Helen Sharman.

[barkis]

I'm a bit perplexed about Helen Sharman's statement concerning Aliens, their likely existence, and the likelihood they 
are already here on earth.  
I, and many others will agree, that their probably will be other lifeforms in the universe, due to the countless  number of
stars, with planetary systems similar to our own.  
Guesswork isn't enough to indicate the existence of others in the Universe, it would be more  sensible to wait for absolute proof.
I hope the sale of tinfoil doesn't  go through the roof 😁.
Ron.

[Carbon Brush]

I read this on the BBC news website and was a little surprised.

The BBC are not known for sensational or ridiculous stories.
They do though sometimes get things out of context, or print partial statements that don't tell the full story.

I won't be lining my house with tinfoil just yet.
I reckon the fine mesh chicken wire embedded in the plaster will be OK.😀
The tinfoil hats are for when I am outside.

 

[banjaxed]

2 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

I read this on the BBC news website and was a little surprised.

The BBC are not known for sensational or ridiculous stories.
They do though sometimes get things out of context, or print partial statements that don't tell the full story.

 

 

Very well put.

[mikeDnight]

Well, I have to agree with her. The evidence is indisputable. Not that long ago the little town of Bacup in Lancashire was reported to be the UFO capital of the world. Bacup is only a skip and a jump from my local astronomy club the AC. Some years ago now, I was walking from the main observatory building back to my car, when in the dark I passed two nut jobs holding pan lids wired to batteries having led's. As I walked speedily past them one said - possibly in an attempt to get my attention - "there's one there behind that cloud!" I didn't bite and kept on walking. My friend Phil wasn't as bright as me as he stopped to talk to them, where as I sat in the car out of sight. A good half hour later Phil arrived at the car frozen to the bone and shaking his head in disbelief. You've guessed it - they were two of Bacups finest scientists, using state of the art Teflon pan's and Duracell batteries to detect alien space craft that don't want to be seen. If youve ever been to Bacup, you'd see for yourselves that we are not alone. 

Edited January 6, 2020 by mikeDnight

[Craney]

"it's possible" ......"there must be"    

Whenever I read this kind of statement I immediately feel that science has taken a trip beyond the atmosphere of fact and ended up in the rarefied nebulousness of sound-bite journalism.

[alan potts]

52 minutes ago, barkis said:

I'm a bit perplexed about Helen Sharman's statement concerning Aliens, their likely existence, and the likelihood they 
are already here on earth.  
I, and many others will agree, that their probably will be other lifeforms in the universe, due to the countless  number of
stars, with planetary systems similar to our own.  
Guesswork isn't enough to indicate the existence of others in the Universe, it would be more  sensible to wait for absolute proof.
I hope the sale of tinfoil doesn't  go through the roof 😁.
Ron.

Ha ha, I was watching Who wants to be a Millionaire last night on the Net and she was one of the questions as to what she was, ie first woman from UK in space. BTW she's right, I'm an alien Ron.

Alan

[domstar]

Helen Sharman did an interview with the Observer, which is available to read on the Guardian website. The questions asked are not reported but it's obvious they asked her about aliens and she answered. The BBC didn't misquote her but it would be better to read the Observer article to understand the context. I can't see any issue with her giving her opinion in a weekend magazine.

[Peter Drew]

10 minutes ago, KevS said:

In Cleethorpes you would start to wish that you were in fact alone!

I live in Bacup.  Says it all really!.     👀 

[Rusted]

There's nowt wrong with Cleethorpes! 

Mind you, when I were a lad on the herring fleets we'd set sail for Greenland whether we needed to, or not. 🥶

[ollypenrice]

“Aliens exist, there’s no two ways about it,” Dr Sharman told the Observer Magazine. “There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of forms of life. 

“Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It’s possible they’re right here right now and we simply can’t see them.”

Here are two statements presented as verbatim. The first, that 'there is no doubt about it,' is factually incorrect since there is, among professional scientists and the general public, considerable doubt about it. Paul Murdin, in his book on the subject, says he began the study by thinking the universe would be full of life and ended it having changed his mind. However, a non-pedantic person would read this as Helen Sharman's opinion on the matter and a perfectly reasonable one, shared by plenty of people including many professionals. However, it is no more than a working hypothesis.

The second, that they might be present among us and undetectable, does not of itself condemn Helen Sharman to the ranks of the Bacup Nut Jobs. No less a luminary than Fred Hoyle argued that infectious organisms come from space. The opinion that most of the universe is in an almost undetectable form is actually a mainstream view in cosmology.  Being open to the notion that undetectable stuff might be used by nature to make undetectable aliens is surely a sensible position to take even if you thought the odds were very long?

The problem arises when the statements are taken out of context in a world in which the Bacup Nut Jobs (a sub-sect of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Nut Jobs) assert that aliens made of the same stuff as us are just behind that cloud and itching to take us for a spin in their saucers. This is what the journos want her to be saying, but is it what she's saying?

Olly

[Alien 13]

We are all aliens anyway, the solar system is full of organic compounds and current theory's suggest we were seeded during the asteroid bombardment.

I think tardigrades and spiders are definitely later extra terrestrial additions though

Alan

[wxsatuser]

I know someone who thought the aliens in Independence Day were real.

[barkis]

I remember Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio announcement years ago.
Caused a right old panic.
Can't foresee that happening  though.😀

 

[Alfian]

1 hour ago, Peter Drew said:

I live in Bacup.  Says it all really!.     👀 

I've visited Bacup a good many times and a couple of friends are from the town. In all the times in or around there I have to say the people I met were mostly humanoid. 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Just now, Alfian said:

I've visited Bacup a good many times and a couple of friends are from the town. In all the times in or around there I have to say the people I met were mostly humanoid. 

