Looking for Little Green Men

When it comes to science fiction, the possibilities are limitless. But every future world that's created, or alternate reality that's developed holds maybe 10% of the interest of UFO stories. Even those that roll their eyes and call the guy a crackpot walk away thinking about it at least a little. Very few people are completely against the idea of intelligent alien life having contacted us humans. That's not to say that there aren't skeptics, but even those skeptics have to think about it every once in a while. It crosses everyone's mind at some point, and it always sticks out enough that the next time someone talks about alien encounters, that little part get caught and pulled to the surface again.

I probably think about alien contact more than I think about zombie outbreak, and I have zombie apocalypse scenarios planned out with my friends. But there's a very different sort of allure that comes with extraterrestrial life. Most people envision very human-looking lifeforms similar to what we've seen on Star Trek and other sci-fi shows. I have to admit, for a while so did I. But really, I'm at the point where I actually don't expect the extraterrestrial life to actually be living biologically. I'm thinking that they'd all be robotic. The reason for this is that I highly doubt that any civilization that has developed space-flight, does not have a working computer, or a computer-like system. The calculations required for flight paths on a planet require computers and satellite guidance right now, and Earth is a very small place compared to the entire galaxy, let alone the entire universe. So to simply traverse our leg of the galaxy, we would need computer systems so advanced that our current systems could be compared to cave drawings. Somewhere along the way, AI will be developed, and at that point, why send a person when a computer will do?

Sending people into space seems unnecessary. Yes, Space Odyssey taught us not to use AI to do a human's job, but humans are just so limited. The only way that I could see aliens traversing the galaxy physically instead of using a computer is if they happened to be more durable than the computers. Can they handle low gravity for extended durations? If not then they need to make a gravity machine, which is probably a lot more costly than sending a computer. Can these aliens handle extremely low temperatures? Better start heating the ship, oh, assuming that you can control the pressure properly the whole way. And since most biological lifeforms require some form of sustenance to keep living, they would need to somehow accumulate that food for the travel, and dispose of their waste. A computer eliminates 90% of the efficiency problems there. All it needs is power which can be accumulated from solar radiation of winds, or whatever fuel we're using, or perhaps a small fusion generator. So computers are far more likely to be traveling throughout the universe than humans or other biological creatures.

And if this is the case, when an alien craft does come to Earth, there's just going to be computers on it. No little green men or big-headed gray guys to mess around with people. Unless of course, for some reason the computers identified what we thought aliens would look like, created androids that looked like those and the used them to test us... So let's just say no on that one.

Basically, we're going to have to communicate with the aliens through a sort of Morse Code involving mathematics. It's going to be us just beeping at them or flashing lights hoping that they recognize the patterns that we're showing them in whatever language or number system they use. Maybe if we're lucky, we'll get some sort of confirmation, but I'd imagine that the computer would simply register our attempts at communication and then leave to catalog the next planet. From there, depending on how efficient their space travel is, a little ship would probably arrive with some sort of communication device, or maybe just some sort of blueprints based on natural ratios that are consistent throughout math. If we can figure out how to get the damn thing to work, then we'll have contact with another life form.

But most likely they would have transferred over to computer and electrical based life forms anyway. Screw biology, live forever as a computer today!