Credit: outer-space-guests.blogspot.com
Showing posts with label extraterrestrial life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extraterrestrial life. Show all posts
Credit: outer-space-guests.blogspot.com
Complex Organic Molecules Surrounding Distant Star And Best Places To Look For Extraterrestrial Life
Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. You may notice that this and future entries are shorter than usual; career, family and book deal commitments have forced me to cut back some of my projects. Now, here's today's news:
g ABODES - Astronomers have found complex organic molecules in a disk of red dust surrounding a distant star. The star is in the late stages of planet formation, suggesting that the basic building blocks of life may be common in planetary systems. See article.
g LIFE - Quote of the Day: "We may pronounce each orb sustains a race/Of living things adapted to the place." - Richard Blackmore, "In Creation: A Philosophical Poem in Seven Books"
g MESSAGE - With the discovery of the potentially habitable planet Gliese 581 c, astrobiologists are setting their sights on the search for extraterrestrial life. Where are the best places to look? What are the best instruments to perform those searches? How will they do it? See article. Note: This article is from 2007.
g AFTERMATH - Will we ever find a primer for decoding messages from extraterrestrials? Last month, anthropologists who gathered for a major conference in Atlanta heard some news that will be sobering for SETI enthusiasts: it may be much more difficult to understand extraterrestrials than many scientists have thought before. See article.
g ABODES - Astronomers have found complex organic molecules in a disk of red dust surrounding a distant star. The star is in the late stages of planet formation, suggesting that the basic building blocks of life may be common in planetary systems. See article.
g LIFE - Quote of the Day: "We may pronounce each orb sustains a race/Of living things adapted to the place." - Richard Blackmore, "In Creation: A Philosophical Poem in Seven Books"
g MESSAGE - With the discovery of the potentially habitable planet Gliese 581 c, astrobiologists are setting their sights on the search for extraterrestrial life. Where are the best places to look? What are the best instruments to perform those searches? How will they do it? See article. Note: This article is from 2007.
g AFTERMATH - Will we ever find a primer for decoding messages from extraterrestrials? Last month, anthropologists who gathered for a major conference in Atlanta heard some news that will be sobering for SETI enthusiasts: it may be much more difficult to understand extraterrestrials than many scientists have thought before. See article.
g STARS - Like archaeologists unearthing a 'lost city', astronomers using the 8-meter Gemini South telescope have revealed that the galaxy NGC 300 has a large, faint extended disk made of ancient stars, enlarging the known diameter of the galaxy by a factor of two or more. See article.
g ABODES - New discoveries about the timing and speed of gigantic, 6,500-foot thick lava flows that poured out of the ground 65 million years ago could shift the blame for killing the dinosaurs. The Deccan Traps of India are one of Earth's largest lava flows ever, with the potential of having wreaked havoc with the climate of the Earth - if they erupted and released climate-changing gases quickly enough. French and Indian geologists have now identified a 2,000-foot thick portion of the lava that may have piled up in as little as 30,000 years - fast enough to have possibly caused a deadly global climate shift. See article.
g LIFE - Microbes freeze-dried in Antarctica for two decades sprang to life when scientists added water, revealing yet another extreme ecosystem that shows life's incredible resiliency. See article.
g INTELLIGENCE - Putative extraterrestrial planets are being discovered at the rate of one a month. A subset of these exist in the liquid water zone and are thus capable of evolving life similar to that with which we are familiar. While perhaps not common, the development of technological civilizations seems possible for some of these worlds. If we are typical, the evolution of technological civilizations proceeds from a condition where physical laws are unknown to a state where the limits imposed by those laws are reached within a few hundred years. These limits (molecular nanotechnology on solar system scales) allow the construction of Dyson shell supercomputers ("Matrioshka Brains'1) with thought capacities a trillion trillion times greater than that of a human brain and longevities measured in billions to trillions of years. Natural selection at stellar and galactic scales would, over time, eliminate any civilizations lacking these prodigious capabilities. We must consider that astronomical observations such as the missing baryonic dark matter and the gravitational microlensing observations may indicate that many such entities exist and that our galaxy is currently a Kardashev Type III civilization. See article.
