Aliens

Today I got up late, and watched a quite a bit of TV. After dinner, which tonight was OK I went and watched Underbelly. Before Underbelly came on there was 60 minutes. One segment on 60 minutes which I thought was pretty cool was about elephants. No one else wanted to watch the elephants, I did. Elephants are the coolest animal on the planet. They are massive, they have trunks, they have tusks, and they are really smart. This segment was about someone who was watching forest elephants in Central Africa, and more specifically looking at there vocalizations. Scientists were trying to work out how elephants communicated with each other, I found pretty interesting, the other people in the room didn't. Though one comment from a friend of mine got me thinking, he said that there could be aliens right now watching us and trying to work out how we communicated. That reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandfather this summer.

We were on our way to get a pizza, Grandpa was driving. I was in the car with him and we were talking among other things about Aliens. I was telling him about how I saw a UFO once, he was beginning to doubt my sanity a little. I then asked him if he believed in Aliens and he said that with the infinite size of the universe there is almost certainly intelligent life elsewhere. He then said something very interesting, he said that he thought it was a stupid idea that people were trying to communicate with intelligent life elsewhere, he mentioned Neal Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee which I haven't read but my grandfather says its really good. SETI, or the search for extra terrestrial intelligence, beams off thousands of messages every day into the ether trying to attract the interest of Aliens. I think I agree with my grandfather on this, that is a really stupid idea.

If an alien gets our message two things could happen. He could decide that he really couldn't give a shit, or he could decide we did matter. If the alien thought we mattered he might decide to give us a visit. If an alien came to earth he would have far more advanced technology than us, we can't even send someone to the next planet yet.

If an alien species has superior technology to us, that probably means that they can utterly destroy us. That is not a good thing. If the aliens are anything like us that is even more worrying. We only very recently eliminated slavery. If they resemble us physiologically thats worse, look at the way we treat our closes relatives the chimpanzees. Chimpanzees who are very intelligent animals are used for testing medicines. What if the aliens decide it would be a good idea to eat us. On the list of things I don't want to happen to me being eaten by an alien is close to the top.

Me and my dad attended a public lecture at the ANU about the Origins of Life in the universe. Speaking was a “Christian Scientist” who me and my dad thought was a complete idiot. One of the more stupid stupid things this guy said was that he thought if there were aliens elsewhere they would probably closely resemble us. Aliens could look like anything, I was reading a science fiction novel a while ago where the alien was a massive cloud of dust. Aliens could could have multiple heads, they could be sentient piles of goo, they could be made of energy, they could be microscopic to us, they might even be invisible. Whatever they look like though I don't care, I don't want to be eaten by one of them.

Thinking about aliens makes me want to watch District 9 again, that was a fucking sick movie. I liked all the south African accents and shit. Also I will leave you with this song by one of my favorite bands the Byrds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mDXu2_PbnQ&feature=related