Thursday, 30 August 2012
China advancing their search for aliens
In space news this week, China is one country going full-speed-ahead in the modern space race. Several space missions have been announced by the country in recent months. And on August 21st, Su Dingqiang, former president of the Chinese Astronomical Society and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced plans to probe black holes, study dark matter, and search for signs of alien life.
Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope. (Credit: HXMT)
He says a hard x-ray modulation telescope is currently under construction, and is scheduled to be sent into orbit between 2014 and 2016. This tool will be used to study black holes to evaluate “high matter density, high energy density, high electric-magnetic field, and high gravitational field.”
A dark matter particle explorer is another project in the works, with a projected launch date of 2015. And, not stopping there, China is working to complete construction on their Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), the world’s largest radio telescope, by 2016. This single dish radio telescope is being built in southern China’s Guizhou province. And the price tag is reportedly more than 700 million yuan (or $110 million US dollars). The Register explains, “It’s designed to be three times more sensitive than the current world record holder, meaning that it should be able to see further into space than ever before.”
China is also searching for extraterrestrial life with their Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3-1) in Antarctica, on which construction was completed in early 2012. As the Daily Galaxy explains, one of the telescope’s chief objectives is to search for extra-solar planets suitable for life.
UFOs over atomic plants – Part 3
We publish the third and last installment of the original series that appeared in The News World’s “UFO Supplement” in March 1982, under the pseudonym of A. Hovni. Based on then recently declassified documents from the USAF, FBI, AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) and other agencies released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), this article continues with the UFO mini-flap over the restricted zone of the Oak Ridge atomic facilities in Tennessee in 1950; as well as CIA documents about sightings over uranium mines in the Belgian Congo (currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in central Africa; and more flying saucer activity monitored by the FBI, this time over the Savannah River Plant managed by the AEC in South Carolina.
We transcribed the article identically as it appeared in The News World on March 6, 1982, correcting only typos and adding illustrations and some of the official documents discussed in the story.
Original cover of the UFO Supplement of The News World, where this article was published in 1982. The CIA document is on the sample official documents section. (Credit: Huneeus Collection)
The News World, New York City, March 6, 1982
UFO blitz over atomic sites sparked U.S. alert
Intelligence agencies began secret research
By A. Hovni
Special to The News World
Last in a three-part series
We covered in our previous article the beginnings of the October 1950 UFO flap over the sensitive atomic installations at Oak Ridge, Tenn., which would cause considerable alarm in various U.S. government agencies. On Oct. 12 and 13 of that year, unidentified objects were observed visually by Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) security personnel while unidentified echoes were detected by the Air Force Radar Station at McGhee-Tyson Airport in Knoxville, Tenn. F-82 fighter jets were scrambled on both occasions.
The authorities were still sorting out the evidence of these initial incidents when, at 3:20 p.m. on Oct. 16, AEC troopers John Isabell, Lendelle Clark and Hank Briggs, and two other witnesses observed “objects hovering over the K-25 plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn.” (See AEC Patrol Incident Report by trooper John Isabell for a complete description of the sighting in the words of the principal witness).
AEC Patrol Incident Report with the testimony of Trooper John L. Isabell on October 16, 1950.
A shorter description is given by AEC troopers Lendelle Clark and Hank Briggs, who were stopped by Isabell at the Blair Gate to show them “an object in the north that was traveling toward the northwest.” Their description stated that the UFO “looked to be at about 2,000 feet in the air and a white-silverish looking color, rotating in a counterclockwise manner. It was round in shape and going up in a rather fast motion.” The witnesses also noticed that the round object “looked the size of a ball” and “seemed to come in sight and then disappear.”
Aerial view of the “Y-12” Area at Oak Ridge. This nuclear installation in Tennessee was the site of many UFO incidents in the late 40s and early 50s. (Credit: nicap.org)
Trooper Isabell phoned headquarters immediately, and he reported that “fifteen minutes after the object disappeared into the northeast, an F-82 Fighter plane showed up in the area where the object was last seen, but appeared to be thousands of feet lower than the object which troopers Clark, Briggs and the undersigned saw and reported.” This third Air Force “scramble” with F-82s with one or two days difference between them is confirmed by another document, an Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) evaluation of the UFO sightings over Oak Ridge. The document states that “a fighter aircraft from the 5th Fighter Sqd. was sent to identify an object which was reported to be hovering over K-25,” but that “the radar equipment aboard the aircraft got an image on its scope” that the pilot finally “identified as a light-type aircraft.” Yet the Army evaluation also indicates that “ground observers state that the fighter plane passed beneath the object which they were observing.” The report finally states that “the Security Division, Atomic Energy Commission, will attempt to have the observers, make the same statements while undergoing a polygraph test.”
