I was visiting my cousins a few weeks back and the conversation turned to the existence of aliens and other life forms in the universe. He was a bit surprised when I shared with him my belief that there are other beings in the universe, other inhabited worlds. When he asked me why I believe this, what proof or what am I basing this belief on my answer was simple:
I can’t believe that human beings are it. I refuse to believe that what we have here is all the life that could ever form anywhere. My ego just isn’t that big. I won’t allow it to be.
My choice to share this with you, my readers, was prompted by the recent video of physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson sharing “the most astounding fact about the universe” with the readers of TIME magazine:
The Most Astounding Fact from Max Schlickenmeyer on Vimeo.
The video above reminded me of Carl Sagan’s You Are Here (also known as Pale Blue Dot):
Although the two videos focus on how amazing it is that we are here and we are us, to me they also emphasize how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. Among all those other planets, star systems, galaxies I refuse to believe we are the only life forms, much less the most intelligent ones.