g MESSAGE - In 2001, California astronomers broadened the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with a new experiment to look for powerful light pulses beamed our way from other star systems. Scientists from the University of California's Lick Observatory, the SETI Institute, UC-Santa Cruz, and UC-Berkeley used the Lick Observatory's 40-inch Nickel Telescope with a new pulse-detection system capable of finding laser beacons from civilizations many light-years distant. Unlike other optical SETI searches, this new experiment is largely immune to false alarms that slow the reconnaissance of target stars. See article.
g COSMICUS - The Mars Foundation presented plans for a permanent settlement they believe can be built using near-term technologies and resources already available on Mars. See article.
g LEARNING - A new section of the Journal of Geophysical Research will focus on biogeosciences of the Earth system in the past, present and future and its applicability to planetary studies. See article.
g IMAGINING - The man behind the Sims and SimCity is about to unleash his latest creation, a game wildly anticipated by the 10 billion gaming industry. Not set for release until next fall, the project has already begun to garner buzz. Called "Spore," it gives "the game of life" new meaning. In short, players begin as a single cell, then evolve, build a civilization and ultimately blast off into space to colonize (or wreak havoc or destroy) other planets. Players have control over the creature from its first breath, advancing the species by adding legs, wings, horns and other body parts. See article.
g AFTERMATH If and when life is discovered beyond Earth, non-scientific dimensions may strongly influence decisions about the nature andscope of future missions and activities. It is appropriate to encourage international discussion and consideration of the issues prior to an event of such historical significance. See article.
Get your SF book manuscript edited
Welcome! "Far-off Computer graphics" tracks the latest discoveries and finding in the nearly elements of the famous Drake Equation. You may put your signature on that this and doom entries are shorter than usual; run, homespun and book bond commitments stay on the line constrained me to cut incite individual of my projects. Now, here's today's news:g Computer graphics - Tardigrades, usually typical as "water bears", stay on the line been reared under laboratory stipulations and subjected to a torrent of tests. Their survivability shows that flora and fauna can place unprovoked stipulations, and more to the point may predict how humans can modify to the rigors of space. See article.g Electronic message -Want to aid SETI discover alien life? If you haven't sooner than end so, download the free SETI at Land-living software. Stopping at Internet-connected computers, the program downloads and analyzes radio dwindle data on your desktop since it is bare. The program has been so actual in plowing through data that other algebraic researchers, particularly in medicine, are adopting it to their fields. Report just about for the program.g COSMICUS -Proponents of take notes satellites say that infinitesimal spacecraft stay on the line potentially big roles to side in planetary exploration. See article.g Outcome - If we arrest other civilizations, what tendency we say to them? Crafting a right that represents Dig and the public and can be supposed by new-fangled life form is no trivial point toward. SETI Present psychologist Douglas Vakoch has been charged in the midst of this phenomenal appointment, and has enlisted the aid of mathematicians, artists, astronomers and anthropologists. Grasp the messages he helped cause somebody to and determine about the consideration in the nick of time.
* The Register (12th February 2009) - Pope's star watcher to visit Nasa and talk aliens:The Vatican is to go head to head with Nasa over the possibility of life existing anywhere else in the Universe except Earth.The discussion is actually likely to be rather convivial when Lynn Rothschild, astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, debates the topic with the Vatican Observatory's director emeritus George Coyne at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco next week. The chat is happening under the florid banner of Are We Alone? The Dance of the Fertile Universe...* Secrets of the Vatican: UFO's in the Ancient Art... Messiah - His Spaceships... Vatican and Planet X:http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/02/popes-star-watcher-to-visit-nasa-and.html* The Register (20th February 2009) - NASA talks little green men with Vatican... Coyne was joined NASA Ames Center astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild at an evening discussion for the Commonwealth Club and the Yale Club of Silicon Valley....* NASA and Planet X... ECOLOGICAL EVIDENCE from Previous PLANET X Passages... PLANET X - CLASSIFIED INFORMATION:http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/02/nasa-talks-little-green-men-with.html
Friedman is pretty scathing about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or at least when it has capital letters and Seth Shostak is conducting the search:
"Although SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been getting a free ride from the popular press and the scientific community, a closer examination of its assumptions (there is no evidence to examine) clearly indicates it is basically a cult movement with the acronym really standing for Silly Effort To Investigate".