The final evaluation
AEC guards at the Elza Gate in Oak Ridge in the 1940s. It was guards like these who reported a series of UFO sightings in 1950 which were thoroughly investigated by the AEC, AFOSI, Army CIC, and FBI. (Credit: Ed Westcott/Wikimedia Commons)
Undoubtedly, one of the most interesting documents regarding the UFO flap over Oak Ridge is a “Summary of Information” prepared by the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). Dated Oct. 21, 1950, it was distributed to the commanding general and the G-2 Section of the Third Army, the AEC Security Division, the FBI and AFOSI. Right from the beginning, the document indicates that “the most reliable sources available were utilized” and that the witnesses’ employment and FBI records “were inspected to ascertain their reliability, integrity and loyalty to the United States government.”
The document indicates next that a number of government agencies were consulted, including the AEC Security Division and Security Patrol at Oak Ridge, the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) Division, the FBI, AFOSI and the AF Radar Station and Fighter Squadrons in the Knoxville area. Yet CIC concluded that the opinions of all these officials “fail to evolve an adequate explanation for SUBJECT” (Capital letters in the original). Although they mention all the Air Force’s favorite debunking gimmicks popular in those days, such as mass hysteria, birds, balloons, insect swarms, flying kites, insanity, etc., the document states in no uncertain terms that all these explanations “have been rejected because of the simultaneous witnessing of the objects with the reported radar sightings; because of the detailed, similar descriptions of the objects seen by different persons; and because of impossibility.”
Less than two months after this authoritative report was written, in early December of that same year, 1950, UFOs were back on the radar screens near Oak Ridge. One FBI teletype informed that Army Intelligence “have been put on immediate high alert for any data whatsoever concerning flying saucers,” and that the Army’s CIC “advises data strictly confidential and should not be disseminated.” Another FBI teletype from director J. Edgar Hoover instructs that, “arrangements should be made to obtain all facts concerning possible radar jamming by ionization of particles in atomic atmosphere.”
From the Belgian Congo…
The Shinkolobwé uranium mine in the Belgian Congo in the late 50s. This mine provided uranium ore for the Manhattan Project. (Credit: www.imca-slotracing.com/images/)
To the extent that flying saucers exploded into the great flap of 1952, so did the concern of the CIA and other government agencies to process and store UFO reports from all over the world. From the CIA’s worldwide reporting network of UFO sightings established in 1952, comes an interesting report obtained from Die Presse in Vienna, concerning “two fiery disks sighted over the uranium mines in the southern part of the Belgian Congo [now Zaire] in the Elizabethville district.” According to the press report, “the disks glided in elegant curves and changed their position many times.” Duration of the sighting was between 10 and 12 minutes, and the objects “appeared as plates, ovals and simply lines.”
Despite its remoteness, this sighting had at least one competent witness in the person of Commander Pierre of the small Elizabethville airfield, who “immediately set out in pursuit with a fighter plane.” Cmdr. Pierre chased the two saucers for about 15 minutes, and at one point he reached a distance of only 120 meters from one of the discs. He described it as a “discus-shaped” object, 12 to 15 meters in diameter, consisting of an “absolutely still inner core” connected through a knob with “several small openings” to an “outer rim (which) was completely veiled in fire and must have had an enormous speed of rotation. The color of the metal was similar to that of aluminum.” According to Cmdr. Pierre’s estimate, the saucers were flying at about 1,500 kilometers per hour “in a precise and light manner, both vertically and horizontally,” until they disappeared from his view “in a straight line toward Lake Tanganyka.” Another CIA document regarding aerial phenomena in the Congo indicated that by 1955, “the UFOs are coming more and more over this country.”
…to the Savannah River plant
A May 12, 1952 urgent teletype from the FBI office in Savannah to director J. Edgar Hoover in Washington indicated that on May 10, at approximately 10:45 p.m., “four employees of Dupont Co., employed on Savannah River Plant near Ellenton, S.C., saw four disc-shaped objects approaching the four-hundred area from the south, disappearing in a northerly direction.” For the next half hour or so, four more objects buzzed the area, flying both in pairs and singles.
