ARE WE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE?

THE SEARCH FOR EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE

Are we the only intelligent beings in the Cosmos?

Hope is why we buy lottery tickets, bet on horses, believe in life after death and search for intelligent life in the Cosmos. The results so far have been disappointing. Below are some of the reasons why we keep scanning the stars with radios and telescopes and the difficulties scientists are up against.

The search for extraterrestrial life has been done primarily with Radio Telescopes to detect signals emitted by cosmic sources such as stars and planets. The SETI Institute now uses the Allen Telescope to search for signs of life in other parts of the universe. The Allen Telescope is the first radio telescope to be designed speifically for SETI searches. Until its construction, all radio SETI efforts were dependent on the intermittent use of antennas built for conventional astronomical observations. Unlike earth-based telescopes, the Allen Telescope can focus on individual star systems to determine if planets are orbiting the star.

EARTH-BASED RADIO TELESCOPE SPACE-BASED JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE EARTH-BASED ALLEN TELESCOPE

DRAKE & HIS FAMOUS FORMULA

The Drake Equation estimates N, the number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable. The value of N has been debated extensively, but Drake himself currently suggests that N = 10,000 based on his guess that new transmitting societies are produced at intervals of one per year and enjoy an average lifetime of 10,000 years.

R_* = rate (number per year) of formation of stars suitable to develop intelligent life.
f_p = fraction of those stars with planetary systems.
n_e = number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.
f_l = fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.
f_i = fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.
f_c = fraction of civilizations whose technology produces detectable signs of their existence.
L = average length of time such civilizations produce such signs (years).

EXO PLANETS & ASTROBIOLOGY

REALITY CHECK - SEARCH (SETI) & CONTACT (CETI)

Drake's formula plays a role in the search for planets like Earth that would support life as we know it. Researchers have discovered thousands of exo-planets but only a few have satisfied the criteria of Astrobiology. But Drake's formula doesn't answer the questions that the search for extra-terrestrial life has raised. What is life? What is intelligence? What is sentience? If we encounter life on another planet, will we be able to recognize it? Will we be able to distinguish life from non-life?

The theory of spontaneous generation held sway into the nineteenth century. Some living things were known to be alive—humans, dogs, horses, seeds. But sometimes life just happened. When meat sat out too long, maggots emerged. A rotting log sprouted mushrooms... life from not-life! But the same year that Darwin published the Origin of Species (1859) Louis Pasteur put spontaneous generation to bed. So we are now better equipped to detect life from non-life. We are, however, stuck with the idea that detection of living things rests on the chemistry we know from life on Earth. So life with a different cellular machinery would probably slip through our net. A better approach would be that we search for life by its complexity, not by its chemistry. Meanwhile, it's interesting to note the current criteria for exoplanets.

The exoplanet orbits its host star (sun) at a distance that keeps temperatures that are neither too hot nor too cold for life, provide enough energy to sustain metabolism, and to allow water to be liquid on large portions of its surface.
The exoplanet should spin on its axis relatively quickly so the temperature differential between day and night is not excessive.
The exoplanet has extended regions of liquid water on its surface to provide conditions favorable for the assembly of complex organic molecules.
The exoplanet has survived at least a few hundred million years to acquire enough mass (gravity) to hold an atmosphere.
The exoplanet has survived long enough for living things to have evolved into sentient, intelligent beings with a technology capable of sending and receiving radio signals.
Life on the exoplanet is based on the same biochemistry vital for life on Earth. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen comprise over 96% of Earth's collective biomass and are the most chemically reactive elements in the universe. Carbon has an unparalleled ability to bond with itself and to form a massive array of intricate and varied structures, making it an ideal material for the complex mechanisms that form living cells.

