Life Forms

I watched the first episode of "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" titled Aliens tonight (before painting my nails and electrocuting the enemies of my Sith Sorcerer in SWTOR), and it brought up an important point that I think scientists commonly forget and often misconstrue. Hawking presented the idea that there may be life forms out there that do not operate similarly to us in any way -- they don't need water, carbon, or perhaps various other things we humans cannot exist without. (We know that these types of life forms exist or can be created on Earth now, which is pretty amazing). He posited the idea that perhaps life exists in one of the most seemingly unlikely places: inside the heart of a star. Maybe if we saw this life, it would be completely unrecognizable to us; we would look upon it and think "well, that is clearly inanimate and therefore not alive".

More and more I'm finding articles about newly discovered life forms created or found in nature that go against our previously held understanding and definition of life, and these sorts of discoveries excite me. Stephen Hawking could be absolutely right, and it may change the way we search for extra terrestrial life in the future.

But here's what bothers me: often times people think negatively about the idea of an alien life form coming to earth. "They'll destroy our planet for resources", they say. They justify this hypothesis by comparing these aliens to us, claiming that if we went to another planet that we would use it for its resources before moving elsewhere in the universe. Now, I think it's fair to make hypotheses about our actions when visiting other planets and planets with life, and if we want to think about these aliens as being similar to us in any way, I can understand why people jump to negative conclusions -- but if we found another Earth, would we really destroy the life on it for personal gain? As far as we know now, life, the scientifically accepted definition of it, is relatively rare. (Statistically we believe that there must be other life that exists in the universe, but we haven't found any yet). If we ever found a planet anything like Earth, I doubt so much that we would strip it of its resources and move on. The life on Earth is absolutely amazing, and I can only imagine that the life on other Goldilocks planets must, too, be amazing. I even think that we would make sacrifices in order to preserve that life. I like to think that if aliens came to Earth, and if they were anything like us, that they would see the beauty of this planet and value its preservation. They would study the life and try to understand it scientifically to expand their knowledge and intelligence, just like I think we would do.

While I enjoy hypothesizing about the nature and behavior of E.T.s, I have a hard time accepting the sensationalism that surrounds doomsday theories that involve them. How can we even begin to claim that intelligent extraterrestrial life that has the capability to travel across galaxies would ever think, feel, or function in any way like us? If they were similar to us, then why would we assume that they would do us harm? Why would we assume that they would do good to us?

We don't know, and like many of the larger questions in life (is there a God? Is there a soul? What is our purpose? Why are we here?), we really don't know the answer. And instead of clinging onto a hypothesis that has no proof, I want to spend my life being okay with the Question Mark. I want to spend my life working towards understanding and accepting the fact that I don't know, and even though I will spend my life looking for the answers, I may never know -- and that's OK.