We live in a universe where matter is distributed in a hundred billion galaxies, each containing a hundred billion stars, made up of quantum fields where space and time are not existent, that manifest themselves in the form of particles, such as electrons and photons, or as waves. Tucked into the 14-billion-year history of this vast observable universe with 100 trillion planets is a pale blue dot teeming with life and a technological civilization created by a strange species known as homo sapiens.
Are we an aberration, an evolutionary accident, or are we one of millions of evolving beings scattered throughout the distant reaches of the cosmos?
In June of 2016, The New York Times attempted to answer this great unanswered question of the human species, publishing an op-ed titled, “Yes, There Have Been Aliens.”
In a brilliant display of intuition vs evidence, astrophysicist Adam Frank at the University of Rochester and author of “Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth”, proposed that “while we do not know if any advanced extraterrestrial civilizations currently exist in our galaxy, extraterrestrial civilizations almost certainly existed at one time or another in the evolution of the cosmos. the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational. We now have enough information to conclude that they almost certainly existed at some point in cosmic history.”
The cognitive disonance is breathtaking. To read more, click here.