How would humanity change if we knew aliens existed?

We have yet to discover any signs of an extraterrestrial civilization — a prospect that could quite literally change overnight. Should that happen, our sense of ourselves and our place in the cosmos would forever be shaken. It could even change the course of human history. Or would it?

Last week, SETI's Seth Shostak made the claim that we'll detect an alien civilization by 2040. Personally, I don't believe this will happen (for reasons I can elucidate in a future post — but the Fermi Paradox is definitely a factor, as is the problem of receiving coherent radio signals across stellar distances). But it got me wondering: What, if anything, would change in the trajectory of a civilization's development if it had definitive proof that intelligent extraterrestrials (ETIs) were real?

Finding a World Much Like Our Own

As I thought about this, I assumed a scenario with three basic elements.

First, that humanity would make this historic discovery within the next several years or so. Second, that we wouldn't actually make contact with the other civilization (just the receipt, say, of a radio transmission — something like a Lucy Signal that would cue us to their existence). And third, that the ETI in question would be at roughly the same level of technological development as our own (so they're not too much more advanced than we are; that said, if the signal came from an extreme distance, like hundreds or thousands of light-years away, these aliens would probably have advanced appreciably by now. Or they could be gone altogether, the victims of a self-inflicted disaster).

I tossed this question over to my friend and colleague Milan Cirkovic. He's a Senior Research Associate at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and a leading expert on SETI.

"Well, that's a very practical question, isn't it?" he responded. "Because people have been expecting something like this since 1960 when SETI was first launched — they haven't really been expecting to find billion-year old supercivilizations or just some stupid bacteria."

Indeed, the underlying philosophy of SETI over the course of its 50-year history has been that we'll likely detect a civilization roughly equal to our own — for better or worse. And no doubt, in retrospect it started to look "for worse" when the hopes of an early success were dashed. Frank Drake and his colleagues thought they would find signs of ETIs fairly quickly, but that turned out not to be the case (though Drake's echo can still be heard in the unwarranted contact optimism of Seth Shostak).

"Enormous Implications"

"Some people argued that a simple signal wouldn't mean much for humanity," added Cirkovic, "but I think Carl Sagan, as usual, had a good response to this."

Specifically, Sagan said that the very understanding that we are not unique in the universe would have enormous implications for all those fields in which anthropocentrism reigns supreme.

"Which means, I guess, half of all the sciences and about 99% of the other, non-scientific discourse," said Cirkovic.

Sagan also believed that the detection of a signal would reignite enthusiasm for space in general, both in terms of research and eventually the colonization of space.

"The latter point was quite prescient, actually, because at the time he said this there wasn't much enthusiasm about it and it was much less visible and obvious than it is today," he added.

No doubt — this would likely generate tremendous excitement and enthusiasm for space exploration. In addition to expanding ourselves into space, there would be added impetus to reach out and meet them.

At the same time, however, some here on Earth might counterargue that we should stay home and hide from potentially dangerous civilizations (ah, but what if everybody did this?). Ironically, some might even argue that we should significantly ramp-up our space and military technologies to meet potential alien threats.

Developmental Trajectories

In response to my query about the detection of ETIs affecting the developmental trajectory of civilizations, Cirkovic replied that both of Sagan's points can be generalized to any civilization at their early stages of development.

He believes that overcoming speciesist biases, along with a constant interest and interaction with the cosmic environment, must be desirable for any (even remotely) rational actors anywhere. But Cirkovic says there may be exceptions — like species who emerge from radically different environments, say, the atmospheres of Jovian planets. Such species would likely have a lack of interest in surrounding space, which would be invisible to them practically 99% of the time. 

So if Sagan is correct, detecting an alien civilization at this point in our history would likely be a good thing. In addition to fostering science and technological development, it would motivate us to explore and colonize space. And who knows, it could even instigate significant cultural and political changes (including the advent of political parties both in support of and in opposition to all this). It could even lead to new religions, or eliminate them altogether.

Another possibility is that nothing would change. Life on Earth would go on as per usual as people work to pay their bills and keep a roof above their heads. There could be a kind of detachment to the whole thing, leading to a certain ambivalence.

