Well others saw something a few years back? Huh. I'm not into conspiracy theories, so I'm still in the there are probably aliens out there but they probably haven't reached out to us (watching us, might be the only possibility) and what I saw could be explained by some drone type that I'm not aware of, but it would be interesting to see how our crazy country will react to actual aliens. 

The article is worth is because it also presents a microcosm of our world as it is (and how science is supposed to work, tbf, especially at the start of a theory):

A UFO. In this case an interstellar object. Observed, but without the usual qualities that one would expect from a comet. So some people come up with theories (ice cube etc) and some others say that's silly, it doesn't explain what was observed. So they say aliens is the only explanation. Fair thought. But as soon as the media comes other scientists mock the idea.

So of course, there was pushback:

“Can we talk about how annoying it is that Avi Loeb promotes speculative theories about alien origins of ‘Oumuamua, forcing [the] rest of us to do the scientific gruntwork of walking back these rumors?” Benjamin Weiner, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, tweeted.

 Followed by the original alien theorists saying, no, your other theories don't  make sense:

Far from being deterred, Loeb doubled down. Together with Thiem Hoang, a researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, he blasted the frozen-hydrogen theory. In another equation-packed paper, the pair argued that it was fantastical to imagine solid hydrogen floating around outer space. And, if a frozen chunk did manage to take shape, there was no way for a block the size of ‘Oumuamua to survive an interstellar journey. “Assuming that H₂ objects could somehow form,” Hoang and Loeb wrote, “sublimation by collisional heating” would vaporize them before they had the chance to, in a manner of speaking, take off.

Then we get into the nitty gritty of alien theory:

Since there are at least four billion sunlike stars in the Milky Way, this means that somewhere between 1.5 billion and 2.4 billion planets in our galaxy could, in theory, harbor life. 

So you can think of whatever fraction of that that could host life. Probably millions. And the fraction of that which could host intelligent life (etc etc). 

So of course, the question arises, Fermi's paradox: where are they? And why don't we know anything about them, their existence? [1] Well there are a few theories (especially if they're smarter and more advanced than us):

At a workshop on the subject held in Paris in 2019, a French researcher named Jean-Pierre Rospars proposed that aliens haven’t reached out to us because they’re keeping Earth under a “galactic quarantine.” They realize, he said, that “it would be culturally disruptive for us to learn about them.”

But I'm also wondering if we should assume all the lucky factors that allowed us to create science and tech would be so easily mimicked in a million planets with ape-levels (or higher) of intelligence? Hard to know. And even if they did:

“It is quite conceivable that if we are not careful, our civilization’s next few centuries will be its last,” Loeb warns. Alien civilizations “with the technological prowess to explore the universe” are, he infers, similarly “vulnerable to annihilation by self-inflicted wounds.” Perhaps the reason no one has shown up is that there’s no one left to make the trip.

Fair point. But of course, our meritocratic betters have some crazy ideas about this:

Loeb also looks forward to the day when we’ll be able to “produce synthetic life in our laboratories.” From there, he imagines “Gutenberg DNA printers” that could be “distributed to make copies of the human genome out of raw materials on the surface of other planets.” By seeding the galaxy with our genetic material, we could, he suggests, hedge our bets against annihilation. 

That alone is the seed for a great story (to be written here or elsewhere), but mainly because I wonder how a newly minted human, or group of humans, with all the blueprints of our civilization will end up faring. Especially if they know that civilization contains the seeds of its own destruction. Huh. 

We could also run a great evolutionary experiment, one that might lead to outcomes far more wondrous than seen so far. “There is no reason to expect that terrestrial life, which emerged under random circumstances on Earth, was optimal,” Loeb writes.

All right, settle down there.

But now we get to conspiracies of aliens already being here:

Von Däniken, a Swiss hotel manager turned author who for some reason in the documentary was described as a German professor, argued that aliens had landed on Earth sometime in the misty past. Traces of their visits were recorded in legends and also in artifacts like the Nazca Lines, in southern Peru. Why had people created these oversized images if not to signal to beings in the air?

Even if it isn't a lizard being theory, it's fun to think about, right?

[1] I wrote about how we would react here. 

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