Anyone out there?

"WE ARE NOT ALONE"

So proclaims the cover of this month's National Geographic, the words emblazoned against a dark and starry sky.

Oh yes, I cried to myself.  Finally!  All my science fiction dreams come true! 

Obviously, we hadn't already made contact, or we would have read the headlines in the daily papers, even before discussions of the president's latest outrage.  But some proof has been discovered, I concluded, and the question is not whether we have fellow sentient beings, but how soon we shall meet up.

Alas. 

Don't get me wrong.  The article is well worth reading. It brings us up to date on the latest telescopic and other data-sensing equipment.  And we learn that astronomers have now confirmed the existence of about four thousand planets outside our own solar system.  And that's just the beginning.  So far, scientists have ascertained statistically that there are more planets than there are stars, and that at least a fourth of them are potentially suitable for life as we know it on earth. 

Since there are between 100,000 and 400,000 stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy, we are looking at some 25,000 to 100,000 earth-like planets relatively (!!) near at hand.  Moreover, since the observable universe is estimated to contain up to two trillion galaxies -- well, we have a lot of planets to check out.  (And forget the fact that some scientists believe that there are nearly an infinite number of universes.  Since it would seem impossible to move from our universe to another -- even though each may be in a sense a fraction of an inch away   -- we can disregard whatever goes on, or doesn't go on, in those other universes.)

So the evidence marshalled to support the article's headline is really the same as we've heard all along -- what are the odds that not one of those trillions of planets has never evolved life?  And if they have evolved life, how can we believe that some of  them, logically, would not sustain civilizations billions of years more advanced than ours?  So advanced that they haven't tried to communicate with us any more than we try to communicate with an anthill as we walk past it in the forest.  The article does concede in conclusion:

Still, space is vast , and so is time.  Even with our ever more powerful computers and telescopes, SETI's expanded agenda, and the gravity assist of a hundred Yuri Milners, we may never encounter an alien intelligence.

But the authors suspect otherwise. 

I hope they're right.  And I hope they discover something, just a glimmer, within my lifetime.  Maybe the universe (universes?) really was created as a playhouse exclusively for humans on earth.  Maybe we're all there is.  But, as I puzzled in an earlier post, if God created us as the sole sentient beings in his universe, didn't he leave an awful lot of unnecessary building material flying around in space? Wouldn't he have tidied things up a bit? 

But, I remind myself, if a Creator can create things ex nihilo, out of nothing, he has no need to economize.  Or if, as some contend, we are all characters in a software program (as Dilbert suggests, above), we can be made to see whatever the programmer wants us to see -- cheaply.  But let's not over-philosophize.  Let's keep our collective nose to the grindstone, and look for those little green men.

And maybe, some day, National Geographic can use the same cover again, and use it more legitimately.  Meanwhile, interesting article, and great photos.