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Will we have irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial intelligence within a decade?

Francisco Miraval

According to a recent article, we should have in ten years or so irrefutable proof of life on other planets and perhaps even proof of intelligence life on some of those planets. There is, therefore, a chance that in a decade we will be in contact with extraterrestrial intelligent beings.

I must say the article took me by surprise. I thought the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life was firmly proved since the time of the original Star Trek series. And, just in case there are still some skeptics, there are also enough videos of UFOs in Internet and on TV to convince those skeptics to change their mistaken position.

All joking aside, it is very interesting to think that after realizing thanks to Galileo that earth is not the center of the universe, thanks to Darwin that we are not the pinnacle of creation, and thanks to Freud that we are not the best example of rationality, in a few more years we could also lose our position as the most intelligent beings in the cosmos.

With billions of planets in our galaxy alone, it would be ridiculous to think that intelligence life would have appeared only on our planet, lost in one of the arms of the Milky Way, lost in the immensity of the universe.

The ancient belief in extraterrestrial intelligences living on other planets is well documented. The Talmud (Moed Katan 16a), for example, mentions “Meroz” as one of the thousands of planets known to be inhabited. Meroz was important, according to that ancient source, because the actions of its inhabitants affected our planet (Judges 5).

What would happen if in ten years there is irrefutable proof of intelligence life on other planets and if we establish contact with those extra-planetary intelligent beings? Paraphrasing Max Scheler, what is going to be the new human place in the cosmos?

Will we still be watching UFOs videos online as we do today, or will we finally meet somebody telling us, “I was piloting that craft when you took the video”? Will we still believe our ancestors were so unintelligent they needed extraterrestrial help to do everything they did, including temples and pyramids?

What would scientists, philosophers, and religious leaders say? I can anticipate hours and hours of interviews with Hollywood celebrities (“stars”) talking about extraterrestrial intelligent life.

Will we be able to travel to those other planets? What kind of immigration laws extraterrestrials have? What intentions they have? Will they come to “serve” humanity? Will they bring gifts? A Trojan horse, perhaps? A sample of interstellar syphilis?

Half a century after the arrival of Spaniards to America (arrival, not discovery), some of the most distinguished scholars of that time met in 1550 in Valladolid, Spain, to decide whether natives living in the Americas were truly human. Are we going to see in 60 years an interplanetary debate about our own “humanity”?

Finally, an important question still remains unanswered: when are we going to find intelligence life on this planet?

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