3 Reasons Scientists Think Aliens Stay Away from Earth
Between government document dumps and a Spielberg movie about extraterrestrial life, it’s a good week to believe in aliens. It’s also a good week to reality-check that belief. About a third of the public in the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere now believes aliens are already on Earth, fueled in part by the government’s recent UAP document releases and the new Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day . Carol Oliver, Professor in Science Communication and Astrobiology at UNSW Sydney, writing in The Conversation , has three reasons why that belief is probably wrong. Space Is Much, Much Bigger Than You’re Imagining Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun, sits roughly 40 trillion kilometers away, 268,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. At the speed of our fastest spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, getting there would take approximately 6,650 years. That’s just the nearest neighbor. Traveling near the speed of light introduces it...