Aliens! Wide-eyed, short-statured, extraterrestrially-elongated aliens!

In a universe as vast as this one (assuming you aren't one of those un-evolved creationist types) alien life of some form or other appears to be a statistical certainty. Yet, in an imagination as narrow-minded as this one (assuming you are human; a species carved neurological intelligence by evolution mere cosmological moments ago) bipedal, communistic, space-faring, master races are ten to the dozen. What's the likelihood we're talking extraterrestrial bollocks here?

In an attempt to find a systematic means to evaluate the numerous probabilities involved, Dr. Frank Drake formulated The Drake equation in 1960. While it was formulated after the objections raised by Fermi's Paradox, Drake's equation has become a common and respected means of estimating the frequency of occurrence of interstellar civilizations.

The Drake equation has been used by both optimists and pessimists, with varying results. Dr. Carl Sagan, for example, suggested as many 1 million communicating civilizations in the Milky Way in 1966. Another published estimate from Frank Tipler in 1982 placed the value at just one e.g., human beings are the only extant intelligent life.

Critics of the Drake equation claim that since the variables cannot yet be determined with any real confidence, estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations based on it is methodologically flawed, an idea which the wide diveregence in estimates seems to support.

Even given the scale of the Milky Way galaxy alone, the abundance of life out there must be beyond our comprehension. Thing is, the form this life will take and the ways in which evolutionary forces will carve out niches for it in abstract realms of reality we have no chance of ever witnessing, is also far beyond our comprehension. Once you get past the human revolving varieties of physiology, psychology and neurology available to our memetically governed intelligences there ain't no Ologies left! Give it up space-cadets, eat yourself some terrestrial fried chicken, spawn a bipedal offspring or two. The universe'd think better of you if you did:

• The Martians aren't Coming
• The Psychology and Neuroscience of Alien Abduction
• Prototypical Alien-face a hallucination?
• So, why do we believe in aliens?
• Who's Out There?
• Why we haven't met any Aliens
• Internet Killed the Alien Star
• Unidentifiable Figmental Organisms?
• Crypto-Terrestrial?
  

But throughout every conspiracy, every mathematical impossibility, every Star-Trek rerun and drab George Lucas extravaganza a voice calls at me from across the deepest voids of space, a whispering vibration in the fabric of space-time cast across the Milky-Way long before humans had the capacity to understand its phraseology. Appealing to my anthropically mediated mentality; the battle cry of all intelligent life everywhere:

Keep looking, space-baby...

So today's Mu Haiku, if you choose to accept it - why aren't they here yet?

'Cos Aliens got better things to do!
The 5 - 7 - 5 ideas veritably flood my monkey-like cerebral cavity:

Martian relief from
this Galactic loneliness?
Space-Tentacle porn...

Go create...

But still, if that excuse doesn't cut it for you, I won't take offence if you reach for the tin-foil helmet and Lucas-affiliated sound effects sword. You have every right to wish the aliens upon us, just don't let your imagination dwell too deep my friends; you're gonna need your conspiracy-nut wits about you if they do turn up:

In one case, before thought screen helmets were available, an abduction was thwarted when a victim had her husband wrap her with string. Her husband hid the scissors, and the aliens could not remove the string so they did not take her. They were very angry. Some abductees report that aliens try to remove their helmets and cannot do so when the helmets are secured with tape or string. - link

Mu to that!

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Labels: Mu Haiku