Do Space Aliens Exist?

 
I got an email from a friend
with some UFO links in it. With
his email came the question of
whether or not UFOs really exist
and whether or not space aliens
are visiting our Planet Earth.

My friend seemed to feel that
space aliens would have little
reason to come here as we would
have little to offer them
technologically.

I was not really that interested
in the question of existence.
Whether space aliens exist or not
does not interest me as much as the
reasons that people come up with to
say they are non-existant.

One common reason given for the
non-existence of space aliens is
that we don't see or hear from them
enough. To my way of thinking, it
would be remarkable if we ever did
hear or see them.

This web page describes how many
stars there are in the universe:

How Many Stars?

How many zeroes does it take to
answer the question, How many
stars are there in the Universe?
According to this web page somewhere
between 22 and 24 zeros. That is
to say, 10²² or 10²⁴.

That's a lot of stars! We have 8 planets
in our solar system. Assuming that other
solar systems have, on average, at least
one planet , there are a lot of planets
out there.

Is all that planetary real estate being
wasted? I doubt it. Why would God
create all that real estate and then
waste it all? Planetary real estate
is cheap if there is no life out there.
Less than a penny an acre. Maybe less
than a penny a planet.

Back to the original premise. It doesn't
make much sense to me to say that space
aliens do not exist just because we
encounter them so seldom.

As hard as it is to discover distant stars,
it is even harder to discover distant planets.
If distant planets are hard to discover, think
how hard it would be to discover life on those
planets.

What if space aliens were to come to Earth?
How would they behave? Probably like we do.
They would probably act somewhat like us.

They would study us the same way we study
lions and tigers in the jungle.  In other
words, they would regard us with some
curiosity, but would otherwise be
uninterested. No need to bother the locals.
No need to try to become friends.

We would do the same thing.  We would
venture out with small scientific
parties, but otherwise most of us would
stay home on our home planet, Earth.

That's how we do anthropology work.  We
don't show up at the tribal site and say,
Take me to your leader.  I want to
negotiate peace.  Instead, we send
in small bands of scientists, as few as
one person, to study the people.  

To truly study something, you have to
leave it in its primitive state as much
as possible.  In other words, non-interference.

Perhaps they too would have some amongst
them --- those who say what some people
say about Dolphins -- Dolphins are
intelligent beings that deserve better
treatment than we give them.

For me, the universe is rather consistent.  
There's a lot of things that rhyme in the
universe.

The way we study life here on Earth is to
seek it out in its natural habitat and study
it while trying to avoid being observed
ourselves. I would think that space aliens
would do the same. Observe the locals but
don't get caught doing it.