see afar, we may be able to detect signs of life on those far-off planets without actually visiting them.

 

 

We don’t have to visit. We can just wave hello from a (safe) distance.

 

 

It’s a shame, though. I bet those slugs are really delicious.

 

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