Aliens are human too. They're entitled to boredom!

Raju Korti
It all began when I stumbled upon this rather delightful theory by Dr Robin Corbet of NASA. He calls it radical mundanity, which, in plain language, means that aliens might be as ordinary as us, only with slightly shinier gadgets. For years, we have imagined them cruising around in shimmering spaceships, manipulating gravity and sipping quantum cocktails. But Corbet suggests they might be no more exciting than a cosmic neighbour who once bought a telescope, got tired of stargazing, and decided to stick to their version of afternoon tea.

Pic as imagined by me, Who ese?

The more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed. Imagine an alien research council somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy holding an emergency meeting: “Operation Contact Earth: Status?” And one sleepy alien saying, “We sent them a signal 3 million years ago. Still buffering.” At some point, even the most patient civilisation would give up and reach for a plate of samosas instead.

It turns out that sending messages across galaxies is not like sending a WhatsApp text. It takes colossal amounts of energy and time. Possibly millions of years just to get a ‘hello’ back. So, after a few cosmic centuries, our alien friends might have realised it was not worth the trouble. You can almost picture them sighing, “These humans can’t even agree on the taste of chai. Let’s move on.”Dr Corbet’s theory also punctures the grand myth of aliens being godlike. He suggests they might just have slightly better tech. An iPhone 42 instead of an iPhone 17. Which means, instead of building galaxy-sized marvels or bending space-time, they could be stuck dealing with their own version of power cuts, software crashes, and interplanetary traffic snarls.

In fact, this makes the universe feel oddly familiar. The Fermi Paradox, the question of why we haven’t heard from anyone yet, might just have the most human answer imaginable: they got bored. Picture the aliens tuning into Earth’s broadcasts, watching endless election debates on television, and deciding that advanced communication with us was a bad idea.

But on a serious note, there is something oddly comforting in this mundanity. If they are indeed out there, maybe they are not perfect, not terrifying, just as flawed and easily distracted as we are. Maybe their greatest invention wasn’t some interstellar engine but a better version of the pressure cooker.So yes, the universe might be full of intelligent life, but it could also be full of civilisations that simply lost interest halfway. In the end, perhaps we are all, humans and aliens alike, victims of the same cosmic condition: short attention spans and the irresistible lure of comfort over curiosity.

After all, even in the grand theatre of the cosmos, it seems boredom truly is universal.