ARE WE ALONE? ALIENS MIGHT BE A CLOSER ENCOUNTER THAN THOUGHT
▶ The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite set to launch as UFO debate hots up,
Is there anything living out there? Whatever the answer, it is shocking in its implications. Now scientists are hoping to find out if it lies on our cosmic doorstep.
This month, Nasa will launch Tess – the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite – which will orbit high above Earth searching for habitable planets beyond the solar system.
Such searches have been done before. Nasa’s Kepler space observatory, launched in 2009, examined over 150,000 stars in a small patch of the night sky using the same technique as Tess.
Orbiting planets cut across the face of their parent star, producing a slight drop in brightness. By detecting these transits, the ultra-sensitive light detectors on Kepler found that about 1.5 per cent of the stars are accompanied by at least one “exo-planet”.
Astronomers now think there could be tens of billions of Earth-like planets able to sustain life strewn across our galaxy but most are so distant there is no hope of finding out what they might harbour.
But Tess is focusing on stars much closer to home. Scientists think they will be able to find dozens of Earth-like planets within just a few hundred light-years of the solar system.
Once found, these planets will be studied in detail by huge telescopes, already under construction, for signs of life.
Within the scientific community, there is excitement about the progress in establishing our status in the universe.
Yet for some people, this just raises another question: what took the scientists so long? They believe the issue was settled years ago by the countless reports of UFOs.
Long regarded as a litmus test for gullibility, merely suggesting UFOs might be evidence of alien life could be professional suicide for scientists.
But new and seemingly reputable accounts of close encounters with strange craft that have extraordinary capabilities hint at a possible rethink.
In December, The New York
Times reported incidents involving US military ships and aircraft, along with the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme, a partly classified project at the US Department of Defence to understand the significance of those incidents.
One such incident began in November 2004, when the USS Princeton, a Navy cruiser, tracked unknown objects that appeared on radar at altitudes of 25 kilometres, far above conventional aircraft flight paths, then plunged down towards the sea.
Fighter pilots sent to investigate could detect nothing visually or on radar but then noticed a whitish oval-shaped object about 15 metres long just over the surface of sea.
As they approached, the object came up towards them and then zipped across the sea at an astonishing speed, estimated at about 4,000kph.
Yet for true believers in alien visits, the disclosure of the Pentagon’s programme and reports of incredible phenomena was old news.
They say that the US Air Force is already known to have investigated more than 12,000 UFO sightings in a project that ended in 1969. Analysts found that more than 95 per cent were cases of mistaken identity – cloud formations, stars, planets and the like.
But that still left more than 700 that could not be explained.
Nor do the incidents reported by The New York Times seem especially impressive compared to events such as the socalled Belgian UFO wave that began in late 1989.
Unknown objects were seen by thousands of witnesses and corroborated by air force radar operators, and twice led to F-16 fighters being sent to investigate.
On the first occasion, the object vanished from ground radar when the fighters approached but appeared again when they departed. The chief of the Belgian Air Staff said the fighter pilots also detected the object on radar but could see nothing.
In late March 1990, police reports of sightings of unusual objects in the skies over Wavre, central Belgium, again led to fighters investigating, with the same result.
Their radar systems detected an unknown object that they described as a “structured UFO”, which could not be seen otherwise.
As with the USS Princeton incident, the object performed extraordinary manoeuvres, accelerating from about 280kph to 1,800kph in just a few seconds – far higher than a human pilot could tolerate and without producing a sonic boom.
Belgian authorities said they would treat the events “with the utmost seriousness” but no explanation has ever emerged.
Sceptics rightly point out that none of this proves UFOs have aliens at the controls. But as astronomers shorten the odds on habitable planets in our cosmic neighbourhood, the standard put-downs are starting to lose their force.
Many scientists happily accept alien life exists somewhere in the galaxy but add that, even travelling at the speed of light, it would take thousands of years for them to reach us. And why should they visit in any case?
This overlooks the fact that for more than 90 years radio transmissions announcing our existence have been streaming out into space. As such, they have passed through hundreds of star systems on the way.
The discovery of nearby exo-planets could make that very significant.
Prof Freeman Dyson of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton in New Jersey, one of the world’s most distinguished theoretical physicists, was once asked for his definitive argument against aliens visiting Earth.
His blunt response: “There isn’t one. The fact is we just don’t know”.
This month’s launch of Tess is the most significant step towards providing an answer. It may also help scientists to move on from being perfectly comfortable with the existence of aliens, as long as they keep their distance.
Astronomers now think there could be tens of billions of Earth-like planets able to sustain life in our galaxy