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Showing posts with label extraterrestrial life. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 ~ Have your say...

The Cosmic Connection: Will we ever know if we're alone?

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An interesting idea presented by Carl Sagan when pondering the likelyhood of discovering intelligent life outside of our planet:

"We are like the inhabitants of an isolated valley in New Guinea who communicate with societies in neighboring valleys (quite different societies, I might add) by runner and by drum. When asked how a very advanced society will communicate, they might guess by an extremely rapid runner or by an improbably large drum. They might not guess a technology beyond their ken. And yet, all the while, a vast international cable and radio traffic passes over them, around them, and through them... 


We will listen for the interstellar drums, but we will miss the interstellar cables. We are likely to receive our first messages from the drummers of the neighboring galactic valleys - from civilizations only somewhat in our future. The civilizations vastly more advanced than we, will be, for a long time, remote both in distance and in accessibility. At a future time of vigorous interstellar radio traffic, the very advanced civilizations may be, for us, still insubstantial legends."


- Carl Sagan, "The Cosmic Connection"

Do you think SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) will find evidence for intelligent life "out there"?  Leave your comment below.

Monday, November 7, 2011 ~ Have your say...

Breaking News: White House Formally Acknowledges: "Searching for ET, but no aliens yet".

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Ok, it's not really breaking news.  It's kinda mundane.  But, it's interesting nonetheless.  


The White House has formally acknowledged that the human race is not engaging extraterrestrials and is not withholding any information from said aliens.  This was in response to two petitions on the White House's "We The People" site, which requires a response from the government if 25,000 signatures are signed.  The first petition stated the following:


We petition the obama administration to "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race - Disclosure."


"We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon."
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Hundreds of military and government agency witnesses have come forward with testimony confirming this extraterrestrial presence. Opinion polls now indicate more than 50% of the American people believe there is an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about this phenomenon. The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth.


The second petition reads:


We petition the obama administration to "Immediately disclose the government's knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings"


This Petition calls for the President to disclose to the American people the long withheld knowledge of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings and call for open Congressional hearings to allow the people to become aware of this subject through those whose voices have been silenced by unconstitutional secrecy oaths.


The Response...


Phil Larson, who works on space policy and communications at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, replied with this official statement:


Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet


By Phil Larson


"Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.


The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.


However, that doesn't mean the subject of life outside our planet isn't being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth. Here are a few examples:


SETI—the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence—was originally stood up with help from NASA, but has since been moved to other sources of private funding. SETI's main purpose is to act as a giant ear on behalf of the human race, pointing an array of ground-based telescopes towards space to listen for any signal from another world.


Kepler is a NASA spacecraft in orbit that's main goal is to search for Earth-like planets. Such a planet would be located in the "Goldilocks" zone of a distant solar system—not too hot and not too cold—and could potentially be habitable by life as we know it. The Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-sized, rocky planets in or near the habitable zone of the star (sun) they orbit.


The Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, is an automobile-sized rover that NASA is launching soon. The rover's onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and other geology in an effort to detect the chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the Martian environment was like in the past to see if it could have harbored life.


A last point: Many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life.


Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved.


But that's all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth."


The official petitions can be found here and here:


Do you think this case is settled?  Or is the government lying to us again....???

Thursday, August 4, 2011 ~ Have your say...

A UFO found on the ocean floor?

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UFOlogists are all a-flutter with the buzz that an ocean exploration team led by Swedish researcher Peter Lindberg has found what might be a crashed flying saucer.  


Lindberg's team was using sonar to look for ship wreck hat went down carrying several cases of a super-rare champagne. Instead, the team discovered a mysterious round object that might (or might not) be extraterrestrial.  Round object?  Yes.  Extraterrestrial?  Hmmm...


Lindberg explained to local media that his crew discovered, on the 300-foot-deep ocean floor between Finland and Sweden, "a large circle, about 60 feet in diameter. You see a lot of weird stuff in this job, but during my 18 years as a professional I have never seen anything like this. The shape is completely round."  Lindberg also said he saw evidence of scars or marks disturbing the environment nearby, suggesting the object somehow moved across the ocean floor to where his team found it.


As one might expect Swedish tabloids and Internet UFO buffs are basking in the glory of this report. Some suggest the object is a flying saucer of extraterrestrial origin and that the seafloor scars were dug up during the crash.


Let's quickly invoke Occam's Razor before going further.  It might be a crashed UFO, OR It might simply be a natural feature formation, or possibly a sunken, round man-made object.  Which is more likely?


Lindberg's claim that the object "is perfectly round" might not even be accurate;  the resolution of the sonar image was not high enough to verify that it is indeed round (and we've seen these type of low-resolution error many times on Mars). And while the lines that appear to be leading to or from the feature may suggest some sort of movement, it's also possible they have nothing to do with the circular object.


Lindberg himself did not offer an extraterrestrial origin, though he did speculate it might be a "new Stonehenge."  Again, a bit of a stretch, but at least a man-made structure is more plausible.


This story is reminiscent of "Bimini Road," a rock formation in the Caribbean near the Bahamas that resembles a road or wall. Many New Agers and conspiracy theorists claimed the rocks are too perfectly shaped to be natural, and either were made by an unknown civilization or are possibly a relic from the lost city of Atlantis.Geologists have identified the blocks as perfectly natural, weathered beach rock.


It's also worth noting that UFOs may not be saucer-shaped. The famous "flying saucer" description of the very first described UFO has since been revealed as a reporting error.  For more on that, read James Randii's "Flim Flam", where he thoroughly explains and debunks the "shape" claim.


Finally, Lindberg said his team has neither the interest nor the resources to further investigate the "UFO".   Deep ocean research is time-consuming and expensive. If the object were indeed a flying saucer, recovering it could potentially be worth millions or billions of dollars. If it's a natural formation, on the other hand, it would probably be a waste of time and money.  


My vote is for the latter.




Read more here: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/03/swedish-booze-hunters-may-have-found-ufo-on-ocean-floor/#ixzz1U4GQ3vyK

Thursday, December 2, 2010 ~ Have your say...

NASA's Big Press Release... Impacting the Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life?

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At 2pm, on Thursday, December 2nd, NASA will hold a news conference. NASA has said the conference will "discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so skeptical.

I would have liked to believe that they would announce "Life on Mars!" or "Life on some moon in our Solar System!"... but unfortunately, I believe the announcement will literally "impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life".

Perhaps the finding will include a new condition where life could exist, and perhaps that condition has been found somewhere, but my hunch is that the announcement will be a letdown for the general public. It will be interesting and newsworthy for scientists, astronomers, and astrobiologists, but I think the public will be generally disappointed.

We'll have to wait and see... 

..UPDATE..

We now have the scoop... and around my workplace there was a collective, disappointing "sigh".  But it's still pretty cool.  Researchers have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth that is able to reproduce using arsenic instead of phosphorus.  

What's the big deal?  Well, it was assumed that carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and  sulphur were the six basic building blocks for life on Earth.  Now, that has expanded.  When looking for life outside of Earth, the horizon just broadened substantially.  For example, we can't assume there's no life on a planet that lacks phosphorus... and if something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, there's sure to be more surprises on Earth and beyond.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."
Read the article its entirety on NASA's website.  This certainly is an exciting day in astrobiology and for NASA.


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