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Aliens, are we alone? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I was looking through my latest issue of 8BS (56) when I came upon the article on alien life. Being a bit sad, and more than a little open minded on such subjects, I decided to add my two penn'orth and keep the discussion going. May I just say that that I found some of the ideas by both John Ripley and Martin Wilson very plausible and sometimes totally ridiculous. All the same they are their own opinions, and even though I will be stating why I don't agree with some of them, I do respect that fact. Are we alone? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It seems totally ridiculous to me that we should be the only sentient life forms in the entire galaxy, and the mere thought that we are the first within the 'SOL' system (thats this solar system) itself. When you have the time, go out at night and look up into the darkened sky. What do you see? Stars of course! Each of those stars could support life in some way or another. Intelligent or other, it is still life. Only human arrogance would imagine that any form of life that does not originate from Earth would be anything like what we are. Before we look to the stars lets take a look at ourselves shall we? We are carbon based life forms. We like to think that we are intelligent, and technologically advanced. But are we? We have ravaged our planet, depleted planetary resourses, damaged the ozone layer beyond our ability to repair. What gives us the right to even think about exploring elsewhere when we can't look after our own planet? Enough of that! Other life forms, do they exist? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In a word yes they do. We know this because numerous missions to the various planets in this star system have discovered various bacteria and fossils. But what of further out? That is where your guess is as good as mine. Lets say that there is and they visit Earth. How would we reconise them? * They would be different certainly, they may be too small for us to see, or they may absorb all the light that we can see and reflect light that is invisible to human eyes, rendering them invisible to us. * They may have no physical form at all (as mentioned by J.Ripley & M.Wilson); there is no reason to suggest that all life must reside within a physical being. * We would certainly have a great deal of difficulty communicating with them. In fact they may have a different way of communication. If their atmosphere does not permit verbal comunication, they may do it some other way such as ESP or similar. We do not even understand the human mind so I won't try to theorise an alien mind that only exists theoretically. * There is the possibility that they could be too big to notice even our planet, being so small as to be the size of an atom to them. That would be strange, we look out into the blackness of space and think that is what space looks like. Safe in this knowledge wouldn't it be a suprise if that blackness turned out to be a passing space slug or something and that space was in fact pink! * On the other hand they could have been too small for us to see, in fact they could be so small they could move through the gaps between the atoms in our bodies. On the subject of life on Mars, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If there was life on Mars it was nothing like life on Earth! If there had been the sort of life that we have here then there would be some evidence somewhere. It is almost a certainty that Mars died millions of years ago, while the Earth was still young and we were little invertebrates swimming in radioactive ooze. But, I am open minded and do not rule it out all together. Perhaps evoloution took a different course to here on Earth and Humanoid life did not exist at all there. So, how did life exist on Mars? Simply put we do not know and may never know! But lets look at what we do know of Mars. The planet is similar in position to the Sun or SOL star to Earth, and the surface is geographically similar to Earth as well. The atmosphere that remains on Mars is a week carbon dioxide mixture which suggests that there MAY have been an oxygen mix gas for an atmosphere at one time. The presence of huge bowls in the landscape indicate that there may have been vast continents and oceans. There are also huge mountain ranges and craters as well. These craters may be the key to the whole mystery. If there were continents, oceans, an atmosphere, and primitive life, then what was it like? We know from the atmosphere that there may have been oxygen, but how strong was the mixture? It would almost certainly differ from our own. It could have been stronger or weaker, it could have had other ingredients like Hydrogen, Helium, or other natural gases. This suggests also that the oceans would have had water content with a similar cycle of evaporation into the sky and then rain later on. All this may have been capable of sustaining life like here on Earth. Well we know that science has found small invertebrate fossils on the surface of Mars. These may have been genetically similar to the equivalent life here. But for some reason life got no further as far as we can tell. What if life still exists on Mars? All we can see is the surface of Mars. There are hundreds of thousands of feet under the surface of Mars that we can't see. Is it possible that due to some ecolgical disaster, life turned subterranian, and still be there today? UFO'S, FACT OR FICTION? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A UFO, or Unidentified Flying Object is just as the name suggests, an object that we can not identify. This does not mean that it is a flying saucer from the planet Vulcan and that they have come to see us. The mere thought that they know we are here and have not come to see us yet is silly. If you were in a spaceship and you found a planet with life on it would you not want to land and say hello? A large percentage of UFO's carry not aliens but plain old stuff that looks a bit strange. However, there are a certain percentage of these UFO's that may just be aliens after all. Go to the library and look at books on the subject. There have been alleged abductions, sightings, encounters with alien space craft (flying saucers) all documented, but never proven. Just because we can not prove what it is, it does not mean that we can prove what it is not. If these are alien visitors then why have we had no contact. With sightings as early as the forties, it seems incredible that nobody has been inclined to say hello. That is not to say they haven't tried. We may not have the equipment to receive their transmissions, or we heard them but did not understand them. The truth is we just do not know, not for certain. IS THERE AN AFTERLIFE? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We know that there is a life, we all live it. But once we have died we leave this existence and maybe move on to another. I don't mean heaven or anything like that, I just mean that the human mind is a powerful thing. There is not a computer in existence that can compute the volume of data the brain can. And with 20% of the human brain actually used, what does the other 80% do? The essence that a person is, is contained in the brain, this means when the brain dies the person dies. Well how do we know that for certain. Reincarnation may seem like a load of old codswallop to some, but the simple fact is we can not explain certain things. These certain things may turn out to be truth after all. The personality of a person may still exist somewhere after the death of the body, (this opens the way for ghosts and other things like that, we can discuss that later). This is one possible explanation to reincarnation. But on the other hand that essence may just stay where it is and become part of the natural universe, floating around watching and learning and ultimately becoming a being of pure energy, totally aware and self suffiecient. Of course this may not be the case, but as I stated earlier there is no proof for or against it. That is all I can come up with for now, but I'd welcome other people's opinions on these subjects as well. By for now E2K