Like or not we are going have to come to grips that we are not alone in this universe.
<font size="5"><center>
Scientist: Alien life could already be on Earth</font size><font size="4">
Variant life forms — most likely tiny
microbes — could be under our noses</font size></center>
Paul Davies of Arizona State University poses for the
Associated Press prior to his lecture in the Royal Society
in central London, Tuesday Jan. 26, 2010. LEFTERIS
PITARAKIS / AP
MSNBC via Associated Press
By Raphael G. Satter
Tues., Jan. 26, 2010
LONDON - For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us — or maybe even in us.
Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times.
Davies said the variant life forms — most likely tiny microbes — could still be hanging around "right under our noses — or even in our noses."
"How do we know all life on Earth descended from a single origin?" he told a conference at London's prestigious Royal Society, which serves as Britain's academy of sciences. "We've just scratched the surface of the microbial world."
The idea that alien micro-organisms could be hiding out here on Earth has been discussed for a while, according to Jill Tarter, the director of the U.S. SETI project, which listens for signals from civilizations based around distant stars.
She said several of the scientists involved in the project were interested in pursuing the notion, which Davies earlier laid out in a 2007 article published in Scientific American in which he asked: "Are aliens among us?"
So far, there's no answer. And ever finding one would be fraught with difficulties, as Davies himself acknowledged.
Unusual organisms abound — including chemical-eating bacteria which hide out deep in the ocean and organisms that thrive in boiling-hot springs — but that doesn't mean they're different life forms entirely.
"How weird do they have to be suggest a second genesis as opposed to just an obscure branch of the family tree?" he said. Davies suggested that the only way to prove an organism wasn't "life as we know it" was if it were built using exotic elements which no other form of life had.
Such organisms have yet to be found. Davies also noted that less than 1 percent of all the world's bacteria had been comprehensively studied — leaving plenty of time to find unusual organisms.
"You cannot tell just by looking that a microbe has some radically different inner chemistry," he said.
Davies' call for alien-hunting scientists to look to their own backyards came as one of the pioneers of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence told the conference the job of finding proof of alien life in outer space may be more difficult than previously thought.
Frank Drake, who conducted the first organized search for alien radio signals in 1960, said that the Earth — which used to pump out a loud mess of radio waves, television signals and other radiation — has been steadily getting quieter as its communications technology improves.
Drake cited the switch from analogue to digital television — which uses a far weaker signal — and the fact that much more communications traffic is now relayed by satellites and fiber optic cables, limiting its leakage into outer space.
"Very soon we will become very undetectable," he said. If similar processes were taking place in other technologically advanced societies, then the search for them "will be much more difficult than we imagined."
But Drake said scientists at SETI were excited by the possibility of using lasers to send super-bright flashes of light into space for a tiny fraction of a second. The flashes could theoretically be seen up by an advanced civilization up to 1,000 light years away, and Tarter said infrared versions of the devices could possibly send beams even further.
But Drake noted that the interstellar equivalent to turning a flashlight on and off only works if a prospective alien civilization wants to get in touch to begin with.
"For this to work ... There has to be altruism in the universe," he said.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35083220/ns/technology_and_science-science/?GT1=43001
Scientist: Alien life could already be on Earth</font size><font size="4">
Variant life forms — most likely tiny
microbes — could be under our noses</font size></center>
Paul Davies of Arizona State University poses for the
Associated Press prior to his lecture in the Royal Society
in central London, Tuesday Jan. 26, 2010. LEFTERIS
PITARAKIS / AP
MSNBC via Associated Press
By Raphael G. Satter
Tues., Jan. 26, 2010
LONDON - For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us — or maybe even in us.
Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times.
Davies said the variant life forms — most likely tiny microbes — could still be hanging around "right under our noses — or even in our noses."
"How do we know all life on Earth descended from a single origin?" he told a conference at London's prestigious Royal Society, which serves as Britain's academy of sciences. "We've just scratched the surface of the microbial world."
The idea that alien micro-organisms could be hiding out here on Earth has been discussed for a while, according to Jill Tarter, the director of the U.S. SETI project, which listens for signals from civilizations based around distant stars.
