The fascination with the possibility of alien life has been with us for a very long time. Grant Young says that, literally and figuratively, the truth is very far away.
UFO’s have been in the news a lot lately. The government released imagery and conjecture on numerous fast-moving objects tracked and photographed by military aircraft. Growing up in the 70’s, I fondly remember TV and movies obsessed with the subject. Hard evidence was dubious to nonexistent, but UFO’s were part of our cultural zeitgeist.
Much to my surprise, some of my good friends couldn’t care less about these recent UFO images. I get it. We’ve been through a frightening pandemic, wildfires, stressful, polarizing and threatening politics—alien visitors are a stressor we don’t need right now. Our country needs hope and tranquility, not an alien invasion.
In 1961, astronomer Frank Drake proposed an imprecise, yet provocative, equation to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy, the…