Heavy Water Component Test Reactor, Savannah River Site, Aiken, South Carolina. (Credit: US Department of Energy)
This incident in another restricted area, the Savannah River Plant managed by the AEC, apparently disturbed Hoover somewhat, since he sent a memo to the Air Force’s director of special investigations at the Pentagon on May 15, 1952, five days after the sightings. Copies were also sent to the Army’s G-2 assistant chief-of-staff, the director of naval intelligence and the director of security, AEC. Based on data furnished by the bureau’s Savannah office, Hoover writes that, “the disks were described by the above-mentioned employees as being approximately fifteen inches in diameter and tallow to gold in color. All of the objects were allegedly traveling at a high rate of speed and at a high altitude, without any noise.”
UFO sightings over atomic reactors and other sensitive military and industrial installations have not diminished in more recent years, either. During the 1973 UFO wave, for example, UFOs were seen again in the vicinity of the nuclear installations in Oak Ridge, Tenn. In December of that year, Howard Whetsel and R. Clough filmed on a 300-foot, 16 mm color film over 30 sightings of UFOs flying over Oak Ridge. I have never seen the film, but both NICAP and Ground Saucer Watch have declared it “bona fide.”
Another series of sightings took place during the same flap in South County, Rhode Island. According to ufologist Ronald Todd from APRO, of 66 sightings in the area, 47 were reported around Wood River Junction, where the United Nuclear Uranium Recovery Plant is located. In one particular incident, two UFOs hovered alternately over the plant for almost three hours. In another incident, witnessed by Todd himself, a UFO was chased by six helicopters and a radar plane. “A lot seemed to center around the nuclear plant,” concluded Todd. And there is still the well known UFO “invasion” of several Strategic Air Command nuclear bases over a two-week period in late 1975.
* * *
Update since original publication
Of course there are many more UFO cases near nuclear power plants that took place since this series of articles was published originally in 1982. On June 14 and then again on July 24, 1984, barely two years after publication of these articles, one of the best known UFO incidents over atomic facilities occurred when “a huge elongated solid structure” was seen by security guards at Reactor No. 3 of the Indian Point Atomic Power Plants in Buchanan, just north of New York City. The details are described in the chapter “Close Encounters at Indian Point” in Night Siege – The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings, which was Dr. Hynek’s last book, co-authored with Philip Imbrogno and Bob Pratt. Although the security guards were interviewed for this book, no official documents have ever emerged regarding this case. The late Col. Colman von Keviczky, director of ICUFON in New York, contacted the NY Power Authority, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, which replaced the AEC), the Department of Energy, and other agencies in an attempt to obtain files under the FOIA, but was basically given a polite run-around but no papers about the Indian Point UFO incidents.
The next important case occurred on the evening of March 4, 1988 on Lake Erie, near the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio, 40 miles northeast of Cleveland. This case was investigated by the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), which described it in a document as “a large object hovering over the lake,” which “apparently dispersed 3-5 smaller flying objects that were zipping around rather quickly” and “had the ability to stop and hover in mid flight.” This interesting case is described in some detail in a famous article by UFO historian Richard Dolan, “Twelve Government Documents That Take UFOs Seriously,” posted by Open Minds. We’ve also included the USCG report in the list of sample official documents below.
The appearance of UFOs over nuclear power plants is certainly not restricted to the U.S. In their book UFO Case Files of Russia, authors Paul Stonehill and Philip Mantle included two chapters titled “UFOs over Soviet Nuclear Installations” and “UFOs over Chernobyl.” The UFO allegations surrounding the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in Ukraine in April 1986 are particularly intriguing. The chapter provides the testimony of two power plant technicians, who “observed a fiery sphere in the sky…Two bright raspberry-coloured rays shot out from the UFO and were directed at the reactor of Unit 4.” According to Mantle and Stonehill, readings taken by the technicians right before and after the appearance of the UFO showed a dramatic decrease of the radiation level. Other sightings and even a couple of photos were taken in 1990 and 1991.
Cooling towers of the Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant in Slovakia, site of a UFO flap in the early 90s. (Credit: MarkBA/Wikimedia Commons)
Another UFO flap over an atomic power plant occurred in Slovakia in 1992, specifically at the Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant in the village of Javlovské Bohunice in western Slovakia’s Trnava District. According to a report published in Hungary’s Ufomagazin in 1994, on the early hours of August 21, 1992, a security guard reported to his supervisor “the appearance of a flying object around the entrance gate of the plant. It was about 300 meters in diameter, triangular in form and hovering at an altitude of 500 meters.” The eyewitness could not identify the object with any familiar aircraft and no noise was heard. Other guards also saw the object over the gate and reported that something had landed outside the plant. Burnt marks were found on the field on the following morning. This was followed by other incidents, which led about 25 workers at the Bohunice plant to create their own UFO Club to document the flap!
