There has been a lot of excitement lately, in scientific circles at least, about the star that experiences periodic and unexplainable dimming. Conjecture about the causes of the phenomena range as widely as the people who are doing the dreaming but none are quite as tantalizing as the thought that out in the universe, a seemingly limitless expanse that must harbour life beyond our own beautiful planet, we seem to have detected evidence of an alien civilization.
Although it may make Fermi rapidly spin in his grave, one of science fiction’s most beloved notions is that an advanced civilization is attempting to capture more of its sun’s energy
by building either a Dyson sphere, or in this case of periodic dimming, Matryoshka layers of solar panels orbiting the sun and diverting its huge power to the civilization that built them. Only that could explain the periodic dimming of more than twenty percent of the sun’s output, say those more eager for this to be true.
Others, more cautiously, suggest that a huge field of comets, torn apart by the distant red dwarf in the binary system, would have the same effect. These suggestions are lost under the welter or youtube video commentary and blog comments, however, as the excitement of the day rules over reason, and those cautious voices which bade us to bank the fires of enthusiasm with the cold reality of evidence are increasingly talking to each other.
The great mass of humanity wants the aliens to exist. We want an ancient and wise society, viewing its solar system with a speculative eye, to make the space factories that such an enterprise would demand, and then use what otherwise would be wasted.
Others are not so eager for this to be true. A friend of mine told me that aliens do not exist. She knows this to be the case because God sent Jesus to save humanity, and if aliens existed, so goes the supposition, then there are multiple Jesuses, which there cannot by according to he sent his only son, or he had Jesus doing multiple house calls. That greatly diminishes our specialness and his sacrifice, however. Even that American psycho, Ken Ham, thinks if aliens exist they can’t be saved because the missed out on the doubled incest of Adam’s bloodline. Perhaps God didn’t bother with them and wants to torture them in a special corner of hell, presumably one that suits their atmosphere and temperament. If they are turned on by fire, for instance, then they might have to be endure a cold environment, while if they were from a planet covered with roiling clouds, and you still wanted them to suffer eternally, you might organize a corner of hell where the sun would always be blazing. You would never let the desert folk into that section, presumably, and while they wrung out their clouds in the cloud forests, God would be devising ways the rain forest people could desiccate for eternity.
You see my friend’s dilemma. I don’t think she thinks it would overly strain her God to deal with meting out rewards and especially punishments, but the idea that God is letting the aliens go without the possibility of salvation and torment is untenable to her, although she forgets that’s exactly what the Christian God did to the many millions of humans who were born before Jesus. I think she believes that if nothing else it trivializes our own special relationship with God when we find out that we are not the only special ones, just like a discussion about God in reference to the scientific possibility of an alien civilization trivializes the importance of this astronomical event.
Silliness aside, we finally have telescopes good enough to begin to see some detail of our universe. Many scientists say that we are on the cusp of discovering alien civilisations, although they caution us that light traveling some hundreds of light years might indicate the civilization we perceive as hearty might be long extinct in real time.
Whether we have seen proof finally that we are not alone in the universe, or merely that we are overly excited by the possibilities, we are finally looking outward. Giving the question of God’s concern with aliens the disinterest it so richly deserves, humanity is beginning to expand our senses enough to look into the universe around us, and with radio and light telescopes trained on KIC 8462852, may we are hoping to see something wondrous and strange rather than just relying on evil myths and dirty church stories.
