Alien Life
Created | Updated Nov 11, 2005
Have you ever considered that the fact that solar eclipses are visible from Earth is conclusive evidence of the existence of alien life...?
Consider these facts:
The Earth is the only planet in the solar system where from the surface a satellite appears to be exactly the same size as the Sun. The planets that are closer to the Sun than us, Mercury and Venus, do not have satellites at all or they are too small to cover the sun in the sky; further out from us — starting with Mars — the Sun is not really a disk in the sky, more of a bright point.
The Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun, but the Sun is exactly 400times further away.
The Sun and the Moon will appear to be the same size in the sky for an amazingly short space of time (in geological terms): in the four-billion-year life span of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun will only appear to be the same size for the current hundred thousand years or so. Before that and after that their different orbits will make them appear to be different sizes.
Now — the current one hundred thousand years as a percentage of the total lifespan of the Earth is 0.25% — and it just so happens to coincide with one species — us — achieving civilization, science and sentience.
So: we are left with the fact that on the only planet in our solar system where life can evolve, and on the only planet in our solar system where the satellite can appear as the exact same size of the Sun, at the only time the satellite will appear to be the same size as the sun, and at the exact time that conscious, sentient beings arose we have eclipses of the sun!
Now this is a fantastically bizarre and unlikely series of events: each one is on the order of one in 10 billion chance — so you have a series of four one in ten billion chances happening one after the other. That is without factoring in the original chance that life would evolve here and then stay around long enough to evolve into sentient life. All of this has happened in the only sequence possible to make eclipses visible from the surface of the Earth.
Now the question becomes this: is it pssible to design a process more likely to make a sentient species aware of the fact that they live on a planet and that their satellite and sun are both also spheres?
What is more likely to make the curious monkeys look up in wonder and awe than the utter majesty of a solar eclipse? What is more likely to make a sentient being think about what those things in the sky are, apart from having one pass in front of the other and exactly blot it out?
What mechanism could you possibly engineer that is more likely to create a star-faring civilization?
All that remains to be answered is who did this and why?
The only two possible contenders that the Chairman can see are an alien civilization or a supreme being....
