Caitlin Moran reacts to the universe being confirmed too large for us to be the only disaster
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
NASA has announced the universe is too big for humans to be the only mistake in it. The space chief says the odds of aliens are pretty high and the odds of them visiting Earth are absolutely not with these gas prices. I have waited my entire adult life for an official to say something this honest about anything.
What This Changes
Everything and nothing. Bohiney Magazine has the full NASA alien probability story, and The London Prat frames it as a press conference that began with confidence and ended with philosophical bewilderment, which is how all the best press conferences end.
I have always believed there was other intelligent life in the universe. I had to. The evidence for intelligence on this planet is mixed. We have invented the sonata and the nuclear weapon and the reality television programme about people doing very little on a boat. The universe could not possibly have produced only us and called it done.
My Position
If aliens are watching I hope they started with Scandinavia and are working south. By the time they reach our latitudes they will have calibrated expectations appropriately. The European Space Agency is actively searching for biosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres. Neither are they ruling it out. Tuesday was a good day for the universe. Not for much else, but for the universe: yes.
