View Full Version : Do you believe in Aliens?
Sounds a like a strange topic, but does anyone else believe in other lifeforms out there?
Thats some UFO's could be alien and not just hoaxes?
Pinkbanana
19-05-2008, 20:31
Yeah, one works in my local Tesco, whilst his brother works in Primark!!! :lol:
StarsOfCCTV
19-05-2008, 20:32
PB! :lol:
I don't believe in them at all. It's like ghosts. Total rubbish :p
Yeah, one works in my local Tesco, whilst his brother works in Primark!!! :lol:
Behave yourself :lol:
Actually, I believe that there could be aliens, why should the population of this planet be the only life form in the vast universe?
Actually, I believe that there could be aliens, why should the population of this planet be the only life form in the vast universe?
Thats what I think. I mean if we have evovled and all living things have adaptations then there is nothing stopping other life forms adapting to their environment, even i we are the other lifeforms in our solar system there could be somewhere else
Chloe O'brien
20-05-2008, 11:31
I think there is some life form on other planets. Not sure if they are little green men.
I vote yes but for life somewhere in another universe.
A similar galaxy to ours was found a few weeks ago but its 5000 light years away so we'll never be able to visit it. Suppose there is life in that galaxy, I wonder if the people there have developed a way to travel at the same speed or faster than the speed of light.
Ive always wanted to know, how do they discover other Galaxies?
Behemoth
20-05-2008, 22:31
I think that with all the planets out there, it's almost impossible for there not to be some form of life out there.
The BBC program, 'SPACE', said that for every grain of sand on Earth, there are a million stars in space. If only a few of these stars had planets orbiting them then that's more possible places for life than we can begin to imagine. I find it hard to believe that there isn't a single other planet with conditions right for life.
Ive always wanted to know, how do they discover other Galaxies?
Using powerful telescopes, space robots and other investigative equipment that can be used in space (I can't remember the name of it).
Kirsty :]
21-05-2008, 13:15
I believe in aliens.. but not the stereotypical aliens.
Just other life
I don't believe we can be the only life in the whole universe... there must be something else out there.
I don't. My friend does though; she claims to have seen one while sleeping over her Nan's.
pookie1968uk
24-05-2008, 10:26
no i dont, not at all. just seems too unbelievable to me
So you dont believe there is a chance of lifeforms in another galaxy or anything?
I think there can be, but they'd be human. It's up to science, I think. If the galaxy's uninhabitable for humans, then no.
I think there can be, but they'd be human. It's up to science, I think. If the galaxy's uninhabitable for humans, then no.
But we developed somehow to survive on earth, why can't other humans have adapted to live on a different planet/in a different universe?
I suppose they could over time, but as we are today then no.
I think there can be, but they'd be human. It's up to science, I think. If the galaxy's uninhabitable for humans, then no.
But we developed somehow to survive on earth, why can't other humans have adapted to live on a different planet/in a different universe?
Thats what I think I mean our Sun is a star and there are billions of stars, and out Sun may not be the only one. The universe is vast
But we developed somehow to survive on earth, why can't other humans have adapted to live on a different planet/in a different universe?
For life to exist somewhere the conditions have to be just right. We couldn't live any closer to the sun than we are because we'd fry. Pluto (not a planet anymore but still) would be far too cold.
There's also the atmosphere to consider. Too much sulphur, nitrogen and other elements that can be toxic to life wouldn't be useful as a place to live as we'd all die. No carbon could also be a problem as plants need it to respire and put oxygen back into the atmosphere.
Our atmosphere is made up of about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% carbon and other elements.
The only possible place that life could, or has maybe, exist so far is Mars. It has a similar atmosphere to ours and small particles of water have been found on the surface.
Thats just talking about humans. If there is another life form out there then their needs could well be different to ours.
Thats what I think I mean our Sun is a star and there are billions of stars, and out Sun may not be the only one. The universe is vast
There are millions of billions of stars in the universe. Scientists have recently found another spiral galaxy similar to ours with a huge star. Only problem is that its so far away we won't ever know if there is life there unless we can find a way to travel faster than the speed of light.
The universe is also still expanding so I guess there's always the possibility of other spiral galaxies forming that have life on them.
This is an interesting article. It happened on Thursday, scientists watched a supernova explode. I love supernovae, they make beautiful scatterings. Exploding star caught in the act (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7413160.stm)
StarsOfCCTV
24-05-2008, 22:13
But what is the universe expanding into? hmmm..
Nothingness. 95% of everything is made up of nothing.
One day, when it has stopped expanding, it will collapse in on itself. Kinda like blowing a balloon up; it reaches the point where you can't blow it up anymore and bursts. When that happens, I don't know. It will probably after our galaxy has become a black hole and everybody is dead.
That sounds so nice lol
The thing is, if we are expanding into nothingness, surely we can expand forever?
No. Using the balloon analagy. Once you get to almost popping the balloon you run out of energy and its hard to blow it up. Thats what will happen with the universe. Energy is needed for it to expand, the energy coming from the annhilation of matter and antimatter when the Singularity whent boom.
Right I understand
The thing is how do they know we are no near our maximum I mean they cant travel very far so even though we know of other galaxies its not like they can put them on a map
Good point. We can estimate the age of the universe. We roughly know when the sun will die. I'm sure that NASA or some other physicist much cleverer than me has come up with a formula to work the end of the universe out.
Certainly won't be in our lifetime though.
StarsOfCCTV
25-05-2008, 00:05
Yeah. I don't much fancy being in the giant barbaque when the sun explodes :p
Do think that galaxies could move as well?
I dunno about galaxies moving. As individual planets in the milky way, we're held in orbit by forces. Whether our galaxy can move as one, I'm not sure.
Actually, I remember reading something about two galaxies that were going to collide a while back. I suppose it is possible, comets, cosmic rays and meteors can move.
I just wondered cos if our Galaxy could move, what effects could that have? COuld it explain the new finding of galaxies too
I'm not sure what physical effects it could have. If we bump into another galaxy our orbits could be affected. If we fall into a black hole then its game over.
We could maybe find new galaxies that are further away from our present position as we move around. The Hubble telescope is long ranging (thousands of light years away) so it is possible to find new things.
Black holes sound scarier and scarier.
So where is the Hubble telescope
Currently its at an altitude of 564.5km above earth, -8.4 degrees latitude and -138.2 degrees longitude.
It changes every minute http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/where.a.s_hubble_now/basic_version.php
StarsOfCCTV
25-05-2008, 02:09
I'm not sure what physical effects it could have. If we bump into another galaxy our orbits could be affected. If we fall into a black hole then its game over.
We could maybe find new galaxies that are further away from our present position as we move around. The Hubble telescope is long ranging (thousands of light years away) so it is possible to find new things.
When the sun explodes it will turn into a black hole, if anyone is still alive after the world has been roasted is definitely dead then! :p
I wonder if there will be any life left on earth when the sun starts to die. What with all these natural disasters and terrorists there might not be anyone left when the time comes.
I wonder if there will be any life left on earth when the sun starts to die. What with all these natural disasters and terrorists there might not be anyone left when the time comes.
Or if we ever manage to find another planet to move to.
Even if we did it would cost loads
I wonder how long it would take us humans to pollute and destroy another planet :hmm:
Saw this and thought of this thread:
Planet hunters say it's just a matter of time before they lasso Earth's twin, which almost surely is hiding somewhere in our star-studded galaxy.
Momentum is building: Just last week, astronomers announced they had discovered three super-Earths — worlds more massive than ours but small enough to most likely be rocky — orbiting a single star. And dozens of other worlds suspected of having masses in that same range were found around other stars.
"Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.
Since the early 1990s, when the first planets outside of our solar system were detected orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257, astronomers have identified nearly 300 such worlds. However, most of them are gas giants called hot Jupiters that orbit close to their stars because, simply, they are easier to find.
"So far we've found Jupiters and Saturns, and now our technology is becoming good enough to detect planets smaller, more like the size of Uranus and Neptune, and even smaller," said one of the top planet hunters on this world, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley.
Marcy, Boss and other scientists are optimistic that within the next five or so years headlines will be splashed with news of a near twin of Earth in another star system.
"What is amazing to me is that for thousands of years humans have gazed at the stars, wondering if there might be another Earth out there somewhere," Boss told SPACE.com. "Now we know enough to say that Earth-like planets are indeed orbiting many of those stars, unseen perhaps, but there nevertheless."
Seeing tiny planets
Two techniques are now standard for spotting other worlds. Most of the planets noted to date have been discovered using the radial velocity method, in which astronomers look for slight wobbles in a star's motion due to the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. This favors detection of very massive planets that are very close to their host stars.
With the transit method, astronomers watch for a dimming of light when a planet passes in front of its host star. Though more haphazard, this approach works when telescopes scan the light from hundreds or thousands of stars at once.
Both methods are limited by their ability to block out the overshadowing light of the host star. For instance, the sun is 100 times larger, 300,000 times more massive and up to 10 billion times brighter than Earth. "Detecting Earth in reflected light is like searching for a firefly six feet from a searchlight that is 2,400 miles distant," writes a panel of astronomers recently in their final report of the Exoplanet Task Force.
With upgrades in spectrometers and digital cameras attached to telescopes, astronomers' eyes have become more sensitive to relatively tiny stellar wobbles (measured by changes in certain wavelengths of light) and dips in starlight from ever smaller planets.
