Will we die of cosmic loneliness?

Top astronomy news items last week wrestled with the question of whether we are alone in the universe.

One story gave a dire warning that aliens are already here because they are mad at us. The other report, that inhabitable planets are everywhere in our Milky Way galaxy.

In reality, our own civilization’s biggest threat to long-term survival may be cosmic boredom, say a pair of theorists.

SLIDE SHOW: Top 10 Places to Find Alien Life

Things got started in a highly publicized event at the Washington Press Club where UFO investigator Robert Hastings offered spooky testimony by several retired military officers. They described seeing flying saucers shaped like “pregnant cigars” snooping around and sabotaging our nuclear missile bases.

His hypothesis: aliens are upset that we are “playing with fire.”

How aliens would have become aware of our warlike shenanigans went unexplained. The burst of light from the first atom bomb test in New Mexico is presently only detectable to a distance of 65 light-years from Earth. What’s more, it would be indistinguishable from theflash of a large meteor exploding in our atmosphere.

Later in the week, a team of astronomers announced the culmination of a 12-year search for the first planet found in the habitable zone around a star. This is a world where water oceans might exist. The super-Earth orbits a red dwarf star, as I predicted last July.

Continue news.discovery.com/space/will-we-die-of-cosmic-loneliness.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1