evolution

sometimes i listen to am radio. late at night there’s a show hosted by this character named george noory, who is supposedly some kind of advocate or researcher for organizations looking for ufos. his callers are a “diverse group”… okay, they’re a bunch of freakin’ whackos. some of them are fairly reasonable folks. others make outlandish claims, such as having been abducted by aliens, or having travelled through time. stephen hawking claims quite convincingly in his book a brief history of time that those two ideas may be essentially equivalent, since the aliens would probably need to travel faster than light in order to get here in a reasonable amount of time.

he then writes. “if they [the aliens] are going to reveal themselves at all, why do so to those who are not regarded as reliable witnesses?” he also wonders: if it were ever possible for humanity to travel through time, wouldn’t some enterprising soul come back to our time to tell us how to do it? his words again: “… unless human nature changes radically, it is difficult to believe some visitor from the future wouldn’t come and spill the beans.”

any visit from aliens would probably result in worldwide disaster. (it’s that human nature thing again.) assuming they survived the automatic air defenses of the world’s nuclear powers, most notably those of russia, china, and my own country’s, there would probably be worldwide panic once they stepped off the saucers. what effect would knowing for certain that other life exists in the universe, and that it has come to visit, have on society? what name would cnn come up with for earth’s first interstellar war?

all these questions are interesting philosophical debate topics. unfortunately, most of george noory’s callers are of the “i got beamed up by the aliens and they poked stuff up my butt” variety.