Is Life On Other Planets as Annoying as Life on Earth?

Alison — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:56:52 +0000

I was reading an article about the size of the universe and apparently, it is a quadrillion times the size of anything we can imagine. The author Bill Bryson says that if a galaxy like the Milky Way was the size of a pea, the universe is the size of an auditorium filled with those peas.

So in light of how ridiculously vast the universe is, I cannot figure out why we waste our time debating whether or not there is life on other planets. Of course there is. We can’t possibly be that special. We can’t be the only planet in the sea of peas that happens to have creatures on it.

Therefore, I’d like to change the focus of the scientific debate. I would like to shift it away from asking “is there life on other planets?” and raise a new, more interesting question: “If there are aliens zipping around out there in the universe, is their world as painfully annoying as ours is?”

For example, is there an alien somewhere out there who has to get up for work on a rainy Monday morning?

Will she sit in spaceship traffic for an hour, or ride a miserable alien shuttle bus to a city full of annoying aliens?

Will she get stuck sitting next to another alien who won’t stop talking?

Does that alien sit in a windowless cubicle and spend her days wishing she was somewhere else?

Does she count down the minutes to the weekend?

Do alien men snore?

Do alien men get yellow armpit stains on their undershirts?

Do alien women get really frustrated with alien men because they can’t seem to communicate? (Maybe all aliens are men and that’s why they haven’t communicated with us yet…)

One day in the distant future, we might land our own spacecraft on another planet and discover a new world teeming with life. But when we step outside, there might not be any fanfare, no band playing or fireworks welcoming us.

Instead, we might be accosted by an alien meter maid who raises her antenna and says “Excuuuuse me. You can’t park that piece of junk here!”

And then we’ll finally know the answer to our question: our world might be really annoying but everyone else’s is too.

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Is Life On Other Planets as Annoying as Life on Earth?