A recent spate of UFO sightings reawakened a century-old question: Are there other planets harboring intelligent life; or are we alone in the universe? We'll attempt an answer.
The theory of evolution has a reasonable and logical basis. Given a planet with water, within the Goldilocks distance from a star, not too hot and not too cold, life should spontaneously appear and begin to evolve into ever higher life forms.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has an estimated 400 billion stars. Noted astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan postulated in 1950 that one star in every 40 million stars in the Milky Way supported planetary life that advanced to the invention of the radio. Therefore, Sagan reasoned, there should be 10,000 planets in our galaxy that are sending out radio waves that could be easily detected.
Light and radio waves travel at the same speed. So if we can see a star---regardless of its distance---we can also hear its radio static as well as intelligently emitted radio waves from its planets.
All we had to do was listen for artificially manufactured radio sounds. And listen we did.
In 1960, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or Project SETI, pointed a telescope sensitive to radio waves to the Milky Way and listened. They heard---nothing, just stellar radio static. That was a problem.
Evolutionary theory predicted a galaxy abuzz with life. But the muted cosmos gave evidence to the contrary. Famed physicist Enrico Fermi questioned, Where are they? It became known as the Fermi Paradox, which, over the years, has become increasingly more baffling.
There are an estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe. Supposing they have the same number of stars as our galaxy, the Milky Way has---400 billion--- means there are 800,000 million, million, million stars in the known universe.
Using Sagan's figure of one intelligent life-bearing planet for every 40 million stars yields 20,000 trillion planets with a technologically advanced civilization.
Consider: How vast is 20,000 trillion planets? It's about 1,500 times more than all the grains of sand on Earth that have technologically advanced civilizations.
The universe should be generously seeded with life. And the Earth? It should be bombarded from every corner of the universe with alien chitchat in thousands---millions?---of languages.
But, as in the Milky Way, there is only the unengineered radio noise of stars. By the way, if you have an old analog radio, the static you hear between broadcasting frequencies is star talk.
Today there are more than 150 very large, computerized radio telescopes, many listening 24/7 for a little-green-men signal. But after almost 60 years of searching for the radio signature of intelligent life, silence is the ill-greeted answer. Does that mean that SETI is a scientific dud?
By no means. Sometimes a lack of evidence is in itself evidence. It points to the startling possibility that Earth is the only planet with intelligent life.
Could, then, the entire premise upon which evolution rests be wrong? That is, that life arises spontaneously to form living microorganisms, progresses to seaweed then zooplankton, on to fish then terrestrial plants. Next amphibians make the great leap forward onto land, they become reptiles, which develop into mammals, and finally to someone like you reading the Transcript. Yes, I know; it's a stretch.
But creationists are not off the hook. They, too, have a perplexing question: Why did God create a universe whose limits seem unfathomable?
The scriptures reveal a fact about the Creator that is equally profound. It says that "God cannot lie," (Titus 1:2). It does not say that God will not lie, but that He cannot lie or sin or do anything that is not entirely perfect.
Hence, there must be a reason for the uncountable number of heavenly bodies. To put it another way: Why didn't God just create the Earth for life, the moon to provide axial stability of 23.5 degrees for the Earth, and the sun to give warmth for the solitary planet?
He didn't because He couldn't. For some reason, that would be less than perfect.
What, then, is the reason for the boundless empyrean? The question haunts. Perhaps you might venture a guess.
Sincerely,
Bob Scroggins, New Milford, PA