Are We alone?

This past week Daily Planet on Discovery Channel Canada was running a feature where viewers were asked to send in ideas about what message, pictures and sounds should be sent in a broadcast directed at some distant star. Being a house of engineers we of course started discussing the idea of 'aliens' at great lengths.


C/O Daily Planet

Sorry that the promo has already closed, so you can't leave messages, but I think you will soon be able to vote for one of the ones already sent.

There are a few inherent problems with the whole idea. Sure, maybe the alien culture will get the message, but how will the decipher it? We want to send pictures. Do you think they have JPEG format? Maybe it's a GIF, or a BMP. Oh, and don't forget, their copyright laws forbid MP3 encoding, so they won't be able to play the sound.

Now, of course the biggest question is, do Alien's exist?

I think it is awfully arrogant of the human race, knowing what we currently know about the universe, to think that we are alone.

I will say, beyond any doubt, that there are other life forms either currently in existence, or have existed elsewhere in the universe. Based on the vastness of 'out there', I'd bet dollars to donuts (haha, gotta love those expressions you pick up from professors) that there is at least one other intelligent civilisation in existence right now. Probably many more than that. I have no scientific proof for this hypothesis, but I think we'd have to be very narrow minded to think any differently.

I don't know that we will ever meet any of them. Maybe the distances are just too vast, or maybe the timing just isn't right.

Maybe that information beam is being sent to a planet that has, can or will support life. Now, assuming that species has the ability to actually collect and decipher the information, what are the odds that that intelligent and technically advanced civilisation is there right now, or in the time it takes for the info to get there. We have only developed these capabilities in the last 50 or so years. How do we know there wasn't a message for us that passed by 75 years ago.

I hope that in my lifetime we will at least make contact with one of those other life forms that I am almost positive is out there. I think that would be a world changing event. The realization, beyong any question, that we are not alone in the universe. It will change the way people think, and I'm sure the rush to develope a way to meet them would be greater than any other peace time effort.

The only way to prove my theories is to actually find another lifeform. It's one of those things that only time will tell.

But that's just my opinion.