 At the same time however, it could lead to hysteria and paranoia. Even worse, and in twisted irony, the detection of a civilization equal to our own (or any life less advanced than us, for that matter) could be used to fuel the Great Filter Hypothesis of the Fermi Paradox. According to Oxford's Nick Bostrom, this would be a strong indication that doom awaits us in the (likely) near future — a filter that affects all civilizations at or near our current technological stage. The reason, says Bostrom, is that in the absence of a Great Filter, the galaxy should be teeming with super-advanced ETIs by now. Which it's clearly not.

Yikes. Stupid Fermi Paradox — always getting in the way of our future plans. 

Source: io9

UFO cult touches down in Cambodia.

The world’s largest UFO cult has reached Cambodia.
“People are not [ready] yet, but we will keep trying to spread the message,” said Am Vichet, the head of the Cambodian chapter of the Raelian Movement, which believes a group of scientists created life 25,000 years ago in a laboratory.
The 41-year old, who works at reproductive health NGO Marie Stopes, said he became a Raelian in 2007 after attending a lecture where the cult’s philosophy was explained. “I want to learn new things. Then, at that time, I joined a lecture and they showed me a video and I thought it was interesting. But it was not enough just to go one time; I wanted to learn more,” Vichet said.
His next step was to read a book penned by the group’s leader, Frenchman Claude Vorilhon, now known by his acolytes only as Rael and who founded the cult in 1974. He claims to be a reincarnation of Buddha.
Vorilhon, then a journalist for an automobile magazine and racing car test driver, says that, on December 13, 1973, he took a detour on his way to work and wandered around an inactive volcano near Auvergne in France. There, he met an extraterrestrial called Yahweh Elohim, who explained “the message”.
The message was simple: life on Earth is the scientifically engineered creation of an advanced alien civilisation, and Vorilhon’s mission on this planet is to prepare humankind for their eventual return.
One of the main goals of Raelism is to build a $20 million embassy for the Elohim, preferably in Israel.

Perhaps due to Raelism’s symbol – a swastika enveloped in a Star of David – the movement is banned in the birthplace of Judaism.
So Raelians are looking eastward and, last January, applied to the Council of Ministers in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The project, which the letter states will generate “several billion euros of revenue, as well as additional spinoff ventures”, will make Cambodians “the first [people] to benefit from the Elohim’s highly advanced technologies”.
But more than a year after the application was submitted, Rael has yet to receive a response from Phnom Penh.
Ek Tha, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said that although he was not aware of the application, he would welcome an extraterrestrial movement in Cambodia.
“I myself have researched UFOs and extraterrestrial life for the last two years,” he said.
“To me, this would be great if we can start an alien movement or institution in Cambodia. We are not alone, my friend. When I tell my friends at work, nobody believes me.”
But any attempt to build the embassy may come up against practical obstacles, according to Dan Thibault, a French-Canadian who travels across Asia spreading Rael’s teachings and was in Phnom Penh last week to hold a public lecture.
“The problem is political . . . the problem is the extra-territoriality, the airspace. We need a protected airspace, like a no-fly zone over the embassy,” Thibault said. “The country that will organise the embassy will be the spiritual and cultural centre of the union to come. It’s a really big thing.”

Vichet explained how he began to accept the Raelians’ ideas after he read Vorilhon’s first book, The Book Which Tells the Truth, which Vichet recently translated into Khmer.

“I started thinking what our natural state was, and one day you can see these things in the sky, and then I thought, oh, it’s true. And then that night I saw the lights again and after that I start to become a Raelian,” Vichet said.
“After that, my life changed. I learn and I read the books and I changed a lot of what I used to think, like negative thinking, and I changed myself.”
The movement claims to be expanding in Asia, boosted by growing followings in China and Japan. Three Cambodians turned up to the meeting last week, at which Thibault delved further into Raelian philosophy.
“Life has been created 25,000 years ago. The Elohim came here, they were a group of scientists who had mastered DNA, and they created all forms of life on this planet,” he said. “They sent all the gods – Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses – all the prophets sent throughout history. We live in the scientific era and at this time we can create life significantly in laboratories, which means we are equal to gods.”
To appeal to Asia’s Buddhist masses, Raelians have tailored their teachings to the students of the Buddha.
Rael now claims to be the Maitreya, the reincarnation of the Buddha. He said the date of his meeting with Yahweh Elohim corresponds with the Buddhist calendar year 3000, when the sutras state the Buddha shall reappear. The new Buddha, the sutras continue, “will come from the west” in “the land of the cock”, which is a national symbol of France.
But controversies over attempts at human cloning in Europe have led to Vorilhon’s exile from France, where there is a warrant out for his arrest.
“We want to live forever. [Human cloning] is the first step towards eternal life,” Thibault said. “It sounds, perhaps, crazy, but some scientists are working right now on downloading your personality. We’ll be able to download our personality from our brain to a computer.
“The next step is you upload your personality into a new body. We’re going to do that, it’s just a matter of time.”