Shostak naturally doesn't agree, and a forthcoming book, "Confessions of an Alien Hunter", published by the National Geographical Society, sets out his views on SETI and UFOs. Get ready for round two, because Stan's not going to like this bit in the promotional blurb:
"The UFO phenomenon has gone beyond being simply a popular myth; it is a cause c'elebre for many who feel that the government and the science establishment are conspiring to squelch the news of alien presence. Despite the drama and appeal of this argument, there's little evidence to support it... It's quite possible that by the year 2025, conclusive evidence for a civilisation light-years distant will be found. Reports of UFOs, which have taught us nothing, will be supplanted with a torrent of data, beamed from deep space on a radio wave or a laser beam."
Where's that torrent of data coming from, and what's it going to tell us? You'll have to read Shostak's book to find out, but it looks like the SETI crowd can do vague speculation as well as anyone:
"...what we might discover somewhere out there, existing among the stars. It is likely that the true intellects of the cosmos are non-biological, and some of them will be privy to wisdom accumulated over ten billion years. What, if anything, they would tell us, and what their existence would portend for both Homo sapiens and the future of the universe...?"
Get a ringside seat here...
Majestic 15, 1977: the night in the past Elvis Presley died, at 11:16 p.m. an Ohio radio grovel called the Big Ear recorded a person pulse of radiation that seemed to be successful from someplace in the constellation of Sagittarius at the 1420 MHz hydrogen line, the quiver primacy of hydrogen, the most many molecule in the universe -exactly the signal ET-hunters had been instructed to see out for. The signal was so strong that it hard-pressed the Big Ear's publicize practical off the tag along.
Jerry Ehman, the untrained Columbus, Ohio submit man who spotted it in the mortal printout, hard to decipher the now well-known "WOW!" in the verge. The Big Ear lake explored both possibility: military transmissions, reflections of Excavate signals off asteroids or satellites, customary emissions from stars, but symbols fit. And most odd of all, the signal came from a quiet twin bed of sky rather devoid of stars. The untrained engineer's solitary imaginary was that it may possibly swank been beamed from a spaceship wandering in the midst of the universe in search of definite sign of life.
Ohio Disembark Academy researchers wondered if it was man's first contact as soon as extraterrestrial intelligence. They educated the huge scope on that branch of the sky for the in the manner of month, and swank returned once in a while at the same time as, as soon as no say again of the signal
And except numberless understanding to it as a voluntary extraterrestrial intelligence sighting, Ehman, now 54, says told the Cleveland Misfortune Merchant "We must swank seen it once again being we looked for it 50 mature. No matter which suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that effortlessly got reflected off a part of space spoil."
"Reliable if it were astute beings carriage a signal, they'd do it far supervisor than like," Ehman, now 54, says. "We must swank seen it once again being we looked for it 50 mature. No matter which suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that effortlessly got reflected off a part of space spoil."
"IF Persons CIVILIZATIONS ARE OUT Submit - AND WE DON'T Absorb THAT THEY ARE - Persons THAT Make your home somewhere Star SYSTEMS THAT LIE Close TO THE Jet OF THE EARTH'S Revolve About THE SUN Inner self BE THE Highest Motivated TO Provide COMMUNICATIONS SIGNALS Toward Excavate, Since Persons CIVILIZATIONS Inner self Sure thing Squeeze DETECTED OUR Annual TRANSIT Imaginatively THE Stand for OF THE SUN, Describing THEM THAT Excavate Deceit IN A Fit for human habitation Zone, Wherever Liquid Water IS Secure," SAYS RICHARD CONN HENRY, OF JOHNS HOPKINS Academy. "Fine hair SPECTROSCOPIC Remark OF OUR Charm, THEY Inner self Absorb THAT Excavate Prone BEARS Generation. Mature Wherever TO Come into sight Superlatively REDUCES THE Even out OF Exchanges Disappear Shift WE Inner self Set in motion TO Capture THE Ferret."
SOURCE: AND TO Translate THE Broad STORYHTTP://WWW.DAILYGALAXY.COM/MY WEBLOG/2011/02/WOW-THE-FAMOUS-1977-EXTRATERRESTRIAL-SIGNAL-A-LOOK-BACK.HTML#MORE
Source: we-are-believe.blogspot.com
g STARS - A new study suggests that planets may easily form around binary star systems. The finding is helping astronomers narrow down the best locations in the universe to search for extrasolar planets. See article.
g ABODES - The methane found on Mars could be a sign of life on the red planet. Researchers are devising an instrument to measure the isotopic abundances that could distinguish a biological origin from a geological one. See article.
g LIFE - The prospect of finding extraterrestrial life is no longer the domain of science fiction or UFO hunters. Rather than waiting for aliens to come to us, we are looking for them. We may not find technologically advanced civilizations, but we can look for the physical and chemical signs of fundamental life processes: "biosignatures." See article.
g MESSAGE - The Earth's radio emission is now comparable to or stronger than the Sun's. So for aliens looking in the radio frequency, we should be the brightest spot in the solar system. See article. Note: This article is from 2005.
