by Wes Kelly

Created on: February 05, 2010

One possible way for extraterrestrials to assume control of the earth would be for human beings to leave or evacuate the earth – and then return to pick up where they had left off.  While this might sound like a cop out on the premise at first reading, it should be noted as well that we are exploring an issue influenced by evidence available or circumstances differing from an earlier age of exploration thus far. 

In the era of exploration five hundred years earlier, explorers headed west from Europe to reach the Indies and China not anticipating numerous native peoples in between them and their final objective.  Looking back even farther, history abounds with tribes and peoples wandering across continents and encountering each other leaving for archeologists and historians numerous records of conflict.   But in the 21st century, looking toward another age of exploration, we are perhaps anticipating inhabited continents where we have as yet no confirmation of a prospective India or China. 

Over many centuries there has been occasional speculation that other worlds provided other sentient life.  When 19th century astronomers in Europe and the United States began to debate whether markings observed on Mars were water channels, canals or simply blotches, speculation about extraterrestrials became ever more common.  Science fiction writers in the 20th century provided a vast literature on the topic and the scientific community became involved as well with efforts to detect intelligent life or to debate what the likelihood was.  During certain periods such as the early days of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, expectations rose high that intelligent life was just beyond telescopic view.  In other periods such as the first Mariner flybys of Mars revealing a particularly desolate swath of cratered terrain, expectations dropped very low.  At this writing, detection of extraterrestrial microbial life within the confines of the solar system is considered an important pursuit of solar system exploration, but it is unresolved whether such exists. Further afield, detection of earthlike planets around other stars is anticipated by success in finding larger planets thus far, but it will probably require either longer observing periods with existing instruments or launch of more sensitive telescopes to identify worlds similar to our own from which to expect outer space visitors arriving here to expropriate us.

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