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World Economic Forum 2013 Report considers effects of discovery of alien life
Discovery of Alien Life
X Factors
In this section, developed in collaboration with Nature, a leading science journal, the Risk Response Network asks readers to look beyond our high-risk concerns of the moment to consider a set of five X factors and reflect on what countries or companies should be doing to anticipate them.
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X Factors: Discovery of Alien Life
It was only in 1995 that we first found evidence that other stars also have planets orbiting them. Now thousands of “exoplanets” revolving around distant stars have been detected. NASA’s Kepler mission to identify Earth-sized planets located in the “Goldilocks zone” (not too hot, not too cold) of sun-like stars has been operating for only three years and has already turned up thousands of candidates, including one the size of Earth. The fact that Kepler has found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests that there are countless Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy. In 10 years’ time we may have evidence not only that Earth is not unique but also that life exists elsewhere in the universe.
Suppose the astronomers who study exoplanets one day find chemical signs of life – for example, a spectrum showing the presence of oxygen, a highly reactive element that would quickly disappear from Earth’s atmosphere if it were not being replenished by plants. Money might well start flowing for new telescopes to study these living worlds in detail, both from the ground and from space. New funding and new brain power might be attracted to the challenges of human space flight and the technologies necessary for humanity, or its artificial-intelligence emissaries, to survive an inter-stellar crossing.
The discovery would certainly be one of the biggest news stories of the year and interest would be intense. But it would not change the world immediately. Alien life has been supposedly discovered before, after all. Around the turn of the 20th century, the US astronomer Percival Lowell convinced many people (including himself) that Mars was crisscrossed by a vast system of canals built by a dying civilization. But the belief that humankind was not alone did not do much to usher in an era of goodwill and earthly harmony, nor did it stop the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
The discovery’s largest near-term impact would likely be on science itself. Suppose observations point to a potential future home for humankind around another star, or the existence of life in our solar system – in the Martian poles, in the subsurface oceans of Jupiter’s frozen moon Europa, or even in the hydrocarbon lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan. Scientists will immediately start pushing for robotic and even human missions to study the life forms in situ – and funding agencies, caught up in the excitement, might be willing to listen.
The fledgling space economy had a big year in 2012, which saw the birth of space trucking when the first commercially built and operated spacecraft had a successful rendezvous with the International Space Station, and a host of celebrity billionaires declared intentions to make asteroid mining a reality. Discovery of an Earth 2.0 or life beyond our planet might inspire new generations of space entrepreneurs to meet the challenge of taking human exploration of the galaxy from the realm of fiction to fact.
Over the long term, the psychological and philosophical implications of the discovery could be profound. If life forms (even fossilized life forms) are found in our solar system, for example, the origin of life is “easy” – that any place in the universe life can emerge, it will emerge. It will suggest that life is as natural and as ubiquitous a part of the universe as the stars and galaxies. The discovery of even simple life would fuel speculation about the existence of other intelligent beings and challenge many assumptions that underpin human philosophy and religion.
Through basic education and awareness campaigns, the general public can achieve a higher science and space literacy and cognitive resilience that would prepare them and prevent undesired social consequences of such a profound discovery and paradigm shift concerning humankind’s position in the universe.
Source and credits: http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/section-five/x-factors/
Sixth Man On The Moon Edgar Mitchell Ends UFO Cover Up
I believe him. Do you? And if you don't believe him, WHO do you believe?
Extra Terrestrial Rumors 2 - The Experiment called Mankind
I am interested on your opinions about this video. Please leave a comment.
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
Now, in Princeton, Indiana....it happened on Thanksgiving night, a few weeks ago.
Strange Lights – Princeton, Indiana: 26/11/2012 (Video)
Strange lights appeared in the sky this weekend and more and more Tri-Staters are asking- what were they?
Kimlee McCraw sent in a picture to 14 News. This is what she says she saw outside of her Princeton, Indiana home Thanksgiving night.
McCraw says she’s a skeptic of UFO‘s, but says she definitely saw something right out of a movie. She grabbed her camera and got them on tape.
“So, these are like the first ones I took,” McCraw said.
McCraw is eager to show anyone the pictures she took Thanksgiving night in hopes someone could explain just what she saw in the sky over her home in Princeton.
“They just stayed in that four, all of them, and they moved across the sky,” McCraw said.
The objects immediately caught McCraw’s attention while her family was outside Thanksgiving night. She even pointed them out to a neighbor who stopped by.
“And I was like, ‘what is that?’ And she kind of turned and came back and said, ‘that’s an airplane.’ I said, ‘that is not an airplane,’” McCraw recounted.
McCraw says it was just before 7:00 p.m. when she started seeing the objects rise from the horizon. She says they didn’t make a sound. All glowed and changed colors, all were about the same size, and all appeared to just to float up in the air.
“And they all took the same path and then sometimes there would be two, sometimes four.”
In all, she says she and her family saw 20 or 30 of them in a period of 10 minutes.
They weren’t the only ones to see strange objects in the sky recently.
Some in Henderson, and even Illinois, posted on social media sites, that they saw objects, too.
We took the video to Francis Ridge, a coordinator for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena who has experience investigating these strange sights.
“The brightness, speed, path, the color, the way they moved without bobbing up and down like this would strongly suggest these jack-o-lantern type balloons,” Ridge said.
Ridge says he believes they look like a Japanese lantern and says it was definitely not a meteor shower.
Source: http://www.eresey.com/2012/12/05/strange-lights-princeton-indiana-26112012-video/
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