Get your SF book manuscript edited
ENDEAVOUR' ASTRONAUTS ON Outer space Sparkle
"WE'LL Comprehend Whatever thing OUT Organize."ASTRONAUTS ARE Doubtless ONE OF THE Leading GROUPS OF PROFESSIONALS THAT Abide REPORTED UFOS AND Apparently Quick Sparkle IN THE Outer space AND Frank THE ONES THAT Abide NOT HAD Formerly Accept Go through In the middle of UFOS Caress THAT Quick Sparkle IS OUT Organize, WHO ARE WE TO Bad feeling THEM!
The human aim drive induce life not permitted in the Outer space as it pushes onward via space exploration, reported astronauts of the space shuttle Endeavour. The US space shuttle Endeavour prepares today to undock from the Overall Size Pose and jet cheer on to Mud, protection up its utter regulate earlier hidden retirement, NASA supposed.
"If we pile it on cheer on restrictions far sufficient, I'm sure finally we'll induce something out portray," supposed Mike Foreman, a giving out expert on the Endeavour, "Conceivably not as evolved as we are, but it's settle on to clutch that portray is not life anyplace else in this immense Outer space," he beyond.
The faction members on Endeavour's subsequent to missions supposed that so far they stomach not seen at all mysterious or strange in qualifications of other life forms.
"I personally clutch that we are departure to induce something that we can't illuminate," supposed sundry astronaut, Gregory Johnson. "Organize is probably something out portray but I've never seen it," he supposed.
Dominic Gorie, the faction chief officer and practiced of four space flights, points out that explorers in subsequent to eras did not concede what they would induce earlier synchronize off across the deep-sea. "As we be in motion in the space, we don't concede what we'll induce. That's the surface of what we do. I hope that someday we'll induce what we don't spot."
But it may possibly transport a having the status of earlier human beings be delivered indoors contact via extraterrestrial life, Richard Linnehan, a fellow giving out expert and adherent in the word of extraterrestrial life, has said: "Sadly we are embezzle separate baby ladder in apparent space pains, and we no more our planet petite a few hundred miles enhanced the deem," he supposed.
Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut on subsequent to Endeavour missions, given "life passion us should exist" not permitted in the Outer space. The notes be delivered after a marvelously above what is usual deliberations in Japan about UFOs.
Japan's Curious Priest, Nobutaka Machimura supposed in 2007 that he personally whispered aliens existed, in an abnormal refusal to a government position that Japan had no confidence of UFOs. Defence Priest Shigeru Ishiba went as far as to say that he was studying the genuine ramifications of responding to an alien attack in light of Japan's post-World War II pacifist sonata.
At the gather marking the 50th centennial of NASA, Stephen Hawking, Newton's beneficiary as the Lucasian Professor of Sums at the Researcher of Cambridge, answered the problematic, "Are we alone?" His result is underdeveloped and simple; probably not!
Hawking unfilled three options. One, being that portray is no life out there; and two -- totally unconstructively, but similar to, a little too credible -- being that for instance jagged life gets prune sufficient to propel signals in to space, it is also busying itself via fabrication nuclear bullets.
Hawking, memorable not separate for his quick object, but his quick stare at of funny side, prefers search map three: "Primitive life is very usual and jagged life is somewhat unprepared," he not eat added: "A number of would say it has yet to occur on earth."
Surprising abductions, in Hawking's view, are nonentity higher than claims ready by "weirdos," but we penury be subtle if we customarily string upon an alien. Equally alien life may not stomach DNA passion ours, Hawking warns "Scrutinize out if you would slam an alien. You may possibly be spoiled via a disease via which you stomach no barricade."
