Thursday, 06. October 2005
Extraterrestrial Civilizations
The chances are there's life out there, but any messages could be thousands of years old and indecipherable. Roger Highfield reports.

Aliens are probably common. Because there are billions of trillions of stars in the cosmos, many astronomers think it would be highly improbable for Earth to be the only rock to harbour life.
Whether ET is intelligent is still hotly debated. But no one doubts that the receipt of a signal from another civilisation would be Earth-shattering. "It would surely be the greatest discovery of all time, eclipsing the findings of Newton, Dawin and Einstein combined," says Prof Paul Davies, a British cosmologist from the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University.

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"The knowledge that we are not alone would affect people's psyche, and totally transform our world view," he said during a visit to Britain last week. "The mere fact alone would be disruptive. But imagine if we got some serious information from ET. Then all bets are off about what our future would be."

The greatest discovery of all time by The Telegraph (English)


UPDATE 13.10.05 @12.20 Uhr

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Experts say that all the searches are not yet a success because earth dwellers do not know for sure what they need to look for. An official from the Russian Academy of Sciences Special Astrophysical Observatory says radio-telescopes of the Observatory have intercepted lots of signals, the origin of which is not clear. "It is not ruled out that they are the result of activity of some other civilization," he adds.


Solar system's unusual structure suggests existence of extraterrestrial civilizations by Pravda. (English)


UPDATE 18.10.05 @ 12.17 Uhr

Does alien life exist? This is one of the most fascinating questions in the whole of science. I’m hopeful that we’ll learn the answer by the end of this century.
In earlier centuries, many believed that the Moon and Mars were inhabited. The science fiction of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells popularised the idea of alien life. We’re less optimistic about Mars than our forebears were 100 years ago. There is certainly nothing there like the “Martians” of popular fiction.

Earth to aliens: we haven't had a signal yet. Could you try again? by The Times. (English)

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Elsewhere:

How many technically advanced civilizations exist in our galaxy? With this essay by Steven Soter, Scientist-in-Residence in the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University, Astrobiology Magazine initiates the first in a series of 'Gedanken', or thought, experiments - musings by noted scientists on scientific mysteries in a series of "what if" scenarios.

SETI and the Cosmic Quarantine Hypothesis by Astrobiology Magazine. (English)
Category: News & Stories Category: Ufo's & Aliens




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