One of the problems I have with the premise here is that it ignores some scientific data. Scientists have discovered that there are organisms that exist in environments hostile to human life. That’s not Star Trek fiction. String Theory does not disprove superluminary travel, and nothing has put the final nail in worm-hole theory, yet.

Now does that mean that a life form existing within the available elements that form in a G5 yellow star can achieve superluminary flight? No. Unless you are privy to information the rest of us aren’t concerning how organic matter functions under other sequence stars or you know that absolutely no life has come to be on extra solar planets that exist in the life zones of the billions of G5 main sequence stars out there, your position is as much based on faith as a fundamentalist.

Also, our inability to reach the far shores of other planets, based on your knowledge of the current limits of our knowledge of physics is based on “conventional science wisdom”. Conventional science wisdom also promised the impossibility of flight.

I think a much more valid argument against the possiblity that we will ever reach the far shores is not that based on our limited knowledge of physics it is impossible, but that based on our limited ability to come together as a people such dreams are irrational.

Our societies cannot even evolve to reverse ecological degredation when the scientific evidence is staring them in the face, so how then could they perform the expensive, time consuming, resource consuming, open ended scientific inquiries that would be need to prove or disprove advanced space flight?

Look at the level of financial and resource consuming that must take place simply to bring about a moon landing. Then, try to contemplate the amounts of cash to reach the economies of scale that would make space flight an ongoing and self perpetuating event simply within our system. Its pretty easy to see that absent a total reshuffling of society on a massive planetary scale, its not gonna happen.

Now that’s why most SF writers usually hint at a calamity or some other event that caused a major disruption in our societies when they write about a universe where human system travel, let alone superliminary travel, even occurs.

Just my two cents. Albeit, those cents are based on discussions I’ve had with astronomy and physics professors.

The most naive idea, and the one most widely infiltrated into the public mind, is that we’ll at some point be able to travel in person to far away galaxies and planets. Not only would it be a one way ticket, the exposure to radiation during space travel seems prohibitive (Physicist Victor Stenger has some details about that in “God. The Failed Hypothesis”).

I mention it because in a way our inability to reach the far shores of space seems analogous to our human search for a supernatural being: when you get there (if there’s a there there in death) you don’t have a phone to call home.

And Jimmy Tingles knew he was kidding, though presumably he was raised to believe in God.

Once a whole society pretends the existence of a deity – or the inferiority of women, the superiority of aristocrats, the nobility of warriors – it becomes ‘reality’.

I’m not sure how an examination of what evidence we have would do much good in answering this question. Science has told us that the Universe is really, really big. So big that we have no real way to concieve of how big it is.

No, I don’t think that aliens are coming down, scooping up hicks from cornfields, but it does seem kinda weird to say “Nope, because no alien has made itself evident to us, there must not be intelligent life on other planets.” And if we’re intelligent, why wouldn’t there be some other intelligent civilizations out there?

CC