Just yesterday my friend had shown me the vintage Johnny Castaway screensaver made by Sierra in 1993. It shows a man marooned on a small island in the sea. The screensaver takes the viewer through the castaway’s daily routine. It’s mostly made to be comedic. At one point, while Johnny Castaway sleeps, a ship of little tiny men pulls up to the island and tie Johnny up Gulliver’s Travels style. The screensaver made me ponder as to whether or not there is a real Johnny Castaway that exists in the real world today stuck on an island perhaps a bit larger than the small one portrayed in the screensaver. Nobody knows he’s stuck there and he survives on his own, all by himself just like the little man shown in the Johnny Castaway computer screensaver. That then lead me to ponder something a lot larger. It’s something I’ve wondered quite a bit about at times over the course of my life. It made me wonder again, “is there life out there in the universe somewhere besides what we have here on Earth?”. The question as to whether or not there’s any other life out there besides on our own planet has long been debated by scientists, scholars, and even the most common observer.
Consider this: Our solar system’s sun is just one of perhaps billions of stars in the universe. So chances are pretty high that there’s extraterrestrial life out there, right? At least, i’d think so. Perhaps there’s even a planet where a similar species to that of the dinosaurs still rules the land. Perhaps the extraterrestrial life isn’t even as advanced as the human species on our own Earth. Or perhaps the science fiction movies got it right and there’s a high tech space civilization just a few thousands light years away from our own Earth(If that were the case, would they make their presence known?). I might consider it a sad fact that we might not know whether or not there is other life out there within our own lifetimes. In some regards we’re like Johnny Castaway, stuck on the island that is Earth and cut off from all the happenings of the rest of the Universe. However, maybe it’s the mystery of the Universe that keeps our minds so curious & innovative, always striving to advance and learn more about the vast sea of space.
letawookieewin 