The Making of Kubrick's 2001
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would probably go to great pains to make it clear that the object was of extraterrestrial origin. So I suspect that we would recognize it as extraterrestrial. We have to date found no artifact that could be construed as being of extraterrestrial origin. This is the prime evidence against the idea that UFOs, for instance, are spaceships from another civilization.
There are a number of examples of cave drawings — ancient scrolls, tablets, and so forth which have very provocative drawings, which appear in some cases to be drawings of creatures in spacesuits — and people have wondered if perhaps these are records of a visit from an extraterrestrial civilization. However, to date no one has been able to give convincing evidence that this is the proper explanation -and, by the same token, in each case a completely natural, non-extraterrestrial explanation can be provided.
Fred
L.
Whipple
Director, Smithsonian Institution Astrophysical Observatory Phillips Professor of Astronomy
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
With regard
to learning about extraterrestrial
life, of course, our go to the planets and study them, as we are now planning — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's program — that's the first move. Now if we wish to consider the possibility of proving that there are intelligent living beings on other planets, it seems unlikely that this could happen in our solar system. The evidence that has accumulated with regard to the more likely planets is discouraging. Therefore, they will have to live on planets about stars, and all stars are physically very distant. Now, there is the possibility of just listening for them. People have generally assumed that intelligent creatures somewhere are so anxious to make their presence known, or to communicate, that they spend huge fractions of their resources, at least, huge resources, in powerful transmitters that could transmit for tens, hundreds, or thousands of light years into space on the vague hope that somebody will answer them. Now this type of communication I think is highly unlikely. I would suspect that although all cultures might not be like ours, there have to be some practical limitations for survival, and they are not going to spend great resources in this type of effort. But what might happen is that one will find a planetary system in which there are several inhabitable planets — two or more at least — and that then they will establish trade and communication. If we could locate such a system in which we lay very nearly on the plane of their mutual orbits or somewhere near
first
move
is
to