The Drake Equation, a formula developed in 1961, is used to calculate the number of advanced civilizations capable of communicating via radio within our galaxy. The initial estimate using this equation was at least 20.
Oumuamua
Oumuamua is an object that passed through the solar system in 2017 and was initially thought to be an asteroid. However, its unusual shape and trajectory led some scientists to suggest that it could be an alien spacecraft. Scientists from the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) proposed that Oumuamua could be a lightsail, a […]
Barney and Betty Hill abduction by aliens
Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple who claimed to have been abducted by aliens in 1961. According to their story, they were driving home from a vacation in Canada when they saw a strange object in the sky. They said that the object followed them, and eventually, they were taken aboard the spaceship […]
Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to fight aliens…
Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to fight aliens together. Reagan was also a Sci-fi fan and appointed many sci-fi writers to government think-tanks.
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What’s the Best Theory About UFOs or Aliens? Here’s What People Said.
When I was in middle school, I read everything I could get my hands on about the supposed UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.
And even though I’m not convinced that UFOs and aliens exist, I still like reading about it and hearing people talk about why they believe.
AskReddit users shared the best theories they’ve heard about UFOs and aliens.
Let’s see what they had to say.
1. Maybe?
“If aliens are on this planet, they are likely using the ocean as a place to hide.
The Nimitz encounter and some of the best actual video evidence we have shows that UFOs and USOs might be the same thing and that they can easily travel through water and air both.
Plus there have been rumors about Lake Baikal in Russia for centuries.
Lake Baikal is one of the deepest lakes on Earth and could absolutely harbor some crazy s**t.”
2. You never know…
“The premise in Lilo & Stitch.
That Earth is a mosquito preserve.”
3. Not going back there.
“Aliens landed once in Africa, got eaten by lions.
Planet now marked as dangerous by the Galactic Feds.”
4. We can’t see them.
“That if any civilization elsewhere in the universe had the technology to reach us, for any reason, they’d be very likely to be also be able to disguise their presence from our detection methods.
They could observe us close up using nanotech, microscopic biological spacecraft etc and we’d never know.”
5. Think about it.
“Consider the fact that the human race is a divided mess of contradictory intents.
We have the scientific community reaching out peacefully, yet if aliens do come into the airspace of any nation, the first to greet them would be the military.
You can imagine what the response of the military would be when a UFO enters forbidden airspace.
Given the declassified government files regarding UFOs, it is quite likely that contact has been attempted in the past and the results were tragic.”
6. I want to believe.
“That “greys” aren’t fully biological, but rather remotely controlled androids, or that they are biological, but their grey appearance is a suit and not the body.
Imagine other lifeforms looking at our astronauts saying “here come the marshmallow cyclops creatures again”.
7. Two theories.
“The best two I’ve heard:
We don’t allow ourselves to contact lost tribes in the Amazon or other wild places. Extraterrestrials may have similar laws on a galactic scale.
We split the atom, but made weapons out of them instead of trying to reach the stars. They leave us alone out of fear that we’ll destroy ourselves if war accidentally breaks out.”
8. In the past…
“There are so many star systems with potentially inhabitable planets out there that the chances that we have been the only life in the universe is extremely slim.
The question, instead, is whether life arising elsewhere has managed to survive destruction and remain alive today such that they might be able to contact us.
That is to say, there have probably been countless civilizations for the past several billion years that simply haven’t made it.”
9. We might not recognize it.
“That life in the universe could be so unrecognizable to us that we wouldn’t even register it as being alien life.
What if life on another world was not carbon based, but another element?
How would we even know what to look for since our definitions and descriptions of life are based on a completely different perspective?’
10. Well, there’s that.
“They came, they saw, they weren’t impressed.”
11. Let’s see what else is out there.
“They visited 250 million years ago.
Saw a planet full of big lizards and labeled us a junky planet not worth revisiting and moved on.”
12. We’re being studied.
“Any species advanced enough to find us wouldn’t “make contact”.
They’d study us the way we study animals. Ideally with minimal interference.
Compare the average “abduction” story to the way we dart large animals, collect data and leave them to wake a bit groggy and confused but unharmed.”
What do you think?
