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Odds of Alien Life 'Very High,' House Panel Hears
Breitbart News ^ | 12/05/2013 | Breitbart News

Posted on 12/08/2013 8:32:23 PM PST by Carbonsteel

The likelihood of life on other planets is "very high," a planetary scientist told a House committee in a hearing some Democrats chided as evading U.S. issues.

"The chance that there's a planet like Earth out there with life on it is very high," Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary science and physics Professor Sara Seager told the House Science Committee.

"The question is: Is there life near here, in our neighborhood of stars? We think the chances are good," she said, answering a question from Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, who asked: "Do you think there's life out there, and are they studying us? And what do they think about New York City?"

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


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To: GraceG
"I am wondering too, everyone knows the Shadow Government exclusively deals with aliens and is the only agency that is allowed to deal with these matters."

Are you being sarcastic, or do you actually believe that?
101 posted on 12/08/2013 11:07:38 PM PST by Steve_Seattle
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To: Carbonsteel

We have to be indeed very careful about words like life, aliens or other potential fascist liberal imagery in this for political narcissist purposes.

The Bible promised the Jews to multiply as the stars in the sky if they followed God.

That is good sensical enough for me, but common sense is too boring for crooks and sophisticate atheists.


102 posted on 12/08/2013 11:08:34 PM PST by lavaroise
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To: GraceG
Knowing how crap works in Washington this is being done to “soften us” tot he idea that aliens exist because our government made contact in the early 50’s...

MJ-12, anyone?

Yeah, there's a ton of fascinating data from the late 40s through the late 50s about that very subject. Some of it is tough to dismiss out of hand. Read Major Donald Keyhoe's early books about the subject. Very no-nonsense and straight forward reporting of hundreds of military accounts. Riveting stuff.

I'm actually not sure what to think about the MJ-12 stuff. I read the first report about it when it began to circulate in the mid 80s. It all sounds very credible, but tough to prove. Darn near impossible, in fact.

103 posted on 12/08/2013 11:10:37 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: FredZarguna
Nope. Can't agree. The entire might of a galactic empire and its evil leader with [supernatural powers, to boot] brought down in forty-five minutes by fuzzballs

To be fair, the fuzzballs didn't take down the evil leader; Luke & Darth did. The fuzzballs didn't take down the entire might of a galactic empire; the Rebel Alliance did.

What the fuzzballs did take down was about a hundred stormtroopers wearing ultra-tech armor and armed with blasters, not to mention three AT-ST walkers, using nothing but stone age technology...which is bad enough, but not quite as bad as what you said!

Attack of the Clones, while awful, is a better film than ROJ.

It's the least bad of the prequels, I'll give it that...not that that's saying much.

104 posted on 12/08/2013 11:10:43 PM PST by Kip Russell (Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ---Robert A. Heinlein)
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To: Steve_Seattle; GraceG

lol. We are secretly ruled by alien Hitlers. Christopher Columbus was one of them and part of the conspiracy to enslave American Indians and drink their blood. They are a progressist advanced ascending race of super scientists going beyond the traditional classical pure race descendency concepts of Herr Hitler.

All hail Al Sharpton.


105 posted on 12/08/2013 11:13:33 PM PST by lavaroise
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To: null and void
Quantum entanglement, Einstein's spooky action at a distance. Instantaneous even across interstellar distances.

Now why didn't I think of that? I'll race ya to the patent office! LOL

Actually, I think you're onto something with that. Makes perfect sense.

106 posted on 12/08/2013 11:13:49 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: OldNavyVet

I actually think a case can be made for a combination of Intelligent Design and Darwin’s theory of evolution. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.


107 posted on 12/08/2013 11:17:06 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: ifinnegan
the answer is that in theory such should be the case given what is known about the physical properties of the waves and universe.

Point taken, but who knows what variables might interfere with such a transmission through deep space?

Could ordinary dust particles, dark matter, or dark energy diminish the strength of such impulses? What about gamma rays and other energetic stellar phenomena? Space is filled with them.

I'm liking Nully's idea about quantum entanglement. Instantaneous transmission without interference at any distance.

108 posted on 12/08/2013 11:24:21 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Kip Russell; null and void
How about this: "Narrowband radio broadcast should be detectable with current technology at a distance of hundreds of light years or more, given our understanding of how radio works."

Works for me.

(I'm too tired to argue too :-)

109 posted on 12/08/2013 11:28:53 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: lavaroise
The Bible promised the Jews to multiply as the stars in the sky if they followed God.

Jews In Space

110 posted on 12/08/2013 11:33:30 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: Carbonsteel

The argument that, since the universe is so vast that it is a certainty that life must have developed somewhere else is a completely empty argument. First of all, no one knows how life can develop from non-life. We absolutely do not know how.