Finally, an Argentinean UFO hunter called Cristián Soldano reported and filmed unexplained lights which he called “UFO flashes” near the Atucha nuclear power reactor in Buenos Aires province in June 2010. His story and footage was published and broadcast by Argentina’s media, including Soldano’s claims that “these objects were reacting to our signals” (he uses a protocol similar to Dr. Greer’s C-SETI) and were seen on the road leading to the Atucha plant. There were also some reports and YouTube videos of alleged UFO activity during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. Although there are several YouTube videos showing possible UFOs, I have not seen more solid reports documenting these cases. But even if we don’t count Fukushima, the evidence outlined in this series clearly establishes a link between UFO activity and nuclear power plants. Their intentions and its implications remain elusive, but the evidence should not be ignored and ought to be researched more in depth.
Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Summary of Information, “Subject: Objects Sighted over Oak Ridge,” dated October 17, 1950.
CIA reports including a translation of a Vienna newspaper article, “Flying Saucers over Belgian Congo Uranium Mines,” from 1952; and a “Report of Unidentified Flying Objects” in the Belgian Congo from 1956.
FBI “urgent” teletype about UFO sightings at the AEC Savannah River Plant, May 12, 1952; and a memo by Director J. Edgar Hoover to the Air Force Director of Special Investigations on the same subject, May 15, 1952.
US Coast Guard “Incident Report: Unidentified Flying Objects,” mentioning an incident “1/4 mile east of CEI Power Plant” from March 1988.
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Did Neil Armstrong Take UFO Secrets to the Grave? (Video)
Did Neil Armstrong know more about UFO sightings
on the Moon than he told the public? Was it the reason he left NASA and became a
very private citizen?
That's the theory cropping up on the web and
discussed in the video attached below.
According to this YouTuber, Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin saw two alien spacecraft, watching their every move, as they descended to
the lunar surface on the first visit.
Why wasn't the public aware? After all, the landing was seen on TV by hundreds of millions around the world.
Either it was equipment malfunction, alien
interference which prevented some key transmissions from being heard, or plain
old-fashioned government coverup.
But, supposedly, reports of the objects by the
astronauts to Mission Control are part of a transcript published years later by
some ham radio operators who were listening in at the time.
In answer to a query by Mission Control, one of
the astronauts is allegedly quoted as saying, "These babies are huge, sir.
Enormous! Oh, God, you wouldn't believe it! I'm telling you there are other
space craft out there. Lined up on the far side of the crater edge. They're on
the Moon watching us!"
The photo above supposedly shows a picture
snapped by Aldrin of the ships shadowing their activities.
If this is true, it would certainly be a
reasonable explanation why Armstrong left the space program. He never "cashed
in" like many of the other 11 men who actually walked on the Moon.
Did seeing a UFO spook him away? Here's the video:
Europe’s Plans to Visit the Moon in 2018 (Video)
By
The European Space Agency is aiming for the Moon with their Lunar Lander mission, anticipated to arrive on the lunar surface in 2018. Although ESA successfully put a lander on Titan with the Huygens probe in 2005, this will be the first European spacecraft to visit the surface of Earth’s Moon.
Although Lunar Lander will be an unmanned robotic explorer, the mission will be a forerunner to future human exploration of the Moon as well as Mars. Lunar Lander will use advanced technologies for autonomous landing and will be able to determine the best location for touchdown on its own, utilizing lasers to avoid obstacles on the Moon’s surface.
With no GPS on the Moon, Lunar Lander will navigate by digitally imaging the surface on the fly. Landing will be accomplished via thrusters, which were successfully tested earlier this year at a test chamber in Germany.
Lunar Lander’s destination will be the Moon’s south pole, where no exploration missions have ever landed. Once on the lunar surface, the Lander will investigate Moon dust using a robotic arm and a suite of onboard diagnostic instruments, sending data and images back to scientists on Earth for further study.
Watch a video of the Lunar Lander mission below, from launch to landing.
Read more about Lunar Lander on the ESA site here.