She said several of the scientists involved in the project were interested in pursuing the notion, which Davies earlier laid out in a 2007 article published in Scientific American in which he asked: "Are aliens among us?"
So far, there's no answer. And ever finding one would be fraught with difficulties, as Davies himself acknowledged.
Unusual organisms abound — including chemical-eating bacteria which hide out deep in the ocean and organisms that thrive in boiling-hot springs — but that doesn't mean they're different life forms entirely.
"How weird do they have to be suggest a second genesis as opposed to just an obscure branch of the family tree?" he said. Davies suggested that the only way to prove an organism wasn't "life as we know it" was if it were built using exotic elements which no other form of life had.
Such organisms have yet to be found. Davies also noted that less than 1 percent of all the world's bacteria had been comprehensively studied — leaving plenty of time to find unusual organisms.
"You cannot tell just by looking that a microbe has some radically different inner chemistry," he said.
Davies' call for alien-hunting scientists to look to their own backyards came as one of the pioneers of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence told the conference the job of finding proof of alien life in outer space may be more difficult than previously thought.
Frank Drake, who conducted the first organized search for alien radio signals in 1960, said that the Earth — which used to pump out a loud mess of radio waves, television signals and other radiation — has been steadily getting quieter as its communications technology improves.
Drake cited the switch from analogue to digital television — which uses a far weaker signal — and the fact that much more communications traffic is now relayed by satellites and fiber optic cables, limiting its leakage into outer space.
"Very soon we will become very undetectable," he said. If similar processes were taking place in other technologically advanced societies, then the search for them "will be much more difficult than we imagined."
But Drake said scientists at SETI were excited by the possibility of using lasers to send super-bright flashes of light into space for a tiny fraction of a second. The flashes could theoretically be seen up by an advanced civilization up to 1,000 light years away, and Tarter said infrared versions of the devices could possibly send beams even further.
But Drake noted that the interstellar equivalent to turning a flashlight on and off only works if a prospective alien civilization wants to get in touch to begin with.
"For this to work ... There has to be altruism in the universe," he said.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35083220/ns/technology_and_science-science/?GT1=43001
<font size="7"><center>
8</font size><font size="5"> UFO cases that generate buzz</font size><font size="4">
Investigators see references to rockets
and aliens going back 6,000 years</font size></center>
<font size="3">
UFO investigators see references to rocket ships, aliens and astronauts that go back to the days when humans first put chisel and paintbrush to rock. More than 6,000 years later, objects that are unidentified - at least at first - continue to appear in the skies and generate buzz.
</font size>
<font size="6">
1.
</font size>
<font size="3">Take, for example, the blazing pinwheel that appeared in Norwegian skies in December 2009, shown here. The sight sparked speculation that aliens were sending earthlings a signal. Other researchers speculated – and the Russian military later confirmed – that a missile failed.
NBC space analyst James Oberg says the incident fits into a long tradition of UFO sightings over Russia that are caused by secret military and space activities. Even when there's a prosaic explanation for the sightings, they can provide useful information about covert activities.
<font size="6">
2.
</font size>
<font size="3">1897: Did an airship crash in Aurora, Texas?
In the 1800s, sightings of UFOs, called airships, streamed in from across the United States, according to Mark Easter, a field researcher and international director of public relations for the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON. Many of these sightings were explained as hot-air balloons, which were becoming a fad then. A reported UFO crash in Aurora, Texas, however, remains inadequately explained, according to a report by the group.
Among the evidence recovered during MUFON's investigation is an unusual piece of metal with properties consistent with a crash landing, shown here in a black-and-white view from the report. What's more, remains of the alien pilot are said to be interred at the local cemetery. Requests to excavate the grave, however, have been denied. Why?
A local historian concluded that the sighting was a hoax meant to drum up interest in the town at a time it was being bypassed by the railroad. Excavating the grave might expose the hoax. Oberg, however, says that cases such as the Aurora crash are immune to disproof – too much time has passed to rely on stories that could would have mutated and been embellished over the years, and there's no remaining physical evidence to study.
