Yes, but is anyone listening?
Mark Pavilons

We humans are a noisy bunch.

I imagine if we were orbiting our globe, pointing a directional microphone at our spinning bauble, we'd hear an almost deafening chatter. Billions of voices, millions of machines barking, belching, spewing.

One would think our boisterous drivel would attract an interstellar crowd. Hey, if I were wandering around the galaxy aimlessly and heard a loud, obnoxious gathering, I'd be tempted to stop by for lunch. Then again, if our galactic neighbours were zipping by, and heard a broadcast of Show Me the Money, they'd surely keep on trekking (pun very much intended).

My son Liam is quite taken by our little neck of the cosmic woods - our solar system and its somewhat lackluster components. He thinks Saturn is really cool.

And he's confident there are aliens in the great expanses of space. I encourage an open mind when it comes to the unknown, so I tell him if God saw fit to put us here, there's a good chance he plopped some other humanoids on rocks scattered throughout the universe. I also noted that since our sun will one day burn out (a fact that alarmed him somewhat), humans will have to find another planet to live on and there may be a mass exodus of spaceships. Of course, we'll all be long gone when that happens (the sun has at least another 5 billion years of hydrogen left in it).

So, if our planet holds out, we've got plenty of time to explore outer space and make new and interesting friends.

I'm pretty confident we're not alone. Some will argue we are the sole occupants of the vastness of infinity, but I find that a bit narrow-minded and self-centred. We also once thought the Earth was flat, the moon was made of cheese and man would never fly.

We also want to believe in extraterrestrial life. Belief alone isn't enough, so Dr. Frank Drake, in 1961, came up with a mathematical equation to determine how many moderately advanced alien civilizations may exist in our Milky Way galaxy.

His complicated formula has a number of components and variables. Those pinholes in the fabric of space we see at night are suns. Like our own sun, around each of them are perhaps a dozen or so planets and maybe one supports life. But not all suns are strong enough to produce the lifegiving qualities we enjoy here on Earth. Remember that just a dozen degrees one way or another, and a few percentage points of radiation, and you'd end up with a toxic soup or hell-like dessert.

So, if only 1% of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way are right for life, that leaves 2 billion suns.

To be on the conservative side, Drake said let's say half the suns have planetary systems and that brings us down to 1 billion suns.

How many planets can support life? In our own solar system, only one planet out of nine is perfect for rodents, intelligent sea mammals and yes, some rather odd-thinking bipeds. Drake narrowed down the search to 500 million planets capable of supporting life.

But, the life we're looking for needs to at least have a brain, or failing that, be able to talk, sing or make TV shows. Drake whittled down his total to only 1 million planets that fit this bill.

When he further narrowed his search to civilizations that have produced electricity and can send signals (radio waves, microwaves, etc.), that leaves us with a grand total of only 10,000 planets with intelligent life capable of communicating with us.

Now, what?

Well, we either try to find them or wait for them to find us.

While we think we're advanced, we still have no idea how to zip across the galaxy at warp speed in a huge starship. Scientists say we'd have to come up with a propulsion system that can send us through the stars at many times the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) in order to reach the nearest star in a matter of years.

We're not likely on anyone's vacation map, or trade route. If aliens have visited, they likely veered off course, ran out of gas or found us so stupid they wouldn't even stop for a bathroom break.

Hopefully there are intelligent, benevolent creatures out there who have something to share with us earthlings. The cures to some dreaded diseases spring to my mind.

As there is good and bad in humans, there may be some terrible aliens out there, just itching to strap on a bib and eat us like chicken wings! I'd prefer those with a sense of humor and no fangs.

Judging from our past, I think it will take more than a couple of hundred years before we have any decent spacecraft capable of even leaving our system for an extended journey. That's not to say our counterparts in space won't drop by first, looking for new talent for their own reality TV shows, or fresh meat for the galactic wrestling rings.

While things out there look really cool, we really need to repair the fences in our own backyards. Humankind needs to eliminate our violent tendencies and petty squabbles, in favor of a unified, peaceful world whose only interest is furthering our species.

If we don't we may only rise to the level of condiments in the galactic food chain!