Extraterrestrial Life Fact Or Fiction

Introduction

The phenomenon of flying saucers and extraterrestrial life raises passionate confrontations. Some give it as an unquestionable fact that only scientific pedantry denies. And some think this is a fertile ground for fraudsters to the gullible and the ignorant (Zuckerman, p. 12). When it comes to extraterrestrial life, we are trying to define those forms of life may have originated, existed or still exist elsewhere in the universe, outside the planet Earth, and that would be found in any of the stages.

Discussion

Percival Lowell, American astronomer, is known for advocating the existence of channels on the surface of Mars, and convert these assumptions channels in the proof that there was intelligent life on this planet. Today we know that the canals of Mars are beds of ancient rivers that flowed millions of years ago, prior to freeze or evaporate, but nothing indicates that there is intelligent life existed on Mars, although there is a possibility that harbored some kind of life microscopic.

The canals of Mars suggest that water once flowed on the surface and thus the possibility of some form of microscopic life. Listening to artificial signals, which would detect extraterrestrial civilizations real electromagnetic radiation emitted as a byproduct of technological progress.

The Institute for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), try to find extraterrestrial life through the treatment of signals from space that are picked up by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, with its 305 meters is the largest diameter world, allowing picking up signals much weaker than any other radio telescope (Goldsmith, p. 45).

These signals are sent to the University of Berkeley, California, where they divide into very small fragments that are scattered among more than 4 million registered users in the SETI @ home, to be analyzed using a program that runs as a screensaver. Despite the large network of computers, so far only been explored a 0.000000000000001% of the universe.

The Milky Way, our galaxy is estimated to have 500 billion stars, representing a fraction of those that make up the universe .

Civilizations Estraterrestres

In 1961, Franke Drakes formulated the Drake Equation with trying to determine the number of civilizations in our galaxy that could get in touch with our own (Davies, p. 56). Took into account the number of stars available to the Milky Way (half billion), which of them would have succeeded in developing intelligent life, how many could or would want to communicate with other civilizations and finally, what is the life that can have these things without drop in violence that leads to self-destruction.

The final figure was revealed that in our galaxy alone could be 10,000 civilizations. Although this equation is merely indicative due to the inability to evaluate these quantities, gives an idea of the enormous possibility of finding other forms of life, the universe consists of billions of galaxies.

Origin of Life on Earth

Panspermia is the theory on the origin of life is that life on Earth come from other parts of the universe, being comets consist ...