I
It was the same old argument. Extraterrestrial life.
Intelligent
extraterrestrial life.
"Billions of galaxies," he
said. "Hundreds and hundreds of billions of stars.
At least as many
planets. At least 40
billion habitable worlds per galaxy.
How can ours be the only one sustaining intelligent life?
You have to admit that there must be others."
We had hashed this over at least as
many times as there are stars in a galaxy. Or at least it seemed like it.
There's your relativity lesson for the day.
"And yet," I replied (again), "we have zero evidence of extraterrestrial
life."
"You can't say zero," he
insisted. "Not zero.
Not all the reports are from crackpots."
"Jake," I replied (again), more patiently than he deserved, I think, "
you know the maxim: 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence.' To be taken seriously, claims of extraterrestrial life
require compelling evidence."
He eyed me quizzically. "Doesn't it bother you that every little
thing our species has ever accomplished ... everything that our species
has ever done ... from great
art to stupid puns, from sublime music to obscure in-jokes that maybe
only two individuals get ... will some day boil away into space?
And that there may be no one else in the entire universe to know
or care? Doesn't it bother you that this may already have
happened to some other intelligent species? Maybe thousands of others?"
Hmph.
Well, that's the kind of thing you talk about when you've been cruising
the cosmos together for thirty years. Jake and I are kind of the
advance guard of Galactic Mining Operations, Inc. We lead the
first eyes-on reconnoitering of likely candidate planets, see if
they're worth the trouble of setting up a mining operation. And
no, we have never encountered any alien life.
So we were on another exploratory mission to another alien planet.
But with one difference. And what was that? Wherefore was
this expedition different from all previous expeditions? Well, it
seems that our target planet ... sort of ... exploded before we
arrived. Better than after, huh?
Still, we hung around for a while, seeing if there was anything
salvageable, maybe some biggish, mineable hunk of planet. We
pulled in some promising-looking samples, but there were no remnants of
significant size.
I do have one little Jake story, however. Good example of his
pollyannic world view.
"Look at this!" Jake gushed, shoving a rock under my nose. "It's a
sample we picked up from the detritus of that planet."
"It's a rock," I said.
"No," he said, "or rather, yes,
but not only a rock.
It's an artifact!"
"It's a rock," I repeated.
"No, no!" He was very excited. "Look
at the tip!"
I looked. There was a bit of metal smushed onto it. "So?
A bit of tin probably. Nothing unusual."
"No," Jake insisted. "Somebody made
this. Someone took this little sphere and attached it to this
rock. It looks like it was hollow before it got crushed."
What an imagination.
"And there was ... there could have been ... like, a little ball inside
... I see a little bump ... right there.
So if you shook the rock, the metal sphere would make a jingling
sound ... like a bell!"
Jake went on in this wise for quite some time. "And what would be
the point?" I asked.
"Assuming that some intelligence was brought to bear on this
tin-bearing rock, why would any sapient being do that?"
"For ... fun?" Jake suggested.
"Hmph," I scoffed. "Rock. Bell. Jingle. Makes
no sense."
"Maybe not," Jake agreed, "but I'm keeping it!"
"Remember," I said. "Extraordinary evidence."