The discovery of super-Earths announced last week reflects this technological leap.
"I think why astronomers are really excited [about the super-Earth discovery] is it just shows that technology has really matured and so they're able to see these very subtle wobbles due to these low-mass planets," said David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. "Those were fairly massive stars. If they were able to get the same precision on a lower-mass star, they would be able to look at even lower-mass planets and so those really would be analogs of the Earth."
To eek out even more sensitivity from current technologies, Charbonneau suggests astronomers look for worlds around small stars.
He and other astronomers are in fact probing the universe for transiting planets orbiting M dwarfs, or red dwarfs, which are about 50 percent dimmer than the sun and much less massive. Red dwarfs are also considered the most common star type in the universe.
"I think the real opportunity there is to study low-mass stars, and that's because we're looking for very small planets," Charbonneau said. "The difficulty is the ratio between the planet's mass and the star's mass or the planet's size and the star's size depending on how you want to find it."
The low mass and luminosity means any changes to the star due to an Earth-mass planet are much more likely to be detected.
"A late M star is about 10 times smaller than the sun," said Penn State's James Kasting, who studies planetary atmospheres and the habitable zones of exoplanets. "So Earth going in front of an M star would give a 1 percent signal. That's like Jupiter going in front of the sun." Kasting added, "We could conceivably find an Earth analog planet by this method within the next five or ten years."
Other teams are gearing up to look for Earth-like worlds orbiting massive stars like the sun. NASA's Kepler observatory is scheduled for launch in February 2009, after which the high-powered telescope will monitor about 100,000 stars in the Milky Way looking for periodic dimming of starlight due to a planet's transit in front of the star.
The French COROT mission is already up in space working in a similar fashion.
The ultimate goal of planet-hunting projects is to find Earth twins.
"We are looking for twins of the Earth, analogs that walk and talk and smell like our own Earth," Marcy said during a telephone interview. He is currently looking for super-Earths using the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Such a twin would be rocky, with a similar chemical composition to Earth, and would orbit within the habitable zone of its star.
The habitable zone defines the distance at which a planet must orbit from its star for liquid water to exist on its surface — not too hot like Venus, not too cold like Neptune or Pluto.
Astronomers have found planets orbiting pretty close to the habitable zone, but none so far within it.
"I suspect there are Earth-like planets with lakes and rivers and waterfalls and deep glacial gorges and that are spectacularly beautiful," Marcy said.
Finding a planet in the habitable zone is the first step toward finding alien life.
"When we say it's a habitable world, all we're doing is saying it potentially could hold life," Boss said. "To go beyond that to say, 'Here's a habitable world; is it inhabited,' then you need to start studying the atmosphere of the planet."
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled for launch in 2013, could do just that.
"There might be a signal in the atmosphere that could be a smoking gun and would suggest that plate tectonics is there," said earth and planetary scientist Diana Valencia of Harvard University.
Her computer models have shown that plate tectonics, the forces that move continents and lift gigantic mountain ranges, are key to life on Earth as we know it, and possibly to life on other worlds. That's because as the rocky plates that form the planet's outer shell move about, they also recycle carbon dioxide. This greenhouse gas keeps our planet's temperature balmy, but not too hot. And the telltale signal would be certain levels of carbon dioxide, suggesting that just as on Earth, this other world relies on plate tectonics to cycle carbon.
But first things first. "There's no doubt that other Earths exist, simply due to the sheer vast numbers of other stars and galaxies in our universe," Marcy said. "There's a deeper question — how common are Earth-like planets? Are Earth-like planets a dime a dozen, or are they quite rare, quirky precious planets that are one in a thousand or one in a million?"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25350155/?GT1=43001
parkerman
16-04-2009, 15:39
I'm not sure what the question means.
If it means do I believe that there is life on other planets I would say yes. There are billions of other planets in the Universe. It seems inconceivable that we are the only planet with life forms.
If it means have aliens visited the Earth, I would say no. There is no evidence at all to suggest they have.
This may be of interest: http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2706/spaceb.jpg
ellikadan2x
23-04-2009, 15:57
I know it's strange but I do believe in them..
It's bad though..
I've a watched some documentaries in History Channel..
They actually proved that they exist and they intend to uncover the mysteries in our own world..
It's really cool.
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A picture is worth a thousand words. (http://www.onlinepromotioncodes.co.uk/Voucher-Promo-Codes/therealartco.com/)
parkerman
23-04-2009, 16:24
They actually proved that they exist
Who are they and how did they prove it?
I believe that aliens exist, however I also believe that they are so far away that it would be almost impossible for them to visit earth.
I would like to see this proof
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