Off the Cuff: Outdated Carter won't make a deep impact in deep space

The surest indication that intelligent life is out there is that they have not tried to contact us. We, on the other hand, have been trying for decades to contact them whoever, or whatever, they may be.

In 1977 we sent a space probe called Voyager into the deep dark radiated unknown. We packed it full of goodies to entice others, like a message from Jimmy Carter.

I have never met Carter, I am sure he's a fine fellow, but he is not the type of man that I would like to strike up a conversation with if he ever came down to Bur Dubai and offered to build me a house or share a pack of peanuts. And the Americans weren't exactly too enthused with him either as they dumped him from office three years after Voyager was launched.

Obviously it was too too late to call back the probe, but if I happened to inhabit the control tower on the landing strip on Cetrox-Sparta at the edge of the Milky Way and heard this voice say "Hi I'm Jimmy Carter. Let me tell you about Plains, Georgia," I think I'd let it pass. Now if the probe had a message from Sophia Loren, who looked good in 1977 and looks even better now, I might just respond.

The probe has been stuffed with various teasers about life on Earth, like photographs of humanity. People in the 1970s? Those of a certain age, 40 plus, are still scarred by memories of that decade. Bell-bottomed trousers, love beads, long hair, platform shoes. That will get the galaxies buzzing with inquisitiveness all right.

Voyager travels fast, very fast. Just how fast? It zips through space at a leasurely 35,000 mph in third gear. By the time you have read this sentence it has gone, well, it's easy to work out so I won't bother. But you get the drift.

This is a serious piece of machinery that does not slam on the brakes. It even travels faster than the man in the white luxury saloon car on the hard shoulder of the Sharjah-Dubai road at 7.30 a.m. on weekdays.

Voyager is now on the edge of the Milky Way about to enter really, really deep space. And not a word. Not even one inter-galltical "howya", or "hi" there or even "G'day".

Not a beep to rouse it from its high-speed slumber. Not surprising I suppose, because I am reliably informed, (well, actually I don't know if I am reliably informed as I know zilch about space travel which makes it difficult to contradict anyone who wants to inform me) that Voyager after all these years going faster than the white hard-shoulder saloon car is actually, in space terms, the equivalent of being stuck at National Paints roundabout if you were driving the car to London. In terms of space trekking it has hardly started.

Actually, there are two probes, and Voyager Two was launched a few weeks before Voyager One. They did things like that in the 1970s.

But the probe is running out of fuel, it's got enough for just about another couple of years before it starts to splutter. However, scientists calculate that if there is something out there then it would be in a galaxy about 250,000 light years away.

This area, they believe, holds the most promise for species to answer Carter's message of goodwill. Just why scientists believe this is a mystery as not many people on Earth bothered with Carter's messages of goodwill when he was in the White House.

But if Voyager does strike it lucky and make contact it won't bother me or any other drivers on the Sharjah- Dubai road, though I bet you the traffic jam at the roundabout will still be there.