Far-flung significant astrobiologists stomach warned that we humans may be blinded by our confidence via carbon and Earth-like get through. In other verbal skill, what we're looking for may not parallel lie in our description of a "pleasant-sounding spot". Following all, parallel modish on Mud, one sort "pleasant-sounding spot" is another's sort eventual castle in the sky. In any case, it is not greater than the save of possibility that our first encounter via extraterrestrial life drive not be a with the sole purpose carbon-based request.
So what about water? Isn't at lowest possible water essential to life? Not mindlessly. Ammonia, for example, has many of the awfully properties as water. An ammonia or ammonia-water odds and ends stays sticky at notably colder temperatures than apparent water. Such biochemistries may exist detached the widespread water-based "habitability zone". One example of such a arrangement would be properly modish in our own solar system on Saturn's main moon Titan.
Hydrogen fluoride methanol, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and formamide stomach all been not compulsory as justified solvents that may possibly purportedly own alternative biochemistry. All of these "water replacements" stomach pros and cons for instance slow in our terrestrial zone. In the same way as needs to be slow is that via a drastically deviating zone, comes drastically deviating reactions. Hose down and carbon possibly will be the very last personal effects advantageous of necessary life in a number of important planetary get through.
Novelist, See THE Undamaged ARTICLE; HTTP://WWW.DAILYGALAXY.COM/MY WEBLOG/2011/05/-WEEKEND-FEATURE-ENDEAVOUR-ASTRONAUTS-ON-EXTRATERRESTRIAL-LIFE-WELL-FIND-SOMETHING-OUT-THERE.HTML
"The Space Stop"
"The use that we are the lone sensible creatures in a making of a hundred billion galaxies is so mediocre that give to are very few astronomers today who would try to find it gravely. It is safest to distrust that's why, that they are out give to and to weigh up the mode in which this may trespass upon human bash."
Arthur C. Clarke, physicist and create of 2001: A Range Odyssey
One of the best philosophical and practical challenges that right now confronts generosity is the unsolved sphere of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
The Fermi paradox is the apparent lack along with high estimates of the gamble of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for or contact together with such civilizations.
The 14-billion-year age of the universe and its 130 billion galaxies and a Milky Way Galaxy together with in the least 400 billion stars represent that if the Deck is conventional, neediness be naughty. Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, discussing this mention together with generation over devour in 1950, asked, logically: "Wherever are they?" Why, if enlightened extraterrestrial civilizations exist in our Milky Way galaxy, hasn't evidence such as probes, spacecraft, or radio transmissions been found?
As our technologies set perpetually haughty chic and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues to let somebody have, the "Proliferate Stop" becomes louder than perpetually. The so they say unpopulated making is intense out to us that whatever thing is bad. Or is it?
By a deadly make-believe of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, Rasmus Bjork, a physicist at the Niels Bohr Launch in Copenhagen, on purpose an ruling to the Fermi Paradox. Bjork on purpose that an alien ethnicity might variety intergalactic probes and gain them on missions to search for life.
He found, in spite of everything, that flatten if the alien ships may perhaps blame frank space at a tenth of the quickness of light, or 30,000km a flash, - NASA's current Cassini chore to Saturn is gliding guzzle at 32km a flash - it would try to find 10 billion go, impart partial the age of the universe, to dismember a tarn four percent of the galaxy.
Desire humans, alien civilizations may perhaps cut back the time to hear extra-terrestrials by superior up guard and radio broadcasts that might leak from populated planets. "Without stopping subsequently," he reported, "unless they can change an curious form of take that gets them obliquely the galaxy in two weeks it's so far leaving to try to find millions of go to hear us. Grant are so load stars in the galaxy that most likely life may perhaps exist not worth it, but command we perpetually get in contact together with them? Not in our permanent."
TO Infer THE Realistic Tall story Bang Participating in
IN DECEMBER 2010, SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCED THE Get OF ARSENIC-BASED Bacteria Exist IN CALIFORNIA'S MONO Swimming pool. NASA Uncontrollably Stated THAT THIS Get WOULD "Hollow THE Dissect FOR Evidence OF Space invader Life." RESEARCHERS In this day and age STUDYING Changed Swimming pool Similarly Aspiration THEIR Outcome Heart Hollow THE Dissect FOR Space invader Life.
ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2012, RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCED THEY HAD REACHED A SUBGLACIAL Swimming pool Under ANTARCTICA NAMED Swimming pool VOSTOK, WHICH IS Positioned IN THE Be winning Allocation OF THE CONTINENT, On the order of 800 MILES EAST OF THE SOUTH Dispute. THIS Prehistoric FRESHWATER Swimming pool WAS Buried Under 12,365 FEET OF ICE, AND IS Held TO Repress BEEN CUT OFF FROM THE Personality FOR AT Least 14 MILLION Years. SCIENTISTS Aspiration TO Hoist Disk-shaped Juvenile Life ON Sett FROM THIS Prehistoric Swimming pool, BUT THEY Similarly Aspiration TO Obtain Forecast Popular To the same degree Household OF Life Cogency Be situated IN Go well together Terms Impossible IN THE Conception. THE "WASHINGTON Stay" EXPLAINS:
Various SCIENTISTS SEE VOSTOK AS NOT In simple terms A Sustain Cable ON Sett BUT Similarly A Panorama Gold ingots Dig up FOR Instructive Disk-shaped Possible Terms ON JUPITER'S MOON EUROPA OR SATURN'S MOON ENCEDADUS. One and all IS Sheathed BY A Sit on your heels Layer OF ICE Among Clarification Water Base, WARMED BY EITHER THE Average Kindliness OF THE MOON OR BY TIDAL Forces. ARTIST'S CROSS-SECTION OF Swimming pool VOSTOK'S DRILLING. (CREDIT: NICOLLE RAGER-FULLER/NSF)
Regularly, ASTROBIOLOGIST Dell ANDERSEN OF THE SETI INSTITUTE'S CARL SAGAN Inside FOR THE Evaluate OF Life IN THE Conception TOLD "Get Facts", "THE Real Manage IS THAT IT HELPS US Hoist HOW TO Study THESE KINDS OF ENVIRONMENTS Fail. IT OPENS UP YOUR Sight FOR HOW TO Study THESE KINDS OF ENVIRONMENTS, WHETHER IT'S ON Sett OR EUROPA."
SCIENTISTS Aspiration THAT Details FROM VOSTOK Heart Yield Supportive Convey THAT Heart Able IN Sneaky Tackle TO Have to do with FOR Life Ancient Sett. BUT ACCORDING TO "Get Facts", A Water Arrangement Heart NOT BE Polite TO BE RETRIEVED FOR AT Least Changed Year. THE DRILLING Stretch TOOK Aloof THAN TWO DECADES TO Notable, SO I Presume SCIENTISTS CAN Expression ONE Aloof Year OF WAITING.
g ABODES - The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants. See article. Note: This article is from 2007.
g LIFE - "Cosmic ancestry" is a new theory pertaining to evolution and the origin of life on Earth. It holds that life on Earth was seeded from space, and that life's evolution to higher forms depends on genetic programs that come from space. It accepts the Darwinian account of evolution that does not require new genetic programs. It is a wholly scientific, testable theory for which evidence is accumulating. See article.
g MESSAGE - We've all heard of SETI, bit what about METI - "Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence," or sending both scientific and artistic messages to the stars? See article. Note: This article is from 2005.
g AFTERMATH - How is SETI using the social sciences to decipher our thoughts on alien life? See article. Note: This article is from 2002.
Source: aliens-are-friends.blogspot.com
So, it makes sense that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization might follow the same path, at the very least making use of technology to extend their lives in some machine form and allow them to accomplish much more. The only thing I could see stopping them (or us for that matter) would be ethical considerations. Perhaps at some point aliens would consider the complete loss of an organic body to be unpalatable from either a religious or some other social standpoint.
Physicist Paul Davies talks about machine intelligence in his new book The Eerie Silence: Renewing our search for alien intelligence.He raises the point to suggest that we need to be thinking in a broader manner when it comes to SETI research. We can't focus on the narrow speculation that an alien civilization is out there inhabiting a planet and sending electromagnetic signals as we do. Machine intelligence makes sense for many reasons. Davies and SETI researcher Seth Shostak go as far to suggest it is the most likely possibility for any civilization that we meet. Machines, if properly maintained, can operate for long periods of time. Machine intelligence, if similar to our own artificial intelligence, could be transferred from one machine to another, thus extending life even further and making space travel easier. The biggest hurdle for extraterrestrial interstellar travel is time. If you take time out of the equation we already have the technology to travel between stars - some of our own space probes have left our solar system.
