Our Milky Way Galaxy has at least 100 bil­lion stars, and in all prob­a­bil­ity has 400 bil­lion stars. Astronomers have iden­ti­fied over one hun­dred plan­ets out­side our own solar sys­tem and a high pro­por­tion of the closely exam­ined stars seem to have some type of solar sys­tem cre­at­ing sup­po­si­tion that there are mil­lions, per­haps bil­lions of earth like plan­ets in our Galaxy alone. Carl Sagan once said: “There may be a mil­lion worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone which are at this moment inhab­ited by other intel­li­gent beings” (Cos­mos, episode XI).

We also are find­ing that mete­orites carry the essen­tial build­ing blocks for life, there­fore it is rea­son­able to assume they have spread life through­out the uni­verse like the prover­bial angels of God or Johnny Apple­seed. A study of sev­eral hun­dred solar-like stars shows sig­na­tures of heavy ele­ments in their spec­tra from which we can deduce that mate­r­ial to form Earth-like plan­ets is prob­a­bly abun­dant. Our own sun is a rel­a­tively young star and if life exits in space, other civ­i­liza­tions have had mil­lions, per­haps bil­lions of years to advance ahead of us. If even only a few alien civ­i­liza­tions have arisen in the 10 bil­lion or so year his­tory of our Galaxy, most of the hab­it­able parts of the Galaxy would likely be col­o­nized by now.

When I spoke at the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, I learned that Astronomer Nor­man Mur­ray believes that, “The impli­ca­tion, if this result holds up, is that there are Earth-like bod­ies in orbit around most of the stars in our galaxy.” Earth is already send­ing out satel­lites through­out our solar sys­tem and far­ther. It is pretty easy to deduce that we will explore much of our Galaxy even at speeds less than the speed of light and find some forms of life. Launch­ing space probes is becom­ing cheaper and it is rea­son­able to assume we will choose to launch explo­ration for var­i­ous rea­sons. Earth is rapidly being over pop­u­lated, so we may choose to develop other plan­ets to set­tle, or attempt to con­quer, or con­duct min­ing oper­a­tions. Even­tu­ally, mis­sion­ar­ies may spread our reli­gion and civ­i­liza­tion through­out our Galaxy.

It is rea­son­able to assume there must be a few other civ­i­liza­tions in our Galaxy that most likely devel­oped much ear­lier than our own. Unless civ­i­liza­tions tend to destroy them­selves with their own tech­nol­ogy, most alien civ­i­liza­tions would be tech­no­log­i­cally thou­sands or even mil­lions of years ahead of us. If these civ­i­liza­tions exist we can log­i­cally assume they have or are vis­it­ing Earth. Carl Sagan stated in his book, “Intel­li­gent Life in the Universe”…”I believe that effi­cient inter­stel­lar space­flight to the fur­thest reaches of the Galaxy is a fea­si­ble objec­tive for human­ity. If this is the case, other civ­i­liza­tions, aeons more advanced than ours, must today be ply­ing the spaces between the stars.” (page 449.) Astronomer Ian Craw­ford wrote, His dif­fu­sion model leads to “full galac­tic col­o­niza­tion” in 5 to 50 mil­lion years (Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can, Nov. 2000, page . Sev­eral mil­lion years is a long time in com­par­i­son to a human life span, but it is short in com­par­i­son to the life span of main sequence stars. Enrico Fermi, the famous physi­cist, argued in 1943, “Where are they?” Extrater­res­tri­als should have col­o­nized Earth long ago, but they are not here. Fermi was a promi­nent sci­en­tist, and his ques­tion is called: Fermi’s Paradox.

My response to Enrico Fermi, is that extrater­res­trial probes are vis­it­ing us on a reg­u­lar basis. They may not have shown them­selves openly, but human­ity is not look­ing at or ana­lyz­ing the ample evi­dence avail­able. Each week for over five years in Filer’s Files, I have pro­vided evi­dence that our Earth is being vis­ited by probes from other civ­i­liza­tions. While I was on active duty in the US Air Force, Lon­don Con­trol directed us to inves­ti­gate and inter­cept a large UFO. We inter­cepted the UFO, I saw it on my radar and visu­ally just before it flew away at incred­i­ble speed. There are thou­sands of sim­i­lar sto­ries where air­crews, ground and air­borne radar oper­a­tors have observed UFOs. It’s time for sci­en­tists to start look­ing at the incred­i­ble evi­dence col­lected daily around the world. NASA Space Shut­tle videos are a good place to start. In my opin­ion we are not alone.