Ever since New Horizons has come into the picture with all
the relentless talk about Pluto, it has put me misery with some incredibly
depressive thoughts in my mind. Pluto was discovered in the 1930s, and it has
taken man to cover almost a century to get close look at the tiny planet at the
edge of our Solar System. It took New Horizons around 9 years to reach Pluto. 9
years!
Pluto is around 3 billion kilometres away from our planet
Earth. Think of this when the next time you take a cab or your car for the
closest of destinations. Now, if you think about it more, just imagine if it
has taken a whopping nine years just to get a clear snap if the furthest planet
in the Solar System, how far are we from discovering any other life form ever.
See, I have no doubt we are not alone in this universe.
You’d have to be very arrogant to ridicule the idea of other life forms apart
from the ones here. We are situated in one of the most insignificant of galaxies
in the Universe, revolving around the most insignificant star in the Milky Way.
If our Sun was an engineering student, he must have been one of those unseen
students you only see on graduation while collecting his certificate, wondering
was he even there in our class?! That’s how insignificant we are!
I hope I may have convinced you about the existence of other
living organisms. Now, it all goes haywire. I so want to meet an E.T., a Jadoo,
and every other alien that ever came to us in the sci-fi movies. There may be a
possibility that aliens may have come to the planet but that it for another
article. I will focus on how we could find them. Probably it may be most
difficult game of hide and seek because you know what to look for, you know
where to look for, but you just can’t yell and tell that you found them.
Astronomers have estimated about hundred habitable planets
in the Milky Way. Now, that sounds like something we could easily figure out.
Just send them radio messages and see if they ever reply, or just go the planet
with a probe and observe it closely. Now, what is wrong with this plan? The
galaxy spans a whopping 100,000 light years wide. That means light takes
100,000 light years to travel across the galaxy. (Sounds like one hell of a
journey though! :P) I wouldn’t bore you with the concept of light since we all
know about it. But let me tell you that the maximum escape velocity ever
achieved by any space probe is 70km/s. It would take us 18,702 years just to
reach the closest start to Earth, Alpha Centauri, which is just 4.2 light years
away. See the difference?
Now, suppose all our scientists across the globe took
inspiration from Interstellar and started working on constructing a wormhole to
go to a planet say 300 light years away. We spend all our earth resources on
creating this wormhole and bend space time to reach the destination in say 15
years, how do we know for sure that the planet is there presently? I mentioned
300 light years, which means what we are looking at something which is 300
years old. Now, suppose if 150 years ago a solar flare wiped out all life from
the planet, or a black hole gobbled it up entirely, or maybe there was a Hitler
over there too, who incidentally managed to win the World War and destruct the
planet completely. All those resources, all the efforts would literally go down
a hole, a wormhole.
Every habitable planet that we have found is only accessible
through light and other radio waves. We
are constantly broadcasting messages
across various sections of the Universe in the hope that we get a reply. But,
would the human species be still live 600 years down the road? That’s how long
it would take just for realizing first contact with the hypothetical planet we
created. Suppose we do manage to survive on this planet by evolving into a
species who breathe carbon dioxide and run cars on solar energy, how would we
know if they survived the 300 years after transmitting their own message? (Of
course, at this moment I am assuming they speak English too!)
The vastness of the Universe can be so thrilling and
intimidating at the same time. The enormity of the galaxies, the intrigue of
finding life, the adventure of exploring ‘heaven’ can all be overpowered by
that sickening feeling that we would never be able to do any of these. The
stomach-turning feeling that Interstellar can just be a movie.
Even though, I am one hell of an optimist. I may not believe
that God would come to Earth again and relieve people of their melancholies,
but …oh but I do believe that Earth would be visited by that falling angel from
a different dimension land on my doorstep or any doorstep for that matter and
boot out my miseries.
We three dimensional people are so naĂŻve that we just cannot
comprehend how to go about beating the one directional time dimension. (For more knowledge on Time Travel) We just
can’t imagine that time can be just another physical dimension and not
something to be stretched, compressed or even rewind. A four dimensional
creature could do a lot more. He may just drop in to say hello and go back in a
matter of seconds.
Maybe the pyramids were made lending their help, maybe the
Bermuda Triangle is their entry and exit point to and fro, you never know.
Although, all of this can be discussed in another article.
For now, we just are too small, too dumb and too far from
any sort of startling discovery of alien life in the Universe. Optimism is overshadowed by the darkness of how distant the dream of seeing an
extra-terrestrial is!
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