(look, if your theory makes you make up a word…)
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Looking around, lately, it doesn’t take long to pile up a lot of bad news. So, here’s some good news.

I recently read in an online article that we are not alone in the universe. According to allegedly sober scientists, there are forty-six other intelligent alien civilizations in our galaxy, not counting Seattle.

Forty-six. Imagine that meeting. I guess forty-seven would’ve been silly.

But that’s what the “they” are telling us. According to the Forbes website, which has way better complexion than Steve Forbes himself, a group of scientists at the University of Nottingham are making the claim that there ought to be several dozen other ongoing civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. True, other scientists are crying “bunk,” but we did point out these “forty-sixers” are allegedly sober, didn’t we? (We’re trying to confirm that, but the Sheriff of Nottingham hasn’t returned our calls.)

Here’s a little on how their science works. Our galaxy, which is named after a candy bar, is estimated to have somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion stars, including several rap singers. So the number of theoretical planets orbing those stars ought to be, to use the preferred astronomically-correct term, a butt load. And since 1961, the smart money in astronomy has been betting on something known as the Drake Equation, because when you’re looking for intelligent life in the universe, you want to be sure and reference the name of a male duck.

But the Nottingham gang is proffering a new idea, based on something they’re calling the Astrobiological Copernican Limit, because they get paid by the syllable. Their assumption is that it took 4.5 billion years of evolution, according to some very old eye witness, before a technological civilization arose on Earth, so it must be that way everywhere. This would be a lot like saying that it took Ella Fitzgerald 25 years to become famous, so everybody in their mid-twenties is famous.

And, carrying the idea to the next level, since there are several hundreds of millions of planets, some of them 4.5 billion years old, they must have developed technological civilizations, or at least online porn. This is what is known in logic as a “syllogism,” leading to what is known in university Astronomy Departments as “tenure.”

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Male Duck Sidebar: By the way, the original Drake Equation attempts to solve for N, “N” being the number of Milky Way civilizations with detectable electromagnetic emissions, “electromagnetic emissions” being the forty-five dollar word for “NFL Sunday.”

The actual equation, if you haven’t already left to go watch some TV show where people open storage containers for a living, looks like this:

N = R_*  x  f_p  x  n_e  x  f_e  x  f_i  x  f_c  x  L

The various variables represent relevant factors that might make intelligence possible (or unlikely), like:

• How quickly stars form that can support planets with oxygen, and freeways
• How long stars can withstand civilizations whining about global warming
• Millenia, or weeks, before outbreaks of the keto, paleo, and glute-free diet wars
• Number of planets required to support Orson Welles’ radio scares
• The length of time before civilizations develop admittedly amazing global communications
• The length of time before civilizations use those amazing communications to share recipes, angry cat memes, and animated gifs
• The length of time before one of the civilizations coin a more killer Scrabble word than “Astrobiological”
• Jazz

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As mentioned, many nay-sayers are already poo-pooing the Nottingham numbers, including two nearby forest friars, both named Tuck, a jockey from the Horsehead Nebula, and a protest group from an Andromeda casino cluster known as Blackjack Lives Matter. We just can’t know, claim some, how long it takes for intelligence to form, since after 4.5 billion years we’ve yet to see any inside the beltway.

Still and yet, mankind continues to hope. Still and yet, humanity continues to associate one’s level of interest in an online post with one’s tally of smiley faces. Still and yet, we wonder how we can possibly be gaining weight during a pandemic quarantine, when all we do is sit home and eat.

And still and yet, we wonder why the other thirty-six civilizations are keeping their shades drawn.