Joan Chittister-National Catholic Reporter: June 9, 2015
NASA is quiet about it, but the fact remains: It is looking for aliens in outer space. What’s more, these days, the rest of us almost expect to see them in our own lifetime. They’re out there somewhere, we figure. And if they don’t find us first, we are certainly going to find them. Maybe under a rock on Mars; maybe in the water beneath the crust of Ceres. Surely somewhere.
If nothing else, the odds alone demand it. Of the 200 billion to 300 billion stars in our own Milky Way and the 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe, who really believes that we are alone out here?
The problem we’re overlooking is that they are already here. Only now, we call them “robots.” They, too, are alien to our society but moving in fast. In fact, now we hardly notice them anymore.