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Apr 5, 2008 04:00 PM
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Forget little green men, Vulcans or super-sexy Number Six's slinking about the 'verse in little red cocktail dresses—some scientists say our first encounter with E.T. will likely involve a simple robot. For proof, says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, you need only to look at our own species' advances in robotics. But then the 'scientists' in this MSNBC Battlestar Galactica puff piece get a little crazy. Human-cyborg relations? Marriage? That'll only work in Massachusetts!
If humans do start charging the batteries of an alien robot, Astronomer Jeffrey Bennett doubts it will resemble the tryst between Dr. Gaius Baltar and Number Six. "I think people get it wrong when they assume the aliens will be young lovelies," Shostak said. Instead, experts like David Levy-who's job is to write papers about humans and robots getting it on (TRUE!)-says we'll approach our love-making like we do our cars, with human-machine hybrids. And then we'll marry them. "My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," Levy said.
But enough fluff. In the end, a majority of researchers agree that the sure bet on alien life is with tiny microbes buried beneath the red sands of Mars or under the ice of our solar system's many moons. Then a whole new slew of questions will arise to muddy the issue. What defines life? Did it start on Mars? Does that make humans the real aliens? On second thought, forget the hot humanoid robots-I'm having an existential crisis here. [MSNBC]
Send an email to Jack Loftus, the author of this post, at jloftus@gizmodo.com.
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