Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

by Avi Loeb

Just looking up, I find, helps change your perspective.

Are we, both scientists and laypeople, ready? Is human civilization ready to confront what follows our accepting the plausible conclusion, arrived at through evidence-backed hypotheses, that terrestrial life isn’t unique and perhaps not even particularly impressive? I fear the answer is no, and that prevailing prejudice is a cause for concern.

In “The Hollow Men,” his meditation on post–World War I Europe, the poet T. S. Eliot reflects: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Our civilization has sent five man-made objects into interstellar space: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, and New Horizons. This fact alone is suggestive of our unlimited potential to venture far out.

We are here for a short time and consequently we had better not fake our actions. Let us stay honest, authentic, and ambitious. Let our limitations, very much including the limited time we are each given, encourage humility.

Given the ubiquity of habitable planets, it is the height of arrogance to conclude that we are unique. It is, I believe, the hubris of a young age. When my daughters were toddlers, they believed they were special. But after meeting other children, they developed a new perspective of reality, and they matured.