UFOs and aliens: science and pop culture look to the sky to answer the fundamental question: are we alone?

(CNN) – If you’ve ever studied astronomy or if you’ve been interested in UFOs and alien life, you’ve probably been exposed to something called the Drake equation.

One side of the equation postulates the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which it might be possible to communicate. The other side gives all the variables that add up to that number, including the average rate of star formation, the number of planets around those stars that have evolved intelligent life, and the ability to send radio signals.

“Depending on how it is calculated, the answer may be none or a billion,” said theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack, author of the recent book “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking).”

Astrophysicist Frank Drake, who formulated the equation in 1961, said that it is actually a way of showing “all the things you needed to know to predict how difficult it will be to detect extraterrestrial life.”

Mack put it more bluntly: “The point of the equation is really to show how little we know.”

If it is difficult for professional scientists to calculate the numbers, it is even more difficult for us mere mortal earthlings to make those predictions.

That’s where imagination comes in. So for generations we have been putting our creative minds to work guessing if aliens exist, what they would look like, and how we will greet them and ourselves, whether it’s with a peace sign or an x-ray gun.

Have UFOs Visited Us?

“It’s funny that ever since we imagined aliens, they look a lot like us,” observed Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

“A couple of centuries ago, they came in galleons in the sky. When zeppelins were invented, aliens were flying in airships. After the Second World War, they arrived in flying saucers, the latest and greatest technology that we can imagine.

Anthropomorphism — putting things that aren’t human in human form — is a constant. To begin with, so is the belief in alien life forms.

Have UFOs Visited Us?

“It’s funny that ever since we imagined aliens, they look a lot like us,” observed Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

“A couple of centuries ago, they came in galleons in the sky. When zeppelins were invented, aliens were flying in airships. After the Second World War, they arrived in flying saucers, the latest and greatest technology that we can imagine.

Anthropomorphism — putting things that aren’t human in human form — is a constant. To begin with, so is the belief in alien life forms.

Strong beliefs in alien visitation

According a study from Chapman University As of 2018, 41.4% of Americans believe that aliens have visited Earth at some point or another, and 35.1% believe they have recently.

There are understandable reasons for such beliefs, Impey noted.

For decades, some people have been convinced that the US government has been keeping secrets about visitors from afar since 1947, when they believe an alien spacecraft allegedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.

“When you know that people aren’t telling you everything they know, you start filling in the blanks yourself,” Impey said. “The videos, the stories of Air Force and Navy pilots watching mysterious spacecraft, all these things add up. It’s just that people connect the dots too fast.

Scientists and many civilians alike hold the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

As a recent CNN story revealedFor years government and military officials ignored UFO sightings reported by military and civilian pilots, just the kind of extraordinary evidence that could corroborate the reality of aliens. The Pentagon, which refers to UFOs as unidentified aerial phenomena, has confirmed the authenticity of the videos and photographs accompanying those reports.

However, before the recent and still ongoing news broke, a hard-to-penetrate cone of silence has surrounded the entire UFO issue, at least as it relates to the US government and military.

Fiction fills in the gaps

Popular culture fills in the blanks, giving expression to UFOs and their otherworldly passengers in vehicles like ComicCon, movies like “Independence Day” and “ET the Extra-Terrestrial” and the classic TV series “Star Trek” with its daring search for new life and new civilizations.

Beyond that, there are a host of conspiracy theories, some benign, others full of omens, with dark warnings of kidnapping and unwanted experiments.

Impey called the UFO issue “a cultural phenomenon, not a scientific one.”

For all that, he cited the late astronomer Carl Sagan’s call for all parties to the discussion to keep an open mind, “but not so open,” as Sagan put it, that they “drop their brains.”

Searching the skies

“Since time immemorial, humans have wondered if we are alone,” said Stephen Strom, former associate director of the National Observatory for Optical Astronomy.

The fact that the popular imagination differs from the scientific one does not invalidate our hope of finding life forms from other worlds.

After all, the question is not just whether we are alone, but also whether other civilizations have done a better job caring for their planets than we have caring for Earth.

The question, then, is “whether so-called complex civilizations can avoid self-destruction,” as Strom put it, and whether we can learn from them before it is too late. Those are some of the most pressing questions we can ask these days.

Of course, most space scientists do not share the view that extraterrestrial life will reach Earth via spaceships in humanoid form. One who did, the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking, was concerned that if the aliens arrived that way, they would likely be on a mission to destroy us.

That doesn’t mean that space scientists aren’t serious about their search for extraterrestrial life.

“Do we think there are aliens out there?” Asked Mack. “We don’t know where, but there almost certainly are.”

“It is highly unlikely that life evolved in one place in the entire cosmos; the kinds of physical processes that had to occur on early Earth are probably things that have happened countless times on distant worlds, “he added.

We are likely to learn about other life forms through rovers, spectrometers and chemical analysis of distant atmospheres, he added. When we do, the news will spread quickly.

As Mack said, “people really want to know.”

– Gregory McNamee writes about books, science, food, geography, and many other topics from his home in Arizona.