When I feel the need to procrastinate, one of the places I hit religiously is Reddit. I don’t entirely remember which entry it was that prompted my current train of thought, but I’ve been thinking about it for most of the last week. It might have been something about the Fermi paradox.

How would you feel if we found sentient, intelligent extraterrestrial life tomorrow morning? You woke up, and the television informed us all that we were not alone. And not just not alone, but very close to our neighbors. Earth is capable of seeing them, and speaking to them. There’s pictures and there’s recordings. What would your thoughts on it be?

Personally, I can’t say with absolute certainty how I would feel, but I like to think I would be excited. Sure, that element of fear always has the potential to creep in, fear of the unknown is a powerful thing. I hope I would be excited regardless.  The thought that we are the only intelligent life in the entire vastness of the universe has always been somewhat depressing to me. How could that possibly be true? Of all the millions of stars in the sky, ours is the only one with a single planet that can sustain life? Intelligent life, especially? That’s a hard cookie to swallow. Not just hard to swallow, but isn’t it a little sad? A universe so vast and so beautiful, but nothing/nobody will see it. We insignificant beings here on Earth is all there is? I don’t buy it, and I don’t want it.

So what’s the verdict, people? Would you be excited like me? Would you be scared? Are you in the ‘kill it with fire’ camp? Talk to me!