Take us to your leader! As we’ve seen throughout the years, Earth is no stranger to alien invasion. It happens to us pretty often in science fiction, whether it benefits us or not. Independence Day, E.T., War of the Worlds, and beyond, we’re often visited by these intergalactic creatures. But why do they come to us? Listen to this: there are roughly about 500 billion galaxies in the universe, which means there are 50 sextillion planets out there, including Earth. Still not seeing the big picture we’re getting at? Take a look at it in fraction form. The odds of aliens choosing to invade Earth, versus the rest of the planets in the universe is…
1/50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!
In the grand scheme of things, it would seem that our odds for invasion are pretty low. However, we get a plethora of films featuring aliens invading Earth each year. Maybe it’s a bit of narcissism on our parts, or just writing what we know (hey, we know little about our own galaxy let alone the entire universe and its planets). Either way, we think that it’s pretty amusing to think that aliens would always choose us over any other planet.
Maybe it’s our resources. We do have water, which, in our search for other hospitable planets, seems to be a rare find. Water gives life and sustains our ecosystem. We also have very breathable air and other resources. Whether aliens are after our air, water, wood, minerals, or something entirely out of left field, it seems like a very common theme.
Or what if we’re looked at it as a threat? Maybe we’re no threat at all. But hey, let’s give ourselves a little bit of credit here. We do have a growing interstellar space program, and our military prowess certainly has proven itself capable against aliens in the past. Maybe they’re just scared of us. But often times, aliens who invade Earth are equipped with technology and capabilities far beyond our own. Yet, we almost always win in those situations. There’s a famous quote by Mark Twain that seems to summarize the spirit of the human race in every alien invasion film, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” We’re a tough species, and every opponent who ever came in thinking they’d wipe the floor with us walked away with their tail between their legs.
The final explanation…happenstance. Maybe we’re just an unlucky planet. If aliens just happen to be discovering our planet out of the blue, then you’d have to admit we’re a bit luckless. Usually, it’s the nice aliens who happen to stop by on accident, but occasionally we’ll get an uninvited visit from a race of aliens who isn’t interested in shaking hands.
For whatever reason, aliens love Earth. And who wouldn’t? Should we take it as a compliment that all of these alien races seem to want to add us to their flight path? Seems like it’s a good sign. In the end, taking science fiction out of the equation, we have it pretty great here, and it would seem that our stay on Earth will continue to go unthreatened for the time being. However, maybe it’s a good thing that filmmakers keep sending aliens at us…it could be instructional.