Top astrobiologist explores the possibilities of alien life

 

It's time to expect the unexpected, says Natalie Cabrol, one of the world's top astrobiologists and author of an authoritative book on the hunt for life's origins – and ET.

Is there life in the universe apart from us?

”David Bowie wasn’t the first or last to wonder if there is life on Mars. The question of whether we are alone in the universe is still a great mystery. Some believe aliens have been visiting our planets microbes on Mars t for millennia, live among us and have even infiltrated the White House and 10 Downing Street.

For the more scientifically minded, there are authoritative voices like that of Nathalie Cabrol. “ She has studied if Mars has microbes and is the director of the SETI institute.  

Source:

Graeme Green 2024  The Secret Life of the Universe review: Top astrobiologist explores the possibilities of alien life | New Scientist  14 August.

Radio bursts from space are exhibiting a strange ‘sad trombone’ effect

 

Image courtesy of Seth Shostak/SETI Institute

Joel Kontinen 

Astronomers have spotted a set of 35 mysterious flashes of radio waves from space that seem to show a strange phenomenon of decreasing frequency that has never been seen before.

"Short, powerful bursts of radio waves from space are getting stranger and stranger. Astronomers have spotted 35 of these bursts from a single object with a pattern unlike any we have seen before."

Sofia Sheikh at the SETI Institute in California and her colleagues observed this object, a fast radio burst (FRB) called FRB 20220912A, over the course of 541 hours of observation with the Allen Telescope Array in California. In each of the bursts from this FRB, they found a phenomenon called the “sad trombone”.

Source:

Leah Crane 2023. Radio bursts from space are exhibiting a strange ‘sad trombone’ effect | New Scientist. 28 December. 

 

Finding aliens in a cosmic that stays quiet

Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI/NSF, CC BY 3.0

Joel Kontinen

Researchers have found 8 possible alien 'technosignatures' detected around distant stars.  They have used a new machine-learning algorithm, and scientists have picked up eight extraterrestrial signals that seem to bear the hallmarks of technology. 

The research does not indicate that they have found proof of intelligent aliens,

If our world was made by Darwinian ways, who do not the vast universe also teem with life?

But they have not responded to Earth´s calls. "Maybe aliens are waiting for the exact right moment,  Aliens may be waiting until a cosmic version of "high noon" to send out all but two of the signals were determined to be due to interference.

Telescope to search for radio signals from 12 exoplanets whose transits were observable during a brief window in March 2018. In a new study, researchers hunted for technological signs of E.T. during the moments when exoplanets pass directly in front of their suns, from Earth's point of view. These exact moments could be the perfect chance for an alien world to beam out a signal to Earthlings in an attempt to make contact their signals to us, scientists have suggested.  

Source:  

Pappas, Stephanie. 2023.  8 possible alien 'technosignatures' detected around distant stars in new AI study. Live Science 2 February. 

Extraterrestrials have not called us yet

 Image courtesy of NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter. 

Joel Kontinen

If our world was made by Darwinian ways, who do not the vast universe also teem with life?

But they have not responded to Earth´s calls. "Maybe aliens are waiting for the exact right moment,  Aliens may be waiting until a cosmic version of "high noon" to send out all but two of the signals were determined to be due to interference.

Telescope to search for radio signals from 12 exoplanets whose transits were observable during a brief window in March 2018. In a new study, researchers hunted for technological signs of E.T. during the moments when exoplanets pass directly in front of their suns, from Earth's point of view. These exact moments could be the perfect chance for an alien world to beam out a signal to Earthlings in an attempt to make contact their signals to us, scientists have suggested. 

The remaining two, a couple of short bursts from Kepler-1332b and Kepler-842b — both potentially rocky planets larger than Earth — were deemed worthy of further follow-up. However, Sheikh said, those two are also almost certainly due to interference and are not real messages."  

 Pappas.  Stephanie – 2023. Why hasn't ET phoned Earth? Maybe aliens are waiting for the exact right moment. Live Science 6 January,  

China says it has heard from aliens

 Image courtesy of NAO/FAST.

Joel Kontinen

China says it may have received signals from aliens.

Scientists have yet to rule out human radio interference as the signals source. 

China is claiming that its enormous "Sky Eye" telescope may have picked up trace signals from a distant alien civilization, according to a recently posted and subsequently deleted report by Chinese scientists. 

China is controlled by the communist party, for which SETI is a God-send. They believe that faith in God is superfluous, that everything can be explained by science or their modelling of it.

Source:

Turner, Ben, 2022.China says it may have received signals from aliens. Live Science 18 June. 

SETI researchers are planning to get extraterrisrials to speak in their 'Library of the Great Silence'

 

Ets will be shown how to use a handaxe, Image courtesy of Jonathon Keats.

