There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet.    

In Oxford University, there was a wall that permitted graffiti.

 “Panic Calmly” was one. But the standout was this question: “Is there intelligent life on earth?” Below,  someone had scribbled: “Yes, but I’m only visiting.”

For decades, man has wondered if we’re alone in space. To that effect, we’ve sent out prayers, hints, signals, probes, even rocket-ships to find out if there’s anyone else out there.

Our eureka moment finally arrived Monday last. A Cambridge team studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b detected signs of molecules that, on Earth, are only produced by living organisms.

It’s the second time chemicals associated with life were detected in the planet’s atmosphere by Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope. 

Being a nit-picking breed, however, the scientists stressed that

more data was needed for an outright Yahoo.

According to its lead researcher, Prof Nikku Madhusudhan,

“This is the strongest evidence yet that there’s possibly life out there.” 

K2-18b is over twice the size of Earth and is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away. It’s a distance far beyond what any human can travel in a lifetime – barring, of course, new discoveries like “warp-speed” of Star Trek fame.  

You’d need something like that to explore the Milky Way, let alone the universe. 

K2-18b is in the Milky Way galaxy which is our home as well. English astrophysicist Brian Cox, however, believes Earth has the only  “civilisation” in the neighbourhood, the one “island of meaning” in the galaxy.

But it’s a meaning according to us, man.  Couldn’t there be some other meaning, a “universal” one if you like? That would be bringing in God, which, apparently,  clouds everything. 

“We operate as if we are it and there‘s nothing else,” asserts the God-denying Mr Cox cheerfully. No lightning bolt has struck him yet. Who’s to say he’s wrong?

Who’s to say he’s right either?

Who the hell knows? 

Scientists like Cox think we’re alone in our galaxy because of the so-called Fermi Paradox – an advanced civilisation would have surely written their presence across the skies for the “idiots”(us) to recognise by now. 

It’s a debatable point.

There are human tribes in North Sentinel Island off India, for example, who are so cut off from modern civilisation that we let them be. Similarly, there could be advanced ETs out there who are so appalled by our behaviour – wars, pollution, crime, stupidity, Trump, etc – that they give us a wide berth but watch us anyway to protect us from ourselves. 

The sheer numbers in the heavens make ETs statistically plausible. There are an estimated 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone. So, assuming each star has at least one “Earth” in its orbit, there could be at least a billion Earths out there. 

Given those numbers, the thought that we’re the only smarties in the galaxy seems strange. 

And the Milky Way is only one galaxy. Even Cox concedes that   civilisations are likely to exist in other galaxies. 

How many galaxies there are in the universe is unknown but US astrophysicist Michio Kaku estimates there could be at least 100 billion.

And those estimates are courtesy of the James Webb telescope. Which means it’s an underestimate because the instrument reaches only so far. 

The math, the statistics almost surely suggest one thing.

They are out there, they are watching us, and ET’s phoned home many times. 

ENDS