ET’s – Tuesday 31st October 2023

ET’s – Tuesday 31st October 2023

Some time ago, thinking on ETs, it occurred to me, wouldn’t we be disappointed if we located a planet with surface life and found the only life remaining there was insects. Having survived all other life and nothing to control their numbers and all preying on each other. Just an awful thought, but if it did occur, then mammalian life might have been the cause of such an outcome through selfishness and mismanagement. (Something to think about)

If we were to find another planet with another civilisation that had technology, then we could immediately know that they could only have reached that phase by being physically built suitable for mining. They wouldn’t be green fragile stick insect forms…… because that build couldn’t survive all the evolutionary processes necessary to get them to the point of creating technology.

It occurred to me that were we to meet such beings, we could show them a Pixel or iPhone and they would probably produce a device of similar purpose. We wouldn’t be able to understand each other’s language, but we would enjoy admiring each other’s gadgets. That gave me a smile and felt I should share that thought.

But something else occurred to me, when we have come in contact with other groups of people that hadn’t been exposed to certain diseases, it caused them illness and so were we to come in contact with life on another planet, we would need to be mindful of that for their and ourselves.

From what I can gather we are currently, vigorously searching for habitable exoplanets. Is it purely interests sakes? Is it habitable in relation to ourselves? Or habitable for just any form of life including micro scale? I’m not quite sure. I realise there is a lot of time, resource and expense going into the venture and certainly it’s interesting, has the feel of a treasure hunt. But I can’t help thinking about this planet and what it needs and that that should be our greatest priority. Hopefully, behind the scenes that is what’s happening and it’s just not in the news articles I see, hence I get the sense not much on that front is being done, when it actually is?

To finding a planet like Earth, with oceans and life at a phase similar to ours, within our current view of space, I think you will find all sorts, but this sort (Earth) is specialised in my view. And I’m still quite certain that Earth is not a random occurrence of luck and chance. Nor do I think that our moon exists because a fully formed planet named Theia collided with a molten Earth, thereby creating the Moon and then that planet becoming part of Earth and the Moon.

It’s interesting, but I don’t see that having occurred, so I’m in a very different viewpoint and I don’t expect anyone to have my view, just as others don’t expect me to have theirs.

But a simple argument for my mind would be, the planet had to form with just the right components, in just the right order, in just the right place with just the right star. It had to somehow have water delivered to it, it had to form tectonic plates and all the necessary weather and gases and so on, billions of years to create this planet and then none of that would come to anything, without a moon. The chances of needing and having a fully formed planet striking molten Earth in exactly the right angle to create that necessary moon, the chances of that are so very remote to my mind.

If we think of all that and then for us to be here, and that too all had to occur in order, ie dinosaurs, fossil fuels that without we couldn’t have progressed, so if we presume it is all just random, that’s such a lot of random and when I look at this solar system I do not see random. I see some mishaps, but when I consider this planet, life and beyond planet Earth, the course of Earth appears plotted with an exactness and order that I can’t dismiss.

Fiona MacLeod (C)