Steven Spielberg said that at the time he made his masterpieces, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., he really believed in UFO's.
That someone was out there.
Visiting us.
But now, in the cynical 21st Century America, that he no longer believes in UFO's.
I still believe.
Here's why. And what. Here's what I still believe in.
First of all, Steven Spielberg's argument, of why he stopped believing.
Which is that ever since we all got video cameras on our phones, the number of UFO sightings have gone down.
I think that that is a false argument. Here's why. 99 percent of all UFO sightings are explainable with good, normal scientific explinations. It's the remaining 1 percent that matters. Of course, once we all have cameras on our phones, the 99 percent will go down. But what about the other 1 percent?
But it doesn't matter. Here's why.
Because we know that someone's out there.
Whether or not they're able to visit us, whether or not it's practical for E.T. to visit our star system, we know someone's out there.
When Steven Spielberg made E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we did not know that someone's out there.
But since then, we have discovered planets around other stars.
Now we know.
There are hundreds of thousands of other planets just like Earth, beautifully suited for supporting life, in this galaxy alone. There are many millions of planets in this galaxy alone. And there are so many galaxies out there.
They're out there.
Whether they can get to our star system or not, they're out there.
And many of them have civilizations hundreds of thousands of years old.
Incredibly advanced civilizations.
They're out there. E.T. is out there.
And a beautiful, highly advanced alien civilization is a lot more realistic than some monster aliens. I mean, tigers and sharks are just creatures, not monsters. They don't mean any harm. They're just big and hungry. If they were smaller, and used to us, they would be our friends just like our dogs are! That is what dogs are, after all! But beautiful, highly advanced civilizations like ancient Egypt are very real.
And who knows? Some of those UFO sightings are unexplained. If there was a planet with a civilization, with intelligent people, wouldn't you want to go explore it?
And even if none of those UFOs are alien spaceships, and it is too difficult to travel to other stars for there to be a lot of alien spaceships around, the possibility of contact still exists.
Because even if it is very difficult to travel to other stars, and it rarely happens, the one thing that would motivate a civilization to do that very, very difficult thing would be contact with other life.
If anything would motivate an advanced alien civilization to build a generational ship for making a 500-year journey at sublight speeds to a star system 60 or 70 light-years away it would be knowledge that a planet in that star system has abundant life.
And with the James Webb Space Telescope, we here on Earth, who have barely been in the industrial phase of civilization for two centuries, can detect abundant life in a planet around another star.
For the James Webb Space telescope has taken the spectrum of the atmosphere of a planet around another star.
If that spectrum contains the signature of oxygen not in combination with any other element, and the spectrum does tell that, oxygen in water leaves a different spectrum from oxygen by itself, if that spectrum contains the signature of oxygen not in combination with another element, that's life.
That's abundant life.
For oxygen is very reactive. It reacts with other elements.
Oxygen not in combination with any other element has to be constantly replenished.
By life.
The James Webb Space Telescope can detect abundant life on a planet beyond the solar system.
And we've had industrial technology for barely 200 years.
Some of those alien civilizations will have had industrial technology for thousands of years.
If their star system has life which uses oxygen the way Earthly life does, and their civilization is land-based and not water-based, and they've had industrial technology for a thousand years, than they know our planet has abundant life.
And even if it is very difficult to travel to another star system, because there is no way to travel faster than light, they might just do it to make contact with a planet with abundant life, a planet that they already knew, from a James Webb Space Telescope of their own, has abundant life.
And if they are no more than 150 light-years from Earth, they might send a generational ship to our star system.
Even though it would be incredibly difficult, and would not happen that often, and would take 800 years to reach Earth.
The possibility is still out there.
Just because they can't travel faster than light, and don't make contact with other planets very often, doesn't mean it could not happen one day.
The possibility is still out there.
Because the fact that Earth has life would make that difficulty worth it, and they could detect Earth's life from their own planet with their own James Webb Space Telescope.
And there's one more thing.
Even if they weren't out there, and they are, the idea of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. is still real.
Reaching out. Making contact. Reaching out to Life, to make contact with Life beyond the normal.
The octopus is highly intelligent. Not as intelligent as man, maybe, but as intelligent as a dog. They live in a strange world, under the sea. Their intelligence is completely independently evolved from that of Man. Our last common ancestors with the octopus were not even snails yet. They don't have the mammalian neocortex. They don't even have the reptilian brainstem. They have something else, which works just as well.
There's your alien life, right there.
Or how about human civilization?
How about a civilization completely different from your own?
A person from the modern west, derived from western Europe, discovering the wisdom of ancient India. Discovering the wisdom of Hare Krishna, of the Upanishads, of The Buddha. Discovering all the beauty of the Ramayana.
Or discovering the world of the Maya. Or classical China. Or Africa south of the Sahara, where great Kingdoms existed for a thousand years in the Middle Ages.
A civilization completely different from our own.
I still believe in close encounters of the Third kind.
I still believe in reaching out to discover new Life, and new magic.
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson