Do you believe in aliens from outer space? A recent news story revealed that NASA has launched a new generation of spaceship probes with the intention of flying to Mars in search of intelligent life forms there, primarily based on the recently discovered evidence of the former existence of water on Mars…

I have been an avid reader of science fiction all my life, and have often wondered about this myself…IS there life on other planets? It is a good question, the universe is boundless, and there are an infinite number of stars and planets….The odds alone would seem to support the hypothesis that intelligent life HAS evolved on other planets…
But….I have a major conflict with the avowed purpose of these various probes etc, because they all seem to assume that if there IS intelligent life forms in outer space, they must of necessity be earth type life forms, oxygen breathing, carbon based, water needing, human like life forms to exist.

The various probes we have launched and will continue to launch, all of these probes have all been geared to explore possible other planets, some of them in different galaxies, that our earth scientists have concluded MAY support humanoid intelligent life forms, similar to our own planet because they have discovered trace elements of water and oxygen on them….
Why exactly is that? Are we so incredibly arrogant that we can only imagine that all intelligent life forms MUST be similar to what we have right here on earth? That presupposes that life, especially intelligent life as we know it, can ONLY exist with the abundance of water and oxygen that we have on earth…In reality, is it not far more likely that instead of our planet being the perfect and only model to produce intelligent life, that the exact opposite is true?

That the true fact is that humanity on this planet has evolved through the millennia to adapt to the harsh conditions that do exist here on this planet, that rather than oxygen and water being necessary to sustain life, that we have simply evolved DESPITE these existing elements, into our current dependence on them?…It seems to me, that in our own all too human arrogance, that we are putting the cart before the horse….
Oxygen, for example, is a very corrosive gas… Oxygen gas will react with other elements, such as iron, and then rust or corrode them….If an object is dropped underwater for any length of time, it will be fine until it is brought to the surface, then the corrosion and rust from the harsh oxygen gas will take place almost instantaneously…

Water is necessary for carbon based life forms such as we have on earth, but who is to say there are not silicon based intelligent life forms somewhere in the universe, or methane breathing, low gravity life forms, or “monsters” as we would call them, on Jupiter that are just as intelligent as we are, even though life on Jupiter would be impossible for humans?…
Isn’t if far more likely that as humans, we have adapted successfully over the course of our own evolution to the carbon based, water sustained, oxygen atmosphere that we all now take for granted? That rather than life sustaining, absolute requirements for life, the truth is that we have simply been able to adapt over the years to the harsh conditions, the corrosive gas oxygen and the carbon based, water dependent type of life that exists in our own atmosphere?
If this supposition is true, and we have no way of proving or disproving it because we would be unable to recognize it as “life as we know it” because of course it would be “life as we DON’T know it”, there may indeed be an infinity of different intelligent life forms out there, right here and right now….They would most likely be as blind to our existence as we are to theirs!

Their equivalent of our own preoccupied scientists would probably scoff at the notion that any intelligent life could possibly have developed, evolved and exist on such a hostile planet like earth, with it’s incredibly corrosive oxygen atmosphere, not to mention the wild improbability of carbon based life forms dependent on water to sustain themselves! I guess it’s all in how you look at it…
Another thing that bothers me, is why are we in such a gosh darned hurry to find out if other life forms exist at all? Idle curiosity, scientific suppositions, the “need to know” all come to mind…But what if there ARE other intelligent life forms “out there?” Why do we blindly assume that they would be friendly to us? Is it not just as likely they could prove to be malevolent, evil creatures, the prototypical monsters from Mars that H.G. Wells presumed existed in his great novel, “The War of the Worlds”?
Are we really ready to make contact with the Galactic Empire and face off against Darth Vader and his ilk? Yikes! I for one, am definitely not up for that!….Maybe we will attract some vicious, man eating creatures from the planet X who regard us as a tasty dinner treat, like a whole planet of complacent herds of cattle or flocks of chickens….

Maybe we will be assimilated by the hive mind of the Borg!….”Resistance is Futile!” Or maybe we will somehow contact all naively, and in some random, impossible to determine how it is spread, let alone how it is cured, some deadly mutant outer space virus that will make the present Ebola crisis seem like a mild case of the common cold!
Let’s stop sending out intergalactic road maps via space ships and satellites inviting who or God knows what to our cozy corner of the galaxy, we are pretty much off the established centers of the known universe as it is…Maybe there is a reason for all this, but I just don’t see the rewards vs risk factors as necessarily in our favor…

Sometimes it’s just better to not wake a sleeping giant, or muddle our way into a situation we can’t escape from….It’s not like we don’t have enough to do right here on our own planet, like solving world hunger, racism, sexism and correcting global warming, and if we just simply have to explore, why not do a comprehensive survey of our own oceans, which cover 3/4 of the globe anyway?

There is nothing wrong with scientific curiosity, it is part of our own human genetic DNA and without it we would probably all still be living in dark caves, but I used to always hear an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure….I still feel that way….How about you?