Imagining Life Beyond Earth - a Stargazer's Dream

Sometimes it really scares me to realise just how small we really are in this vast universe. To this day, I still dream about being in the outer space and seeing our world from above and having that moment of pure awe takes my breath away. I've always wanted to know what lies beyond this little planet of ours we call home.

I keep pondering over all these questions about life and existence that come to my mind leaving me in wonder and restlessness. As a kid, I remember how I used to look up at the night sky and just stare at the stars for hours hoping some day I'll get to see them up close. I still do.

I've had my share of sleepless nights where I keep asking myself these questions expecting I'll get an answer sooner or later. If there really is life outside of Earth, will we ever find it? Will it find us? What if we never do? It fills my heart with wonder and my mind with curiosity to even imagine that someday we will.

I know we all will be long gone before our civilization can find answers to these questions, but for now, all we can do is keep searching even if it might seem hopeless at times, because if there's one thing that we humans are really good at, it's exploring.

If you do a little research, you'll learn how existence of extraterrestrial life is almost guaranteed. To our current telescopic ability, we know that in the observable universe which is about 90 billion light years in diameter, there are at least 100 billion galaxies and each of those galaxies contain billions of stars orbited by billions of planets.

To put that in perspective, for every grain of sand on Earth, there are about 10,000 stars in our own galaxy. Remember, that's just a rough estimate and the count may fluctuate as space technology improves.

The universe is infinite and expanding, and there are constantly new stars and planets taking birth with the old ones dying out, trillions of light years away. If that wasn't interesting enough, let me remind you that 1 light-second equals about 300,000 kilometers. Let that sink in for a minute.

Even if we may never be able to see it or find it, it's highly probable that alien life does indeed exist somewhere in the universe for the simple reason being that there are trillions of other habitual planets in space just like ours, which gives life plenty of opportunities to exist and thrive, and is bound to happen somewhere and somehow.

Given the facts, the answer to the question "Does alien life really exist?" is pretty obvious if you think about it. What we should be asking instead, is will be ever be able to find it and how far it really is.

Before we go any further, I want you to watch this video real quick just so you can feel as amazed as I am. Done? Okay so, now that you have watched the video and know just how unfathomably huge the universe is, it's safe to say that somewhere out there is all that starry mess, intelligent life is waiting to be found.

Problem is, we don't know. More importantly, we don't even know where to begin. To this day, we have received absolutely no foreign signals from outer space that can be evidence or sign of an alien intelligent life.

But let's not jump into conclusions and keep in mind that just because we haven't received any signals, doesn't mean they don't exist. Saying that is like saying volcanoes don't exist because you've never seen any. There can be numerous reasons for us never getting any signs of their existence.

It may be possible that we did indeed receive signals from them but our current level of technology isn't developed enough to catch or interpret it. It can even be possible that the information they sent us was lost while travelling the massive distances between planets or even galaxies.

If you're like me, you image this situation on a daily basis. Discovering intelligent alien life and potentially seeing and shaking hands with them sounds like something every science-fiction fan would love to see.

But what we don't question as much as we should is, what if we actually do find them? Will we feel safe from their presence in our lives? Will they bring war or will they come in peace? As of right now, we have no idea.

On the flip side, for them to find us, all we have to do is survive long enough. Easy, right? Not really. It can be millions or even billions of years before they can make contact to us. Just like we are struggling to find them, they could be dealing with the same problem. Our civilization would have to hold on long enough to be found. Even then, the chances are uncertain.

What we do have now however is imagination, which in my honest opinion, we should use more often. Try to imagine yourself in a situation where you meet an alien or have an encounter with one. What would you do?

The big question is, what would humanity do? Will we fight them in the aim for stealing their resources or will be take a step forward into companionship? Whatever we do, when and if the time comes, I hope we choose wisdom, and not greed.