Some scientist finally getting over ridicule factor and speak truth..

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

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.

[benburch]

1. I studied Astronomy under the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek

Who was one of the principal authors of the Air Force's study on the subject "Project Blue Book", author of the book "The UFO Experience" (from which "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" gets its title) and founder of the center for UFO studies.

He had an open mind on this issue.

His opinion was that too many credible witnesses see too many things that cannot be explained.

Notoriously, he spent a lot of time "debunking" UFO reports, but that was his method; Remove all observations that can be explained, and whatever you have left are UFOs. Not that he thought they were spacecraft, no real scientist would reach that conclusion without a physical exemplar, but they remain Unidentified.

[Warpy]

2. There's a school of thought that views life

as an artifact of planets. I think they're probably onto something, since they've found things that look very much like fossilized bacteria in meteorites, especially those from Mars.

I do have a sneaking suspicion that even if we find equivalent life on other worlds, we won't be able to relate to it. We're just not all that smart. We can't manage to communicate with the other intelligent species on this planet, like the cetaceans. How could we manage to communicate with a methane breathing intelligent species from across the galaxy? There would be too few points of reference beyond tapping out 1,3,5,11,13... so that they'd know we were smart enough to figure out what prime numbers are (if they'd ever considered them, themselves).

I would dearly love for these little green men to show themselves in sufficient numbers to take the starch out of the fundies and their view that humans are the pinnacle of creation and the universe revolves around the earth. I just don't think that they're going to be bipedal anthropoids with opposable thumbs.

[Boosterman]

4. Heres an interesting thought

What if they show up and believe in God or some version of a Higher Being.

[Stuckinthebush]

7. Bah!

The fundies would just take it as an opportunity to witness to more creatures.

Praise the lord!

[Tace]

3. We Probably Are Limited By Our Definition Of Intelligent Life

We look for organic-based lifeforms from watery planets driving vehicles with technology a few-hundred years ahead of ours. We are looking for entities operating in the same space-scale and time-scale. I'm of the opinion that the universe is teaming with life, most of which we wouldn't recognize if we were looking right at it. A Hermetic philosopher would say (if you could get him to tell you) that the entire universe is a giant mind of unimaginable intelligence.

The Earth has been around long enough that several different native species could have evolved civilizations... and then left the planet, or simply disappeared into the mists of time without leaving a trace that we recognize.

Also, and I'm jumping around a bit here, but a good argument can be made that there are indeed UFOs, but that they likely are of terrestrial origin, either military black op, or time travelers from our future.

I sure don't know. --Cheers

[Thew]

8. We are also limited...

by the presumption that our form of intelligence is the pinnacle of evolution - that given time, all species would evolve into some form of intelligence.

I read an interesting book, forget title at the moment, that described evolved intelligence as a response to a specific set of environmental variables. There are examples where species have not evolved for millions of years, sharks, insects, but not achieved what could be described as intelligence.

I would imagine of the countless planets that could sustain earth-like life; many would have highly-evolved, yet not necessarily intelligent, life.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. I have a friend whose brother-in-law is an astrophysicist at Goddard

Space Lab and he firmly believes in "UFO"s and alien abductions and all those other tinfoil hat theories that the rest of us might think were a little weird. But hearing someone in his position go on about it sure made me think that nothing is impossible.

[OxQQme]

6. more evidence

Crop Circles:

http://www.lovely.clara.net/homepg.html



Details of the search for Nibiru (Planet-X)

http://www.detailshere.com/niburu.htm



The reason for the belief in Planet-X

http://www.sitchin.com/nasa_looking.htm