Friday, October 26, 2007

Part 1: Outer Space Intelligent Life

Is there intelligent life out there?

As an avid reader of comics, articles and novels that touch on this topic with their resounding affirmation, I have decided to share in my blog today and in the days ahead, some arguments by several great 20th century writers who also firmly believe there is intelligent life in Outer Space.

I've seen some pretty unusual phenomena myself in the past making me cast doubts on the singularity of our existence on Earth.

My theory and it's possible some others' as well, is that the strange or mysterious sightings that we make is the evidence that time-travel is presently on-going but a universal law forbids the tampering of our economic and socio-political history.

I have decided to start with the late famous brilliant best-seller author of Chariots of the Gods, Erich Von Danken's argument.

Is it conceivable that we world citizens of the twentieth century are not the only living beings of our kind in the cosmos? Because there is no homunculus from another star on display in a museum for us to visit, the answer 'Our earth is the only star with human beings' still seems to be legitimate and convincing. But the forest of question marks grows as soon as we make a careful study of the fact resulting from the latest discoveries and research work.

On a clear night the naked eye can see about 4,500 stars, so the astronomers say. The telescope of even a small observatory makes nearly two million stars visible and a modern reflecting telescope brings the light from thousands of millions more to the viewer-specks of light in the Milky Way. But in the colossal dimensions of the cosmos our Stellar System is only a tiny part of an incomparably larger Stellar System-of a cluster of Milky Ways, one might say, containing some twenty galaxies within a radius of 1 1/2
million light years (1 light year= the distance travelled by light in a year, i.e. 186,000 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 miles). And even this vast number of stars is small in comparison with the many thousands of spiral Nebulae disclosed by the electronic telescope. Disclosed up to the present day, I should emphasise, for research of this kind is only just beginning.

The astronomer Harlow Shapley estimates that there are some 10(20) stars within the range of our telescopes. When Shapley associates a planetary system with only one in a thousand stars, we may assume that it is a very cautious estimate. If we continue to speculate on the basis of this estimate and suspect the necessary conditions for life on only one star in a thousand, still calculation still gives a figure of 10(14). Shapley asks: how many stars in this 'astronomical' figure have an atmosphere suitable for life? One in a thousand? That would still leave the incredible figure of 10 11 stars with the prerequisites for life. Even if we assume that every one thousandth planet out of this figure has produced life, there are still 100 million planets on which we can speculate life exists. This calculation is based on telescopes using the techniques available today but we must not forget that these are constantly being improved.


TO BE CONTINUED...

No comments: