Posted on 01/14/2005 2:19:11 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
Decades ago, it was physicist Enrico Fermi who pondered the issue of extraterrestrial civilizations with fellow theorists over lunch, generating the famous quip: "Where are they?" That question later became central to debates about the cosmological census count of other star folk and possible extraterrestrial (ET) visitors from afar.
Fermi’s brooding on the topic was later labeled "Fermi’s paradox". It is a well-traveled tale from the 1950’s when the scientist broached the subject in discussions with colleagues in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Thoughts regarding the probability of earthlike planets, the rise of highly advanced civilizations "out there", and interstellar travel -- these remain fodder for trying to respond to Fermi’s paradox even today.
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).
Curious situation
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.
Point-to-point distances
Given billion-year advanced physics, might not buzzing around the galaxy be possible?
Even today superstring theory hypothesizes other dimensions... which could be habitable Universes adjacent to our own, the researchers speculate. It might even be possible to get around the speed of light limit by moving in and out of these dimensions.
"What we have done is somewhat of a breakthrough," Haisch told SPACE.com. "We have pulled together various recent discoveries and theoretical issues that collectively point to the strong probability that we should be in the midst of one or more huge extraterrestrial civilizations," he said.
Haisch said that superstring dimensions and wormhole and spacetime stretching possibilities address the "can't get here from there" objection often argued in view of the interstellar, point-to-point distances involved. Also, diffusion models predict that even a single civilization could spread across the Galaxy in a tiny fraction of the age of the Galaxy - even at sub-light speeds, he said.
ET signature in the data
Can the scientific community bring itself to consider any evidence coming from mysterious sightings of strange things by the public?
In large measure, the scientific community seemingly has eyed ET visitation as far from being serious stuff to cogitate over. Why so?
"The dismissal has several causes, all reinforcing each other," Haisch responded. "Most of the observations are probably misinterpretations, delusions and hoaxes. I have seen people get confused by Venus or even Sirius when it is flashing colors low in the sky under the right conditions. Having been turned off by this, most scientists never bother to look any further, and so are simply blissfully ignorant that there may be more to it," he said.
Deardorff, the lead author of the JBIS article, points out in a press statement: "It would take some humility for the scientific community to suspend its judgment and take at least some of the high quality reports seriously enough to investigate…but I hope we can bring ourselves to do that."
According to Haisch, there is a motivation not just for scientific tolerance of the UFO issue, but a strong scientific prediction that there ought to be some genuine ET signature in the data.
"This potentially changes the relationship of the UFO phenomenon to science in a significant way. It takes away the ‘not invented here’ prejudice, pointing out that a ‘yes’ to ET visitation is exactly what side our current physics and astrophysics theories would come down on as the most likely situation," Haisch concluded.
Exactly. If one views the lights in the sky as time machines from our own distant future, one does less violence to physics than if one assumes they are ET's that have come from hundreds of light years away.
I don't believe it. For starters, these modern astrophysical theories don't explain how the little green guys get possibly here from across billions and billions of miles of space.
That's the operative phrase of course. Sometimes our knowledge gets better.
It was scientific enough to draw federal funds into the SETI project. It's based upon counting billions of stars and trying to figure out which ones are the most likely to harbor intelligent life. The sample base is in the trillions.
Here's a sampling of the controversy:
The chances of getting accidentally synthesized left amino acids for one small protein molecule is one chance in 10^210. That is a number with 210 zeros after it! Such probabilities are indeed impossibilities. The number is so vast as to be totally out of the question.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html
Hubert Yockey's article "Self Organization Origin of Life Scenarios and Information Theory" in Journal of Theoretical Biology 91 (1981) pp. 13-31 (this is an extension of work done by him in 1977 in vol. 67 of the same journal). The objective of his paper is not to prove special creation (he actually rejects such theories as useless), but to argue that alien life is so improbable that we ought to shift science to draw talent and funding away from projects like SETI and into "research on the origin of life." In his own abstract, he presents his conclusion as "belief in little green men in outer space is purely religious not scientific." But his assumptions are as faulty as those made by creationists, although his approach is much more sophisticated--and above all, he does not generate any actual estimates of probability. He tries to argue that only 10^5 arrangements of a protein 100 amino acids long, out of a total possible 1.26 x 10^130 arrangements, are of concern to biology, if we assume a 4-bit code. Though he does not state this explicitly, this means the odds against life starting, if it had to start with just such a protein, would be 1 in 10^125.
LOL!
Extraterrestrial conscious beings with greatly advanced technology may have seeded planets throughout most galaxies....
Or they may not have.
If they're here, they most likely didn't make it in tin-lizzy vehicles that reflect light and hence cannot exceed its velocity. Thus most likely, they're not here.
Haven't these idiots seen Men in Black? It's all there, for everyone to see.
I find it much more plausible there is life out there than we are all alone.
Remember, at one time everyone swore the Earth was flat.
I think they've gone to other branes and bulk dimensions LOL - this brane we're on is too boring.
Yes, but it would be more in keeping with the general tenets of science to speculate what aliens could be zooming around after figuring out if it is even theoretically possible.
If nothing - NOT A DAMN THING among all the waves and/or particles in the universe has ever been seen to travel (convey information, strictly speaking) faster than light, it is no more than wishful thinking to posit that alien spacecraft can. One might as well say they could shrink and expand at will, or change the atoms they are made of.
Thanks much. I bet the naysayers have shown up pontificating with great haughtiness within the first 12 posts--certainly within the first 25.
Thanks.
I didn't double check with you that you'd gotten the last several additions. Should I send you the whole list or have you kept up?
But not as much fun. :)
Ahhhh, perhaps within 5 posts!
A kindly, one, however. Thanks.
Ditto and amen to your list, Fighter. It's not whether these things exist, but from whence they came. Have you read any of Chuck Missler's books on this topic? Great food for thought. I've long thought there were simply too many UFO sightings for all of them to be a hoax, but there were aspects I'd never considered until I started reading up on them from Missler and other sharp Christians. They go into great detail on some details that tend to get lost in the secular discussion of UFOs, such as the way these craft so often behave contrary to the laws of physics.
BTW, if anyone encounters a ghost, the first thing you wanna do is ask him a question or two about who Jesus is. :-)
MM
Ahhhh--within 10 posts. At least not quite so shrill and caustic as is common.
Thanks for that.
Does that mean you won't be sending me a dollar?
THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE
is often not very scientific.
Try publishing outside the religious dogma!
Even attempt it in some universities! And your bags may well be packed for you.
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