Radar, broadcast television, Wi-Fi — all these uses for radio will disappear, and the aliens will move on to some other, unspecified technology. You might not have any problem with that assumption. Radio is a very useful technology, based on some fundamental physics.
It might be around for as long as the wheel. So it would certainly be reasonable to guess that the technological lifetime of societies is 10, years, not Choosing the larger number increases the tally of inhabited worlds by times.
Earth-like planets can spontaneously generate living organisms, and some worlds will eventually spawn an intelligent species. But surely not all such worlds will do so. Since there are at least four billion sunlike stars in the Milky Way, this means that somewhere between 1. Kershenbaum argues that the key to understanding cosmic zoology is natural selection.
From this premise, Kershenbaum says, it follows that life on other planets will have evolved, if not along the same lines as life on this planet, then at least along lines that are generally recognizable. On Earth, for instance, where the atmosphere is mostly made of nitrogen and oxygen, feathers are a useful feature. Assuming that there is, in fact, alien life out there, most of it seems likely to be microscopic. This, in his view, opens up quite a can of interstellar worms.
Will they accord us whatever rights, if any, they grant their little green or silver or blue brethren? Still, Fermi reckoned that Earth was a fairly typical planet revolving around a fairly typical star. There ought, he reasoned, to be civilizations out there far older and more advanced than our own, some of which should have already mastered interstellar travel. Yet, strangely enough, no one had shown up. In the nineteen-sixties, an astronomer named Frank Drake came up with the eponymous Drake equation, which offers a way to estimate—or, if you prefer, guesstimate—how many alien cultures exist with which we might hope to communicate.
Key terms in the equation include: how many potentially habitable planets are out there, what fraction of life-hosting planets will develop sophisticated technology, and how long technologically sophisticated civilizations endure. Loeb proposes that Fermi may be the answer to his own paradox. Humanity has been capable of communicating with other planets, via radio wave, for only the past hundred years or so.
Thus, not long after humanity became capable of signalling to other planets, it also became capable of wiping itself out. His best guess? On March 13, , thousands of people in southern Arizona say they saw weird lights move across the night sky in a flying V.
Most of their reports came in between 7 and p. A majority of people spied the pattern passing overhead it was supposedly several football fields long , but the Air Force also sent a team of A Warthogs from nearby Barry Goldwater Range on a training exercise that same night, and, as luck would have it, those planes dropped some stationary flares just outside Phoenix, considerably complicating any UFO conspiracies with a second set of strange bright lights.
Actor Kurt Russell now claims he saw them while up in a private plane near the Phoenix airport, but air-traffic control told him the radar was clear.
Governor Fife Symington reportedly witnessed the V-shaped as well. Other so-called sonic attacks plagued scores of others in town around the same time. He tried to flee , passed out, then regained consciousness only once the aliens had ditched him on the Arizona roadside. The story received loads of publicity — authorities thought Walton had been murdered, and seven eyewitnesses corroborating a single close encounter was unheard of.
On February 25, , reports filtered in of a glowing object floating over Culver City. Air-raid sirens sounded; the Army proceeded to pepper it with 1, anti-aircraft shells. Eventually it disappeared from view, but not before a citywide blackout was ordered, shell fragments got lodged in surrounding buildings, and five civilians died.
The Navy later explained it had been a weather balloon. Conspiracists site a famous L. Times photo as extra proof; it seemingly caught searchlights trained on a very un-balloon-like object getting barraged with shells. New encounters happen all the time — even to famous people. The universe is If even a genius like Stephen Hawking thought that aliens might destroy us if they ever were to find us, then maybe we should be a little afraid. If another civilization were technologically savvy enough and had enough resources, it could build a massive orbital structure like a Dyson sphere to keep it cloaked from detection.
It took about 3. Maybe we just happened to evolve faster and earlier than everyone else. On the scale of the cosmos, that time frame is less than a fraction of the blink of an eye. The process could take centuries or even millennia — optimistically speaking.
This is where the conspiracy theorists get to go nuts. They might be taking some time to study us before unveiling themselves, or maybe they have already let themselves be known to certain groups. Joseph O. Baker is a sociologist and the co-author of the book Paranormal America. Katie Heaney: Why, when we think of aliens, do they all look the same — three feet tall, gray or green, big black eyes?
If you see drawings that some of the so-called contactees made, the aliens almost look like Swedish people — very attractive blond types with shining eyes. KH : Even those guys look pretty human — why do we have such a hard time imagining radically different forms of life?
Much the same way people do with God — really, what sense does it make for a supernatural entity to have a gender or be humanoid Anthropomorphized supernatural entities tend to be more compelling.
JB : The probe part of the abduction narrative took over in some sense because it tends to be the most salacious aspect of these stories.
But the stories of abduction among believers are really diverse, and usually probing is only one small part of it. Men will report having sperm extraction, and women will report having eggs extracted. Positive encounters tend to be akin to religion in some ways, in which beings of higher enlightenment show people the errors of humanity, or help them reach a higher plane of consciousness.
KH : Who is likely to believe? JB : Men, and people with lower levels of income, are more likely to believe. But one of the strongest predictors you can find for believers is their extreme distrust of the government.
Trump might actually increase belief in UFOs. Another one of the strongest predictors is not participating as strongly in forms of organized religion. KH : Most alien-encounter stories give aliens one of two motives: Either they want something from us or they want to kill us.
What does that say about us? JB : It shows that we have a high level of perceived self-importance. The idea that, in this vast universe, these beings sought us out in this tiny corner of the spiral arm of the Milky Way to come learn something from us, or eliminate us, is a bit flattering.
Rates of reported sightings and rate of belief have been pretty stable. Subscribe Now! One mom's message to other parents after her 8-year-old got Covid vaccine.
Trump makes last-ditch effort to stop release of White House records. Legal analyst reacts to judge rejecting Trump's attempt to withhold documents. Helen Sharman, who visited the Soviet Mir space station in , told the Observer newspaper on Sunday that "aliens exist, there's no two ways about it. Maybe not. Then, in a tantalizing theory that should probably make you very suspicious of your colleagues, Sharman added: "It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them.
Sharman was the first of seven Britons to enter space.
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