Since amino acids have been discovered in space, some people argue that the universe is big enough so that amino acids could randomly associate the proteins necessary for life. The universe is big, but not nearly big enough. We estimate there to be about 200 billion galaxies in the universe, each with approx 200 billion stars. The total number of atoms in the universe is about 10 to the 80th power.

The smallest molecule that classifies as a protein requires a chain of amino acids 81 units long. The number of 81 unit amino acid combinations in this smallest of all proteins is 10 to the 129th power.

Suppose that all the atoms in the universe were not atoms but were amino acids instead. Further suppose that every amino acid anywhere in the universe could combine with any other amino acid and that the universe was working full-time assembling 81 unit amino acid chains, a thousand times per second ever since the universe began 13.7 billion years ago.

The universe would have been able to try about ten to the 98th power combinations meaning that the universe is about ten billion, billion, trillion times too small or too young. The universe is unimaginably tiny compared to the random odds of producing life. So just saying the universe is big isn’t enough. It can’t happen by random processes.

There *must* be some other force at work or else there just isn’t any other life out there. It is intellectual fraud to present non-zero odds for life elsewhere in the universe at this point in time. We have no evidence of extra-terrestrial life whatsoever, and we don’t even have a theory about how life can form from non-life. So these statements of certainty that there is other life out there are based one-hundred percent on faith and only faith.

Nothing wrong with faith. But scientists shouldn’t pretend that they are basing there estimates on science when they are based solely and completely on faith.


111 posted on 12/08/2013 11:33:56 PM PST by pjd
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To: Kip Russell
Actually, Luke and Darth taking down the Emperor is even more insulting than the Ewoks defeating the Storm Troopers.

We're supposed to believe that somebody who murdered hundreds of little kids in the Jedi Citadel, to say nothing of the casual murder of more or less any military or bureaucratic functionary who got in his way, is "persuaded" to amend his evil ways over the course of a few seconds of confrontation between his kid and his boss. A kid, by the way, whose hand he's previously cut off.

Actually less credible than superluminal travel through spacetime. And that's saying something.

112 posted on 12/08/2013 11:42:48 PM PST by FredZarguna (The sequel, thoroughly pointless, derivative, and boring was like all James Cameron "films.")
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To: Kip Russell
Mel Brooks was a Neanderthal?
113 posted on 12/08/2013 11:45:40 PM PST by Kickass Conservative (A Communist is nothing more than an honest Democrat...)
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To: Steve_Seattle

“I am wondering too, everyone knows the Shadow Government exclusively deals with aliens and is the only agency that is allowed to deal with these matters.”

[ Are you being sarcastic, or do you actually believe that? ]

If I said for sure someone would have to kill me...


114 posted on 12/08/2013 11:49:38 PM PST by GraceG
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To: Kip Russell

That it doesn’t matter if demons or fairies are real, but the phenomenon of contacting them is the same or related to the supposed contact with aliens.

You dismissed the observation because the observer, Vallee, believes literally in it as supernatural, but his belief in that doesn’t discount the accuracy of the observation.

Demons and fairies are by definition supernatural. But theoretically and ostensibly UFOs and aliens are not supernatural. So understanding UFO alien belief is actually just another variation of these age-old beliefs is an important observation.


115 posted on 12/09/2013 12:07:19 AM PST by ifinnegan
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To: null and void; Windflier
I know you guys don't like to hear this, but I'll keep saying it until you try to understand: nothing which has a material effect -- including the transmission of information -- can move faster than the speed of light.

You cannot transmit information via quantum entanglement.

If you could transmit information faster than the speed of light, the receiver would obtain the signal in the past, he could then act on the information in your reference frame before it occurred -- and this would lead to causality violations.

It doesn't happen.

116 posted on 12/09/2013 12:13:32 AM PST by FredZarguna (The sequel, thoroughly pointless, derivative, and boring was like all James Cameron "films.")
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To: Kickass Conservative
See Post #60
117 posted on 12/09/2013 12:22:33 AM PST by FredZarguna (The sequel, thoroughly pointless, derivative, and boring was like all James Cameron "films.")
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To: FredZarguna

We already have “causality violations” galore in classic Judeo-Christian theology.

We don’t want to put our minds in overly rigid boxes.


118 posted on 12/09/2013 12:26:19 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (The Lion of Judah will roar again if you give him a big hug and a cheer and mean it. See my page.)
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To: null and void

They live!!


119 posted on 12/09/2013 12:26:54 AM PST by Cincinatus (Omnia relinquit servare Rempublicam)
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To: null and void; dfwgator
Especially since there is none.

Source please?

Source please. Wishing for something to be true, is not proof.

120 posted on 12/09/2013 12:31:14 AM PST by itsahoot (It is not so much that history repeats, but that human nature does not change.)
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