On Space Travel

Space travel fascinates our culture. The television waves saturate the air with programs on space shuttle launches, UFO's, Area 51, and alien conspiracies. In my opinion, this suggests that we are being bamboozled by some remarkably clever higher-ups in the entertainment business. The actual possibilities of space travel and alien visitation are limited by one inconvenient truth about our world: Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. In short, this theory states that the speed of light - 186,282 miles per second - acts as a sort of "cosmic speed limit." Nothing can travel faster than it.

The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years away. The light year is a unit of distance which equals the how far light travels in 1 year. If we grant alien and UFO conspiracy theorists the HIGHEST POSSIBLE benefit of the doubt, let's assume that super-intelligent aliens inhabit a planet in the Proxima Centauri solar system. Let us also assume that they have developed space travel technology allowing speeds approaching the speed of light. Let me emphasize that both of these assumptions are profoundly absurd to a stupefying degree.

Reservations aside, let the assumptions stand. Are we then to conclude that these super-smart, technology-savvy aliens would take the time, effort and resources to travel 4.3 years through space to our planet only to hover over our planet a few hundred feet up and flash the lights on their aircraft?


"O Tempora, O Mores!"

-Quintus Tullius Cicero