I currently have some alien life form living on some of my Saskatoon berries. It looks eerily like a Covid virus—round and spiky, with microscopically small, cauliflower-like ends. I was pretty sure it was alien, but it turns out to be terrestrial. Something called, appropriately obscure and no doubt Latin, gymnosporangium nelsonii, or, in English, Saskatoon/juniper rust.
One of the reasons I was suspecting alien lifeforms is because in 22 years I’ve never seen it before. The many Saskatoon bushes at Smilin’ Dog Manor have never before been invaded. And I don’t have any nearby juniper from which the fungus originates.
And believing an extraterrestrial is the cause is, well, trendy.
There are many intractable issues facing our neighbours to the south: climate change, culture wars, Donald Trump, and a host of others. There is, however, only one burning issue that seems to have bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress—getting to the bottom of whether the U.S. has been visited by aliens.
Late last month, hearings were held by the National Security Subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee to delve into the question of whether there is intelligent life outside Earth—though perhaps they should have limited that query to Earth itself—and if so, have aliens visited this planet and is that visitation being covered up... and by whom?
Well, duh. The answers are yes, no, and don’t be absurd.
Is there life elsewhere in the universe? The odds of there not being some form of life are highly unlikely. Best guess by the best guessers is there are something like 200 sextillion—200 billion trillion—stars in the universe. While no one’s counted them, or even seen them, I’m not about to, so I’ll take their word for it. Whether they’re off by a few billion trillion doesn’t really matter. The law of large numbers, and the fact they found the distinct possibility of some form of life on Mars, is good enough for me. Life? Sure.
Intelligent life? By what measure?
Since 1984, the SETI Institute has been searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life. So far, zilch. Some radio signals, some speculation, no little green men or Top-40 alien tunes. During the same period, Earth has been bombarding deep space with probes and old reruns of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., hoping someone else would tune in way out there.
The uber-hyped speaker before the House subcommittee, David Grusch, told members the Pentagon was not only in possession of crashed alien space ships, but also biologics—that is, aliens, or whatever was left of them once their vehicles crashed into Earth.
Mr. Grusch did not show up wearing a foil hat. He did come with impressive credentials, having racked up time during his career with the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and something called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, the members of which may wear foil hats.
And heck, he’s seen the evidence! Oh, no. I take that back. He hasn’t seen the evidence, but he’s been told about it by people he says have seen it but he can’t name because... you know. It would spoil a good story.
I’m not conceited enough to believe there isn’t life elsewhere in the universe. I’ll even grant there may be, probably is, intelligent life out there. But I have some fundamental problems with the notion they’ve physically visited this planet. Some of those problems are physical, some behavioural, all are tinted by human experience.
For all our, which is to say, human, intelligence, we haven’t ventured very far into space. Even travelling to the edge of our own solar system—let alone galaxy—is either going to be a multi-generational trip, or we’re going to have to figure out how to travel faster than light... assuming that’s possible.
Aliens, while not necessarily looking anything like us or, as science fiction writers like to posit, not even being carbon-based lifeforms, would, nonetheless, have to have the ability to construct any spacecraft they crashed into Earth. That, at a minimum, suggests delicate articulation and opposable digits. Or one heck of a powerful ability to levitate materials likely not found in usable forms on whatever planet they’re from.
It suggests a span of time for their civilization far longer than our own. It suggests a means of locomotion powerful enough to laugh at gravity and achieve warp speed.
More importantly—especially if our own evolution of locomotion is anything to go by— it suggests they didn’t poison their own habitat during the time it took to reach such breakthroughs, and they overcame very real social issues along the way that allowed them the luxury to spend the effort to overcome the limitations of space.
But wait, there’s more.
Three nagging questions about Mr. Grusch’s little green people. Why is it, if aliens have been visiting long enough to crash into Earth, it’s only North America, and only the U.S., they’ve had such dire luck to crash into? Why, with the advent of modern recording equipment—everything from iPhones to sophisticated tracking technology—are there no verifiable recordings?
And most damning, in a society that can’t manage to keep anything secret, how has such a cover-up, requiring huge numbers of people to keep quiet for so many years, been as successful as it seems to have been? Notwithstanding everything else, I consider that to be a knock-out punch.
There were also a couple of Top Gun U.S. fighter pilots who testified to having seen inexplicable, mysterious flying things—now called unidentified aerial phenomena in a comical attempt to de-sci-fi flying things.
I believe them. Heck, I’ve seen flying things I couldn’t identify. And I totally believe the U.S. military would move heaven and Earth to deny any knowledge about them, spin any story to explain them—remember marsh gas?—and construct an elaborate cover-up to hide them.
Why? Because those flying things were theirs, and they don’t want to admit it. Because those flying things were launched by some other country, and they don’t want to admit it. Because their very sophisticated tracking systems didn’t/don’t pick them up, and they don’t want to admit it. Or just because they like keeping secrets so they can keep the gravy train rolling. Or all the above.
Perhaps the congressfolks just needed a little levity in their lives, or thought we needed a little levity in ours when they decided to hold public hearings on UAPs. Perhaps it was the only thing they could agree on before the House Republicans went back to their own cover-up that Trump really is an alien and the House Democrats went back to finding new ways to undermine their 2024 presidential hopeful.
But with any luck, they’ll continue to seek out intelligent life... in Washington.
