More on Aliens and the Fears of Stephen Hawking
Posted: Tuesday, April 05, 2011
by Morten St. George
Morten St. George Websites
This article is a follow-up to my article Are Aliens Something to Fear?, which I recently released to the public. In view of my desire to attempt a wide distribution for the first article, my remarks had to be somewhat restrained. Here I am referring to my critique of Stephen Hawking's well-publicized fear of aliens. Meanwhile, direct distribution of the current article will be extremely limited, just two websites and one blog, so I feel free to be blunt.
His logic runs as follows: the aliens would have exhausted all the resources of their home planet long ago, so now they are traveling through space looking for planets like Earth to exhaust all its resources too, and then move on again to find another planet to plunder. It all boils down to self-sustenance. This is not an original concept on Hawking's part. We saw it at play in War of the Worlds and countless other movies.
My opinion on this is: It is absurd to believe that a civilization with technology so advanced that it can travel across the galaxy would be unable to find a way to manufacture its own food supply. Even the Star Trek crew could do that. Besides food, minerals are also found on Earth, but many if not most of these elements can also found on other planets in our solar system not to mention on millions of other planets in our galaxy, inhabited with life or not. And please note that the obvious choice for energy resources would be stars rather than planets. Aliens would have no necessity at all to plunder planet Earth.
The only remaining reason I can think of to fear aliens is merely the suspicion that they are afflicted with sadistic psychosis, a rare mental disease suffered by a few humans during the course of history. It is noteworthy that the humans who have suffered from this disease were generally poorly educated (the words barbarian and civilized are antonyms), but to build sophisticated spaceships, you would have to be highly civilized. Once again, there are no grounds here to fear aliens.
One notable human who might be currently suffering from impaired mental functions (masochistic psychosis) is Stephen Hawking himself. Either this, or he was paid to make anti-alien remarks. Don't laugh. With billions of dollars of defense spending at stake, a lot of time, effort,and money was expended in the past to quell SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) efforts, and, indeed, government funding was virtually extinguished across the globe. Only small amounts of funding from private sources (like the Planetary Society) are still ongoing. Bring in Hawking. Anyone reading his comments will surely become less inclined to donate to the Planetary Society and others who support SETI.
There are many forces at work on this planet against scientific advancement in general and against space exploration in specific. Scientists of the world need to count on the most brilliant and famous among them to take the lead and help stir public opinion in favor of scientific progress (like Carl Sagan did). In this respect, Hawking's unfounded conclusions about aliens do far more harm than good. That man has become a disgrace to science and to the prestigious position he holds.
Morten St. George is the creator of a website about the Nazca Lines, in which he argues that geoglyph making originated in the Altiplano near Tiahuanaco, from where it spread to Nazca.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I can see why Hawking would be paid to make remarks. There are so many who hang on what he communicates. I love your observations about psychosis. They make sense. I will continue to read you with great interest.
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