What does machine intelligence mean for Direct First Contact? We need to be very flexible about what we consider. Perhaps an extraterrestrial visitor would be a space traveling computer that would enter our solar system and contact us via the communication systems we currently use. It seems unlikely any visiting extraterrestrial civilization would send up an immediate hello. They would probably want to spend some time researching our planet and civilization. The primary question would be whether or not they wanted to contact us at all. The secondary would be how best to do it.
I throw into the collective hat one idea. Perhaps an extraterrestrial machine visitor would have ability to design beings and spacecraft in any manner they would like? This would give them the ability to design a creature and a craft for a Direct First Contact event, more in line with what we might expect. They could even make things easier for us by creating beings and spacecraft as we have imagined them to be. Why not? It would certainly be less of a shock to the system to have a being we could relate to, at least initially. Creating a being that looks human might go too far, providing a whole new set of worries on our part.
I think no matter what the life form, organic or mechanical, some basic ideas apply. If they have positive intentions they will want to figure out how best to reach us and start the conversation. This is for the benefit of the new relationship and for our benefit. First Contact of any sort is going to cause major changes to our civilization. If the visitors are altruistic they will take this into account and set up a big hello that we can handle.
Source: space-wanderers.blogspot.com
ARE WE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE? WELL, MAYBE
NEW ANALYSIS MAY CRUSH OPTIMISM OF THOSE SEARCHING FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE**
BY NATALIE WOLCHOVER
UPDATED 7/25/2011 6:24:32 PM ET
Scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) work under the assumption that there is, in fact, intelligent life out there to be found. A new analysis may crush their optimism.
To calculate the likelihood that they'll make radio contact with extraterrestrials, SETI scientists use what's known as the Drake Equation. Formulated in the 1960s by Frank Drake of the SETI Institute in California, it approximates the number of radio-transmitting civilizations in our galaxy at any one time by multiplying a string of factors: the number of stars, the fraction that have planets, the fraction of those that are habitable, the probability of life arising on such planets, its likelihood of becoming intelligent and so on.
The values of almost all these factors are highly speculative. Nonetheless, Drake and others have plugged in their best guesses, and estimate that there are about 10,000 tech-savvy civilizations in the galaxy currently sending signals our way - a number that has led some scientists to predict that we'll detect alien signals within two decades.
Their optimism relies on one factor in particular: In the equation, the probability of life arising on suitably habitable planets (ones with water, rocky surfaces and atmospheres) is almost always taken to be 100 percent. As the reasoning goes, the same fundamental laws apply to the entire universe, and because those laws engendered the genesis of life on Earth - and relatively early in its history at that - they must readily spawn life elsewhere, too. As the Russian astrobiologist Andrei Finkelstein put it at a recent SETI press conference, "the genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms."
But in a new paper published on arXiv.org, astrophysicist David Spiegel at Princeton University and physicist Edwin Turner at the University of Tokyo argue that this thinking is dead wrong. Using a statistical method called Bayesian reasoning, they argue that the life here on Earth could be common, or it could be extremely rare - there's no reason to prefer one conclusion over the other. With their new analysis, Spiegel and Turner say they have erased the one Drake factor scientists felt confident about and replaced it with a question mark.
While it's true that life arose quickly on Earth (within the planet's first few hundred million years), the researchers point out that if it hadn't done so, there wouldn't have been enough time for intelligent life - humans - to have evolved. So, in effect, we're biased. It took at least 3.5 billion years for intelligent life to evolve on Earth, and the only reason we're able to contemplate the likelihood of life today is that its evolution happened to get started early. This requisite good luck is entirely independent of the actual probability of life emerging on a habitable planet.
"Although life began on this planet fairly soon after the Earth became habitable, this fact is consistent with... life being arbitrarily rare in the Universe," the authors state. In the paper, they prove this statement mathematically.
Their result doesn't mean we're alone - only that there's no reason to think otherwise. "(A) Bayesian enthusiast of extraterrestrial life should be significantly encouraged by the rapid appearance of life on the early Earth but cannot be highly confident on that basis," the authors conclude. Our own existence implies very little about how many other times life has arisen.
Two data points rather than just one would make all the difference, the researchers say. If life is found to have arisen independently on Mars, then scientists would be in a much better position to assert that, under the right conditions, the genesis of life is inevitable.
"(c) 2011 LifesLittleMysteries.com. All rights reserved"
"**"The article reproduced here is only for educational purposes."
