NASA: “You’re the one who gets to read all the accusatory letters we get sent demanding we release ‘alien booty’ from Area 51, which isn’t even owned by us”
Chief of UFO Research: “I better get good mental health insurance.”
For a minute I thought this was the sad update to their potential evidence of life on K2-18b.
Thankfully, that is still a tantalizing possibility.
As a biologist, I think there’s a pretty good possibility that extraterrestrial life exists. What I mean by that is that there is a reasonable chance that ecosystems that have no relationship to terrestrial life exist on other planets. We do not have enough information to speculate about how common it might be, but we do have an idea about what kinds of conditions might be necessary to evolve what we would consider a loving ecosystem.
By the same line of reasoning, I am very skeptical that anything we classify as UFOs - or any sign of technological civilization in general, actually exists.
I am among the people who believe multiple intelligences exist - that octopuses and ravens and dolphins and chimpanzees are all intelligent for any meaningful definition of the word. I think theory of mind is widespread and has multiple evolutionary origins, and that these things are best thought of as continuous variables rather than Boolean.
That said, in 4.5 billion years we’ve evolved a single line that went on to produce cities and spaceships. That says to me that it’s not a statistically likely line of development. The fact that it’s been so off-the-charts successful in terms of ecosystem resource domination tells us that it’s a very, very good idea. The fact that it’s happened once says it’s hard to get to.
It’s going to take more than fuzzy videos and the testimony of a handful of people to convince me. I want cell samples. I want to know what they use for DNA. I want to know their physiology and their ecosystem complexity and their evolutionary history.
When o think about what might be possible for extraterrestrial life, I think about what evolved early (eg cells), and what evolved multiple times (eg eyes). The further you get from that, the less confident I am.