</font size>
<font size="6">
3.
</font size>
1947: The 'flying saucer' sighting
On June 24, 1947, former World War II pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state when he spotted a chain of nine crescent-shaped objects that he said skipped across the air like saucers. Newspaper reporters, erroneously, called them "flying saucers."
"The phrase 'flying saucers,' which are assumed to be round like a saucer, spread so quickly that people began seeing not what he saw but what the reporters had misdescribed," Oberg said. The technical description of whatever Arnold saw has rarely been reported again, the space analyst added.
Other researchers, according to MUFON's Easter, put the sighting in the historical context of the post-World War II atomic weapons program. This activity, he notes, could in theory attract extraterrestrial attention. Plutonium for the bombs was processed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation east of Mount Rainier.
"If there's some surveillance going on, these things, whatever they were, it just makes sense they would be hugging the east side of that mountain when [Arnold] saw them," Easter said. Doing so, he noted, would have helped shield them from detection by radar.
</font size>
<font size="6">
4.
</font size>
<font size="3">1947: The Roswell incident
Did UFOs crash-land in the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947? According to the official line from the U.S. military, the answer is no. At the time, fragments of strange debris collected by a local rancher were explained away as an experimental weather balloon gone awry. In 1994, the military changed its story, saying that the balloon was actually part of Project Mogul, a covert operation to monitor Soviet nuclear blasts.
Oberg is satisfied with that explanation, but some members of the UFO community view the military's explanation as a cover-up of another kind. MUFON's Easter, for example, lends credence to a theory that the military shot down two spaceships that were checking out nuclear weapons being developed and tested in New Mexico. One crash site was cleaned up before it leaked to the press; the other became known as the Roswell Incident.
Amid the buzz, one thing is certain: The mystery has generated income for merchants in Roswell who play up the incident, including the unquestionably fake alien (see above) on display at a local museum.
</font size>
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34940931/ns/technology_and_science-space
8</font size><font size="5"> UFO cases that generate buzz</font size><font size="4">
Investigators see references to rockets
and aliens going back 6,000 years</font size></center>
<font size="3">
UFO investigators see references to rocket ships, aliens and astronauts that go back to the days when humans first put chisel and paintbrush to rock. More than 6,000 years later, objects that are unidentified - at least at first - continue to appear in the skies and generate buzz.
</font size>
<font size="6">
1.
</font size>
<font size="3">Take, for example, the blazing pinwheel that appeared in Norwegian skies in December 2009, shown here. The sight sparked speculation that aliens were sending earthlings a signal. Other researchers speculated – and the Russian military later confirmed – that a missile failed.
NBC space analyst James Oberg says the incident fits into a long tradition of UFO sightings over Russia that are caused by secret military and space activities. Even when there's a prosaic explanation for the sightings, they can provide useful information about covert activities.
<font size="6">
2.
</font size>
<font size="3">1897: Did an airship crash in Aurora, Texas?
In the 1800s, sightings of UFOs, called airships, streamed in from across the United States, according to Mark Easter, a field researcher and international director of public relations for the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON. Many of these sightings were explained as hot-air balloons, which were becoming a fad then. A reported UFO crash in Aurora, Texas, however, remains inadequately explained, according to a report by the group.
Among the evidence recovered during MUFON's investigation is an unusual piece of metal with properties consistent with a crash landing, shown here in a black-and-white view from the report. What's more, remains of the alien pilot are said to be interred at the local cemetery. Requests to excavate the grave, however, have been denied. Why?
A local historian concluded that the sighting was a hoax meant to drum up interest in the town at a time it was being bypassed by the railroad. Excavating the grave might expose the hoax. Oberg, however, says that cases such as the Aurora crash are immune to disproof – too much time has passed to rely on stories that could would have mutated and been embellished over the years, and there's no remaining physical evidence to study.
</font size>
<font size="6">
3.
</font size>
1947: The 'flying saucer' sighting
On June 24, 1947, former World War II pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state when he spotted a chain of nine crescent-shaped objects that he said skipped across the air like saucers. Newspaper reporters, erroneously, called them "flying saucers."
