Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying”. For many years humans thought that they were alone in the Universe. Then the conspiracies came about with UFO sightings, and aliens. Now though actual research is going into it that will finally prove if humans are alone or not alone. People are not alone in the universe because there are millions of planets that can harbor life, millions of galaxies similar to the milky way, and it is scientifically probable.
To start off, there are millions of planets similar to Earth that can harbor life. NASA predicts that in the Milky Way there may be up to 100 million planets that may host life (Fearnow). NASA is one of the best space agencies in the world,
…show more content…
NASA has also made telescopes that have found planets that can possibly have life, and have done many other extraordinary things. One of NASA’s best telescopes is the Kepler found a planet called Kepler-186f that is similar to Earth. Kepler-186f is in a "habitable zone" which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water might be created on the surface of a planet, and might have life (Nasa’s Kepler Discovers). Since Kepler-186f is in a habitable zone it is more similar to Earth. Since it is in a habitable zone it helps make it easier to study, because it is more like Earth in it’s size, ‘"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth,"’ said Paul Hertz, a Astrophysics Division director who works for NASA, ‘"Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their
Yet somehow, despite this vast evidence that there must be something or else everyone
...re not alone. Mitchell said our destiny and we might as well get started with it; we should become a part of the planetary community. We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there (Mitchell).
Some people believe we are not alone in the wide variety of planets, stars, and the solar system next door to us. Believing we aren’t the only ones stuck in space, but having more power than us where they might watch over us. The strong belief created a phenomenon more than the sci-fi culture itself; government cover-ups can’t hide these visitors anymore.
Fermi’s paradox supports this claim because theoretically there should be species capable of interstellar travel due to the age of the universe. Although we haven’t encountered any life forms from other galaxies it doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Ted Chiang uses an endangered parrot to show that a possible reason for our great silence is due to or erratic and dangerous nature as humans. However, there are still some instances where humans have connected with other species and created special bonds in the
Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put
Over a 1950 summer lunch at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the great physicist Enrico Fermi asked his colleagues an unexpected question – “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” Laughter went around the table as everyone immediately knew that he was talking about extraterrestrial intelligence [1]. If life arises fairly commonly, as Fermi believed, it follows that there should be advanced civilizations with the desire to visit and colonize Earth close enough to do so. However, there is no incontrovertible evidence of aliens on Earth, either now or in the past. This is called the Fermi Paradox. The lack of observational evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence is known as the ‘Great Silence.’[13]
The existence of life – Aliens, beyond our planet has been a controversial topic for several centuries, and is a debatable issue even today in the 21st century. What is our topic you may ask? Aliens, Do, Exist. According to theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, it would be improbable for life not to exist somewhere other than Earth. This is a bold claim, but there is evidence to support this statement. The evidence we seek is in the many Alien occurrences we have experienced throughout human history.
It is without a doubt that the most fascinating thing about space is the possibility of life elsewhere beside Earth. It is estimated that the Milky Way Galaxy itself contains about 300 billion stars. Each star contains planets and some planets might even have moons. With these findings, the question is no longer whether life exists elsewhere. The probability that Earth is the only place where life exists in the universe is far too slim. NASA has identified many planets that have similar conditions to Earth but most of these planets are hundreds of light years away so traveling there to find out if there’s any living organism is not easy. Luckily, scientific evidences have pointed out that one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, could be one of the places where life can exist. If the theories proposed by astronomers about Europa are true, life on Europa might not even be entirely different than life near the bottom of Earth’s oceans.
