(no subject)

[fan_eunice]

I am attempting to distract myself while I wait for a torrent. So I'm thinking about aliens. Well, I've been thinking about aliens since yesterday when I somehow ended up watching UFO Hunters on History Channel and rolling my eyes a *lot*. The weird thing is that the more I learn about space and science and the universe the more convinced I become that it is highly likely that life is abundant out there, and probable that at least some of it is intelligent. I also become less convinced that there has ever been any sort of contact or may ever be. Why? Distance + the laws of physics. The universe is huge. On a scale I don't think is truly comprehensible. I can't wrap my mind around it all when I try to think in the actual distances, and I know I scale them down in my mind to make sense of them. I'm not ruling out the possibility that techonology could be invented or properties of the universe could be controlled (wormholes!) in such a way that the distances could be crossed. It's just that the odds of both that happening, and that of the species that would cross, ours would be one of them in this vast space...they aren't very high. Practically non-existent I'd wager. That if it did, it would occur in the ways described by so many UFO encounters just...strikes me as silly. It is fun fiction, what if we could cross those distances and somehow, along the way, find that improbable needle in a haystack. It would be totally cool. It's tantalizing, especially once you realize how likely the possibility that somone is out there to be found is. But little grey men visiting Earth? Nah. Didn't happen. Us being able to travel in any way that would put us in reach of the little grey men's planet? Unlikely, definitely not going to happen in anything approaching my lifetime.

Which is okay. There is all sorts of cool stuff to discover that we can reach. And if we'd like to not be, y'know, extinct we do sort of need to find some more habitable worlds (or figure out how to make some habitable) at some point. Which is in reach before we lose this one (and we WILL, not if....when), if we manage to keep from killing ourselves off. So that's all pretty awesome. Intergalactic block parties, not so much.

Guess I'll just have to wait for the Doctor to HURRY UP AND COME GET ME ALREADY. Much like Donna, I already have my bags packed. *twiddles thumbs*