Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Misunderstanding Fermi's Paradox by PITT DICKEY Let us now mangle quantum physics. My Baby Mamma is an amateur fan of quantum physics. She will periodically try to explain its bizarre concepts to me. Unfortunately during these explanations, my eyes glaze over at the level of 8 minutes into a dry sermon on a hot day when the church air conditioner is struggling to keep up. This brings me to Fermi's Paradox. Fermi's Paradox really has very little to do with quantum physics unless you believe that space aliens use some sort of quantum interstellar space drive to zoom around in space. Which they do. Enrico came up with his Paradox which sort of goes like this. Our own personal Sun is a pretty young star in the greater scheme of galactic time. Billions of other stars are much, much older than the Sun. Maybe even a gazillion years older. These other stars are so old, they lie about their age. Squillions of these senior citizen stars have planets zipping around them in Earth like orbits which would be suitable for life to develop as it has on Earth. As these alien planets are much older than Earth, they should have developed intelligent life a gazillion years before us. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope recently sent back information that in the Milky Way Galaxy alone there are probably 60 billion planets that could support life. The alien planets' life forms should have developed space travel umpty kazillion years ago that would allow them to visit and colonize the Earth. The aliens should already be here on Earth. You may even suspect that your cranky next door neighbor is a space-alien colonizer from the planet Remulak. But do you have proof? No way, Jose. We have no evidence aliens are here and yet they should be. It is a conundrum. There should be buckets of proof that aliens have visited Earth, but there isn't. Hence Enrico's question, in the form of Fermi's Paradox — "Where is everybody?" Why aren't the aliens here? Is it Earth's collective lack of deodorant? Our movies? Lindsay Lohan and the Kardashians inexplicable prominence? Our 6 JULY 17- 23, 2013 table manners? Why won't anyone come to see us? Is Earth a gated community keeping out illegal aliens? Are they waiting for Congress to pass a gateway to citizenship for space aliens before they reveal themselves? Maybe because the aliens are so much more advanced than we are, they have no interest in us. Are you interested in the microbes on the nematodes in the grass in your back yard? Not so much. Maybe Earthlings are the nematodes of the universe. Not worth the time of our more advanced neighbors. Maybe we really shouldn't want the aliens to visit us. How did the visit from the Pilgrims work out for the Indians? Remember the classic movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Space alien Klaatu came down from outer space and landed on the Washington Mall in his flying saucer. He came in peace with a message for the leaders of the Earth. To be on the safe side, he also brought along his side kick, the giant robot Gort. A nervous soldier shot Klaatu when he got off the space ship. Aunt Bea was living in D.C. at the time and took in Klaatu as a tenant in her boarding house before she moved to Mayberry. The unwillingness of Earth's leaders to listen to Klaatu led to Gort getting cranky. Gort blew up some weapons and and unplugged the electric power grid in preparation for destroying the Earth. Fortunately just before Gort was about to totally destroy the Earth, one of Klaatu's Earthling friends said the magic words to Gort that stops the killing. "Klaatu barada nikto." Say it loud and there's music playing. Say it soft and its almost like praying. In the future let us hope Fermi keeps his paradoxes to himself. "Klaatu barada PITT DICKEY, Contributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@ nikto," you all . upandcomingweekly.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM