Like many Americans, I was excited when the administration announced it would release more fuzzy black-and-white photographs of unidentified aerial phenomena. After all, I write books set in Nevada. Area 51 sits in my backyard. I have a recurring character named X-Files. At this point, I’ve heard enough UFO theories to qualify for continuing education credits. My protagonist, Porter Beck, spends much of his life in the same desert where conspiracy theories breed faster than jackrabbits. They are literally food for thought.
Recent Congressional testimony offered by some of these conspiracy goblins suggest that the aforementioned blurry screen grabs constitute the biggest coverup since those fake moon landings, an idea only slightly more ridiculous than the banana-colored bell-bottoms I once wore in the eighth grade. Let’s face it, the history of our species is basically one long series of us pointing at strange stuff and yelling, “It’s definitely that thing I just made up.”
But here’s the question I would ask those of you who buy into this galactic farce: “Have you done the math?”
Has the United States government been keeping this huge secret about captured alien spacecraft and extraterrestrial bodies for decades? Nope. Not because government employees are incapable of keeping secrets. They keep secrets all the time. Poorly, at times, and never for decades. Not with several thousand federal employees, military contractors, former employees, current employees, ex-spouses, drinking buddies, and that one guy who can’t keep a secret longer than it takes to microwave a burrito, who are all in on the secret.
No, these E.T. autopsies aren’t happening. Period. Full stop. Why? Because the universe is enormous.
And by enormous, I don’t mean “bigger than Texas” enormous. I mean absurdly, offensively, insultingly enormous.
The nearest star system beyond our own is more than four light-years away. That’s roughly twenty-five trillion miles. If you got in your car and drove there at highway speed, you’d arrive sometime after the Sun had expanded into a red giant and swallowed the Earth.
Space is not a neighborhood. Space is an ocean so vast that our brains refuse to process it.
Then there’s the speed limit.
Nothing with mass can travel faster than light. Nothing. Not humans. Not beings residing in the Goldilocks zone of Alpha-Centauri. Science fiction treats this speed limit as a mild inconvenience. Physics treats it as law. The closer you push an object toward light speed, the more energy you need. Not a little more. A lot more. Then an unreasonable amount more. Then an amount that makes federal budget deficits look like lunch money. At some point the required energy becomes so large that even Congress would hesitate to authorize it, and that’s really saying something.
Suppose an alien civilization somehow solved that problem. Yay!
They’ve now earned the privilege of spending years, decades, centuries, or even millennia crossing interstellar space. And for what? To crash in a remote part of the desert?
As a member of a semi-intelligent species, I understand why I have trouble returning a rental car to the correct airport. Yet we’re expected to believe a civilization capable of conquering the greatest engineering challenge in the history of the universe somehow has pilots that drive like 90-year-olds with cataracts?
That’s not an advanced civilization. It’s astronomically poor planning, just like me trying to find my way around the District of Columbia without Google Maps.
Then we get to biology.
Space is not friendly. Humans who spend long periods in space experience bone loss, muscle loss, vision changes, immune system disruption, and increased radiation exposure. The human body evolved for Earth. Remove Earth from the equation and things begin breaking in creative ways. My body starts breaking in creative ways after sleeping on a hotel mattress for two nights. Interstellar travel would finish me off before I reached Arizona.
Now imagine a species crossing interstellar distances. Slim, gray creatures with enormous heads and huge eyes. Biologics is apparently the preferred term now, which sounds less like extraterrestrials and more like a probiotic yogurt sold at Whole Foods. Their spacecraft would need to provide something besides yogurt—water, atmosphere, radiation shielding, waste management, medical care, and protection from every tiny particle in space that becomes a bullet at extreme velocity.
The engineering challenge is staggering.
I consider the odds of alien visitors crossing interstellar space, evading every telescope on Earth, crashing in a remote area, and then allowing themselves to be stored in a government warehouse to be significantly worse than the odds of Santa successfully delivering presents to every child on Earth on the same night without violating Einstein’s speed limit.
If we’re handing out credibility badges, Santa has at least demonstrated a workable distribution model. Santa also has a flawless safety record. Not one confirmed sleigh crash in seventy-five years of NORAD tracking.
None of this dingbat-theory debunking means there aren’t still great stories out near Area 51. I feel a duty to share them with you. The Riddle Maker, the fourth Porter Beck novel, is about an interesting breed of serial killer. No alien bodies but plenty of real-life drama with Beck and his cadre of crime fighters. You can pre-order it now here.
And hey, if you’ve got some good cell phone video of aliens, I would love to see it! But I bet you don’t. 😊