Proposed plans for the ‘embassy’ that the Raelians say they hope to build in Cambodia. PHOTO SUPPLIED

Despite the movement’s expressed alignment with Buddhist values, since its first seminar in 2006, it has only managed to attract 10 adherents in Cambodia.
“We just have a very small number in Cambodia,” said Vichet, adding that he hopes more people will hear the message now that he has translated one of Vorilhon’s books into Khmer. “Most of the Cambodian people, they don’t want to read, especially big books. They don’t want to read a whole story.”
Raelism, which now claims to have close to 85,000 members in more than 100 countries, has courted controversy in an attempt to gain notoriety and support, including campaigns for public nudity, LGBT rights and setting up a clinic in Burkina Faso to reconstruct women’s genitals after they have suffered female genital mutilation.
They also hope to attract celebrity support, much like Scientology.
“We met Michael Jackson; Rael met Russell Brand in the past year. But the fear, they don’t want to identify themselves publicly,” Thibault said, shortly after playing an animated video showing the four-foot-tall Elohim, who look remarkably similar to Jackson, meeting Vorilhon.
Mike Kropveld, executive director of the Montreal-based InfoCult, which has documented Raelism for about 30 years, said that the group is attempting a two-pronged approach to move into Asia.
“They have been trying for years to move into other countries. They have been raising money endlessly [to do this],” he said. “At the same time, they’ve been trying to get Israel to form an embassy. I don’t know why they want an embassy in Cambodia.
“They also often move into the shock area, or something that’s titillating, like the topless campaign. A more accurate [membership] figure would be 5,000, of people who would consider themselves members.”
Kropveld said that Raelism appeals to disillusioned followers of many religions.
“It has had an appeal here, some of the messages the group subscribes to, it’s like a church in terms of the treatment of women, going to heaven, going to where the creators are,” he said. “It’s not really so far off from what [new members] believed before. They kind of have a global religious perspective.”
While Raelian leaders say Buddhism is compatible with their beliefs, Vichet stopped practising around the time he became a Raelin “guide” through a baptism ceremony in 2007. Through the ceremony, Vichet believes his “cellular plan” was transmitted to a computer in preparation for judgment when the Elohim return in 2035.
“We do a baptism to get the plan transmitted and become a Raelian. The baptism actually is physical . . . everybody has vibrations, you transmit these vibrations.”

Source: Phnom Penh Post

AMAZING VIDEO, UFO in Jerusalem

The World's Largest Solar Plant Started Creating Electricity Today.

Take 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors, each 7 feet high and 10 feet wide. Control them with computers to focus the Sun's light to the top of 459-foot towers, where water is turned into steam to power turbines. Bingo: you have the world's biggest solar power plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.

Long-mired by regulatory issues and legal tangles, the enormous solar plant–jointly owned by NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy and Google–opened for business today.

From the official news release:

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is now operational and delivering solar electricity to California customers. At full capacity, the facility's trio of 450-foot high towers produces a gross total of 392 megawatts (MW) of solar power, enough electricity to provide 140,000 California homes with clean energy and avoid 400,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to removing 72,000 vehicles off the road.

Sprawling across a staggering 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, it looks goddamn beautiful. Just look at these amazing images.:

Source: Gizmodo

Tiny motors controlled inside human cell.

For the first time, scientists have placed tiny motors inside living human cells and steered them magnetically.