UFO Witnessed by Hundreds Over Myrtle Beach (Video)
Published on 26 Aug 2012 by thirdphaseofmoon
More Amazing Footage shot by Joe Kiernan North Myrtle Beach,S.C. dusk around 8pm of what looks to be a Mothership hiding in the clouds! Also notice the small Object Disappear as it Zooms Underneath the Unusual Lights!
UFO Sightings on KTLA News Broadcast (Video)
Published on 27 Aug 2012 by GammaUfoChannel
Mass Ufo Sightings on the Weather Report on Long Beach News KTLA Channel 5 waves. California. August 19, 2012
Skeptics vs. Believers: Let's Do the Math on UFOs
By R.W. Sanders
Picture added by Mac (credit Google Images)
It seems every time I peruse a website addressing the UFO subject, I see articles from skeptics that usually begin with a title such as "Is this a UFO, or a tractor?" This just seems like shooting fish in a barrel. Of course it's a tractor. Or a balloon. Or Jupiter. Or swamp gas!
The fact is that most all who are interested in the subject would agree that all but a few percent of sightings reported are explainable as some kind of natural object or phenomena. So do we really need an article that exemplifies that well known fact? Of course it is a tractor. It's just a tractor that looks a lot like a space ship when seen in the right light.
Let's Get Serious
Most agree that about five percent of sightings are unknown. That being the case, the believers are beginning this struggle with the odds looking pretty bad for our side. Of all UFO cases, skeptics can write about 95 percent of them, while believers are stuck with a measly five. Doesn't seem fair, somehow. Nevertheless, the result of this inequity is that the believers research the hell out of their five percent, while skeptics just point out tractors and planets and swamp gas and usually act superior.
Stanton Friedman has a very good formula that defines skeptics at his website. And though the "Father of Roswell Ufology" is pretty savage in the way he treats skeptics, they are usually no less so in their treatment of believers. But Stan can site decades of research on one incident, which obviously leads to expertise. Most skeptics spend very little time researching one incident, comparatively speaking. But then, that's what happens when you only have five percent of the total with which to work.
But seriously, with all the new science happening and the building consensus that we will find life outside this planet, isn't it time to quit talking about swamp gas? A good first step in this process would be if the mainstream media would become less snarky on the subject. Is it any wonder that true experts tend to avoid mainstream news shows? James Fox, an otherwise well respected UFO researcher, learned this lesson when he agreed to star in Chasing UFOs on the National Geographic Channel. He seemed more surprised than anyone at the final cut made by the network, which as usual made a mockery of the entire subject. James found out that he was appearing in just one more show where people run around at night with fancy equipment, but this one just features more profanity. How many more "___ Hunter" shows do we need anyway?
This Subject Deserves Better
Don't get me wrong, skeptics are valuable and being skeptical is usually wise. But, being skeptical just for the sake of it, is just foolish. Ditto with believing beyond reason. Just as with any subject, there are extremes on both ends of the spectrum. But at this time, and probably due to good disinformation campaigns, most Americans seem to view the subject with embarrassment. They fear being perceived as a UFO believer. And they feel this way even though many polls find that a majority of Americans believe UFOs exist.
What a weird paradox. We have been trained well by the mainstream media, who cannot broach the subject without wearing smirks on their faces and acting as if the whole subject is beneath them and worth derision and ridicule. Yet these are the same media who devoted weeks to coverage of Anna Nicole's death and whether or not to tube-feed Terri Schiavo. The same media who spent all day watching O.J. Simpson being driven in his getaway car at a blazing 35 mph, puts something as potentially life changing as extraterrestrial visitation at the end of the newscast with the puppy stories and other weird news. In fact, The Huffington Post will publish this under "Weird News." My question is, why is this subject "weird"? It seems to me that it is of extreme national security concern that unknown objects are invading our air space, messing with our nukes, and our military seems powerless to intervene. If people really are being abducted and experimented upon, is everyone alright with that?
These are questions that deserve serious, well-funded study. But presently, it is a very rare scientist who does not do his research on UFOs by paying his own way. Virtually no one receives grants for funding, like those who study more traditional subject matter. And while there is no doubt in my mind that greenhouse gasses will gravely wound civilization if left unchecked, it will take years. And that can be seen as a serious research project, ergo the funding. But if ET really can make nukes malfunction and fly through our space unchecked, that is a bit more immediate to my mind. Surely the government should throw some money that way.
