Many Worlds

Tag: Arthur C. Clarke

Sure UFOs Exist. But There’s No Reason To Conclude That Aliens Are Flying Them

June 3, 2021 / / 1 Comment

An apparently unidentified object detected on a Navy plane’s infrared camera. (U.S. Department of Defense/Navy Times)

It seems to happen with some regularity.  Claims that Unidentified Flying Objects are visiting us have captured the public imagination once more and a big reveal is expected soon.

That will come, oddly, from a government report required to be released by the end of June that will supposedly detail the many sightings made by high-flying military pilots and unexplained detections by satellites.  The requirement was added to the Covid relief package that was passed by Congress in December and orders the Department of Defense and the Office of the DIrector of National Intelligence to release their unclassified findings on the subject, information that has been apparently collected for decades.

In terms of national defense, these reports could indeed be meaningful.  If other nations are sending

This well known poster was first introduced during an episode of the 1990s television show, “The X Files.” and featured in a subsequent movie.

drones or satellites of some sort (true UFOs) to get close to and study American assets, then that’s important news.

But, of course, the UFO drama is overwhelmingly about something else:  The claimed presence of intelligent aliens that are scoping out Earth for reasons ranging from awe-inspiring or extremely worrisome.

The report — which sources say concludes that there is insufficient evidence to confirm or conclusively rule out extraterrestrial UFO sightings —  will no doubt be widely consumed by a population with many “UFO believers.”  After all, a 2019 Gallup poll found that 33 percent of American adults said that alien spacecraft from distant planets and galaxies have been visiting us.

I find all this to be not only unfortunate but also misguided and potentially damaging.  The moment will pass with no intelligent aliens identified, and then will return again some time in the future for another round.

The potential damage is to the very real, very challenging, very cutting-edge science being conducted around the world that seeks to identify actual signs of actual extraterrestrial life in the cosmos, or at least to know what to look for when we have space telescopes and instruments with the necessary power.

And I’m concerned that a focus on UFOs imagined to be carrying intelligent alien life takes away from the hard-won seriousness of their enormous and so compelling scientific effort.  This is especially true now that the scientific search for extraterrestrial life is on the front burner for the National Academy of Sciences, which will soon make recommendations about a next grand observatory for the 2030s.… Read more

NASA Panel Supports Life-Detecting Lander for Europa; Updated

April 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Artist conception of water vapor plumes coming from beneath the thick ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The plumes have not been definitively detected, but Hubble Space Telescope images make public earlier this month appear to show plume activity in an area where it was detected once before.  How will this finding affect decision-making about a potential NASA Europa lander mission? (NASA)

As I prepare for the Astrobiology Science Conference (Abscicon) next week in Arizona, I’m struck by how many speakers will be discussing Europa missions, Europa science, ocean worlds and habitability under ice.  NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to orbit that moon, scheduled for launch to the Jupiter system in the mid 2020s, explains part of the interest, but so too does the unsettled fate of the Europa lander concept.

The NASA Science Definition Team that studied the Europa lander project will both give a science talk at the conference and hold an afternoon-long science community meeting on their conclusions.  The team argued that landing on Europa holds enormous scientific promise, most especially in the search for life beyond Earth.

But since the Europa lander SDT wrote its report and took its conclusions public early this year, the landscape has changed substantially.  First, in March, the Trump Administration 2018 budget eliminated funding for the lander project.  More than half a billion dollars have been spent on Europa lander research and development, but the full project was considered to be too expensive by the White House.

Administration budget proposals and what ultimately become budget reality can be quite different, and as soon as the Europa lander was cancelled supporters in Congress pushed back.  Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.) and chair of the House subcommittee that oversees the NASA budget, replied to the proposed cancellation by saying “NASA is a strategic national asset and I have no doubt NASA will receive sufficient funding to complete the most important missions identified by the science community, including seeking out life in the oceans of Europa.”

More recently, researchers announced additional detections of plumes of water vapor apparently coming out of Europa — plumes in the same location as a previous apparent detection.  The observing team said they were confident the difficult observation was indeed water vapor, but remained less than 100 percent certain.  (Unlike for the detection of a water plume on Saturn’s moon Enceladeus, which the Cassini spacecraft photographed, measured and flew through.)

So while suffering a serious blow in the budgeting process, the case for a Europa lander has gotten considerably stronger from a science and logistics perspective. 

… Read more

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