Opinion piece by Michael Cohen m.cohen@allnewsweb.com

 

I, like so many, was taken aback by the comments made by British physicist, Stephen Hawking, on aliens and UFO visitation.

 

In a nutshell, Professor Hawking, remarked that humans should be fearful of any aliens popping in to meet us.

 

Hawking drew parallels to exploration and colonisation on Earth, noting that the arrival of more technologically advanced Europeans in the Americas did not bode well for the natives. Hawking also mentioned that any aliens landing their UFOs on our planet will be looking to deplete and exploit our resources.

 

There are serious flaws in the logic behind these comments.

 

Firstly, it should be noted just how far we humans are from any real long-distance space travel. Any ET race capable of arriving here from a very distant planet, probably many light years away, will be so advanced technologically in comparison to us that an analogy involving medieval Spaniards and Native Americans is absurd.

 

A more apt analogy would be a bunch of curious Westerners, in say, 100 years time chancing on the last uncontacted tribe in the Amazon. This event would probably be rather peaceful.

 

It would be fair to say that no home planets of any ETs capable of reaching us exist within our immediate environs or we would have openly been interacting with them already. More likely any alien visitors will be coming from very far: Light years away, as mentioned above.

 

Chances are that between us and them exist hundreds of resource rich planets not inhabited by technological beings. Coming such distances for the meagre resources of our tiny planet would hardly be a cost-efficient or worthwhile endeavor.

 

That any alien visitors would have solved the resource issue long ago is implicit in the ability to travel the mind-boggling distances involved in getting here.

 

It is unlikely that any visiting aliens would need anything from us.

 

One can also be pretty sure that should any aliens arrive here in an open manner, they have already known about our existence for a very long time. Just as it is mathematically unlikely that we are the only technological beings in the universe, so to is unlikely that no-one out there, be they from another planet or even another dimension, knows of our existence. If ridiculous 'Independence Day' scenarios were part of the equation we would have been gobbled up already. No concrete evidence exists of malevolent intentions from any other-worlders towards us yet.

 

To sum up, let us not get to self-righteous about nasty aliens coming to destroy Earth's resources: The only ones on record doing that are us.

 

Professor Hawking's comments are unhelpful in putting in place strategies for dealing with the inevitable moment when we do meet technological ETs, an event we should welcome. Chances are that it will be they who will teach us how to value life on this planet.

 

Plots involving human-eating alien nomads belong in 1950's television show episodes, not serious discussions on this matter.