In scientific circles, there is something known as Ockham's Razor: a principle of logic, which states that: "plurality should not be assumed without necessity" and "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything" - or more simply put, KISS (keep it simple, stupid). This axiom is best known for its appearance in the movie Contact, authored by Carl Sagan, where the protagonist, played by Jody Foster, is forced to admit publicly that the simplest solution tends to be the most correct.

Under normal circumstances, that would seem to be true. William of Ockham lived in the days of Robin Hood; and his philosophies were scandalous for the time. A Franciscan Monk, he wrote prolifically against the power of the church, and spent his last years in veritable exile. Today, we know that a child standing next to a broken lamp is a "no-brainer" and dogs typically do not eat homework. But, as noted physicist Michio Kaku argues, if all were as it seems, Mankind would have derived the secrets of the universe thousands of years ago.

Ockham's Razor may have been cutting edge logic in the 13th century, but it is also the underlying principle which allows innocent people to be framed for crimes they didn't commit. In The X-Files, Fox Mulder refers to Ockham's Razor as "Ockham's principle of handicapped imagination." That is to say, sometimes it really was the cat or the little brother who broke the lamp; under the right conditions, dogs can be coerced into eating homework - and the Face on Mars is not necessarily a "trick of light and shadow" just because NASA says it must be. Beyond the obvious, what else could there be? What else, indeed.

In Astronomical circles, there is a favorite formula known as the Drake Equation - developed by Dr. Frank Drake, the world famous astrophysicist and senior staffer at SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) - which predicts how many intelligent civilizations there must be, in our galaxy alone. Simply stated, the Drake Equation is: R * FP * NE * FL * FI * FC * LN = N. More ambitious stargazers take the time to estimate: "the mean rate of star formation, averaged over the lifetime of the galaxy; times the fraction of stars with planetary systems; times the mean number of planets per system, with environments suitable for the origin of life; times the fraction of such planets on which life does develop; times the fraction of such planets on which intelligent life rises, during the lifetime of the local sun; times the fraction of planets on which advanced technical civilizations rise; times the lifetime of these technical civilizations," to arrive at the number of advanced technical civilizations emitting detectable radio signals. Whew!

Carl Sagan once optimistically concluded that at least one million of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy have planets which have developed advanced intelligent civilizations. Putting aside, for the moment, the over ten billion other known galaxies in the universe, any local alien civilization would have to be currently using a form of telecommunication that we, in our technological infancy, are able to detect. Most SETI scopes focus on radio, x-ray, gamma-ray, infra-red, ultra-violet, or even laser detection. However, in the context of technology, for a space-faring species, they might as well also look for smoke signals. Seriously, what sane species, capable of interstellar travel, would utilize a form of communication limited to the speed of light? Because of this, to some, SETI seems about as likely to detect alien civilizations as Gilligan watching the variation of waves in his lagoon. Few serious ufologists are surprised that SETI has yet to turn up a single ET phoning home.

And most skeptics will shove the speed of light in your face; to disprove the possibility, even the likelihood, of interplanetary travel. "There could not have been alien visitors, because it is impossible to travel such vast distances," they say - although similar things were said about automobiles and airplanes, and the Earth was once thought to be flat. In truth, the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, is about four light years away - and any radio or television signal managing to make it that far, is from four years ago - if received at all. But, according to Einstein, 186,000 miles per second is the ultimate speed limit - nothing can travel faster than it - and that may be true. In theory, anything made of atoms will warp to infinity at the exact moment such mind blowing velocities are attained - but maybe that's the whole idea. Who says you have to actually travel the distance between two points? Wormholes are possible. Einstein's Black Holes have been proven to exist, and many have already been charted. What if it were possible to mimic or artificially recreate even such phenomenal natural phenomena? In this scientific age, we somewhat less savage primates have come to the eventual wisdom: that there is usually much more to the universe than we are able to detect, or even imagine. Einstein wanted to know what was on God's mind. Perhaps the aliens wonder that as well.

In the mid 20th Century, everybody's mind was on Martians - little green men, poised for planetary dominance. Well, whether or not people from Mars turn out to be very little or very green, the invasion was not televised. This does nothing, however, to ease the minds of those who swear they've been abducted - taken aboard motherships, probed, seeded, implanted, and otherwise shaken up a bit.

In fact, there aren't many sightings of aliens which do not involve being treated like a specimen. In one of the earliest contemporary abduction stories: Betty Hill recalls, through hypnotic regression, a calm yet chilling conversation with her new space doctor. On viewing what she thought must have been a starmap, she asked the alien which system he was from. He thought for a bit, and asked her if she could point out her own star on the map, which of course she could not: which allowed the being to retort, basically: "what's the point?" She also wanted to know why they were doing this to her and her husband. The alien remarked that we Humans do as much, and often far more, to laboratory rats - and that this was no different. Few conversations with aliens are reported to have gone as better, or even as well. "Why don't you just ask us?" many say - but aliens tend to be of one mind on that: our species is not yet ready to accept the possibility of the existence of other beings in the universe. Most find that cold, and take it as a cheap excuse.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this entire subject is the inescapable suspicion that the American Government is behind much of the turmoil. From the Men in Black to Area 51, rumors abound of aliens on Earth: working with, and even masterminding black projects - cattle mutilations, black helicopters, crop circles, the continued abduction of Human beings for some sinister purpose - and we are powerless to do anything about it. Ironically, the best argument for continued secrecy - despite missing out on the cure for cancer, avoiding religious and economic turmoil, etc. - continues to be preventing the mass realization that we are powerless to do anything about anything at all.

The bottom line: if they wanted to wipe us out, they could have done so thousands of years ago. A culture technologically advanced enough to travel here from who knows where, may likely be able to trim our population down to a few hundred survivors, none of us the wiser - through an environmental disaster or a plague, tossing a comet our way, or eroding our ozone layer. If they landed on the White House front lawn today, they would most certainly be worshiped as gods by someone. But obviously, enlightening us as a people is also not very high on their list of priorities - or is it? All this time, there could have been an alien base on the far side of the moon, and no one would have even imagined - and until this century, how few would dare to dream?

So, they're not incredibly hostile - but they don't seem to be very friendly, either. Maybe they have their own ulterior motives, and maybe few of them are passive - but at least they haven't zapped us with their ray gun... not yet, anyways.

Whatever their perspective, it is probably well beyond ours. One expects astronomical intelligence, and even exponential wisdom, from species' a few million (or billion) years our senior. It is certainly a universal constant of existence, that any culture with: both terrorists and transporters; lasers and unlimited portable power supplies; even unlimited lifespans and unlimited resources, but limited space in which to thrive; is not long for this universe. Perhaps we should feel safe and secure in our relatively quiet corner of the galaxy. Maybe we're drowning in our own problems, but at least we don't have theirs. If our best asset is our limited development, maybe they come down here for a vacation.