Is there such thing as life outside of Earth? The building blocks of life are carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Those ingredients condense to form all living things, new stars and even new planets! So, who’s to say those ingredients didn’t form other life on other planets? Think about how vast outer space is. There are millions and millions of other planets, stars and galaxies! It’s not that far out there to think that there might be other life in space, in fact, some people even have stone hard evidence that supports the idea of “aliens”. I personally believe there is such thing as extraterrestrials, and I believe they have visited earth before. As a child, I remember my dad and I would sit around all afternoon watching alien documentaries or shows about people hunting aliens and searching for UFOs. When it comes to aliens people have so many questions; have aliens been to earth before? Are they currently living on earth? Are they controlling us? Does the government know? If so, are they hiding it from the public? There are so many questions you can ask but, in order to answer them, you have to
Everything changed on August 7, 1996, when NASA and President Clinton told the world that a very primitive life form had been found in a meteorite, from 1984. President Clinton had this to say about the matter: “This is a product of years of exploration and months of intensive study by the world’s most distinguished scientists. Like all discoveries, this one will and should continue to be reviewed, examined and scrutinized.'; After Clinton said this it was almost as if a scientific boom had occurred. NASA research teams of scientists at Johnson Space Center began to look for life as well. NASA began to send robots and Satellites to Mars. Unfortunately, they found nothing or lost contact with the robots or Satellites in the process. During the year of 1999 NASA sent up two rockets toward Mars and both were failures. Due to the failures, time has been given for scientists to blueprint a credible and step-by-step search for life on the Red Planet. Without the pressure to return Martian samples to Earth any time soon, new schemes for automated, on-the-spot detection of past or present Mars life can be flown.
...nced in 1996 that they had discovered evidence of fossilized microbial life in a meteorite from Mars, this was a huge event. Former President Bill Clinton even conveyed a national address about the discovery. Based on the evidence provided by this event, it is highly unlikely that we are the only example of intelligent life in our universe.
A galaxy, also called a nebula, consists of billions of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter which are all bound to form a massive cloud in which we live in. Although it cannot be very well explained, dark matter makes up at least 90% of a galaxy’s mass. Galaxies also contain billions upon billions of stars and their diameter can range from 1,500 to 300,000 light years. That’s huge! The Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live in, is one of about 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Our Sun is one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and our eight planets revolve around this star in only a tiny part of our galaxy. “The Earth’s solar system is believed to exist very close to the Galaxy’s galactic plane, due to the fact that the Milky Way essentially divides the night sky into two virtually equal hemispheres” ("All About the Milky"). It definitely makes people second guess the fact of there being life on other planets.
With a field as large as space is, metaphorically and literally, there is no end to all the advantages that can come of exploring the magnificent cosmos. One of the major questions we face currently is the possibility of life on other planets. “NASA's biggest ambition is the hunt for life and a habitat that can support life. Several planned or prepared missions will specifically explore the question of whether or not life exists, or once existed, elsewhere in out solar system” (Folger 3). That's exactly what we plan on using the Curiosity rover for. The MSL (Mars Space Laboratory) Curiosity rover was launched November 26th, 2011 and landed on Mars on August 6th, 2012 (Launch 2). “MSL Curiosity's mission is to analyze the climate, geology, and habitability of Mars to see if there is or has ever been life on Mars. Then, after gathering enough data, it will see if it's feasible to send a manned mission to Mars” (Anthony 2). We are already searching ...
It may be possible for us to obtain material from another planet or moon or star from elsewhere in the Solar System. Spacecraft may be able to visit these bodies and, for example, use a robot to collect material for examination. This may be examined on site, or brought to Earth to be investigated in laboratory conditions. They could be tested for things such as evidence of fossilised organisms. Another, possibly slightly far-fetched hope is that we may find simple organisms like bacteria actually living on the desired planet. These ideas spanned from the discovery of rock on our planet that originated from Mars; knocked from the planet when a comet collided with it. In 1996 a group of scientists created conflict by ...
The argument suggesting life existing on other Earth-like planets has been present since man first looked into space and questioned his own existence and the existence of others like him. Today there are many theories on the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but only one theory goes beyond them and into an even larger realm. The contents of this theory, known as the “multiverse” theory, suggest that humans on Earth live within one universe of many others that reside within a primordial vacuum containing many other universes (Jenkins and Perez). Each of these universes possesses potentially different natural constants and physical laws that govern them differently, thus calling forth some logical questions. First, what is the likelihood such universes even exist, and second, how can we test the constants and laws that still result in the possibility of intelligent life in other universes? Moreover, what implications does this theory have on the ideology that this universe is designed specifically for human beings?