By the end of this century, says astrophysicist Martin Rees, we should be able to ask whether or not we live in a multiverse, and how much variety of the laws of physics its constituent ‘universes’ display. The answer to this question, says Rees, “will determine how we should interpret the ‘biofriendly’ universe in which we live (sharing it with any aliens with whom we might one day make contact).”
Vulcans, Daleks, Martians, Grays – our culture is pervaded by alien beings from distant worlds – some benevolent…most not so much, observes the BBC: “In our galaxy alone, there should be tens of billions of planets harboring life, but we have not heard any broadcasts or seen any flashing lights from distant civilizations. Sixty years ago, the journal Nature published a paper suggesting the best way to search for alien life was by listening for radio signals. Within months, astronomer Frank Drake had begun scanning nearby star systems and SETI was born.”
If general principles exist that can explain properties common to all life on Earth, scientists hypothesize, then they may be universal to all life, even life on other planets. If a “universal biology” exists, it would have important implications for the search for life beyond Earth, for engineering synthetic life in the lab, and for solving the origin of life, enabling scientists to predict properties of alien life. (more…)
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Why is that of the tens of thousands of reports of UFO’s since the iconic radio broadcast of Orson Welle’s “War of the World’s” terrified the nation in 1938, have none been reported by astronomers manning the observatories across our pale blue dot?
We live in a universe where matter is distributed in a hundred billion galaxies, each containing a hundred billion stars, made up of quantum fields where space and time are not existent, that manifest themselves in the form of particles, such as electrons and photons, or as waves. Tucked into the 14-billion-year history of this vast observable universe with 100 trillion planets is a pale blue dot teeming with life and a technological civilization created by a strange species known as homo sapiens.