The advance represents another step towards molecular machines that can be used, for example, to release drugs into specific locations within the body.
There is interest in the approach because it could enhance the benefits of drugs while minimising side effects.
The rocket-shaped metal particles were propelled using ultrasound pulses.
Materials scientist Prof Tom Mallouk, from Penn State University, and colleagues have published their research in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

"As these nanomotors move around and bump into structures inside the cells, the live cells show internal mechanical responses that no one has seen before," said Prof Mallouk.
"This research is a vivid demonstration that it may be possible to use synthetic nanomotors to study cell biology in new ways."

 

This microscope image of a cell shows some of the gold-ruthenium nanomotors

Up until now, nanomotors have been studied only "in vitro" - in laboratory apparatus - but not in living human cells.

At low ultrasonic power, the nanomotors had little effect on these cells. But when the power was increased, the nanomotors surged into action, zooming around and bumping into organelles - structures within the cell that perform specific functions.

“Start Quote

One dream application of ours is Fantastic Voyage-style medicine”

Prof Tom Mallouk Penn State

The nanomotors could be used as "egg beaters" to essentially homogenise the cell's contents, or act as battering rams to puncture the cell membrane.

"We might be able to use nanomotors to treat cancer and other diseases by mechanically manipulating cells from the inside," said Prof Mallouk.
In addition, he said: "Nanomotors could perform intracellular surgery and deliver drugs non-invasively to living tissues."
The researchers were able to steer the tiny motors with magnetic forces.
The scientists also found that the nanomotors could move autonomously - independently of one another - an ability that is important for future applications.

Destructive forces
"Autonomous motion might help nanomotors selectively destroy the cells that engulf them," Prof Mallouk explained.
"If you want these motors to seek out and destroy cancer cells, for example, it's better to have them move independently. You don't want a whole mass of them going in one direction."
Describing the potential uses of nanomotor technology, the Penn State professor invoked a 1966 science fiction film in which a submarine and its human crew are miniaturised and injected into the blood-stream of a dying man in order to save him.
"One dream application of ours is Fantastic Voyage-style medicine, where nanomotors would cruise around inside the body, communicating with each other and performing various kinds of diagnoses and therapy.
"There are lots of applications for controlling particles on this small scale."
The idea of molecular-scale surgery can be traced back to a lecture by celebrated physicist Richard Feynman in 1959 called "There is plenty of room at the bottom".
In the talk to the American Physical Society (APS), he explained: "Although it is a very wild idea, it would be interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon.

"You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood vessel and it goes into the heart and 'looks' around. It finds out which valve is the faulty one and takes a little knife and slices it out."

Source: BBC

[WATCH] UFO or Hoax?

This video has been going around Facebook and people seem to be divided on whether it’s a hoax or the real deal.

(VIDEO) British scientist discovers a meteorite pitted with tiny fossils of algae.

Chandra Wickramasinghe is no stranger to controversy. The Sri Lanka born mathematician was the founder of the theory of Panspermia along with British physicist Fred Hoyle.

Panspermia is based on the idea that life is spread throughout the universe in the form of microbes carried on the back of meteorites that travel through the interstellar vacuum. Wickramasinghe believes that the Sri Lanka meteorite is vindication for his controversial theory, and has solid scientific evidence supporting his conclusions.

According to the abstract in Wickramasinghe's and his co-author's article:

''We report the discovery for the first time of diatom frustules in a carbonaceous meteorite that fell in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka on 29 December 2012. Contamination is excluded by the circumstance that the elemental abundances within the structures match closely with those of the surrounding matrix. There is also evidence of structures morphologically similar to red rain cells that may have contributed to the episode of red rain that followed within days of the meteorite fall. The new data on "fossil" diatoms provide strong evidence to support the theory of cometary panspermia.''

Basically, diatoms are a form of algae that are mainly unicellar and form large colonies. They are a major producer in the food chain. Finding fossil diatoms in a meteorite is hard evidence that extraterrestrial life not only exists, but is commonly found throughout the galaxy.

Live and fossilised diatoms found in meteorites in Sri Lanka -- Prof Wickramasinghe
http://srilankanspuwath.co.uk/web/201...

ASTROBIOLOGY AND ASTROPALEONTOLOGY STUDIES: FIRST COMETARY PANSPERMIA OBSERVATIONS http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/i...

FOSSIL DIATOMS IN A NEW CARBONACEOUS METEORITE
http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC21/P...