66 million years ago the Chicxulub asteroid impacted Earth, precipitating a mass extinction event that resulted in the demise of gigantic amphibians—dinosaurs—and smaller critters and foliages. At least that’s what your kind theorised.
My name’s Bebop. And I will explain why you lot have yet to discover us extraterrestrials.
First, let me explain how your brains work; how curiosity gives birth to theories and how unimaginative you all are. Your brain consists of two cerebral modules: the left hemisphere that makes you the innate mathematician and linguist that you are not, and the right hemisphere, where you get to be the spontaneous and creative expressionist.
You are but a brain, one which puppeteers your skeletal-being, your attitudes and behaviours. However you do not grasp the fact that you are but a brain.
Imagine you are one of the first prehistoric self-conscious human to inhabit planet Earth and one day you see a ball of fire diminishing past the horizon, the sky reworking its colours from golden-orange to blue and black and finally, minute specks of light materialising and flickering. How will you react? Some nights you witness a pale-yellow crescent, other nights you see a ghastly sphere afloat in the sky. Does it excite you? Creep you out perhaps? Just what is that?
Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published a book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death in 1543. In it he introduced Copernican heliocentrism, an astronomical model which positions the sun near the centre of the universe with the rest of the planets rotating on their individual axes and revolving around the sun. There is a contrasting model theorised in the 2nd century—the Ptolemaic system which places Earth at the centre of the universe, immobile, with all other celestial bodies orbiting it.
In November 1572, Tycho Brahe discovered Stella Nova, one of the eight supernovae observable to the naked eye in historical records. He had discerned that the supernova did not change its position relative to the fixed stars over the months as all other planets did in their orbital movements. Case in point, Tycho Brahe unified the mathematical benefits of the Copernican system with the philosophical benefits of the Ptolemaic system and developed his own astronomical model—the Tychonic system—in which he proposed that Earth is at the centre of the universe. The sun, moon and the stars revolve around the Earth while Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn revolve around the Sun.
Thomas Digges, another astronomer, had also witnessed Tycho’s Supernova and concluded that its orbit goes further than that of the moon’s. A year earlier, he had completed Pantometria. Within the publication, writings by his father Leonard Digges and his father’s colleague William Bourne detailed the incorporation of lenses and a concave mirror as a construct of a reflecting telescope.
Are you still reading this, human? You would most probably have skimmed through the history lecture and astronomical jargons to get here, leaving yourself wondering how the ancient-astronomy crash course and the five aforementioned men fit into this lengthy article. Well do allow me to conclude this chapter with Galileo Galilei—father of modern observational astronomy and father of modern science.
The 17th century arrived. 1608 A.D., in particular, was an immensely exciting and peculiar year as three individuals—Hans Lippershey, Zacharias Janssen and Jacob Metius—filed patents for instruments that could see things far away. The very first refracting telescopes were invented.
In the following year, based on the description of invention by Hans Lippershey, Galileo Galilei bettered the Dutch telescope to allow the end-user to see a distance 3 times further than what the original make had offered. Down the years, he had ameliorated his creation to pave way for improved telescopes with magnifying capabilities of 20-30x.
Around January 1610, Galileo Galilei made a significant discovery with his telescope. Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto—the four moons of Jupiter; or otherwise known as the Galilean moons—were observed.
To encapsulate the paragraphs above, two astronomical models—the Copernican system and the Ptolemaic system—made way for the Tychonic system which was influenced by the observation of Tycho’s supernova. Thomas Digges who too observed the same supernova published his father’s inscription of the very first concept of a gigantic magnifying glass. Finally, Galileo Galilei had subscribed to Tycho Brahe’s Tychonic system, and with the telescope he assembled using Leonard Digges and Hans Lippershey’s sheer intelligence, observational astronomy grew and started booming unprecedentedly.
Without the fireball and the pale yellow ball shifting positions at varying phases of time, no theories would have been formulated for debate and rebuttal. Without such theories, no observations would have taken place and space would not have been discovered. If that had happened, humanity would not even possess the notion that space does exist. In fact, the term “space” itself would not have even been coined.
Which brings me to my point, earthlings: there are things that are beyond comprehension. And without knowing what it is that you do not yet understand, you will never have a chance to find out. Look closely. No. Even closer. Galileo Galilei would never find out what the four specks of faint lights were without gazing deeply into the cosmos.
Our extraterrestrial minds are omnipotent, as yours are. I think of the brain as a cumulation of knowledge. Without having a key (something that invokes your intellect), knowledge will never be unraveled and questions will remain unanswered. You have read about people who have suffered blows to their heads and once recovered from their comatose, they are able to speak with a different and unlearnt language. While it is certainly not advisable to run into a wall, this example is a wondrous illustration of how one can awaken the trove of information that lies dormant in his brain.
Ponder over this: have you ever seen a stranger somewhere, anywhere, that you immediately feel connected to? As though the both of you have known each other for ages? Some call it love at first sight while others use the word affinity. But what if all of you do already know each other from your previous lives? What about déjà vu, then?
Back to the Triassic period, have you ever considered the possibility that you humans arrived from another planet to replace the dinosaurs? Yes, it was theorised that an asteroid impacted near the present-day town of Chicxulub, Mexico, and that a crater was etched on those grounds. But what about the Mariana Trench—the deepest part of world’s oceans? Microbial life forms are thriving in the extreme pressures of the dark abyss. Now associate this with your unfettered Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
An asteroid plunges into the ground, water filled it up, erosion over centuries. Boom. You yourself are an extraterrestrial-being.
Ridiculous, you think. Heck, space is expanding as you read this. So let me bring the ridicule to another level: you will eventually be replaced by extraterrestrials smarter than you are. Intelligence-wise, what you are to dinosaurs corresponds to what I am to you. And this is why you have not found my kind. You are quite the dumb species.
Your kind is dumb because instead of collaborating with each other to make your planet a sustainable habitat, you collide and crash, you feign affability with your neighbours, you label and divide based on appearances and stereotypes, and agreeing to disagree means nothing more than giving in reluctantly.
And you lot are brunt of all jokes. Your politicians disagree with each other, and so what do they do? They send you to war with another group of your kind from another place on your planet. All they do is talk, as you slaughter your own blood. Ingenious.
humanity
noun
1 the human race; human beings collectively
My friends, the day we meet face-to-face is the day when humanity is as it is. Without resolving your differences, how would we know that your race is ready for intergalactic conventions?
Until then, this is goodbye.
Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure that the article is thoroughly factual, discrepancies may very well be unavoidable. If you do find one, kindly point them out in the comments and appropriate corrections will be effected.