"The phrase 'flying saucers,' which are assumed to be round like a saucer, spread so quickly that people began seeing not what he saw but what the reporters had misdescribed," Oberg said. The technical description of whatever Arnold saw has rarely been reported again, the space analyst added.
Other researchers, according to MUFON's Easter, put the sighting in the historical context of the post-World War II atomic weapons program. This activity, he notes, could in theory attract extraterrestrial attention. Plutonium for the bombs was processed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation east of Mount Rainier.
"If there's some surveillance going on, these things, whatever they were, it just makes sense they would be hugging the east side of that mountain when [Arnold] saw them," Easter said. Doing so, he noted, would have helped shield them from detection by radar.
</font size>
<font size="6">
4.
</font size>
<font size="3">1947: The Roswell incident
Did UFOs crash-land in the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947? According to the official line from the U.S. military, the answer is no. At the time, fragments of strange debris collected by a local rancher were explained away as an experimental weather balloon gone awry. In 1994, the military changed its story, saying that the balloon was actually part of Project Mogul, a covert operation to monitor Soviet nuclear blasts.
Oberg is satisfied with that explanation, but some members of the UFO community view the military's explanation as a cover-up of another kind. MUFON's Easter, for example, lends credence to a theory that the military shot down two spaceships that were checking out nuclear weapons being developed and tested in New Mexico. One crash site was cleaned up before it leaked to the press; the other became known as the Roswell Incident.
Amid the buzz, one thing is certain: The mystery has generated income for merchants in Roswell who play up the incident, including the unquestionably fake alien (see above) on display at a local museum.
</font size>
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34940931/ns/technology_and_science-space
<font size="6">
5.
</font size>
Gail Shumway / Getty Images
<font size="3">1952: UFO buzz hits Washington
By 1952, according to MUFON's Easter, UFO fever was at such a high pitch that sighting reports started to clog telephone networks. The buzz hit a crescendo during two consecutive July weekends with a series of visual and radar sightings over Washington, D.C.
The military explained the wave of sightings on a temperature inversion, which can cause interference with light and radar. Skeptical members of the UFO community, however, see the time frame as the beginnings of a government-orchestrated mission to squelch the UFO phenomenon by making fun of the people who reported the sightings.
Oberg says the government was concerned about the flood of calls – it was interfering with communications. Security experts reasoned that enemies could purposely spread UFO panic to tie up lines of communication as they dropped bombs on U.S. cities. Instead of debunking the UFOs – which was an option studied – the military shored up its communications systems.
</font size>
<font size="6">
6.
</font size>
Robin Loznak / AP
<font size="3">1967: Malmstrom missile site shuts down
Some UFO researchers say an inadequately explained sighting at a nuclear missile launch site near Malstrom Air Force Base, shown here, in March 1967 bolsters the case for a connection between nuclear weapons development and UFOs.
According to a MUFON investigation into the matter, retired Air Force Capt. Robert Salas, who was stationed at the site, said sightings of UFOs with pulsating red lights were followed by a rapid shutdown of the missiles' targeting system. The military admits the shutdown occurred, but its own investigation concluded that the UFO sighting was a rumor.
Oberg says he'd like to know more about the events surrounding this incident. He notes that the tale sounds similar to a case in Russia in which officials used UFOs as an excuse to explain why nuclear equipment was faulty.
</font size>
<font size="6">
7.
</font size>
BJ Booth / UFO Casebook
<font size="3">1980: A diamond in the sky
In December 1980, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Vickie's grandson Colby were looking for a bingo game in Texas when a diamond-shaped UFO appeared in the sky. Moments later, the UFO seemed to be escorted away by a fleet of helicopters – some similar to a type used by the U.S. military, according to various accounts of the UFO incident known as the Cash-Landrum Case.
After the incident, Cash and the Landrums reported symptoms such as nausea and burns that some experts believe to be radiation poisoning. Cash spent more than two weeks in the hospital. The trio sued the U.S. government for compensation, but the case was dismissed because a government connection to the incident could not be shown and the medical condition of the alleged victims prior to the incident remained sealed under privacy protection laws.
