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Stephen Hawking got some bad granola

I have no problem admitting that I have always believed in aliens.

Seriously, since I was a kid and even with the religious and spiritual indoctrinations I received, I've always found it difficult to believe that humans on earth are it for intelligent life in the universe.

I even once drew the ire of a visiting minister who was delivering a sermon at my dad's church when I was a kid, 'cause I after the service I asked him what he thought Jesus's name and appearance might be on Jupiter.

He got flustered. I thought it was a fair question.

It just seems like a waste of space if there aren't other planets out there with their own intelligent creatures, economies, vehicles, stupid politicians, religious charlatans leaders, lazy relatives, etc.

The important thing though is that I haven't the slightest bit of evidence to support any of this. And that leads me to my point:

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, supposedly the smartest person on Earth, has a new Discovery Channel documentary coming out about space in which he warns that there are probably aliens out there and if we ever made contact with them the encounter would be more like Independence Day than E.T.

Hawking not only speculates that there are hater aliens out there who can't handle just how cool we are on Earth and that they might want to eat us, he also says we'd freak out if we saw how advanced alien technology is, and that aliens might look something like this - alien herbavores and alien predators, respectively (courtesty of Discovery Channel):

Alien Herbivore   Alien Predator

Now, I'm a big fan of what work of Hawking's that I understand. He's also been great on The Simpsons. But seriously, the smartest people on earth are now guessing at what man-eating aliens might look like?

Anyway, even if you believe Hawking's great imagination, he fails to explain one thing: what reason do we have to think that aliens are smarter than us or have better technology than us? Really, how does he not know that other planets are populated by billions of guys from Deliverance? Maybe on Planet X, the aliens are dumb as dirt and named Cletus D. CousinKisser. Maybe their vehicles are all wagons with square wheels.

I still believe in aliens, but till I see proof to the contrary, I'm assuming we're smarter than them.

P.S. Follow me, please, at twitter.com/jamesburnett


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IGC-P (Nassau, Bahamas)

Awesome! My thoughts exactly. Also, why are they usually so unattractive/ugly? If they are such 'advanced societies' wouldn't they have figured out how to get rid of 'ugly'?? Just asking!

CL Jahn

Well, take a look at human migration; what drives us into new territories? Shortages in the old ones. Look at what happened to the indigenous population of every land ever colonized by another. And that's just amongst us humans.

No, it's a good bet that if aliens show up, our civilization won't survive the encounter.


I think that if they can get here (to Earth) you'd have to assume they were smarter than us. We've only made it as far as the moon, which is nothing within the scale of the universe.

Mental Mosaic

Hawkings didn't say that ALL extraterrestrials are smarter than us, but he did say: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet"

While his intellect is impressive, I'm always amused by Hawkings' penchant for seducing his caretakers. That boy must have some amazing pick-up lines. I'm waiting for his dating book to come out! ;p



my feelings are (I said feelings. Now that has to be separated from true thinking) that other worlds would take one look at the horrible aspects of the humans on this earth and pass us by...

Matthew Mientka

I loved "A Brief Moment In Time" and any scientists who can write well for the lay audience but... this was all just so goofy. He's losing it....

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