Joel Kontinen

We don’t know of any habitable world, which may be a reason we haven’t contacted them. However, folks have taken on research what to say to them in a language they haven’t heard of. .

SETI Institute researchers use to scan the skies for possible signals from ET. SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak will be the head of the project. of the 'Library of the Great Silence', where also extraterristrials can say what they think. if they exists.  

Source:

Wall. Mike. 2021. 'Library of the Great Silence' invites E.T. to share long-term survival strategies Live Science 17 May.

First Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua Probably Isn't an Alien Spacecraft, Scientists Conclude

,

Image courtesy of ESO/M Kornmesser, nagualdesign, CC BY-SA 4.0.




Joel Kontinen

In 2o18, Harvard's Avi Loeb suggested that 'Oumuamua was an alien spacecraft.

It was first thought to be a comet. However, 'Oumuamua “is cigar-shaped, measuring about 200 metres in length (650 feet) and 34 metres wide (114 feet), and rotates once every seven hours. It was also found to be accelerating instead of slowing down—a discovery that was difficult to explain.”

Now, “a study published in Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers has concluded 'Oumuamua has a ‘purely natural origin,’ and that a host of natural phenomena can explain it.”

Sometimes, scientists view of the universe might be wrong. More and more space signals have turn to be false.

Almost all signals caused by interstellar signals have been false.


Source:

Osborne, Hannah. 2019. First Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua Probably Isn't an Alien Spacecraft, Scientists Conclude. Newsweek (1 July).

No Signs of Aliens in the Closest 1,300 Stars, Hunt Funded by Yuri Milner

Image courtesy of CSIRO, CC BY 3.0.




Joel Kontinen



"New results from the most comprehensive Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program ever undertaken — which surveyed 1,327 nearby stars for signals from intelligent beings — have turned up empty.

“There's certainly nothing out there glaringly obvious," Danny Price, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a paper about the results, which were published in The Astrophysical Journal, told Live Science.

"There's no amazingly advanced civilizations trying to contact us with incredibly powerful transmitters."

$100-million endeavour funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner that aims to scan the skies for technosignatures: transmissions or other evidence created by technological creatures on other worlds. The initiative, which kicked off in 2015, relies on two of the world's most powerful telescopes — the 100 meters (328-foot-diameter) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the 64 m metres (210-foot-diameter) Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia — to try to eavesdrop on alien communications."


They found nothing.

Science has proven that aliens could be hiding in only 50 per cent of the places we thought.

Some have also said that deed aliens could save humanity.

When it comes to fast radio bursts, where do they come from – the stars or aliens civilizations?

All news from the aliens are bogus. The extra-terrestrial evidence doesn’t look like 'Oumuamua.

However, many intelligent people look on aliens are real. As they believe in evolution, they also seem to think that our solar system was not unique.

New Scientist has said that has said that aliens are more likely than God.

But only if we a priori rule out God who in the beginning created everything.

Life cannot create itself.

Source:

Mann, Adam. 2019. No Signs of Aliens in the Closest 1,300 Stars, Hunt Funded by Russian Billionaire Reveals. Live Science (19 June).

'Oumuamua could be an Extraterrestrial Solar Sail

Kuva: ESO/M Kornmesser, nagualdesign, CC BY-SA 4.0.



Joel Kontinen


'Oumuamua could be an interstellar spacecrafts, some scientists are saying. Now, another team of them of is saying that it could be an extraterrestrial solar sail.

The study, done by Shmuel Bialy and Prof. Abraham Loeb, throws caution to the winds:

"Loeb told Universe Today, 'Oumuamua could be an active piece of alien technology that came to explore our solar system, the same way we hope to explore Alpha Centauri using Starshot and similar technologies’ ".

All indications of space life have been failures. This one could always be phantasy, not fact.

Source:

Williams, Matt. 2018. Could 'Oumuamua be an extraterrestrial solar sail? phys.org. (1 November)

Alien Life Enthusiasts Want to Recruit Laypeople to Decode Alien Messages

Some want to send messages to aliens; others want to decipher messages sent by assumed aliens. Image courtesy of Arne Nordmann, CC BY-SA 3.0.





Joel Kontinen

Whereas the SETI folks would like to see evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) people go a step or two further. They want to decode messages sent by intelligent aliens.

Last week METI held a workshop in Los Angeles with the aim of finding out if “language — or at least certain essential elements of language — might be universal throughout the cosmos.”

Noam Chomsky promoted the view that all “terrestrial languages share a common underlying structure," and the METI folks think that this might also apply to the whole universe.

Sheri Wells-Jensen, a linguist at Bowling Green University in Ohio, wants to recruit laypeople to decipher potential messages sent by aliens.

For some reason, the SETI/METI people tend to assume that aliens are “far more advanced technologically than we are” and thus capable of sending intelligent messages from their home planet or spaceship tens of hundreds of light years away.

