EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

Extraterrestial life is a hypothetical life that may occur outside the earth and do not originate on Earth. Such life might range from simple prokaryotic to intelligent beings and even sapient beings possibly bringing forth civilisation that might be far more advanced than humanity. In my previous post , I mentioned about Drake Equation that speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in universe.

Some pictures of imaginary alien ecosystem.

The question of existence of life elsewhere was asked by many intellectuals across history. From ancient civilisations to greek philosophers, all tried to apprehend this mystery. The first speculation about what we call ‘ Alien ’ goes back to the atomist speculation popular among EPICUREAN philosophers in ancient greece and their roman disciples . DEMOCRITUS and EPICURUS considered the universe to be result of a chance jostling of atoms and regarded it as highly likely that there were worlds out there and they were inhibited. As the ROMAN EPICUREAN poet LUCRETIUS put it ‘ Nothing in the universe is unique and alone and therefore in other regions there must be other earths inhabited by different tribes of men and breed of beasts ’. But the serious work had been done on this topic rather late in intellectual history

On June 24 , 1947 , an amateur pilot named KENNETH ARNOLD was flying a small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington state when he saw something extraordinarily strange. Directly to his left , about 20 to 25 miles north of him and at the same altitude , a chain of nine objects shot across the sky. Arnold suggested that the object is 40 to 50 feet wide. They flew between two mountains spaced 50 miles apart in just 1 min 42 sec , flying at around 1700 miles per hour or 3 times faster than any manned aircraft of that era. Later after scrutinizing the event by many scholars and historians , it came out that the object weren’t from outer space at all , it is probably a pelican flying in formation. Probably Arnold might have miss judged the distance and thought they were huge objects at great distance but they were actually much closer. These kind of events happened to many people across the world , but not even a single shred of confident proof had been gathered till now.

Kenneth Arnold with the sketch of speculated object he had seen.

The first person to speculate in a scientific way about the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrials was the great German mathmatician CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS, widely regarded as the greatest mathmetician of all time. In a letter to fellow astronomer HEINRICH OLBERS in 1822, he suggested setting up an array of a hundred huge mirrors to reflect sunlight towards the moon. This would create a spot bright enough to be seen by the Moons inhabitants only if there were any. As Gauss put it “ this would be a discovery greater than that of America, if we could get in touch with our neighbours on the moon. SETI ( Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ), is a collective term for scientific searches for extraterrestrial intelligence by monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilisation on other planet. It is basically an organisation with the motive of search for extraterrestrial intelligence and form communication with them. The first person to put SETI into practise was FRANK DRAKE at Green Bank radio observatory in West Virginia. CARL SAGAN , STEPHEN HAWKING are some of the names in scientific history that tried to wonder around this mystery. I will be making a whole seperate blog on SETI later on. The whole history of SETI is very fascinating and compelling, so it is worth a seperate isolated blog.

MY VIEWS : My question is “ Is it worth investing in the extraterrestrial life excavation sector ”. Do we really need to know wheather there is a human counterpart in distant star system. Personally speaking, the question of wheather there is an alien life or not is one of the greatest question posed by human consciousness. It has both scientific and moral significance. We all should care about these short of questions and I hope you all do care .The philosopher ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER said that those who dont wonder about the contingency of very existance , the contingency of life itself are mentally deficient. Thats a little harsh but still. Answering these questions is utmost essential because it will determine wheather or not human beings are special and unique in the universe or we are just one of billions of life forms wandering around in infinitely vast cosmos. Answering these questions will help figure out the purpose of emergence of life itself. Answering these questions will help us determine our fate in this cosmos. And most importantly it will also help us short out once in far all the greatest debate of all time Creation vs Evolution, God vs Nature ( By the way I am on the side of nature ). I truely believe humans had created God through imagination then manifested and integrated it with the real world. Ok lets not talk about God!!! otherwise I will become sentimental. Wait I had seen something, when I typed ‘God’ this 🙏🏻 emoji poped up in the suggestion bar of my keyboard. What the hell !!! God means joining hands.I am speechless!!!! I will talk about this whole debate that is happening around the world God vs Nature in a seperate blog. So that’s it for today, meet you in the next blog.

PS : I suggest all of you to watch the movie PROMETHEUS by Ridley Scott. It will get imagination the hell out of you, I promise.