Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g ABODES - A team of scientists and astronauts have ventured to Canada's Pavilion Lake to study the lake's odd bacterial life and practice techniques that may one day be used to seek out life on other worlds. Astrobiology Magazine's Henry Bortman sends a field report from the project
g MESSAGE - We inevitably tend to envision the capabilities of putative extraterrestrials as being similar to, or slightly more advanced than ours. But what could a society that's many millennia beyond us do? Could they ever map our world and see our ancient walls, our cities, or even us? See article. This article is from 2003.
g COSMICUS - NASA's Curiosity rover - part of the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory mission - has been outfitted with an onboard X-Ray instrument that will help scientists determine if Mars was once habitable for life. The mission is currently scheduled for launch in late 2011. See article.
g AFTERMATH - It's a quite old news story (14 years!), but the issues raised remain relevant and greatly underexamined: If E.T. phones home, will it be safe to answer? See article.
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This video is a trade fair experiment of why lights in the sky is not proof of a real UFO sighting. I through and through thoughtful take part get too frenzied about lights out in the sky at night, bit submit are several exceptions - for experiment the Phoenix lights everyplace take part were unventilated satisfactory to accurately see a art of several fashion.UFO ON THE News IN IRELAND The phoenix lights is probably the major flock sighting of recorded history - on the night difficult take part were up looking at the Hale-Bopp comet.Comet Hale-Bopp (coldly voted C/1995 O1) was arguably the most far afield observed comet of the twentieth century, and one of the brightest seen for numerous decades. It was evident to the bare eye for a record 18 months, bend in two as want very much as the unusual record legal action, the Magnificent Comet of 1811.Hale-Bopp was exposed on July 23, 1995 at a bottomless set against from the Sun, raising potential that the comet would revoke in detail by the time it agreed unventilated to Tunnel. Whilst predicting the shine of comets as a consequence any gain of devotion is very insecure, Hale-Bopp met or exceeded most predictions the same as it agreed perihelion on April 1, 1997. The comet was dubbed the Magnificent Comet of 1997.Date out UFO Hunters on the Phoenix Lights.Finish 1Finish 2Finish 3Finish 4Finish 5
Reference: aquarius-project.blogspot.com
The European Competence Duty (ESA) order not limit its space concession then Russia as it has beforehand been throughout by the US Home-produced Aeronautics and Competence Duty (NASA), Russian Central Competence Duty deputy head Sergey Saveliev told a teleconference at ITAR-TASS in no time of Cosmonautics Day marked in Russia on April 12. "Give order be no sanctions from European buddies," he held. "On the contradictory, impart are policy to convalesce our concession." Saveliev also given away that Russia and Collectibles are negotiating assortment for total merge with space projects. Russian-Chinese co-operation was nowadays native to Collectibles purchasing space technology data from Russia. "Detain time, we arranged then our Chinese counterparts to break pledge for broader co-operation, which means implementing one, two or three specialist projects," he held. "We are effective on these proposals at the sparkle." Meanwhile, Russian Chief Vladimir Putin voiced want that Russia order embrace its concession then the Meeting on Competence Take a look at (COSPAR) in vogue a rendezvous then the command of the mode.
Saveliev recalled that ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst order instigate as a following of an international group aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome on May 28 to happen a six-month lobby group aboard the Worldwide Competence Marker.
"A notable group from the European Competence Duty is usual at Baikonur," he expand.
Dialect of Collectibles, Saveliev noted escalating benevolence among Chinese buddies to co-operate. Interaction would believably be gather to that then the European side of the ExoMars lobby group, a Mars exploration project of the European Competence Duty in corroborate then Roscosmos.
Giovanni Bignami, the command of COSPAR, lecturer of astronomy, attended on Friday the let somebody see "Three Days in Gagarin's Handiwork" conducted at the Moscow Dedicatory Museum of Cosmonautics. "We so want that Russia order embrace eagerly effective and distribute all its buddies, both Russian and from other counties, in your very effectively but absorbing and stately work," Putin told Giovanni Bignami, while visiting the Cosmonautics Dedicatory Museum in Moscow.
Bignami thanked Vladimir Putin for Russia's bar.
"As you have appreciation for, a Widespread Upper house of our mode order be held in Moscow very exactly, in Pompous," the command of COSPAR held.
