Friday, January 14, 2005

Dropping Science: ET (Cell) Phone Home?

Almost everyone I know has at least one UFO story in their repertoire. Either they’ve seen something, someone they know has seen or experienced something, or both. Inevitably, a high percentage of these stories can be put down to superstition, wild imagination, or sinister ulterior motive.

That leads to the question: even if 99.99% of UFO sightings, extraterrestrial (ET) experiences, and all other miscellaneous manner of weird shit are false, what about the other .01%?

Senior Space Writer for Space.com Leonard David notes that some scientists are beginning to look at the possibility of non-Earth based intelligent life from the perspective of modern science and advanced physics:

Now a team of American scientists note that recent astrophysical discoveries suggest that we should find ourselves in the midst of one or more extraterrestrial civilizations. Moreover, they argue it is a mistake to reject all UFO reports since some evidence for the theoretically-predicted extraterrestrial visitors might just be found there.

The researchers make their proposal in the January/February 2005 issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS).


So we’re not talking about Crackpot Village here. Some real scientists are at least taking the possibility of extraterrestrial phenomena and UFOs with a degree of seriousness. I think this measure should be applauded: wouldn’t it be foolish not to look at every possibility of intelligent life in the universe from a rational and scientific perspective?

Pick up any good science magazine and you’re sure to see the latest in head-scratching ideas about superstring theory, wormholes, or the stretching of spacetime itself. Meanwhile, extrasolar planetary detection is on the verge of becoming mundane.

"We are in the curious situation today that our best modern physics and astrophysics theories predict that we should be experiencing extraterrestrial visitation, yet any possible evidence of such lurking in the UFO phenomenon is scoffed at within our scientific community," contends astrophysicist Bernard Haisch.

Haisch along with physicists James Deardorff, Bruce Maccabee and Harold Puthoff make their case in the JBIS article: "Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation.”
The scientists point to two key discoveries made by Australian astronomers and reported last year that there is a "galactic habitable zone" in our Milky Way Galaxy. And more importantly that Earth’s own star, the Sun, is relatively young in comparison to the average star in this zone -- by as much as a billion years.

Therefore, the researchers explain in their JBIS article that an average alien civilization would be far more advanced and have long since discovered Earth. Additionally, other research work on the supposition underlying the Big Bang -- known as the theory of inflation -- shores up the prospect, they advise, that our world is immersed in a much larger extraterrestrial civilization.


Freaky shit? Sure. But exciting, too. Is it possible it’s all a load of horseshit served up by the tractor-load? Yep.

But shouldn’t we explore every possibility first?

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m going to start getting my All Visitors Welcome door sign ready.

No comments: