Is there any evidence that aliens visited our planet?
A NASA scientist did really claim that aliens may have come to Earth. However, there is some nuance.
A white paper titled "New Assumptions to Guide SETI Research" by NASA researcher Silvano Colombano was the topic of discussion on Reddit this morning.
It made some audacious statements, and the media seized upon them right away. NASA scientist claims Earth may have been visited by aliens, according to Fox News. Tiny aliens "may have already visited Earth," according to Yahoo.
Yes, Colombano, a member of the Intelligent Systems Division of the space agency, acknowledged that extraterrestrials may have previously visited Earth. However, the paper's main contribution was a sharply original interpretation of the Fermi Paradox. Or, to put it another way, it posed the query: Where are all the aliens?
Given the vastness of the cosmos, there are a plethora of potential hiding places for extraterrestrial life. The Kepler Program has found 3,848 planets in total, including some candidates in systems with an estimated age of 11.2 billion years. Given that our solar system is just 4.5 billion years old, it's feasible that one of these really old systems has an Earth-like planet that is 6 billion years older than our own.
Consider what conditions life may be like there. For Colombano, the timing—those six billion years—is crucial. In essence, he contends that the pace of technological advancement on Earth is so rapid that it is impossible to foresee what will happen in the next thousand years, let alone in six million.
According to Colombano, there are four fundamental presumptions that should be questioned in order to better understand where aliens may be and how rapidly increasing technology might contribute to their detection. Here is a summary.
1. It is impossible or extremely unlikely to travel between stars.
Our technological capabilities and scientific knowledge currently place limits on how far we can travel in the cosmos. In the 1970s, a person traveled to the far side of the moon, which was the furthest away from Earth at the time. Additionally, neither fusion drives nor travel at the speed of light exist. Yet.
However, aliens may. Thus, we may search for proof of rather clear events, such as a massive spacecraft with ion propulsion traveling past Earth.
However, according to Colombano, we must imagine the potential of obtaining a far higher comprehension and control of matter-energy and space-time; we cannot allow our existing resources or imaginations to constrain us.
2. For hundreds or millions of years, radio waves have been the primary means of communication.
It's beneficial to have a means of remote communication until we are able to travel at the speed of light. One of the reasons SETI has been looking for radio waves is because of this.
Colombano adds that radio waves would be able to convey a lot more information than they can now, even if they continue to appear in the far future and we think that aliens are transmitting them. In other words, they would be invisible to us, making it impossible for us to tell a significant message from "noise." However, in the future, this mode of communication could be rendered unnecessary. Other beacons that we are not even yet able to understand might be chosen by civilizations.
3. Carbon life would be the foundation for intelligent civilizations.
This is a major issue. We've known for a very long time that a few essential building elements are necessary for life as we know it, but it's also plausible that other, very different kinds of life exist in the cosmos.
Colombano contends that our ecosystem's need for carbon may just be the tiniest initial step in an ongoing evolution that might give rise to an intelligence far superior to our own that is not dependent on carbon.
Although it seems logical to suppose that all life began in circumstances comparable to our own, there is little chance that every creature abides by these principles.
In such an event, our chances of discovering life start to increase outside the Goldilocks Zone. It's difficult to picture how this kind of existence might seem, behave, or communicate. Its native planet might have served as a petri dish for something quite odd.
All subsequent assumptions on this list may subsequently be affected by this. Due to the absence of human constraints like a human lifetime or size, life not based on carbon could have access to interstellar travel.
4. No one has ever visited us, and nobody is coming.
Due to widespread hoaxes and widespread skepticism, Colombano contends that the quest for alien life has largely disregarded the possible importance of the UFO phenomenon. He thinks the scientific community should try to "discover the signal in the noise" as opposed to taking this position.
There may be "signals," however faint, amid the incredibly vast quantity of "noise" surrounding UFO reports that point to some occurrences that cannot be explained or refuted. Some of those events could meet particular theories if we accept a new set of presumptions about the kind of higher intellect and technology we might discover, and we might then begin some serious research.
What therefore needs to be changed?
Comombano suggests a few ideas for a more aggressive strategy for future SETI investigations.
It is important for physicists to do "speculative physics," which pushes the boundaries of space-time and energy while remaining rooted in empirical ideas. They should also work with engineers to explore possible futures for technology, particularly with respect to AI and ways that people may work with robots.
They should also involve sociologists in speculating about the kind of societies that may emerge from these hypothetical civilizations as well as how they would interact.
Also worthy of investigation in the context of a system with very little signal to noise, but with the potential to cast doubt on some of our presumptions and open up fresh avenues for communication and discovery, should be UFO sightings.
We now have additional concerns after taking all of that into account, including the possibility that life throughout the galaxy may not take a recognizable form. What impact may this have on our presumptions and willingness to interact with societies different than the Earth-like ones we've been anticipating for ages? The next challenge is that.
We have a long way to go before we can definitively say that aliens have landed on our tiny blue planet.
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