

Do you still protest? Must I keep talking? I suppose if I stop now they won't hand me that oversized novelty check that your president has been fondling. So let's proceed.

There are two classical ideas on extraterrestrial life. Let me enumerate them for you:

One: there is NO extraterrestrial life. Of course there isn't. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. The universe is too vast and would have produced it by now if it was going to, humans are a unique creation, et cetera. We are alone, the universe is ours to enjoy.

Two: there IS extraterrestrial life. Of course there is. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. The universe is too vast to not produce life somewhere else, humans are simplistic collections of amino acids vigorously rubbing up on each other, and that could happen anywhere, et cetera. We are not alone, and it's simply a matter of time before some more advanced civilization finds us and puts us in a zoo.

The problem with scenario two is this: the universe has been here for close to fourteen billion years. It took us about twenty thousand to go from barely-sentient hairballs to our current state. A blink of the eye, by comparison.

Consider that in the next few months, the first of our interstellar ships will launch, and our race will begin populating other solar systems. That took less than a thousand years after we figured out combustion. A fraction of a fraction of a blink of the eye.

How soon until we have technology that can propel us to whole other galaxies? It can't be more than a few eyeblinks away. And from there, how long to fill the universe? A few more blinks.

What I contend, dear students, is that if <em>any</em> intelligent race were to exist <em>anywhere</em> at <em>any</em> point in time, it would fill the universe almost immediately. Relatively speaking. There would be veritable traffic jams above us in space. Even if they filled the universe and then vanished, we would be swimming in their trash.

And so, position two is clearly absurd. 

Any questions? Yes, you.

(long pause; speaker from the audience is inaudible)

For those of you who couldn't hear the question, it was &quot;What if extraterrestrial life is just at the same developmental stage as us, and we haven't encountered it yet?&quot; Which is to say, one of our colony ships will likely run across one of <em>their </em>colony ships in the near future.

That is about as likely as me flipping fifty coins, and having them all land on their edges, one on top of the other. Unless there is some other kind of unobserved power at work, or all life came into being at relatively the same time. Frankly, both of these are absurd. What's more likely, that the universe has some kind of wondrous underpinning to it, be it deity or mathematical connectedness or what have you? Or that we simply live in a big empty space with lots of rocks in it?

I realize you're all young and eager to find some kind of magic in the world, but let's face it: we're alone. Thank you.