However, all signals thought to hail from intelligent aliens have been false ones, including the famous wow signal and the sounds coming from the assumed megastructure near Tabby’s star that raised hopes in the SETI community.

What is more, aliens have never bothered to answer our messages, but this has not put an end to the hope that one fine day they might do so.

However, there is no evidence that space aliens even exist.

Source:

Wall, Mike l. 2018. Intelligent Aliens Might Speak Our Language. And You Can Help Decode Their Messages. Live Science (27 May).

Scientific American’s Unscientific Musings on Alien Life

Alien spaceship? Image courtesy of the Ministry of Communications of the USSR. Design: Andrey Sokolov. Scanned by Dmitry Ivanov.





Joel Kontinen

October 30, 1938 brought panic to the streets of New York. Orson Welles had adapted H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel The War of the Worlds for radio, and many listeners thought they were hearing a live broadcast on a Martian invasion.

At the time, people believed that Mars was inhabited by intelligent beings who had constructed a massive canal network that kept the red planet habitable.

Many people, including Stephen Hawking, are still fearful of big bad aliens.

Scientific American speculates on how we might react to the discovery of alien life. In an article awash with evolutionary assumptions, author Yasemin Saplakoglu quotes some true believers, including SETI’s Seth Shostak:

“Perhaps it might make sense for our brains—tuned by millions of years of evolution to be wary of predators—to freak out over immensely powerful alien beings arriving on our cosmic doorstep from parts unknown.”

Saplakoglu also discusses the views of neuroscientist Cornelius Gross:

“Gross thinks we would probably first try to understand it, a reaction that can be interpreted as yet another ancient, evolutionarily sculpted defense system aimed at gaining control of a novel situation.”

There seems to be a connection between believing in UFOs and in evolution. Darwinians detest the possibility that Earth could be a unique place, a privileged planet.

There is no evidence of any kind of alien life, despite the headlines suggesting otherwise. All reports have been false alarms. (See, for instance here, here and here.)

Source:

Saplakoglu, Yasemin. 2018. Is Humanity Ready for the Discovery of Alien Life? Scientific American (16 February).

Interstellar Cloud Destroys Belief in Alien Megastructure Near Tabby’s Star

Some thought it was comets. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.




Joel Kontinen

No megastructure. No aliens.

Not so long ago SETI enthusiasts thought they saw evidence of a “massive extraterrestrial construction project”, as New Scientist puts it, near Tabby’s star.

A star can become 1 per cent dimmer when an exoplanet crosses in front of it. This occurs at regular intervals. However, astronomers were unable to explain why Tabby’s star or KIC 8462852, as it is officially known, became 20 per cent dimmer – sporadically.

Recent research suggests that asteroids or alien megastructures can’t explain what is happening. The proposed solution is a swarm of interstellar comets.

The problem is that no one knows whether they exist.

Jason Wright at Pennsylvania State University, who initially came up with the idea of alien megastructures, now thinks the dimming may be caused by an interstellar cloud between us and the star.

This might well be a plausible explanation as Tabby’s star has been dimming for a hundred years or so.

This has not been a good year for the SETI folks. It has cast doubt on the famous wow signal and the strong radio signal coming from the star HD 164595.

It seems that those who reject the Christian worldview tend to believe in more or less bizarre phenomena.

There seems to be a strong correlation between belief in Darwinian evolution and in UFOs, for instance.

Source:

Hall, Shannon. 2016. ‘Alien megastructure’ star may be explained by interstellar junk. New Scientist (19 September).

SETI’s Logic: Searching for Life Where It Can’t Exist

SETI is searching for life on planets orbiting red dwarf stars. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.



Joel Kontinen

The SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) project has used radio telescopes to scan the skies for signs of extraterrestrial life. After 50 years of searching, they have found absolutely nothing.

Even the famous wow signal was probably a false alarm.

Most exoplanets are very different from Earth, and even the ones that might in principle be habitable might not be – or even exist.

This has not stopped people from speculating about how we should communicate with aliens. Stephen Hawking, for instance, has warned us of big bad aliens.

The SETI Institute is not going to throw in the towel, however. New Scientist states:

“Over the next two years, the institute will turn the Allen Telescope Array – a group of 42 antennas in northern California that are dedicated to SETI research – towards 20,000 red dwarf stars to listen for radio signals that might be signs of life.”

This might well be wishful thinking:

“Red dwarfs tend to be more active than sun-like stars, shooting out energetic flares that could fry nearby planets.”

And that is not the only problem:

“They’re also so dim that their habitable zone – the region around the star where temperatures are right for liquid water – is close enough that the planets there would be tidally locked to the star, showing the same face to it at all times. That means one side of the planet could be drenched in scorching eternal sunlight, while the other experiences a frigid constant night.”