"That was an interesting case in the sense that it was one of these outliers that have a bright light being carried away by helicopters low across the skies," Oberg says. "That's really bizarre and as far as we know, that, if accurately reported, was the only case where that ever really happened."
</font size>
<font size="6">
8.
</font size>
<font size="3">2008: Did fighter jets chase Texas UFOs?
Dozens of people in rural Texas near Stephenville reported seeing a large object with bright lights flying low and fast in the skies on Jan. 8, 2008, apparently chased by F-16 fighter jets. At first, the Air Force denied they had jets in the area at the time. Two weeks later, the military admitted that there were indeed jets in the area, and suggested that the residents might have seen one of the jets as a UFO.
The admission satisfies some people as a reasonable explanation. Many such sightings turn out to be military operations. Others, however, remain unconvinced that the larger object has been adequately explained.
Oberg says even he has been fooled by jet overflights. When the line of jets passes overhead, the lights of the leading jet can be seen long before any sound arrives from it. By the time the second and third jets fly over, the roar is evident and it looks as if the jets are chasing the "silent" light out front. "I was shocked by just how gripping, how persuasive, the illusion was that the roaring jets were following a silent light in front," he says.
</font size>
5.
</font size>
Gail Shumway / Getty Images
<font size="3">1952: UFO buzz hits Washington
By 1952, according to MUFON's Easter, UFO fever was at such a high pitch that sighting reports started to clog telephone networks. The buzz hit a crescendo during two consecutive July weekends with a series of visual and radar sightings over Washington, D.C.
The military explained the wave of sightings on a temperature inversion, which can cause interference with light and radar. Skeptical members of the UFO community, however, see the time frame as the beginnings of a government-orchestrated mission to squelch the UFO phenomenon by making fun of the people who reported the sightings.
Oberg says the government was concerned about the flood of calls – it was interfering with communications. Security experts reasoned that enemies could purposely spread UFO panic to tie up lines of communication as they dropped bombs on U.S. cities. Instead of debunking the UFOs – which was an option studied – the military shored up its communications systems.
</font size>
<font size="6">
6.
</font size>
Robin Loznak / AP
<font size="3">1967: Malmstrom missile site shuts down
Some UFO researchers say an inadequately explained sighting at a nuclear missile launch site near Malstrom Air Force Base, shown here, in March 1967 bolsters the case for a connection between nuclear weapons development and UFOs.
According to a MUFON investigation into the matter, retired Air Force Capt. Robert Salas, who was stationed at the site, said sightings of UFOs with pulsating red lights were followed by a rapid shutdown of the missiles' targeting system. The military admits the shutdown occurred, but its own investigation concluded that the UFO sighting was a rumor.
Oberg says he'd like to know more about the events surrounding this incident. He notes that the tale sounds similar to a case in Russia in which officials used UFOs as an excuse to explain why nuclear equipment was faulty.
</font size>
<font size="6">
7.
</font size>
BJ Booth / UFO Casebook
<font size="3">1980: A diamond in the sky
In December 1980, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Vickie's grandson Colby were looking for a bingo game in Texas when a diamond-shaped UFO appeared in the sky. Moments later, the UFO seemed to be escorted away by a fleet of helicopters – some similar to a type used by the U.S. military, according to various accounts of the UFO incident known as the Cash-Landrum Case.
After the incident, Cash and the Landrums reported symptoms such as nausea and burns that some experts believe to be radiation poisoning. Cash spent more than two weeks in the hospital. The trio sued the U.S. government for compensation, but the case was dismissed because a government connection to the incident could not be shown and the medical condition of the alleged victims prior to the incident remained sealed under privacy protection laws.
"That was an interesting case in the sense that it was one of these outliers that have a bright light being carried away by helicopters low across the skies," Oberg says. "That's really bizarre and as far as we know, that, if accurately reported, was the only case where that ever really happened."
</font size>
<font size="6">
8.
</font size>
<font size="3">2008: Did fighter jets chase Texas UFOs?
