Is there anyone out there?

As a child I used to spend ages in the evening looking up at the darkest of dark skies at the tiny dots out there. Was there another version of me out there looking back? I think to be honest we’ve all wondered the same at one point in our lives if there is anyone else ‘out there’, and if there is why haven’t we found them yet? Where could these beings be hiding? When you look up there are millions of stars. Countless in the nights sky. I think we’d be bonkers to suggest that there is no one else out there. To believe that we are alone in the Universe is definitely arrogant, and verging on ignorant.

So far the hunts have been for tell tale signs of organic material. Carbon, Collagen, Oxygen. But these are the building blocks for life on earth. In other galaxies life may not require the sun, water, or any of our periodic table of elements for survival. Our science is based on what we know, could there science be totally different. I do believe that science is sometimes scared to think out of the box.

Why can’t life emanate from darkness? Why do the building blocks for DNA or RNA need to be present to indicate that there are organisms out there. What’s wrong with just saying that it’s probable, but they could be of similar technological levels to us and unable to jump light years in distance. We just don’t know science, my son, and you know what? That’s alright. We are learning. On the flip side of the debate, they may well be as human as you or me. And that’s an exciting philosophy.

Is there anyone out there?

I’m going to talk a little bit about a physicist called Enrico Fermi, who produced the first nuclear reactor. He also suggested the theory we now call the Fermi paradox. He argues there is a paradoxical relationship between the lack of evidence that intelligent life beings exist and it’s probability of existing. With all the trillions of stars in our universe there must be some form of life out there.

Our sun is 93 million miles away. Our part of the Universe, the Galaxy called the Milky Way is so huge that it would take 100,000 light years to travel across it. Mind boggling! And the Universe is expanding all the time. We are just a tiny speck of dust on a spiral arm of something so huge we can’t even contemplate how big it is. Why wouldn’t alien life, even the simple building blocks of life be right under our noses. We wouldn’t see it because in relative terms all we’ve explored is our very near neighbourhood. Like living in the middle of a forest, we have only ventured out to the nearest trees.

So where could life be hiding?

A few Clues here and there

We’re not looking for little green men here. Or X files type large-headed beings who visit regularly to abduct people for rectal screening and impregnation…

Here’s what science has offered us thus far.

A moon of Saturn called Enceladus, in our own solar system, is thought to bear life. It is an Ocean moon surrounded by a thick layer of ice. Discovered by William Herschel a British 19th Century astronomer, it is thought to have a vast ocean of water beneath its crust of ice and rock. Satellite missions to moons of both Saturn and Jupiter have looked further at their chemical composition. They found vast plumes of water and vapour being ejected from the bottom of the moon.

This suggests a liquid ocean beneath the ice. It becomes more likely that life is hiding deep at the bottom of this ocean could be chemosynthetic organisms. Basically a bacterium which does not require light to ‘live’. All they need is chemicals spewed out from thermodynamic vents beneath the seas. Could be possible that they’re out there waiting to be discovered! Of course they could be little creatures whom are nothing like we have seen before! Until we man another probe there, we do not know.

A Comet?

In 2014 an unmanned satellite called Rosetta was sent to the comet Philea. What it detected was chemicals present in the comet’s constitution were chemicals which could be created by microorganisms living beneath the surface of the comet.

 

Phosphorous and Glycine (a DNA component protein) were detected! So deep beneath the icy crust of this comet may be loads of microorganisms doing their thing!

Weird radioactive stars

It’s a kooky argument but could highly evolved aliens be messing with stars to make them very radioactive to aide detection? I don’t know about this one either so I’m going to leave it right here 😀 But, hey, it made the Express….

Thank you to my son Ellis for his insightful take on this blog post. He’s a budding astronomer and he BELIEVES!

Using black holes as time travelling devices

Who knows! Stephen Hawkings work on Black holes teaches us that anything travelling through a black hole may be spaghettified and elongated, but reconstituted at the other ens. Also could be a way to hop time and space. Other theories suggest there could be millions of planets we can’t see orbiting a black hole. Who knows. An advanced species could generate a lot more energy from a black hole than our sun produces.

I hope I’ve given you some food for thought here. You’re not the only one who has looked at the stars and gone, what if…..

Until the next post 😉

 

My other blogtober offerings:

Ghosts : Psychology or Paranormal?

On Being A Witch

Momento Mori : The Book Of The Dead

My five fave horror films

A history of witchcraft : A feminists perspective

Mabon

The Body Shop Drops of Youth Review

Pet Hates a Listicle

Divination – can we accurately predict the future?

 5 of the scariest places I’ve visited