ME viewed from space. (I can't do hands!)
The UFO phenomenon took a leap
many years ago into assuming that if we didn’t know what that thing was in the
sky, it had to be extraterrestrial (not of this earth) and then took a further
leap to the assumption that if it was flying and was not of this earth,
sentient beings that weren’t us must be flying these unidentified things.
Obviously, they had to live somewhere and have created their spaceships
somewhere and aimed them at earth. The assumption that these “beings” must have
sinister intentions has predominated; that they might be looking for love,
companionship or new and better recipes for btfspljk didn’t seem to occur to
us.
I could enjoy sitting down with
a sentient being from another solar system despite its twelve eyes and
wheels-instead-of-legs to compare political systems. Trouble is, I’m with
astronomer Chris Hadfield on the realization that the thought is absurd, and
here’s one good reason:
The nearest star (sun) to us in our galaxy is Proxima Centauri, which is
40 trillion kilometres away. The fastest speed theoretically that even an
electromagnetic current can travel is the speed of light, or 300,000 kilometres
per second. For a spaceship to travel from one of Proxima Centauri’s two
planets even at that speed—which is most certainly impossible—it wouldn’t reach
earth for 4.25 EARTH YEARS. And if it was traveling at the fastest speed that a
man-made object has ever traveled in space (360,000 kilometres per hour), that
spaceship wouldn’t arrive until 12,749.8 EARTH YEARS had passed. A space
vehicle setting out for earth would have to be massive in order to support life
upon it for all those years. Generation after generation would have to pass on
the journey. Food would have to be produced, their preferred atmosphere stored or manufactured,
hospitals and recreation facilities, etc., etc. would have to be part of the
project. As it approached our earth so many years after launching, it would likely
look more like the moon in size; no one would miss seeing it.
Anyway, here’s the math; prove
me wrong.
*Cruising Speed of the space probe to Mars 40,000
kph[1]
*Or, in
kilometres per year 350,400,000
kpy
*Distance
to the nearest star in our galaxy (Proxima Centauri) 40,208,000,000,000 km
*Time
required to reach the nearest other “solar system”
at the Mars probe cruising speed 114,748.8
years
*Highest
speed ever obtained by a space ship[2] 360,000 kph[3]
*Or,
expressed as kilometers per year 3,153,600,000
kpy
*Time
required to reach the nearest other solar system 12,749.8 years
*Speed of
light 1,080,000,000
kph
Time needed
for light from Proxima Centauri to reach us 4.25
years
In the USA, UFO sightings are
investigated by the military. The possibility of threat from space works nicely
against cutting, and toward increasing, the military budget. I expect that the sighting
by a Delta Airlines Pilot over Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan this spring will be
followed up by more such stories; shades of Reagan’s and Trump’s “Star Wars”
campaigns.
We know enough about all the
planets in our solar system to conclude that life as we know it exists
on none of them. Given speeds and distances in space, no “Cinderella planets”
like ours exist in reach by any of the standards we know. So what are people
seeing? Hard to tell these days:
· -Earth’s
low orbit is crawling with “space junk,” spent communications satellites etc.;
· -free-floating
rocks pass through space and occasionally enter earth’s atmosphere as meteorites;
· -weather
balloons;
· -the
inevitability of pranksters creating crop circles and doctored photos and
videos because they can, and because that’s what humans sometimes do when craving
attention;
· -the
suggestibility of the human mind that can easily be made to see things that
aren’t there;
· -you
name it!
Back in the 70s, I experimented
with black and white photography; I built a darkroom in our basement. I saw
somewhat blurry photos then of saucer-like objects and on a whim, created “photos”
in the darkroom that were dead ringers for these “evidences of extra-terrestrial
life.” It wasn’t hard.
We do have threats we might well
be afraid of. They’re all earth-made, however. If there is conscious, space-travel-savvy
life somewhere out there, we’ll never know it, because the distance to them is
exactly the same as the distance from them to us.
Our puny missions to Mars, the moon, Jupiter are the space-travel equivalent
of tossing a tennis ball into the neighbour’s yard. Conjecture that if earth should
become uninhabitable in future, we could always colonize another planet is as
absurd as saying that if food supplies dry up, we’ll just eat rocks.