Perhaps They Do
Many believe our country and others have a secret space program. Let's hope so! Perhaps serious money is being thrown at the investigation. We are simply unaware. Maybe that is where some of the billions of dollars in the government's "black budget" go. Who knows? But I believe that is just the point, who knows? Why the secrecy? Our government produces millions of classified secret documents each year. Why? How can so much need to be kept secret? Do the people actually own the government, or vice versa? Is the military/industrial establishment sitting on technology that could solve our energy problems?
These are the questions that need to be answered. And there is no room for ridicule in the search for answers to these very important questions. And we all owe a great debt of gratitude to those who have spent their lives researching this subject with very little if any compensation. And still somehow, coming up with answers to questions that the mainstream simply will not address seriously. And it is a shame that anything written regarding this very serious subject is published under some classification labeled "weird." It is my hope that someday I won't feel compelled to write about these things, as the ridicule will have disappeared and answers will have been found. But in the meantime, when dealing with skeptics, I find the following mental exercise helps illustrate this point.
Let's Do the Math
Even mainstream scientists agree that the earth is approximately four and a half billion years old. That is 4,500 million years. Also well known and recently accepted is that we are finding planets are absolutely thick throughout the cosmos. Where we thought the odds extremely stacked against finding another planet like earth, we have already found a few that are very similar. And that leads one to believe that there will be not only one earth twin, but perhaps many. Yet, for the purpose of keeping this example simple, lets assume we find only one. But that one is just a bit older than us. In fact, one million years older. It sounds like a huge difference, but remember one million years is only 1/4500th of the entire history of both planets.
So assume an exact twin of Earth and our human society, except theirs is 1/4500th older, or one million years older than us. Look at what our technology has done in only one hundred years, from 1900 to 2000 c.e. What a humongous difference this has made in our daily lives. One hundred years ago, men barely could imagine traveling in space. Young people today just yawn at the thought of going to the moon -- been there, done that. So we go from riding horses to riding rockets in only one hundred years, what might we do in a million?
So, if there is only one civilization exactly like ours but just one million years older, who is to say what kind of technology such a civilization might possess? Michio Kaku thinks they could probably control at least all the energy in their star system, and perhaps their galaxy. So, if technology develops exponentially, as it seems to do, then this hypothetical planet that is so nearly identical to our own in age would be unrecognizable in technology. We can barely imagine what they might be able to accomplish. So why is it so difficult for a skeptic to accept this scenario? After all, mainstream science is proving the existence of new planets daily. And though barely even started on this search of the heavens, they have already found hundreds of planets, including some pretty similar to our own. Why would it be unreasonable to assume that a civilization a million years older than our own, already knows we're here as well as everything else about the Milky Way?
Rather than exalted and singular in our existence, I tend to believe we are insignificant in our commonality. I think it more likely that extraterrestrials have not made themselves more apparent to us due to indifference, rather than secrecy. Someone so far advanced might not even notice us, the way we do not stop to introduce ourselves to every ant or insect we encounter. So it seems the primary problem that prevents a skeptic from endorsing the reality of extraterrestrial civilization, is egoism. Face it guys, we're just not that special!
Astrobiologists support missions to search for life on Europa
Some scientists believe Jupiter’s moon Europa is the best place to look for alien life in our solar system.
Planetary scientist and astrobiologist Kevin Peter Hand recently explained to CNN that Europa “provides an incredibly compelling place to go to search for a second, independent origin of life and it’s a place where we might find lifeforms that are alive now, today.” But as Wired explains, “big dollar signs” have prevented the necessary exploratory missions to this moon to search for life. NASA had plans to launch a large spacecraft called the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO), but the craft’s hefty price tag ($4.7 billion is hefty, right?) grounded the project indefinitely.
Refusing to accept Europa exploration as a lost cause, astrobiologist Pabulo Henrique Rampelotto of Brazil’s Federal University of Pampa formulated alternative mission concepts for sending craft to Europa for less money. As outlined in the journal Astrobiology, Rampelotto favors sending three small spacecraft, rather than one large spacecraft. Wired explains that this plan, which would include two orbiters and a probe carrying a surface impactor, “could spread out both the cost and the risk while hitting all of JEO’s science goals, and then some.”
According to Wired, Bob Pappalardo, a scientist helping NASA develop future Moon missions, said Rampelotto’s proposal is logical for “tight budgetary times.” But he points out that “saving money by splitting up a big mission into smaller ones brings about another issue: fear of commitment.”
Although the likelihood of any Europa mission happening in the near future is slim, Rampelotto shares the opinion of many scientists that Europa is “the prime candidate in the search for life in our solar system.”
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