SA, the SETI (Search for Extra terrestrial Intelligence) project and many other entities are searching for life beyond Planet Earth. Life outside earth could exist in two forms – non-intelligent life such as microbes and intelligent life such as the animals we see on Earth. Indeed, the former variety could exist in our own solar system, but we will necessarily have to look beyond it to find the latter variety.
Scientists have discovered hundreds of Exoplanets – or planets outside our solar system from near and afar, in cosmic terms. With millions of stars in our, and nearby galaxies alone, there could be billions of planets out there. (There are more than two trillion galaxies in the entire universe). And some of the planets could be in the so-called Goldilocks Zone – neither too near nor too far from their star to host liquid water and hence, life as we know it. (There are “Tatooine” planetary systems which have two suns).
It beggars belief that life could have evolved only on Earth, given that only a few simple ingredients are needed to create life. And most of these substances including carbon, are abundant throughout the universe. As the saying goes, we are all made up of stardust. Thus the chances are that life thrives elsewhere in this vast universe.
Have you heard the term UFO ? It means “Unidentified Flying Object” which in other words refers to an alien spacecraft. Many sane, mentally alert and totally reliable witnesses have reported UFO sightings and some even claim to have been abducted by alien beings. Many people believe that UFOs regularly visit Earth.
But are there aliens among us ? This is a more controversial subject. This was the premise of the Men In Black movies – that aliens disguised as humans are among us and that the Governments know all about it.
There are many other books and movies which explore this intriguing concept. Among them are John Carpenter’s Star Man and They Live and the recent Under the Skin. A lot of other movies prefer to have aliens who invade or want to destroy the Earth, from ID4 to District 9.
Many believe that Governments know about aliens on Earth, but prefer to cover it up. One of the most well-known stories supportive of this theory originates from Area 51 in the USA, where an alien spaceship is supposed to have crashed. The authorities apparently have taken away the aliens’ bodies and covered up the incident. One TV series titled Roswell (where the spacecraft is said to have crashed) is based on the likelihood of spacecraft survivors living disguised among humans.
Take the tale of an ex-CIA operative suffering from a terminal illness who claims to have seen “live extraterrestrials” inside a top-secret facility at Area 51 in Nevada. In a recent video, the man is interviewed by UFO hunter and author Richard Dolan.
The man tells Dolan that President Dwight Eisenhower had warned of a threat of Earth being invaded, so he and his superior at the CIA were allowed inside Area 51 to report back to the President. He also claims to have seen many recovered flying saucers some of which were being tested by Air Force engineers.
The interview was filmed in 2013, but only released on the Open Minds UFO website and is being discussed widely after being shared on other UFO forums.
The idea that aliens could be living among us has gained so much traction that many well known people are openly saying so. In an eye-opening interview on 6-0 minutes last week, aerospace mogul and entrepreneur Robert Bigelow said he was ‘absolutely convinced’ there were alien visitors to Earth.
When the Interviewer asked him : “Do you believe in aliens?”, Bigelow said: “I’m absolutely convinced. That’s all there is to it. There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence. And I spent millions and millions and millions ― I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.”
A similar viewpoint was recently expressed in a film about the late US President John F Kennedy, who it said had a vast knowledge of UFOs. Top astrobiologist Caleb Scharf of the Astrobiology Center at Columbia University and author of The Copernicus Complex believes that “hyper-advanced aliens” are already among us.
Astronauts are also joining in the debate. Former International Space Station Commander Dr Leroy Chiao has said, recent discoveries of water on one of Saturn’s moons, and amino acids on comets, left him in no doubt about extra-terrestrial life existing. He added: “To find this kind of evidence of life in our own backyard means to me the idea there’s other life in the universe is pretty much a given.”
Fife Symington, 71, who was governor of Arizona from 1990 to 1998, has revealed that he was a witness to one of the world’s biggest ever mass UFO sightings, and he believes it was extraterrestrial. On March 13, 1997 thousands of people reported seeing huge triangular UFOs drifting over Arizona and the city of Phoenix.
The sizes varied from a Boeing 747 to multiple football fields. (Such an incident is the basis of the 1977 Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind – a Third Kind encounter refers to meeting intelligent alien beings).
There are also those who say that massive ancient structures such as the Pyramids could not have been built without some kind of alien help. Indeed, some of these structures will take years to build even with our current technologies, so it is unfathomable that the ancients managed such feats on their own.
This is only a hypothesis, but an intriguing one nevertheless. Some also say that giant crop circles (as alluded in the famous alien film Signs) and markings visible only from above could also be the work of aliens who have visited Earth.
Thus, there is widespread concurrence about life outside Earth and many scientists believe that we will come into contact with intelligent aliens within the next 40-50 years or even earlier. However, rudimentary forms of life could be found much earlier in our own solar system by our robotic proves.
The universe is so vast, there is simply no way that we could be alone in a little corner.
The discovery of any form of life outside the Earth will be the biggest announcement ever in our history and will fundamentally alter the way we think about not only life on earth, but also about life itself. It will really be a life-changing experience.