But maybe you missed the super-intelligent shades of the colour blue that might be around

[Alfian]

Just now, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

But maybe you missed the super-intelligent shades of the colour blue that might be around

In the Lancashire/Yorkshire Pennine borders with all the wind, rain, hail etc colour isn't always a useful guide.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Just now, Alfian said:

In the Lancashire/Yorkshire Pennine borders with all the wind, rain, hail etc colour isn't always a useful guide.

Super-intelligent shades of the colour wet?

[sheeprug]

15 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

But maybe you missed the super-intelligent shades of the colour blue that might be around

They're usually refracted into a free-standing prizm, if i recalll correcly.

SR

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

4 minutes ago, sheeprug said:

They're usually refracted into a free-standing prizm, if i recalll correcly.

SR

Only for festive occasions

[ollypenrice]

22 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Only for festive occasions

Which are rare in the north west...

😁lly

[alan potts]

Ron, looks like we have alien chickens over here too, not something you see every day.

Happy free roaming chickens, seem to like my garden too.

Alan

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

We are all aliens anyway, the solar system is full of organic compounds and current theory's suggest we were seeded during the asteroid bombardment.

I think tardigrades and spiders are definitely later extra terrestrial additions though

Alan

The theory of Panspermia?🤔

[Xilman]

My personal view: extraterrestial live is virtually certain to exist.  There are several reasons why I believe it to be so.

First, in our neighbourhood we already detecting an average of one planet per star --- Kepler has shown that.  There are roughly 1e12 stars in our galaxy and roughly 1e13 galaxies in the observable universe.  The MW is bigger than average, so let's be conservative and estimate around 1e24 planets.  That is a big number. However that applies only to planet-based life. Chuck in moons and the number of habitats could be several times larger. We can reasonably expect 1e25 solid bodies in orbit around stars.

Second, there are several places in our solar system where earth-like life could have evolved.   By that I mean carbon-based using liquid water as a solvent. Planets include Venus & Mars and the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Bacterial life could well have survived high up in the atmosphere of Venus and underground on Mars.  Both planets were really rather friendly earlier in their histories. The gas and ice-giant atmospheres have very large volumes where the pressure and temperature is close to that which terrestrial life finds comfortable.  There is a great deal of evidence for sub-surface oceans in several of their satellites.

Third there is some evidence and several plausible lines of argument to suggest that water is not required for life.  There is some truly fascinating chemistry going on in low-temperature non-aqueous solvents, with analogues of sugars and lipids having already been synthesized.  Searching on the term "azotosome" may lead you into some interesting chemistry which should be possible in the liquid methane seas on Titan. "Polysilanol" is another good word,  https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Many-chemistries-could-be-used-to-build-living-Bains/321cabdb19e7debb78613ef38b925475b9f4580d is a specific reference.  Note that I have not yet brought in any wilder speculations such as Black Clouds, black hole Eaters and Cheelas.

Fourth, and really rather important in my view, our experience is that it didn't take long for life to evolve on the earth (with relevance to the Mars and Venus comment above) and once it took hold it proved to be ineradicable.  It sailed through several snowball earth episodes, for instance. On a shorter term, viable viruses were returned to Earth after spending a couple of years on a Surveyor probe exposed to the lunar environment. It will interesting to see whether of those infamous tardigrades survived their journey.  Extensive modelling and a few experiments with hypervelocity projectile guns have shown that viable bacteria can be chipped off the terrestrial planets and survive long enough to land safely on a different on.

Perhaps this may not be a proof in the mathematical sense but it surely reaches the "balance of probability" criterion in civil law suits and, in my opinion, beyond all reasonable doubt in criminal cases.

[Rusted]

For all our faults [well yours, not mine] we have been fabulously lucky to have survived this long.

Big, fast, falling objects, too near to astronomical cataclysms, misogyny, pandemics, childbirth, advertising super-saturation, mass superstition, THE 1%, survivable temperatures, radiation, vulcanism, war, earthquakes, drugs and alcohol, volcanoes, inbreeding and interbreeding, climate change, starvation, flat feet, nuclear armaments, dirty water, tin pot dictators, dyslexia, exercise avoidance, UV, genetic defects, monarchy, race extinction, pop culture, obesity, trash foods and drinks, daytime TV, predators, AI, LBGT, Disney, gerrymandering, etc. the list is endless and I have hardly scraped the bottom of the barrel.

There is bound to be more to come that we can hardly imagine yet with our myopic superstitions filtering every thought. Somehow we survived with compound interest. We are now so numerous that we are wrecking our only trailer home as we surround ourselves in toxic disposable garbage and take potshots at passing planets. All to satisfy the ego of billionaires, Dumb and Dumber to help their ratings on Junior Twatter.

Every single organism in the universe has to overcome the same list and far more and survive to tell the tale in a recognisable language which allows learning from silly mistakes and to achieve iterative progress. Despite the absolute proof that we and they haven't a clue what we or they are really doing. And do so again and again and again and again at every single extinction hurdle which presents itself. Having survived into sufficient numbers to manage really large projects. They must develop FTL or [far more likely] astral projection to spread their own religion of crop circles delivered by black cheese wedges and silly, flying saucers.

Well, I don't know about you, but I really don't fancy the look of yours! Don't you have anything with fur and pointy teeth? I could really do with a nice change. 

 

[mikeDnight]

5 hours ago, Peter Drew said:

I live in Bacup.  Says it all really!.     👀 

If aliens were all as nice as you Peter, assimilation would be nothing to worry about. But if you were as pretty as the girl in the 1995 movie below, I wouldn't care how bad you were, even if you were from Bacup.