Aliens do exist, and in the their millions if not billions.

Currently they are sitting on the other side of the English Channel pumping up their lilos and canoes in preparation for a Springtime invasion/offensive, that would make Adolph or the Kaiser “green with envy “.

We are going to need more than Captain Kirk to stop this one.

A wonderful example of free thinking. I see parallels between what Avi Loeb describes here and the essay by Paul Kingsnorth. Is it merely a coincidence that both appear on the same day? It could be, but i think not. Unherd habitually publishes articles that have resonances, even where the subject matter is quite different.

Let me be clear. This is not so much about “belief in aliens”, or more accurately, extraterrestrial civilisations. It’s about a particular spirit of enquiry, and the plea to young scientists embarking on their careers is of particular importance.

Loeb references cancel culture, and draws parallels with the Inquisition. Quite! It’s worth remembering that whilst the Inquisition may have seemed all-powerful at the time, it did not prevail. I read comments which suggest that our institutions are too captured by Critical Theory for them to change, and i shake my head. CT too, will not prevail. ET won’t care about DEI or deities.

I would be astonished if we somehow learned that this insignificant rock contained all the life in the universe. Truly astonished. This is not the same as claiming that other intelligent/sapient life exists and certainly not the same as stating that is visiting us. In that sense, I still think we’re alone in the universe.

Consider concepts such as the Drake equation, which multiplies a series of probabilistic values for intelligent life to occur in our galaxy. Such as appropriately hot, stable and long lived stars, the probability of a planet with appropriate chemistry etc. Although a number of the probabilities are extremely tentative (e.g. is the odds of life occurring on an earth like planet closer to 1 or 0) with the lack of data points we have, the starting number is 400,000,000,000.

This can be paired against the concept of the Great Filter, which is related to the steps in The Drake equation but asks which one is the point that blocks off development – life forming in the first place, evolving complex biology or developing a technologically advanced civilization.

I have no idea what our current inquiries will discover, but detecting proof of even the most basic life of non-terrestrial origin would likely indicate the universe is teeming with life of some sort. The Great Filter is perhaps where we we are now, a civilization that has lost its urge for discovery and progress. Or maybe it’s just speed bump.

It’s a question of time. There probably were advanced civilisations within 100 lightyears of Earth, but existed, flourished, then died; a long time ago. No overlap.
To suggest that we are / will be, the only intelligent life in the universe chimes with the excessive narcissism of todays bien pensant, but that’s all it is. Any advanced extraterrestrials passing our way would observe us, conclude we were stupid and cruel, then drive on by.

It seems pretty arrogant to assume there is no other intelligent life in the universe, based on the assumption that humans are so super clever.

Given interstellar distances it’s highly likely that mankind will never encounter aliens.
If we do they will probably be an artificial life form that destroyed their biological creators.

Like gods, I’ll believe in aliens when I see them. The SciFi aliens with bulbous hairless heads that is. If they are invisible, ethereal or cross dimensional perhaps they cannot, or have no wish to, acknowledge us. I watched an interesting film / movie on the topic with quite educated people convinced we are visited by benevolent beings on a selective basis. They seemed a bit mad, like attendees at a séance, very frustrated they could not share their ‘visions’ with the rest of us.
Are we ready? It would be good to have non intrusive surgery, new teeth, cancer banished and hostile viruses’ diminished. Putin’s missiles frozen in mid flight, Mars terraformed and fast transit between. New tech that dealt with poverty overnight. Knowing us, we’d reject all that with our control freakery. ‘We demand the right to be attacked by munitions,’ sort of thing. They seem to be running Planet Earth at the moment.

Fascinating read and enjoyed the actual podcast too.
I’d not sensed there was a scientific community attempt to close down such analysis or thinking. I think it’s about being inquisitive and open minded. Anyone v fixed in their thinking on this question probably worth ignoring as a general rule.
I watched the BBC’s ‘First Contact – An Alien Encounter’ few months ago. Was gripping and used some of the ‘Oumuamua’ theory. Of course it’s fiction but plausible fiction and IMO v well done. Certainly thought provoking.

“How presumptuous to think we humans are special.” And yet these science-minded people cannot see that this is a fundamentally theological argument, not a scientific one.

I would be curious to know the overlap between people who believe in aliens and those who participate in organized religion. I would suspect there is little overlap — because alien-interest is one of the ways man’s fundamentally religious outlook is expressed among people who who have committed themselves to the idea that religion is bosh or God doesn’t exist or the like.

Starfleet commander, make your report! Yes, emperor Zog. We travelled many light years, braved supernovae, black holes, and gravity storms! We finally found a planet they call Earth. Crewbeing Zagga mooned a lonely drunk on a dirt track in Arizona, then we returned home. Excellent, you did well, like all the others. I mean, what else were you supposed to do?

Extraterrestrial aliens are a lot more likely to exist than not exist because of Copernicus’ insight, long before there was instrumentation to support it, that mankind is not “special” in any way. The universe does not revolve around the earth. Our sun is an ordinary star, and so is our location in the galaxy. Life can arise from abiological chemical processes.
But we have no direct evidence that any aliens have ever visited Earth. Given the vast distances between stars, what would interstellar travel actually look like? I conjecture that it will take the form of small uncrewed probes, sent out to likely candidate star systems. We have already observed that machines tolerate long-term missions through the irradiated environment of deep space much more easily than humans. I can see that eventually we will be able to launch a probe that includes a fusion engine and a large solar sail. We would use high-powered fixed base lasers, based on the Moon or an asteroid, to accelerate the probe quickly to a good fraction of light speed using the sail, no onboard fuel consumed. The probe would later use its fusion engine to decelerate in the vicinity of the target star. Both accelerations could involve G-forces much higher than human biology could tolerate.
Once in the Oort cloud of the target, the probe could follow programming to forage for the local materials it would need to remodel itself into a communications station to phone home, repurposing the sail as an antenna. It would then send information about the parts of the star system it could see directly, and receive new programming that would cause it to start making and launching Loeb’s “dandelion seed” probes of the inner planets. It would then operate as a relay station for whatever information those probes could glean about the target.
This is what I think our first interstellar exploration might look like. Now consider that anything we can do, Someone Else could probably be doing at the same time…

There must be life out there. Life but not as we know it, Jim.