The Truth is Out There
I loved watching the X-Files in my teen and young adult years (yes, I am that old!). The long-running series featured every pseudoscience and urban legend it could find, from liver-eating coccoon mutants to the Jersey Devil. But no show about the mysteries of reality would be complete without aliens.
Aliens have long been a staple of Science Fiction, and American culture in particular seems fascinated with their existence. Some say they are here already, kidnapping people and experimenting on them, mutilating cattle, and of course manipulating historical events. And yet when it comes to producing conclusive proof, UFO believers have yet to produce anything that can’t be explained by natural phenomena, alcohol consumption, or simple human paranoia.
As far as we know, we are alone in the universe. But that may soon change.
Where there’s water…
NASA believes there may be water on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. They are currently accepting proposals for which instruments they ought to use to determine whether this is true or not. While this may sound like an over-priced inter-system well-drilling operation, it is actually the beginning of determining whether or not there is life, independently evolved from that of earth and completely alien, living beneath the ice that covers Europa’s surface.
I rather like Neil Degrasse-Tyson’s take on Europa:
But What Would it Mean?
It would mean brand new discoveries in biology and evolution, for one. It would also likely mean a boost for the space program and perhaps even an increased desire to explore our little solar system and even the galaxy.
Space, as Douglas Adams so aptly wrote in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is big. Really big. And while it is difficult to understand why Russian scientists would send a satellite into space filled with randy Geckos having sex, discovering alien life would popularize science in a way we haven’t seen in years.
This high resolution image shows the ice-rich crust of Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Seen here are crustal plates ranging up to 13 km (8 miles) across, which have been broken apart and “rafted” into new positions, superficially resembling the disruption of pack-ice on polar seas during spring thaws on Earth. The size and geometry of these features suggest that motion was enabled by ice-crusted water or soft ice close to the surface at the time of disruption. The area shown is about 34 km by 42 km (21 miles by 26 miles), centered at 9.4 degrees north latitude, 274 degrees west longitude, and the resolution is 54 m (59 yards). This picture was taken by the Solid State Imaging system on board the Galileo spacecraft on 20 February 1997, from a distance of 5,340 km (3,320 miles) during the spacecraft’s close flyby of Europa.
I can’t help but also feel like it would give a boost to the pseudoscience industry as well, paving the way for a whole new generation of hucksters and con artists to fleece desperate people by selling them alien ointments for their joint pains, ground alien powder for lactose intolerance, and perhaps even claiming that vaccines are made from alien matter that makes it easy for the government to control us.
As much as I have fond memories of watching The X-Files when I was young, when I rewatched the entire series a few years ago I couldn’t help but cringe at the combination of bad science, hokey conspiracy theories, and general distrust of the actual scientific community which the late 90’s show fostered. In short, while the show likely inspired my young mind to begin crafting scifi stories of my own, I can’t help but feel that it probably did more harm than good by presenting proven medicine and science in such a negative light. As I’ve grown older, I have come to realize that science, actual empirical science, is a force for good in the world and can make our lives better.
The discovery of even primitive microscopic alien life would answer one question and raise a thousand others. If there’s life on Europa, might there not be life on other planets as well? What forms would it take? And might some of it be as intelligent or, dare we say it, more intelligent than humans?
Luckily, science has no problem with questions because questions lead to data which lead to discovery. And just because scientists probably can’t answer every question in the universe, that won’t stop them from trying.