{"id":924,"date":"2021-08-10T08:29:11","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T12:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=924"},"modified":"2021-08-10T08:29:11","modified_gmt":"2021-08-10T12:29:11","slug":"where-is-everybody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/10\/where-is-everybody\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is Everybody?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Two summers ago more than two million people signed a petition.

They intended to storm Nevada\u2019s ultra-secretive Area 51 so they could, in the words of one signee, \u201csee them aliens.\u201d 

Conspiracy theorists have long held that the American government is hiding evidence that extraterrestrials have visited Earth \u2013 and that we even have a few bona fide E.T.\u2019s under lock and key.  Senator Bernie Sanders promised that if he were elected president, he would investigate the validity of such claims and report his discoveries to the world.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligent life has been an endlessly fascinating subject \u2013 for Hollywood screenwriters, late night college campus bull sessions, and the world\u2019s most elite scientists.

In 1950, four renowned physicists had a memorable lunch conversation in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  As they walked toward their midday meal, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski chatted about recent UFO sightings and the possibility of traveling faster than the speed of light.  They agreed on several issues.  Since there are more than 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, it makes sense to speculate that there are myriad civilizations as advanced as our own.  And surely at least one of those civilizations has been sufficiently ambitious to have colonized the whole galaxy.  

Acknowledging those probabilities, Fermi famously leaned across the lunch table and asked, \u201cBut where is everybody?\u201d 

It\u2019s called the Fermi Paradox.  Since theoreticians assume there must be millions of alien civilizations out there somewhere, why haven\u2019t we encountered any of them?

Despite six decades of listening to every corner of the night sky by means of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), we have heard nothing.  Nor have astrobiologists yet discovered a shred of evidence of microbial life beyond Earth\u2019s atmosphere.  Life thrives almost everywhere on our planet \u2013 in permafrost ice, seven miles down in the darkness of oceanic trenches, and in the boiling hot springs of Yellowstone\u2019s geyser basins \u2013 but (so far at least) we\u2019ve found no signs of life anywhere else in the cosmos. 

So how do we resolve the Fermi Paradox?

In his book Where is Everybody?<\/em> Stephen Webb examines 50 of the more popular solutions \u2013 some of which blur the line between science and science fiction.

One possibility is that the aliens are already here.  Thirty-eight percent of Americans believe that UFOs are not of this world, and one in ten claim to have seen one.  About 4% believe in the conspiracy theory that alien lizard creatures secretly control the highest levels of human society \u2013 something to think about the next time you look around at a crowd of your fellow citizens. 

Another possibility is that aliens were here a long time ago but are now gone.  That\u2019s the thesis of pseudo-scientific books like Chariots of the Gods<\/em>, which claims that ancient works of architecture like the Egyptian pyramids could not have been accomplished except by means of extraterrestrial technology.

Perhaps non-human intelligent beings are amongst us but are not revealing themselves.  Or maybe they are watching us (the so-called Zoo Hypothesis).  Or they\u2019re running an elaborate computer program and we don\u2019t realize we\u2019re just components within it (think The Matrix<\/em>).  Or they are cooperating with governmental officials who are keeping this important information from us.  With regard to that last option, Edward Snowden had fairly wide access to America\u2019s secrets.  When he searched for coverups concerning UFO\u2019s, alien abductions, and the like, he found nothing.

Which of course leads some people to say, \u201cNow we have proof that Snowden is part of the conspiracy.\u201d   

More standard solutions of the Fermi Paradox are that advanced alien civilizations, if they really do exist, wouldn\u2019t even bother communicating with Earth.  That would be like a hiker stooping to introduce himself to a pair of beetles.  The beetles wouldn\u2019t understand, and the hiker would have no reason to care.  Some theorists suggest that advanced civilizations might be doomed to destroy themselves (a possibility that resonates with many humans), or that the unpredictability of the cosmos \u2013 with its asteroid strikes, supernova explosions, and gamma ray bursts \u2013 may make it impossible for any civilization to endure long enough to reach out. 

As astrophysicist Sarah Rugheimer reminds us, the Milky Way is also a very big place.  It\u2019s 100,000 light years across.  If it\u2019s impossible to exceed the speed of light (something which would be highly disappointing to science fiction fans), we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that no one has dropped in for a visit. 

Or it\u2019s just possible that the reason there\u2019s not a single piece of incontrovertible evidence for extraterrestrials is that they do not exist.

Which would mean we\u2019re stuck here alone on the cosmic stage. 

British author and theologian C.S. Lewis maintained that the real question is not whether extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist \u2013 he was quite open to that possibility \u2013 but which of three categories they would fall into:

Would they be unfallen<\/em> \u2013 that is, creatures who had never strayed from being in healthy relationship with their Creator?  Would they be fallen and in need of spiritual rescue<\/em>?  Or would they be \u2013 like the citizens of planet Earth \u2013 fallen but visited<\/em> by a Redeemer who had begun to set things right? 

Lewis then floated an idea that is both disheartening and inspiring. 

What if our world is the only place in the cosmos where things went wrong?  What if we represent the only \u201ccivilization\u201d of ruthless, self-centered, love-challenged rebels who dare to shake their fists at God?

That would truly be disheartening.

But what if, at the same time, that makes us the only place where the Creator has done the unthinkable and become one of his own creations?  The Bible claims that the Trinity itself has been forever changed<\/em> because the second Person \u201ctook on flesh and moved into the neighborhood\u201d (John 1:14).

In light of human failures and God\u2019s grace, our planet would simultaneously be the most dreadful and most glorious locale in the universe. 

Which might indeed make Earth a Must See destination for any UFO\u2019s that happen to be exploring our neck of the galactic woods.   
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Two summers ago more than two million people signed a petition. They intended to storm Nevada\u2019s ultra-secretive Area 51 so they could, in the words of one signee, \u201csee them aliens.\u201d  Conspiracy theorists have long held that the American government is hiding evidence that extraterrestrials have visited Earth \u2013 and that we even have a few bona fide E.T.\u2019s under… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[159,287,288],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-fermi-paradox","tag-ufos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}