STAR TREK

Some think SETI is as much a search for ourselves as it is a search for others. Who are we? Where did we come from? Where do we fit into the grand scheme? Did God create us? Or are we the result of millions of years of evolutionary accidents? The Chase episode of the Star Trek series is a fictionalized but eye-opening answer to these questions. In Season 6, Episode 20 of Star Trek, the Next Generation, Picard and crew discover pieces of a computer program hidden inside the DNA of species from dozens of different planets. The discovery sets the captain and the Enterprise on a search for the missing DNA fragments necessary to complete the program.

The Klingon and Cardassian captains come to believe the program must be a great weapon or dangerous secret. The efforts of Picard and his rivals to discover the lonely planet with the final DNA strain becomes a grand, cosmic chase to get there first. As they converge on the planet, they discover the program isn't a weapon or a secret, but a message from an ancient race of humanoids that created sentient life in our galaxy. The Progenitor hologram appears before a group of Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, and Starfleet captains and crew members...

"Life evolved on my planet before all others in this part of the galaxy. We left our world, explored the stars, and found none like ourselves. Our civilization thrived for ages, but what is the life of one race, compared to the vast stretches of cosmic time? We knew that one day we would be gone, that nothing of us would survive, so we left you. The Progenitors seeded humanoid life across the galaxy in their own image; life that tended to evolve into bipedal, tailless, largely hairless creatures with two eyes and two arms and five fingers on each hand. And they left clues in the genetic signature of their work, broken up among the stars. It was our hope that you would have to come together in fellowship and companionship to hear this message, and if you can see and hear me, our hope has been fulfilled. You are a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence. That was our wish, that you, too, would know life. There is something of us in each of you, and so something of you in each other."

The Progenitor's message is that the origin of life throughout the Cosmos may have begun in the Big Bang, but life in this galaxy was the intentional, intelligent design of the Progenitors. Humans and Vulcans, Klingons and Romulans, Ferengi and Cardassians, Trill and Bajorans, all share the same genetic ancestor. Seeing and hearing the holographic Perogenitor messenger was like discovering that God exists but in this case it was more meaningful because their creator isn't an all-powerful being. Just someone like them who came before and made them in their image so the Cosmos might continue to be known and explored. So that life's legacy might continue.

EINSTEIN & HIS FAMOUS FORMULA

Einstein is famous for his E=MC² formula but it has implications beyond the explosive power of atomic bombs. One of those aspects is how the speed of light impacts our search for sentient life in the Cosmos. Conventional wisdom claims that the distance between Earth and the exoplanets discovered so far makes it unlikely that we will ever meet intelligent life face to face. Even if we receive a signal from E.T. he or she would have died long ago because it takes signals from even the nearest exoplanet billions of light years to travel to Earth.

Physicists and other researchers, however, have proposed theories of alternate modes of interstellar travel and radio communication that involve Worm Holes and the warping of space to bring two locations closer together, and anti-gravity devices and warp drives that increase the probability that the speed of light is not a limiting factor in shaking hands with beings from other planets. Some even propose the possibility that aliens have mastered the physics of teleportation — "Beam Me Up, Scotty!" and some propose the idea that aliens live in a dimension other than our own or that they are humans visiting us from our future! The possibility that aliens are time travelers suggests that our search for alien life is a question of when rather than where they come from.

THE VOYAGER GOLDEN RECORDS

Gold Record Images

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The Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 took the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence beyond listening for signals from aliens. The Voyager carries two gold plated records. One contains sounds and images to portray the diversity of life on Earth. The other contains symbols to show the aliens how to play the records and how to find us if they decide to visit Earth. Carl Sagan said, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space, but the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

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FLYING SAUCERS

Look! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... Superman!
No, it's a flying saucer!

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have intrigued people for thousands of years. Researchers now tend to refer to them as Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) but the message is the same... millions of people have seen strange objects doing strange things in the sky, and despite the fact that four out of every five (about 80%) have proven to be Identified Flying Objects (IFOs), one out every five (about 20%) remain Unidentified.

