Fun with Maps ISSUE 2025-027

By Steve Kovacs (Introduction by Chuck Gibson)

LOVELAND, OH (February 11, 2025) – In today’s edition of Fun with Maps, we celebrate the possibility of alien life forms and living beyond the atmosphere of Earth.  

Little Green Men

Today is Extraterrestrial Day.  First celebrated in New Mexico, home of the famous Roswell incident of 1947.

UFOs, the Grays, Flying Saucers, etc. have fascinated people for a long time.  There are plenty of sightings, abductions and other contacts claimed and recorded. 

The odds of other life out there are fairly high according to those crunching numbers: There are 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe; There are about 200 billion stars in a typical galaxy, of which about 10% have planets.   After that, a life-supporting planet needs to be a certain distance from its star, needs to be the right age and so on.   Crunching all this together, some estimated there should be about 6 billion planets capable of supporting life.

Aliens may not look like us, as life in theory can be silicon based and not carbon based or rely on methane as the solvent as opposed to our water.

A large hurdle to visitations by aliens is distance.   Our Milky Way is nearly 100,000 light years wide, and as we are about halfway to the edge from the center, traveling from a similar position on the other side of the Galaxy would take 50,000 light years.  It would help if Scotty was among us and warp-speed is actually achievable.

Presented here is a map of New Mexico by Cram from 1902.

Steve Kovacs and his wife Theresa reside in Loveland, Ohio where they raised their two children. He is a passionate collector of antique maps.

Visit his antique map boutique world-on-paper online. Watch for his daily feature Steve Kovacs: Fun with Maps here on Loveland Beacon.