Visitors . . . from space

February 3, 2005

By Katie Piepel

Daily Staff Writer

If the National UFO Reporting Center is correct, aliens visited the United States 148 times in January.

Once again, a scientific space advancement has stirred up debate over the existence of extraterrestrial beings.

January marked the landing of the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe on the creamy, mud-like surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Guillermo Gonzalez, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, says Titan is not suitable for life, even though it shares similarities with Earth.

“It’s too cold for Titan to have carbon dioxide in gas form, and it’s too cold on Titan to have water as a liquid or as a gas,” he says. “Titan is much, much colder than Earth ever was, so that means most things that are liquids or gases in Earth’s atmosphere or oceans today are in solid form on Titan.”

Gonzalez says there was a time when he believed in extraterrestrial life and UFO sightings, but it was during his years as a graduate student that he started to see things differently.

“I just started looking into all the factors you need to have life, especially complex life, on a planet,” he says. “When you start listing all the factors and multiplying them out, it turns out that the probabilities become very small very quickly.”

But Steven Kawaler, professor of physics and astronomy, says the idea that intelligent life is common in the universe is something he finds very difficult to ignore.

“Given what we’ve learned over the last 200 years about the development of life on Earth — chemistry, biochemistry, astronomy and so on — it looks like the process that produces life on Earth is a fairly common process,” he says.

Although Gonzalez says he is confident that Earth is the only planet in our galaxy able to sustain life, the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence existing outside of our galaxy is something he cannot deny.

“I’m not ready to say that we’re alone just because we don’t know the probability as well enough,” he says.

Kawaler, however, says that since we have not proven this galaxy gives life only to humans, it is still open for debate.

“If you wanted to say we are the only intelligent, technologically capable civilization in the galaxy, the only way you could deal with that is to prove it wrong,” he says. “And to prove it wrong you have to find another intelligent, technologically capable civilization in the galaxy. That hasn’t happened yet, but people are looking.”

Over the years, the media have portrayed extraterrestrials as unpleasant, eerie creatures conspiring against planet Earth in hopes of overtaking our civilization and using up our resources, like in the 2002 film “Signs” or in Orson Welles’ infamous radio dramatization of “War of the Worlds.”

Kawaler says evil aliens make good stories, but not a lot of sense.

“If they have the technology to solve problems that we think are absolutely insoluble, like how to travel faster than the speed of light, they really don’t need to come to Earth,” he says. “[Instead] it would be out of curiosity to see how we work.”

Bob Hopp, senior in mechanical engineering and vice president of the Ames Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, says he believes in the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence and agrees with Kawaler that aliens have no need to visit Earth.

“It seems plausible that they would come to take our planet for its resources, [but] it also seems plausible that, when they’re advanced enough to get to us, they’d be advanced enough to not need anything that we have,” he says.

Hopp says despite the physical representations we see in the media, he thinks aliens would not have human characteristics.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that they would be humanoid,” he says. “I imagine that the biggest reason that they look humanoid in movies is that we need actors to play them.”

If extraterrestrial intelligence does exist in our universe, Gonzalez says, we do not yet have the capabilities to find it.

“The other galaxies are so far away from us that we couldn’t detect their signals if they are there,” he says. “But I think we’re getting a better handle on the probabilities every year as we learn more about stars and star formation and planetary processes. I think within maybe 20 to 30 years we’ll be able to say, with much greater confidence, whether or not we’re alone in the entire universe.”

Whether the idea seems plausible or not, Gonzalez and Kawaler agree it won’t be long until the big question can finally be answered: Are we alone?

Famous UFO Cases

The 1947 “Roswell Incident” — The U.S. Air Force

discovered the remains of a “flying disc” near Roswell, N.M. The Air Force said the object was part of Project Mogul, a top-secret government experiment involving weather balloons.

The 1982 Hudson Valley Sightings — Between 1982 and 1995, the Hudson River Valley of New York was home to more than 7,000 documented sightings of “boomerang-shaped” objects moving over New York and Connecticut. The UFOs were said to be as big as a football field. This is one of the most widely

witnessed and investigated cases in history.

The 1997 “Phoenix Lights” sightings — a cluster of lights were seen in the sky over Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Hundreds of witnesses reported seeing a gigantic triangular-shaped object with many lights. Military personnel said the event was caused by “military flares” from an Air Force A-10 aircraft.