Sightings in the Identified category (IFOs) are frequently ascribed to the validity of Occam's Razor—the assumption that the simplest, most rational explanation is the correct one, and that witnesses have misidentified natural phenomena... ★Pelicans flying in formation; ★Venus, the brightest planet in the night sky; ★Lightning balls, meteors, lenticular clouds, and weather balloons; ★Reflections of headlights, search lights, or a lighthouse off a cloud or an overcast sky; ★Planes and helicopters; ★Hoaxes, hallucinations and false memories.

Sightings in the Unidentified category (UFOs) frequently include evidence to justify the conclusion that the observer has not misidentified the aerial phenomena—that flying saucers are real physical objects... ★ UFO movements that contradict the known laws of physics with extreme accelerations, sudden full stops, and hovering without wings and noise; ★ Confirmation from others who also saw the phenomena; ★ Imprints, rings and burn marks on the ground; ★ Videos and photographs found to not be digitally altered; ★ Radiation burns, nausea and brain damage confirmed by MRI Scans resulting from the encounter; ★ Stars blocked by the UFO as it moved across the sky; ★ Pilots watching a UFO fly next to their airplane; ★ Weapons disabled when pilots atttemped to shoot down a UFO; ★ Unidentified radar blips confirmed by visual observations.

ROSWELL

SUMMARY • DOCUMENTARY

Interest in UFOs intensified in 1947 when an alien spacecraft crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. Despite hundreds of UFO incidents since then, the Roswell Incident is still the most significant. Why? Because there were dozens of military and civilian witnesses but the government confiscated all the physical evidence and warned witnesses to keep quiet about what they saw. The goverment's weather balloon explanation, however, was blown away when researchers analyzed the telegram held by General Ramey in a photograph of him sitting next to fragments of a weather balloon. The Ramey telegram is the Smoking Gun.

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Barely noticeable in one of the 1947 photos and clutched in Gen. Ramey's left hand is a slip of paper (circled in red). When blown up and analyzed, it tells a remarkably different story of events from the one Ramey or contemporary Air Force counter-intelligence wants you to believe. The message is a telegram from Gen. Ramey to the Pentagon and to Gen. Vandenberg, acting AAF Chief of Staff. Ramey is providing Vandenberg an update on the very fluid situation in-the-field at Roswell.

The first paragraph describes what had been found. Ramey starts by acknowledging THAT A DISK IS NEXT NEW FIND. He then adds that THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK had also been found near the recovery OPERATION AT THE 'RANCH. At the end it states that YOU (Gen. Vandenberg) had ordered the victims and/or the wreckage FORWARDED to FORT WORTH, TEX.

In the second paragraph, Ramey describes how the situation was being handled. Ramey first states that something IN THE 'DISC (probably the bodies of the forwarded victims) would be flown by a B-29 Special Transport or C-47 to the A1 (personnel director) of some 8TH ARMY division (most likely the head flight surgeon at Fort Worth). Wright Field, Ohio, home of the AAF's aeronautical labs, was to assess the Roswell crash object (referred to as an AIRFOIL).

Finally Ramey outlines how the situation was being treated publicly and how they were going to cover it up. First he assures Vandenberg that the earlier highly inflammatory Roswell base press release (MISSTATE MEANING OF STORY) was the work of an Army counter-intelligence team (CIC/TEAM), but that the NEXT SENT OUT PR (Press Release) would be OF WEATHER BALLOONS. Ramey finishes with the statement that the weather balloon story might be better accepted if they also added weather balloon radar target demonstrations. This apparently was the impetus for the national debunking campaign using the devices that followed over the next few days.