Dozens of people in rural Texas near Stephenville reported seeing a large object with bright lights flying low and fast in the skies on Jan. 8, 2008, apparently chased by F-16 fighter jets. At first, the Air Force denied they had jets in the area at the time. Two weeks later, the military admitted that there were indeed jets in the area, and suggested that the residents might have seen one of the jets as a UFO.
The admission satisfies some people as a reasonable explanation. Many such sightings turn out to be military operations. Others, however, remain unconvinced that the larger object has been adequately explained.
Oberg says even he has been fooled by jet overflights. When the line of jets passes overhead, the lights of the leading jet can be seen long before any sound arrives from it. By the time the second and third jets fly over, the roar is evident and it looks as if the jets are chasing the "silent" light out front. "I was shocked by just how gripping, how persuasive, the illusion was that the roaring jets were following a silent light in front," he says.
</font size>
woah@info
<font size="5"><center>
The Hopeful Search for
Extraterrestrial Life</font size></center>
The Atlantic
Jun 4 2010
Fifty years ago, the search for intelligent life in the universe began in earnest. That year, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory named Frank Drake began scanning the stars with a radio telescope, hoping to find evidence of a civilization we could communicate with. This was the first iteration of the famed SETI program, and it was the beginning of "the most ambitious, and potentially the most significant, research project in history," writes Paul Davies in The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence. <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">And thus far it's been spectacularly unsuccessful.</span> Despite a half century of intensive effort, not a single extraterrestrial bacterium has been definitively identified, let alone an intelligent species.
Yet these are buoyant times among alien enthusiasts--and not just the usual cranks. A recent poll by Scripps Howard and Ohio University found that 56 percent of American adults think intelligent life likely exists elsewhere in the universe. Mainstream media coverage of UFOs and other extraterrestrial happenings has skyrocketed in the last 10 years. And no less an authority than Stephen Hawking asserted this spring that he believes intelligent species almost certainly exist (and should probably be avoided). But optimism is also surging among serious scientists involved in the quest for extraterrestrial life, a small sampling of whom sat on a panel convened by the World Science Festival last night in Brooklyn.
Their common theme was that relentless technological advances have both deepened our appreciation for the number of potentially habitable worlds and extended our ability to investigate them. Steven Squyers, the principal investigator on NASA's Mars rover missions, revealed that a new analysis of rocks studied by the Spirit rover found high concentrations of carbonate[/b]p/color]--suggesting not only that water likely existed on ancient Mars, but that it had low-enough acidity to support life. "Of all the discoveries rovers have made over the six and a half years they've been on Mars, this one points toward more life-friendly conditions than anything else," Squyres said. "This is strange stuff, not like anything we've seen before." He added that the possibility of life on Jupiter's moon Europa, which is coated by an ice sheet that scientists suspect covers a liquid ocean, also seemed increasingly likely. Finding life in either place--thus proving that organisms emerged independently more than once in a single solar system--would suggest that it was propagating on a vast scale across the universe.
Michael Russell, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argued that according to his theory of how life began on earth--[url="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0130_030130_originslife.html"]summarized here--it was a virtual certainty elsewhere in the universe. On wet, rocky planets "life will automatically onset," he said.
And the universe outside our solar system seems to abound with potential homes. David Charbonneau, a professor of astronomy at Harvard, pulsed with optimism as he described NASA's Kepler mission, which launched last year and will examine 100,000 stars in a search for orbiting planets. Because the technology for detecting these so-called exoplanets has improved dramatically, this is "really a remarkable time to be alive," he said. "If those planets are out there, we should be finding them pretty soon." And if any seem habitable, scientists will study the chemical content of their atmospheres for the hallmarks of biology.
Of course, for 50 years believers in alien life have subsisted on nothing but optimism. And Jill Tarter--the SETI astronomer who inspired the character played by Jodi Foster in Contact--suggested a measure of caution. She analogized SETI's search for intelligence over the years to examining a single glass of water from the earth's oceans in a search for fish. But as SETI's technology improves--particularly as the ambitious Allen Telescope Array comes online--she believed that making contact with alien civilizations was increasingly feasible, and that humankind should have a clear plan in place for how to respond to them. "Computing power is getting exponentially better," she said. "Frank Drake in 1960 conducted the first radio search looking at two stars with a spectrometer that had one channel. Today I look at multiple stars with spectrometers that have hundreds of millions of channels. The tools I use today are 14 orders of magnitude more comprehensive than what we started with 50 years ago. And 50 years in the future--unimaginable."