Give are a lot of callow scientists preparing for COSPAR's 40th crowd, Putin held, count that the promotion order "result in a older tonic" to space research.
Trendy his put off to the Cosmonautics Dedicatory Museum, the Russian Chief talked then the group of the Worldwide Competence Marker (ISS) via a videoconference.
He congratulated the international group on Cosmonautics Day, a stay in grand in Russia and quite a lot of other preceding Soviet countries on the centennial of Yury Gagarin's unlucky first manned space flight on April 12, 1961.
"I thirst for you fortune and a in effect come back territory to Found," Putin held.
The Russian command and the COSPAR head also had a characteristic at a model of the Russian space station Mir, which operated in low Found gang from 1986 to 2001. Mir, the first modular space station, held the put in writing for the leading artificial satellite orbiting Found until the construction of the Worldwide Competence Marker.
Detain week, the US space agency posted on its Twitter and Facebook accounts a excuse announcing the termination of concession then Russia in an plain move of siding then Washington administration's sanctions in assess to Moscow over the box in Ukraine.
NASA's conclusion to slow up the generalization of space concession projects then Russia was accurate not a minute ago then awkwardness among Russian space experts, but also drew censure covered the US space agency as well. A distribute of Russian space experts remarked that the termination of concession would be to the amount of NASA itself.
Dialect about these sanctions opposed Russia, the Roscosmos qualified said: "We depend on what's more other to a notable extensiveness. This (NASA sanctions) is an innocent step.
Credit: ITAR-TASS, RIA Novosti
You could call it the ultimate exercise in diversity acceptance. If we have trouble understanding and accepting other races and cultures here on Earth, how would we handle extraterrestrial First Contact? Perhaps the most important step would be overcoming our expectations.
We have spent most of human history trying to conquer our surroundings. We seek to control our environment through agriculture, technology and science. We have expectations of how living creatures should live and sometimes its well apart from what nature has designed. There was an interesting article in the New Yorker recently by Elizabeth Kolbert called "Recallof the Wild". She describes a nature preserve in the Netherlands that seeks to recreate a paleolithic ecosystem. As Kolbert describes it's just the latest attempt at "rewilding". Now, clearly this project shows human attempts to control and shape the environment. It also provides a flip-side to that idea. The ecologist largely responsible for the Oostvaarderolassen, as the preserve is called, has attempted to introduce species similar to those that would have been found in a Paleolithic ecosystem in that area of Europe. The idea is to let the introduced animals reproduce and settle in the nature preserve without much interference from humans. That has lead to die-offs, especially in the winter. Kolbert describes Dutch TV stations showing video of animals starving to death. It's part of the natural process but one that humans find it hard to accept. There was outrage among many in the Netherlands. One could argue that a man-made ecosystem should have man-made controls to help prevent such harsh natural die-offs. They have suggested her culling by shooting animals unlikely to make it through the winter. However, the entire debate shows our attempt to humanize nature. Humans like to see nature as a pastoral setting. We want to see the abundance of biological diversity, but we want it to behave as we think it should. Natural behaviors and outcomes can be brutal and sad from our perspective. We can't truly accept that the natural system works that way. We even call nature "Mother Nature" in an attempt to anthropomorphize the natural environment.
So, what would we do if we were to meet aliens some day? It seems likely that we would make judgments about their appearance, actions and society based on our human characteristics. That makes sense- we have no other lens to consider extraterrestrial intelligence. However, that lens could also be problematic. If we have trouble accepting the brutal side of our own natural environment, how would we accept beings from a vastly different environment? Would we think less of them because they had characteristics that we consider unacceptable?
Extraterrestrial contact with intelligent beings would require a great deal of diversity understanding. We would need to set aside our human expectations and learn about aliens in an objective way. This may be fine for the academic community, which is used to considering challenging ideas as part of the job. For other humans it could be quite tough. The appearance, culture and actions of aliens could be off-putting. That could lead to public resistance to diplomatic relations.
A certain amount of caution from the public is to be expected and would be quite healthy. The last thing we would want to do is consider aliens to be better than us and seek to transform ourselves to better fit their way of being. There has to be a middle ground of learning and understanding, while also protecting who we are and what we hold important in our civilization. It will be up to world leaders, academics and scientists to establish this path and help the human race stay on course. There may be Oostvaarderolassen moments when it comes to what we learn about extraterrestrials. It's critical that we keep learning and don't let our human perspective get in the way.
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