Could aliens find us?

Many science fiction stories involve extraterrestrial aliens coming from distant stars systems to invade us lowly humans. Some of the earlier movies involved creatures from Mars. We'll dismiss that idea because we already know that there are no Martians still alive.

Just how easy would it be for an extraterrestrial race to discover our planet Earth and realize that it was full of intelligent beings? That's a good question that doesn't have an easy answer. Before I try to answer that question, I need to convey a little history.

There have been many stories about alien invasion. The granddaddy of all of them is H. G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds'. This was written back in a time when people thought that there were Martians on the Red Planet. The strange thing about this is that there have been several 'War of the Worlds' movies.

When I was young, the movie that impressed me was the original 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. This wasn't so much an invasion but rather a warning to Earth not to import nuclear weapons into space. This movie, along with "Destination Moon', kick started my interest in science fiction.

There have been a plethora of alien invader movies. 'The Invasion of the Body Snatchers' was rather odd in that it involved sending plant spores that grew and spewed out seeds capable of causing humans to succumb to a vegetable duplication.

Speaking of vegetables, the best vegetable alien was in the 'The Thing'. Again, I prefer the original with James Arness playing the alien 'vegetable man' that came in a flying saucer that crashed in the Artic.

A more recent alien invasion plot was in the movie 'Independence Day'. However, this is only one of many similarly themed movies upgraded to modern technology.

But, how easy would it be for aliens to find us? The answer is: not that easy. The reason is because we are only a tiny spec in a vast galaxy full of hundreds of billions of stars. If you've seen those photos of the Earth from Saturn or from Voyager a billion miles away, you would appreciate how tiny we are at those distances. An alien race would have to be looking for us from a distant star. Yes, there are methods of seeing planets from light years away, but it would take a lot of time and effort to find us in a virtual sea of planets around dwarf stars like our Sun.

You might argue that we've been sending out radio signals for quite some time and that this could attract aliens. Yes, that's true, but we've only been doing it for roughly 90 + years. That means that the signal has only traveled 90 light years, and radio signals decrease in power the further they go. An alien would have to be listening with a powerful radio telescope to detect our signals. SETI has been trying to search for extraterrestrial intelligent radio signals for 60 years without any luck. Would an alien have better luck at detecting our signals? Who knows!

Then we get to the question of: why would they come here? Coming here from a distant star system would be a major undertaking. It would require a lot of resources and expense. The only reason I could see this happening is if the alien race is desperate. That would imply that their star is unstable or their planet is screwed up. In other words, they would be looking for a new home. Let's face it, we should be doing that, so that's a distinct possibility.

The other reason they would come here is because they're curious. That's the 'ET' concept. Again, I'm not so sure that they would necessarily want to come to a planet inhabited by intelligent beings unless that's what they like to study. It would be dangerous and very expensive. For one thing, they would risk infection by germs that they're not immune to. The other danger is that we humans are crazy and would probably try to kill them.

That's one reason that aliens would be better off not coming here to invade us. We aren't going to go down easy. It would be a very messy fight to take us out. Just saying!

Thanks for reading.