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Source: AP (via UASR)
Date: Oct 14, 1998
Written by: Paul Recer
MADISON, Wis. -- Scientists are becoming more optimistic that life exists elsewhere than Earth.
"There have been key discoveries that suggests life is simple, straightforward and easy if you have the right conditions," Bruce M. Jakosky, a University of Colorado planetary scientist, said at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. "There is a remarkable change among scientists from just 20 years ago."
In this solar system alone, there are at least four places besides Earth where life could have evolved. And beyond the sun, untold numbers of stars could be shining on planets teeming with life of some form.
"There has been a revival in the serious search for life," Stanford University scientist Chris Chyba said. "There is a substantial higher optimism for the existence of life beyond the Earth."
This optimism is based, in part, on this new knowledge:
At least a dozen planets have been found in orbit of distant stars. All are the size of Jupiter or larger, and none is "Earth-like." But their existence strongly suggests the existence of smaller planets more friendly to life. NASA is now mulling 30 proposals to search specifically for "Earth-like" planets.
Biologists now know life is more robust than once believed. Microscopic organisms have been found to thrive in extreme conditions, from the ice of the Arctic to boiling vents at the bottom of the ocean to solid rock deep within the Earth. Microbes, it is now known, can live without the sun, thriving on chemical energy alone.
"The biomass deep beneath the Earth is now estimated to equal all the biomass living on the surface," Chyba said. "That makes the possibility for life on Mars, for instance, more credible."
Fossil studies show that life developed very quickly on Earth, probably within the first 200 million years after the planet formed.
"We don't understand yet how, but we see that it happened quickly," said Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center. "That supports the notion that it could have happened quick somewhere else."
In Earth's solar system, experts now believe that life could have evolved on Mars; on Europa, a Jupiter moon thought to have an ocean; on Ganymede, another moon of Jupiter; and on Venus, now a torrid planet but a place that once had more pleasant temperatures.
Despite the new optimism, scientists also have found new limits on conditions that make life probable.
Not every star or planet can promote life, said David Koch of NASA Ames. Some burn too brightly, overheating planets. Some have a lifetime too short to allow life to evolve. And double star systems -- 60 percent of all stars -- are less likely to have a stable family of planets.
"Even if there is only one star in a thousand that could harbor life, that's still a billion stars in this galaxy alone," McKay said.
Nevertheless, other factors also come into play. Planets can be battered so often by asteroids that life has no chance to evolve or sustain itself. Except for early in its history, Earth has been protected by Jupiter and Saturn, giants that swept up most of the threatening asteroids around.
Life also is most likely on planets within the "habitable zone" about a star. This is an orbit where sunlight keeps temperatures mild enough for water to remain liquid.
Yet even with new optimism that life is out there, many scientists believe the evolution of intelligent life remains highly uncertain.
For single-cell animals to evolve into modern humans took 4 billion years on Earth and required a process that remains largely a puzzle.
Fossil evidence, for instance, shows that 30 million years ago, the dolphin had more brain power than did ancestors of modern humans. What happened to allow humans, and not dolphins, to evolve intellectually is not understood, Chyba said.
"Despite the new optimism, the prospects for finding intelligent life is unchanged," he said. "We don't understand very well how intelligent life can evolve."
Source: Sunday Times (via UASR)
Date: Oct 11, 1998
Written by: Tom Rhodes
Lending credence: former astronaut Edgar Mitchell supports claims that the truth about UFOs has been covered up
THERE are no little green men on the moon. Edgar Mitchell knows this because in 1971 he became the sixth man to walk on it. He is positive, however, that aliens have landed on Earth.
Sharing the podium at a conference in Connecticut yesterday with "alien abductees" and others who claim to have had contact with unidentified flying objects (UFOs), the former Nasa astronaut intensified his campaign to persuade Washington to acknowledge life beyond our skies.
Mitchell argues that life is almost certain to exist on any other planet with a supportive environment. Some physicists, he points out, now believe it is possible to travel faster than light, even if humble earthlings have yet to achieve it.
He is 90% certain that many of the thousands of UFOs recorded since the 1940s belonged to visitors from another planet. Although some have been delusions and others natural phenonema, too many remain unexplained, he said. "This suggests there are humanoids manning craft which have characteristics not in the arsenal of any nation on earth that we know of. That is very alarming," he said.
It was a startling departure for a scientist who, up to now, has been wary of appearing with ufologists widely regarded as cranks.
"Until recently I was very cautious about such conferences," Mitchell, 68, admitted before the opening of an annual convention entitled the UFO Experience. "But now I believe there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to warrant a scientific understanding in this area."
Mitchell, who holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, does not fit easily into the ranks of the UFO fanatics. Although he acts as a consultant to The X Files, the cult television series, he is scornful of "disinformation" about aliens and flying saucers that emanates from the Internet and marginal UFO organisations in America.
"The notion that there are structures on Mars or the moon is bonkers," Mitchell said. "I can certainly attest to the latter - I've been there. We saw no structures at the landing site and none was reflected in my helmet, as has been alleged."
Mitchell bases his credo on established cosmology - in which he became closely involved after gazing at his tiny, distant planet from the command module of Apollo 14. He felt "an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness and perceived the universe as in some way conscious".
In the early 1970s, after leaving Nasa, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California. Dedicated to the study of psychic and spiritual phenomena, it subjected luminaries such as Uri Geller, the Israeli spoon bender, to scientific scrutiny.
Mitchell says his research - including conversations with people who have worked in intelligence agencies and military groups - has convinced him that the American government has covered up the truth about UFOs for 50 years. He is trying to persuade Congress to grant his sources immunity to tell "the real story" of events such as the so-called Roswell incident - the alleged crash of a flying saucer in New Mexico in 1947.
"Many of these folks were under high-security clearances, they took oaths and they feel they cannot talk without some form of immunity," Mitchell said. "It takes a brave person to come out on something like this."
A poll by Time magazine last year suggested that 22% of the population share Mitchell's conviction that other planets have been in contact with humans; 17% said intelligent life had abducted humans to experiment on them.
The high level of interest has encouraged other speakers at this weekend's conference. They include Robert Wood, a retired aerospace engineer from California, who claims to have new evidence of the existence of MJ12, a clandestine military unit trained in recovery and disposal of aliens and their craft.
The true believers could hardly conceal their delight at the former astronaut's endorsement. Walter Andrus, international director of the Mutual UFO Network, the largest organisation of its kind in America, said: "There's no doubt in my mind that Ed Mitchell gives us all credibility."
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard terms and conditions. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website.
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