Today top scientists gathered in London to discuss alien life, an event organised by the Royal Society with speakers from Nasa, the European Space Agency and Professor Paul Davies, a physicist from the University of Arizona to share their ideas.
The lecture titled "The eerie silence: are we alone in the universe?" addressed those really important hypothetical questions such as 'How does one break the news of discovering Extra-Terrestrial life?' ^^
Fifty years on and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, a rather bold ambitious attempt to find alien life is still ongoing...
Speakers argued that we need to be far more expansive than our current efforts, by questioning existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if we ever do make contact.
While I praise efforts to push our technology to its limits by locating Earth-like planets, I do object to this research that already proposes higher intelligence or life forms that exist in the first instance and that they are capable of contacting us (laughably not the other way around – aren't we out to discover life on other celestial bodies?) , it all seems like an utterly fruitless and mundane exercise when you think about it.
Firstly the definition of "life" is tangible here and open to debate, if viruses thrive on our planet, and these pathogens barely qualify as "alive" in the strictest sense how would we detect, or even recognise if there were life-forms out there, I agree that's open to speculation, and presupposing how diverse life maybe across the universe is nothing more than the by-product of science fiction. Keeps Star Trek fans happy but does nothing else.
All the noise aside - How close are we actually to finding alien worlds that can support life? Well, I'm aware the Kepler space telescope program was launched in March 2009, however its discovered planets much larger and far hotter than Jupiter. It can only detect the presence of the large planets using a transit method, which is when the planet crosses in front of its star, by identifying the tiny changes occurring in the stars brightness.
None of this can hope to confirm whether life survives and thrives on these worlds, or not, and even if it were technologically possible, space is so vast that the light that comes from these sources is hundreds to thousands of years ago, there’s no certainity if the life observed were still in existence.
What are your thoughts on these lecturers? When asking about alien life, shouldn't the more logical question be: Can we find it? Is this study one of the most important endeavours of the human race to date? Or nothing but a load of hot air?
The lecture titled "The eerie silence: are we alone in the universe?" addressed those really important hypothetical questions such as 'How does one break the news of discovering Extra-Terrestrial life?' ^^
Fifty years on and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, a rather bold ambitious attempt to find alien life is still ongoing...
Speakers argued that we need to be far more expansive than our current efforts, by questioning existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if we ever do make contact.
While I praise efforts to push our technology to its limits by locating Earth-like planets, I do object to this research that already proposes higher intelligence or life forms that exist in the first instance and that they are capable of contacting us (laughably not the other way around – aren't we out to discover life on other celestial bodies?) , it all seems like an utterly fruitless and mundane exercise when you think about it.
Firstly the definition of "life" is tangible here and open to debate, if viruses thrive on our planet, and these pathogens barely qualify as "alive" in the strictest sense how would we detect, or even recognise if there were life-forms out there, I agree that's open to speculation, and presupposing how diverse life maybe across the universe is nothing more than the by-product of science fiction. Keeps Star Trek fans happy but does nothing else.
All the noise aside - How close are we actually to finding alien worlds that can support life? Well, I'm aware the Kepler space telescope program was launched in March 2009, however its discovered planets much larger and far hotter than Jupiter. It can only detect the presence of the large planets using a transit method, which is when the planet crosses in front of its star, by identifying the tiny changes occurring in the stars brightness.
None of this can hope to confirm whether life survives and thrives on these worlds, or not, and even if it were technologically possible, space is so vast that the light that comes from these sources is hundreds to thousands of years ago, there’s no certainity if the life observed were still in existence.
What are your thoughts on these lecturers? When asking about alien life, shouldn't the more logical question be: Can we find it? Is this study one of the most important endeavours of the human race to date? Or nothing but a load of hot air?
