Little Green Aliens

Do you think humans will ever colonize Mars? What would life there actually look like?

My old diary had this entry for May 12, 1974: “Looked at Mars through my telescope. Doug was a jerk.”

Had to think about that for a minute. Why was my big brother a jerk? 

Oh, yeah.

The cosmos has been on my mind lately.

I took a walk along the greenway yesterday at dusk and low in the western sky were two lights that, tellingly, didn’t twinkle; Venus and Jupiter. And last week at the beach, I saw Saturn and Mars in the predawn sky.

As I walked, I thought about the scale of our solar system. My walk is three miles; at 1.5 miles, I turn around and head back. I asked ChatGPT to construct a scale model pretending I was an astronaut traveling to Pluto 1.5 miles away.

Here’s what it gave me:

Object	Size	Distance
Sun	Giant inflatable ball 13 feet (4 m)	N/A
Mercury	Large pea	80 ft / 24 m
Venus	Grape	145 ft / 44 m
Earth	Large Marble	201 ft / 61 m
Mars	Chickpea	306 ft / 93 m
Jupiter	Basketball	0.2 mi / 322 m
Saturn	Volleyball	0.4 mi / 644 m
Uranus	Softball	0.7 mi / 1.1 km
Neptune	Softball	1.1 mi / 1.7 km
Pluto	Peanut M&M	1.5 mi / 72 km
Furthest satellite	N/A	45 mi / 72 km
Nearest star	Medium yoga ball	76,000 mi / 122,310 km

Mom and Pop had gone out and Doug was left in charge. While he sat engrossed with Love, American Style, I swatted at mosquitoes out in the cul-de-sac and peered through my telescope at Mars. The sky was dark all around except for a faint glow in the south from Ft. Lauderdale.

After an hour, I went inside to get a drink. The TV was on, the sliding glass door was open, but no Doug. I looked around the house but nothing.

I ventured onto the patio; also nothing. It was dark and from the nearby migrant agricultural camp, shouts and bits of Saturday-night song carried faintly. On some weekends, gunshots rang out with the singing. I circled around the back of the house.

“Doug?” I whispered. “Doug!” The moon was almost full and there were dark shadows under the trees.

Puzzled and nervous, I returned to the front of the house. The shouting and singing continued and I decided to go back inside.

But now the front door was locked.

“Doug?” My hand uselessly twisted the knob. I pounded on the windows that flanked the door. “Doug!”

Things in the shadows moved and the hair on my neck stood up.

The ChatGPT model left my head spinning. Nine little worlds silently trundling along in space, orbiting a garage-size star. A tiny system in the immensity of space, following the same physical laws that stretch across the universe.

We’ve sent eight probes to Mars since that night 52 years ago. We know there’s ice and water below the surface. The Martian atmosphere contains the same things as Earth’s, but in different amounts.

Although we’ve not yet detected any life on Mars, I think that needs to be qualified: we’ve not yet detected any life with which we’re familiar.

If I had had eyes in the back of my head, it would have been OK.

I would have seen big brother sneaking around behind me in the humid May night. I would have seen him creep to within three feet of me as I pounded on the windows and rang the bell. I would have seen him grin and raise the air horn 18” away from my neck.

One of my Mom’s most cherished maxims was Too many blows to the head aren’t good. This made a deep impression on Doug and I as one of us…can’t recall which…sat rubbing a knot on our skull after falling off the jungle gym.

I would have thought that from this, Doug would have extrapolated that too many shocks to the nervous system were also not good; but apparently this distinction eluded him because from point blank range, the deafening air horn made a part in my hair at the back of my head.

I can’t recall exactly what happened next…I vaguely remember trying to climb the door and screaming…but it was Doug’s reaction that really scared me.

There was no grin, no laugh, no teasing “got you”; there was a hitherto unseen look of fright and concern. He’s gonna die and Mom and Pop are gonna kill me.

Happily, I did not and instead got an ace to play whenever I needed it.

At the bottom of some of the Earth’s deepest ocean trenches—in complete darkness, immense pressure and frigid temperatures—strange creatures perch happily at volcanic vents. They bask in scalding emissions of poisonous gases as they do their thing. They could just as easily live in the sulfuric acid atmosphere of Venus or the frigid soil of the Martian arctic.

I’m optimistic. I think humans have a restless curiosity, a continual itch to push the limits, to see what’s over the next hill. And I think that God, like any loving Father, fondly watches the crowning glory of his creation figure out the hows of everything He has made.

We’re going back to the moon. Plans are being drawn up for a permanently manned colony from which a jump-off to Mars will be vastly simpler than from earth.

And I don’t think we’ll stop at Mars. Jupiter and Saturn both have very large moons with water/ice and methane-based ecosystems that well may have life.

The dreamers, the visionaries, the ones whose thoughts and ambitions rise far above the day-to-day bickering and issues of our home planet, are setting their sights on something higher.

I hope I’m around to see it. 😎

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