Is it possible that UFOs and aliens exist or is it all a bunch of malarkey?
Talk to us in the comments and let us know!
The post What’s the Best Theory About UFOs or Aliens? Here’s What People Said. appeared first on UberFacts.
Scientists Say There Could Be 36 Alien Civilizations in the Milky Way
We’ve all wondered–could there be, not just life, but intelligent life, out there?
And while relative intelligence of life on Earth could be debatable, two scientists from the University of Nottingham have a new theory that suggests there is.
36 different potential civilizations, to be exact.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
How can scientists possibly make a prediction about the number of undiscovered civilizations?
It’s a mathematical theory based on a fifty-year-old equation called the Drake equation.
As Popular Mechanics explains:
Drake’s seven key variables, which range from how many habitable planets exoplanets there are in the galaxy to the amount of time over which intelligent life takes shape, are almost impossible to pin down.
The formula acts more like a framework for the probability of finding life; previous estimates have ranged from zero to over a billion civilizations.
But Professor of Astrophysics Christopher Conselice, his colleague Tom Westby, and their team at the University of Nottingham used new technology and assumptions about our galaxy, the Milky Way, to formulate a new hypothesis.
They published their work last summer in The Astrophysical Journal.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
As quoted in Phys.org, Conselice explains that they based their assumption on the length of time it took a civilization to develop on Earth:
“There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth.
The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.”
The Copernican limit guides researchers to think on a pretty large scale–where intelligent life develops in either more or less than 5 billion years.
By intelligent life, scientists mean a civilization capable of communication.
On Earth, that development took more than 4.5 billion years, thus the 5 billion year threshold.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
These calculations have been used for years, but the Nottingham team took it one step further, factoring in the specific composition of Earth’s sun.
As Westby explained:
“In the strong criteria, whereby a metal content equal to that of the Sun is needed (the Sun is relatively speaking quite metal rich), we calculate that there should be around 36 active civilizations in our Galaxy.”
When all of the data is combined and analyzed, they believe just 36 exoplanets possess all the right conditions to support the development of an alien civilization.
Of course that means 36 alien civilizations that are enough like us to be recognizable as communicative beings.
Who knows how many are out there that are so different that we might not even recognize them if we saw them.
The problem is, a theory needs to be proven, and the exoplanets are so far away that while we can see them with high powered telescopes and gather some sensory data on them, we don’t yet have the technology to visit them–even with probes.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
If they’re so far away, why do we even care?
Well aside from the intrinsic human need to explore and discover, finding out how many other civilizations co-exist could actually tell us something about how long life on earth will last.
As Professor Conselice points out:
If we find that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization could exist for much longer than a few hundred years, alternatively if we find that there are no active civilizations in our Galaxy it is a bad sign for our own long-term existence.
By searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life—even if we find nothing—we are discovering our own future and fate
This is very exciting in the world of astronomy.
But according to Popular Mechanics and The Guardian, not every scientist is convinced.
Oliver Shorttle of the University of Cambridge told the news organization that more factors need to be considered—such as how exactly life formed on Earth—before taking the new findings as fact.
That’s science for you. There’s always more to consider.
Even so, it’s pretty cool to have such a specific number, don’t you think?
Do you believe there’s life out there? Let us know your theories in the comments!
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In 1924, the US had “Radio Silence Day”…
In 1924, the US had “Radio Silence Day” where radio broadcasts would be kept quiet for 5 minutes every hour in order to listen for radio signals from space. They didn’t hear anything.
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Fermi’s Paradox proposes theory for…
Fermi’s Paradox proposes the theory for why we haven’t heard from or seen any aliens. One of which being that they aren’t communicating because of an impending threat they know about, that we are not aware of.
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Ambassador to Extraterrestrials
In the case of discovering aliens, we already have a representative who will handle all communication with them. Simonetta Di Pippo, is the current director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and is the designated person to act as an ambassador to extraterrestrials.
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Carbon Chauvinism is a term coined…
Carbon Chauvinism is a term coined by Carl Sagan which assumes that all extraterrestrial life must be made of carbon because carbon-based humans are unable to imagine life made of radically different biochemistries.
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