JumpStart by Robb Armstrong for May 01, 2023

Dexter, semi-literate life lives on our planet.

The Milky Way is said to contain as many as 400 BILLION stars. It’s now said that there are 2 TRILLION galaxies in the universe. It is also said that there may be 2×10²⁴ stars in the universe. The odds against Earth being the only planet with intelligent life are literally ASTRONOMICAL!

Interesting expressions on Dexter’s face in the last two panels!

Semi-literate life forms? You’re one of them.

If there is intelligent life more technologically advanced than we are, it has to be more than 80 light years away. Otherwise we would have heard their radio signals by now.

We’re a quarantined star system. The aliens that do visit are here on official business, studying us and keeping us under control. That is to keep the insanity known as “human nature” from infecting the rest of the galaxy.

Maybe when we grow up and put away childish things like nukes, racism, prejudice, and animalistic overpopulation growth, we might be ready to grow beyond our star.

Dexter, there’s something to said for anonymity. Some aliens might only want to make us a part of their conquered empire. Or, worse yet, their meal.

So Dexter is hoping there are aliens that are intelligent, but still naive enough to visit us.

semi-literate all ready lives …..on this very earth

“You humans are cute… not even noticing us among you.”

Anonymous cat

If beings are visiting us from other galaxies, either they have virtually infinite lifespans or they discovered a big loophole in the Theory of General Relativity that allows travel at speeds faster than that of light.

keep in mind, if there is an alien race out there capable of interstellar travel, then by default they would already know how to create and control massive amounts of energy just to DO that. The same technology that gets them here could just as easily boil our oceans or sterilize our entire population, if they had hostile intent, there would be NOTHING we could do. Attacking or showing ANY kind of hostile face towards interstellar visitors is probably the single stupidest thing you can possibly do.

For some sci-fi examples, there was an Outer Limits episode where a group of interplanetary strip miners found what they thought were some primitives on a planet they wanted to harvest and killed them, only for it to turn out that they were basically a group of alien boy scouts on a camping trip, and when their parents (who were from a race ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more technologically advanced than humans in that story) found out, they obliterated the human ship from a vantage point that they couldn’t hope to defend themselves from, then set course for Earth to kill the rest of humanity because they saw us as a dangerously hostile species.

Another is the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic, where an alien space craft crashed on Earth and the humans experimented on and dissected its pilot. The aliens who sent that scout ship, the Xorda, were SO offended that the body of one of their own was desecrated in such a way that they sought to exterminate all life on the planet using a weapon called a gene bomb, which had the side effect of contaminating the biosphere with human DNA, which created the anthropomorphic animal people we all know and love.

Robb nails it again!

Fermi paradox