But if one embraces the Darwinian view of life, one has to believe that we are not special – even if the evidence shows that we are.

In contrast, some researchers believe that Earth is extremely unique and that there’s no place like home elsewhere in the universe.

Source:

Grossman, Lisa. 2016. SETI looks at red dwarf stars in its search for ancient aliens. New Scientist (4 April).

Famous Wow! Signal Caused by Comets, Not Aliens?

Image courtesy of The Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO), public domain.




Joel Kontinen

Science fiction and Darwinian evolution have played major roles in shaping the way many people look at the universe. There’s a tendency to assume that life mysteriously pops up almost anywhere it possibly can – without any input from a Designer.

Even brilliant minds have jumped on the alien life bandwagon. Steven Hawking, for instance, has warned earthlings of big bad aliens. Others have speculated that we have already seen them, while some others are planning to communicate with them.

What is needed is a reality check. We don’t know of any other star system expect our own that harbours life, and the search for alien intelligence (SETI) has been marked by false alarms.

The latest to go is the famous Wow! Signal. A recent article in New Scientist gives some background facts:

“On 15 August 1977, radio astronomers using the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University picked up a powerful signal from space. Some believe it was our first interception of an alien broadcast.”

Hopes were high when the assumed message was first received:

“The signal – known as the “Wow! signal” after a note scribbled by astronomer Jerry Ehman, who detected it – came through at 1420 megahertz, corresponding to a wavelength of 21 centimetres. Searchers for extraterrestrial transmissions have long considered it an auspicious place to look, as it is one of the main frequencies at which atoms of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, absorb and emit energy. What’s more, this frequency easily penetrates the atmosphere.”

However, the almost 40 years following the signal have been silent ones. Now it seems that the signal was caused by two comets that passed Earth. Antonio Paris, a professor of astronomy at St Petersburg College in Florida came up with this view recently.

He might well be right.


Source:

Emspak, Jesse. 2016. Famous Wow! signal might have been from comets, not aliens. New Scientist (11 January).

New Scientist: How should we communicate with aliens?

New Scientist discusses the issue of communicating with aliens. The same question was brought up in the 1970s when the first message addressed to ETs began its long voyage through space. Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen

The latest issue of New Scientist strays far from empirical science. The popular magazine takes up the issue of communication with aliens. While the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)project has cost millions of dollars, euros and pounds, it has not produced any results. ETs have been as unwilling to reply to humans as the ancient Philistine god Dagon.

In any case, Stephen Battersby thinks that ETs are social beings who at least have eyes and some kind of limbs and that they eat meat and procreate sexually.

Battersby does not mention that we do not have any proof of the existence of ETs.

The belief in UFOs and aliens stems from Darwinian evolution. The evolutionist believes that since (in his view) life began randomly on Earth it must also have developed elsewhere in the universe.

However, one needs more than just water to create life. One also needs information and a sender. In addition, life can only come from life, and thus the Genesis model is a much more logical explanation than abiogenesis (spontaneous generation) or panspermia (the view that life came from outer space).

Sources:

Battersby, Stephen. 2010. Exolanguage: do you speak alien? New Scientist 2744 (20 January).
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.300-exolanguage-do-you-speak-alien.html?full=true


Battersby, Stephen. 2010. The face of first contact: What aliens look like. New Scientist 2744 (20 January)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.400-the-face-of-first-contact-what-aliens-look-like.html?full=true

New Scientist: Let Us Tell Our Worries to ET, perhaps he will listen

According to New Scientist, the messages sent on Pioneer 10 were too boring. Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen

New Scientist suggests that ETs have not replied to our messages because they have been too humdrum. For instance, the messages on board NASA’s Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have lacked features that could have made extraterrestrials give us a call.

Proponents of evolution have searched for etxraterrestrial life for many decades. They have invested millions of dollars into the SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project in the hope of getting evidence for the existence of little green men.

Friends of SETI believe that since life has evolved on Earth randomly it must also have evolved on many other planets.

For supporters of SETI, creation is a dirty word.

Now Douglas Vakoch, director of interstellar message composition at the SETI Institute in Mountain View California writes in New Scientist that we have sent messages that have been too brief and too boring. ETs, who obviously enjoy the fruits of a civilisation that is vastly superior to ours, would want more realistic descriptions of the denizens of our planet, for instance news about our weaknesses and problems.

Wall Street Journal might just be too boring. Perhaps we ought to send them an issue of Time or Newsweek. Of course, there are some British tabloids that might interest them, at least from a sociological point of view.


Source:

Vakoch, Douglas. 2009. Why we shouldn't hide our problems from ET. New Scientist.com. (18 April)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16981-why-we-shouldnt-hide-our-problems-from-et.html?full=true&print=true