Ramey's message, even when greatly enlarged and then enhanced by computer, is a very difficult to read because of fuzziness, photo defects, paper folds, shadows, and text obscured by General Ramey's thumb. This prompted comments from die-hard skeptics, but they ignored the most important phrase of the message, which is THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK on the third line. If there were VICTIMS then this was no Mogul balloon crash. Ramey's mention of VICTIMS in 1947 also disproves the preposterous crash dummies theory. Another key phrase is IN THE 'DISC on the fifth line. Ramey is clearly describing the crash object as a DISC not as a weather balloon. He is also referring to the shipment of something IN THE DISC. Neither balloons nor the two-dimensional, flimsy radar kites had anything inside that could be shipped. This was the actual crash of a flying disk craft with a dead crew found on the inside, as corroborated by the testimony of military and civilian witnesses.

For years, uofologists contested the army's official explanation for the debris they found outside Roswell. It's hard to prove anything when you're up against a machine as big as the U.S. military. But as the years go by the men who saw the debris, the craft, and the bodies begin to reveal the things they were told to remain silent about. First Lieutenant Walter Haut's Death Bed Confession has made many skeptics doubt the government's official position on flying saucers. Below are a few more accounts that were suppressed by military and government personnel trying to cover up the incident.

"What are you looking for, Daddy?" His answer was simple: "I'm looking for UFOs. They're real, you know. I saw the bodies. Small bodies with big heads and big eyes."

"Those people will kill you if I tell you what I know!"

"A tractor-trailer was used to transport the inner cabin of the crashed UFO down Main Street in Roswell to the RAAF base south of town."

"I wadded up a piece of it in my hand, and it felt as though there was nothing there. Then, I placed it on a smooth surface, and it unfurled itself and flowed over the flat surface like liquid mercury back to its original shape without so much as a crease."

"I saw three little people. They had large heads and at least one was alive!"

"I was at Roswell when they recovered the spaceship in 1947. I was involved. I saw it. It's all true. I'm sorry for never saying anything before, but I was told to keep quiet, or else!"

"There were four space beings. Their heads were large. They wore suits like silk. One of the little men was alive."

"The creature was under 5 feet tall, human-like but with longer arms, larger eyes, and an oversized, hairless head for its small frame."

"Flying saucers are real. Too many good men have seen them that don't have hallucinations."

"I believe the flying saucers come from outer space, piloted by beings of superior intelligence."

"We excavated the crash site and just below the surface found a symmetrical V-shaped stratigraphic anomaly, exactly as the witnesses recalled after the military had completed their cleanup. We were elated. Something had impacted with the ground at some time in the past... something a balloon cannot do."

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Despite the overwhelming evidence that we arew being visited regularly by aliens from outer space, people are still ridiculed for claiming they saw or had an encounter with a flying saucer. Eyewitnesses have credibility in a court of law, but it's the lowest form of evidence in the courts of science and common sense, so it's not surprising that skeptics are still saying, "It can't be, so it isn't. Sightings are the result of hallucinations, hoaxes or hyperbola."

In August of 2022, however, Congress initiated a program to investigate UFOs as a potential threat to national security. The attitude of the senators and military personnel at the hearing implied that politics will have nothing to do with the investigation or any conclusions that result from the findings. If you're skeptical that they are telling the truth, or that flying saucers really exist, you might find Leslie Kean's Approach to believing that UFOs are real.

First Kind... you spot something in the sky and it leaves no evidence.
Second Kind... you see physical evidence of the UFO's visit to Earth.
Third Kind... you touch a UFO and/or see the occupants of the UFO.
Fourth Kind... you are abducted into the UFO for medical, zoological or genetic purposes.
Fifth Kind... you communicate telepathically with aliens from another world.

The first two kinds are more likely to peek your interest and curiosity than to cause death or injury. The third kind could expose you to dangerous radiation generated by the power source of the craft. The fourth kind could end like the Twilight Zone episode titled To Serve Man. The fifth kind typically results by going outside with like minded ufologists to mentally invite conversations with aliens. Skeptics warn ufologists that the aliens might transmit telepathic messages to influence us in ways that serve their purposes, not ours.

