Tory Shepherd: Even if the chances are miniscule, the search for life beyond Earth is at an exciting point

The chances of finding anything on Mars may be incredibly remote, but an imminent US report on UFOs still promises some fascinating finds, Tory Shepherd writes.

The chances of anything coming from Mars are more than a million to one. More than a billion, most likely.

The Martians may not come, but we’re going. To the moon, and on to Mars.

There is an increasingly real chance Earthlings will find evidence of life on the Red Planet. Not tentacle-waving, squeaky-voiced Martians. Not the enigmatic “Greys” that predominated popular thinking during The X-Files period. Not the tripods from The War of the Worlds. But still, evidence of life on another planet.

Humans have sent the Perseverance rover to Mars, where there is a serious scientific theory that it will find evidence of ancient microbial life.

NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter flying on Mars. In the background is the Perseverance rover. Picture: AFP / NASA

The same Australian scientists that have studied stromatolites – fossil evidence of microbes in the Pilbara – are optimistic they’ll find the same storylines on Mars.

They’re looking at what seems to be an ancient river delta, about the same age as that Western Australian site. NASA says there’s something like a “bathtub ring” that might show nascent signs of life. That could have a similar philosophical impact on us as the Copernican Revolution. As children, we eventually learn the world does not revolve around us. When Nicolaus Copernicus discovered it was not even our humble home planet that was the centre of our system, but the sun, there was a seismic shift in our thinking.

Since then – thanks to astronomical thinkers like Carl Sagan – we have gone on to learn we are simultaneously just a pale blue dot in the universe and also stardust. Because everything we are made of is fallout from the Big Bang.

I wonder how many find it reassuring that we pale in significance to the vastness of the universe, and find awe in that. And how many rail against the idea, and want to chuck a tanty in the face of their irrelevance.

We’re in a new space age, and it’s exciting. Even the next few weeks could be amazing.

The US is set to release a bunch of secret UFO reports.

The US is set to release a bunch of secret UFO reports.

The world is split between those who think of UFOs as “unidentified flying objects” that act as transport to would-be anal probers, and those who think of them as … UAPs, “unidentified aerial phenomena”.

The switcheroo from UFOs to UAPs is an ill-disguised attempt to separate seriously interesting mysteries from the Roswell mob.

US intelligence agencies are preparing to deliver a UAP report to Congress within weeks. Too many unexplained things have been seen. Former US president Barack Obama said recently that, upon assuming office, he asked about a secret lab with aliens and spaceships.

The answer was no, but…

“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” he said.

I spoke recently to a guy called Nick Pope. He was in the UK’s UFO project within the Defence Department. His department is now defunct – or secret. But he said it was seriously investigating whether unexplained sightings were spy planes, hypersonic tests, drones or artificial intelligence-operated machines.

“We always suspected the Russians,” he said.

This report coming from the US will be fascinating. At its best, it’ll be honest about the known knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. It might be heavily redacted, just a nod to transparency, leaving us with more unknowns. Or it could sketch out some specific answers, which, in a time of geopolitical instability, will be interesting.

It probably won’t have any answers about extraterrestrial intelligence. The best we know about that is abstract, but fascinating. The Drake equation, posited in 1961 by Frank Drake, is an enlightening tool. It’s an attempt to incorporate unknowns (how many stars could develop planetary systems, how many would be suitable for life, how many would actually produce life, how many would we temporally coincide with, and so on) then start inserting “knowns” or probabilities as we learn more.

It’s helpful, and maybe healthful, in these times to look outwards for a bit, to ponder the imponderables.

Those who believe there are Martians in those flying saucers are probably the same cohort who believe in chemtrails and the evils of 5G, and who are probably anti-vaxxers – so it’s also entertaining to think that the original Martians in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds were killed off by a human disease.

The universe really does work in mysterious ways.