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/...peful-search-for-extraterrestrial-life/57708/
The Hopeful Search for
Extraterrestrial Life</font size></center>
The Atlantic
Jun 4 2010
Fifty years ago, the search for intelligent life in the universe began in earnest. That year, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory named Frank Drake began scanning the stars with a radio telescope, hoping to find evidence of a civilization we could communicate with. This was the first iteration of the famed SETI program, and it was the beginning of "the most ambitious, and potentially the most significant, research project in history," writes Paul Davies in The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence. <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">And thus far it's been spectacularly unsuccessful.</span> Despite a half century of intensive effort, not a single extraterrestrial bacterium has been definitively identified, let alone an intelligent species.
Yet these are buoyant times among alien enthusiasts--and not just the usual cranks. A recent poll by Scripps Howard and Ohio University found that 56 percent of American adults think intelligent life likely exists elsewhere in the universe. Mainstream media coverage of UFOs and other extraterrestrial happenings has skyrocketed in the last 10 years. And no less an authority than Stephen Hawking asserted this spring that he believes intelligent species almost certainly exist (and should probably be avoided). But optimism is also surging among serious scientists involved in the quest for extraterrestrial life, a small sampling of whom sat on a panel convened by the World Science Festival last night in Brooklyn.
Their common theme was that relentless technological advances have both deepened our appreciation for the number of potentially habitable worlds and extended our ability to investigate them. Steven Squyers, the principal investigator on NASA's Mars rover missions, revealed that a new analysis of rocks studied by the Spirit rover found high concentrations of carbonate[/b]p/color]--suggesting not only that water likely existed on ancient Mars, but that it had low-enough acidity to support life. "Of all the discoveries rovers have made over the six and a half years they've been on Mars, this one points toward more life-friendly conditions than anything else," Squyres said. "This is strange stuff, not like anything we've seen before." He added that the possibility of life on Jupiter's moon Europa, which is coated by an ice sheet that scientists suspect covers a liquid ocean, also seemed increasingly likely. Finding life in either place--thus proving that organisms emerged independently more than once in a single solar system--would suggest that it was propagating on a vast scale across the universe.
Michael Russell, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argued that according to his theory of how life began on earth--[url="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0130_030130_originslife.html"]summarized here--it was a virtual certainty elsewhere in the universe. On wet, rocky planets "life will automatically onset," he said.
And the universe outside our solar system seems to abound with potential homes. David Charbonneau, a professor of astronomy at Harvard, pulsed with optimism as he described NASA's Kepler mission, which launched last year and will examine 100,000 stars in a search for orbiting planets. Because the technology for detecting these so-called exoplanets has improved dramatically, this is "really a remarkable time to be alive," he said. "If those planets are out there, we should be finding them pretty soon." And if any seem habitable, scientists will study the chemical content of their atmospheres for the hallmarks of biology.
Of course, for 50 years believers in alien life have subsisted on nothing but optimism. And Jill Tarter--the SETI astronomer who inspired the character played by Jodi Foster in Contact--suggested a measure of caution. She analogized SETI's search for intelligence over the years to examining a single glass of water from the earth's oceans in a search for fish. But as SETI's technology improves--particularly as the ambitious Allen Telescope Array comes online--she believed that making contact with alien civilizations was increasingly feasible, and that humankind should have a clear plan in place for how to respond to them. "Computing power is getting exponentially better," she said. "Frank Drake in 1960 conducted the first radio search looking at two stars with a spectrometer that had one channel. Today I look at multiple stars with spectrometers that have hundreds of millions of channels. The tools I use today are 14 orders of magnitude more comprehensive than what we started with 50 years ago. And 50 years in the future--unimaginable."
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/...peful-search-for-extraterrestrial-life/57708/
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