The alien in Steven Speilberg's movie E. T. was an odd-looking creature — like a turtle with a long neck — but he was a friendly, likeable, intelligent being. So ET didn't phone home to summon death and destruction on planet Earth. He just wanted to go home. But that was Hollywood. In the real world, who knows where they came from, why they are here, or what they're like.

FRIEND, FOE, FACT OR FICTION?
GREEN, GRIM, GRAY OR GOOFY?

Are they green, grim, gray or goofy? Friend, foe, fact or fiction? Are they humanoid with two legs, two arms, two eyes and a head centered on their shoulders? Do they walk upright on two legs or move with their arms and legs? Do they have wings? Are they some terrifying version of earthly reptiles, insects or mythical creatures?

Think of the advantages of symmetry. Two eyes are generally better than one because it makes depth perception possible. At least two legs are necessary for locomotion, and at least two arms are required to hold and handle tools. More than two legs or arms would require that the location of the third appendage not upset the creatures balance.

Think about evolution on this planet. Although the building blocks of life — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen — are the most chemically reactive elements in the universe, it's not a foregone conclusion that living things on other planets would have evolved in ways similar to us.

Put yourself in their shoes, metaphorically speaking. If you were planning to investigate the inhabitants of the Amazon jungle, for example, and your initial research had revealed that more than a few of the tribes down there were cannibals, you would probably send intermediaries — biological androids, programmed robots, or minions of some sort — so you and your fellow aliens wouldn't end up in the pot! Below are links to websites, videos and books to help you dig further into the quest to answer the most important queston of our times... Are we alone in the universe?

UFO QUOTES

It's not a matter of belief if other life forms exist. The formation of life is a cosmic urge, as inevitable as the formation of atoms. So it's biologically and cosmically impossible that there isn't other life out there. ~William Shatner

Skepticism and wonder make strange bedfellows but a good marriage, for one must be open to ideas but willing to run them through a rigorous filter. In their quest for truth, skeptics suspend both belief and disbelief. I don't want to believe. I want to know. ~Carl Sagan

We only know what we interpret. We can't peek over the edge of our interpretations to see things in the raw. ~Thomas Sheehan

Our universe would be a sorry affair if it did not contain something for every age to investigate. ~Seneca

I've never seen a whale but I've read many credible reports of their existence and yet nobody has ever asked me if I believe in whales. ~J. Allen Hynek

There is more evidence that UFOs exist than evidence that God exists. ~George Carlin

To declare that Earth must be the only planet with life in the universe would be inexcusably arrogant and bigheaded of us. ~Neil deGrasse Tyson

How quickly our differences would vanish if we were facing an alien threat.~Ronald Reagan

We are not alone in the universe. We have recovered crashed craft and bodies. ~Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Pilot

To extend the power and funding of the Military Industrial Complex, people must be afraid of something—communism, terrorism, asteroids and now extraterrestrials. ~Shirley MacLaine

If aliens have visited us, they have probably concluded that there is no intelligent life on Earth and are now looking elsewhere. ~Tommy Jones

If aliens were to visit us, the outcome would be like when Columbus landed in America—it didn't turn out well for the Natives. ~Stephen Hawking

It is difficult to name another subject so quickly identifiable, so widely debated, so easily dismissed, and yet so little understood as the one regarding intelligent, extraterrestrial life. ~ Garrett Graff

It is shockingly ironic that it is far more acceptable today to affirm publically one's belief in God, for who's existence there is no scientific evidence, than UFOs, the evidence of which has been physically documented. ~ Raymond Duvall

Truth goes through three stages. First, it is furiously refuted. Secone, itis violently opposed. And theird, it is accepted as self evident. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Aliens visiting Earthwould quickly realized that Earthlings are a primitive species whose chief obsession is tribal warfare. ~Stanton Friedman

As more exoplanets are discovered and more scientists acknowledge the probability that life exists elsewhere in the Cosmos, the importance of studying UFOs will become more imperative. ~Leslie Kean