Aliens?

You might already have an opinion on aliens - there are many! Here are some of the possibilities:

• Aliens do not exist - we are the only world in the near-infinite universe that has evolved life
• The only aliens are simple organisms that don't have the complex brains that we do, so they'll never have technology or any way to communicate with us, but we could discover them
• Aliens exist, but the universe is so big that we'll never have proof of their existence because they're just too far away
• Aliens exist but complex organisms are so destructive of their own environment, and long spaceflight is so difficult, that complex life almost always kills itself off (or gets hit by a massive natural disaster like an asteroid or supervolcano) before reaching the technology necessary for long space flight
• Aliens are out there that have higher technology than us, and they have have seen us already but haven't made contact
• Aliens have already visited earth and there's evidence at Area 51, the government is just hiding it from us. Or they came long before humans started writing down history - they may have even sent life here to begin the process of evolution!

 

 Dooo doo dooo dooo dooo dooo dooo (from giphy.com)

I personally favor one of the middle possibilities - the 1st and last are the least likely in my opinion. But that's all we have to go on for now - probabilities and opinions.

One thing we do know is that space is huge - epically huge, to the point where you can't even comprehend the size. Rough math says that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the entire planet earth. Each star could have many planets, so that's a lot of chances! Here's a cool visualization of the scale of this stuff - wait for it to load then press 'start' and use the slide bar to explore objects smaller and larger than us.

It's really hard to get this all in one picture...(source)

The inspiration for this blog post was this very interesting idea: a signal coming from space that no one can explain. It could be aliens! It could be nothing...what do you think is the most likely? Get involved in the comments - all theories welcome!!