Extraterrestrial Life is a censored subject says Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe!

Honestly... I believe that their are other forms of life in the universe... even within our own solar system. However, they exist on a different dimensional plane. And unless some species have already developed a method of travel between dimensions we will never meet them.

reply to post by Miccey


there have been bacteria found on europa, jupiters moon, comets, and possibly mars though mars is inconclusive from the little i've read about it

Originally posted by Sablicious
Religion is ET's arch nemesis.

Until we eradicate religion, we will never be able to freely explore the possibility of ET life without ridicule.

Because as we all know, were alien life to be discovered, it would expunge any vestige of 'credibility' ([insert hysterical laughter]) these fictitious belief systems (/ systems of control) have.

Can you provide a statement from any major religion that states it fundamentally disagrees that life may exist on somewhere other than earth? Just one statement would be fine, although I'd prefer it to be from within the last couple of hundred years if that's ok.

You also make the assumption that any sensient ET life wouldn't in fact have a religion, don't you? For all you know, should they ever pop over and knock on our door, they may turn out to actually be looking for converts.

India launched a balloon into the stratosphere in 2009 and found:

12 bacterial and six fungal colonies were detected, nine of which, based on 16S RNA gene sequence, showed greater than 98% similarity with reported known species on Earth.

Why weren't they 100% similar to those found on Earth? Even more startling is that they found three NEW species of bacteria NOT found on Earth:

Three bacterial colonies, namely, PVAS-1, B3 W22 and B8 W22 were, however, totally new species. All the three newly identified species had significantly higher UV resistance

The implications are clear, these bacteria either evolved on their own in the stratosphere (highly unlikely) or they were brought here, hitching rides on micrometeors or other extraterrestrial debris. They were also more adapted to living in space, being resistant to UV rays for example.

www.sciencedaily.com...

Originally posted by DaTroof
Are we alone in the universe? Statistically speaking, most certainly not. However, the odds that another intelligent species has developed vehicles for perpetual interstellar travel, AND found our tiny planet are just as proportionally slim.

I agree with this statement and I used to follow the same logic coming to the conclusion that we "probably" could not have been visited.

However, this train of thought assumes that such an advanced civilization's chances of finding us are completely randomized and totally indifferent to their advances in science. It might be very well the fact that a civilization advanced enough to perform interstellar travel have the means to considerably increase their probability of them discovering life in the universe with their technology. The assumption above is flawed in the sense that we "think" that an advanced cilization would be looking for us as blindly as we are looking for them. However logic implies the opposite.

What I'm saying in short is, if we accept the probability of existence of an advanced extraterresterial civilisation capable of inter-stellar travel we also accept that they would be advanced enough to find us. So I guess the question still stands?

"Where is everybody?"

I think the probability says they are here, or they have been here.

FACT: bacteria/ microbes can survive an extremely cold ride on a meteorite or sulferic acid. amino acids also travel on comets which is the essential building block for life. as the article i read this from said..let the planet seeding begin! (obviously it's already started, not gonna begin just because we just noticed it)

reply to post by Nicolas Flamel

Why weren't they 100% similar to those found on Earth?

That would imply that they were already-known species.

Even more startling is that they found three NEW species of bacteria...

That isn't at all startling. There are estimated to be around a billion bacterial species on Earth, the overwhelming majority of them unidentified and unclassified. Any random scoop of soil from your backyard would probably turn up a few unknown species. And there is nothing to say that the bacteria the researchers found were not terrestrial in origin.

The implications are clear, these bacteria either evolved on their own in the stratosphere (highly unlikely) or they were brought here, hitching rides on micrometeors or other extraterrestrial debris.

Actually, it is more likely than not that they originated on Earth. Bacteria are found everywhere on our planet, from hot springs to deserts to the polar icecaps. Plenty of them are airborne. It is even theorized that airborne bacteria help rainclouds form through biopreciptation. It all sounds pretty terrestrial to me.

This link, Bacteria: More than Pathogens, will help give you an idea of the huge variety and versatility of bacteria.

Originally posted by Astyanax

Censorship, My (Censored)!

Discussion of extraterrestrial life is not censored among scientists. What nonsense!

It was a scientist, Enrico Fermi, who first asked the question 'where is everybody?' – meaning, if the universe is teeming with extraterrestrial life (as it should be), why do we see no trace of it in the skies or on Earth? Still no answer to that one.

Fermi asked his question in 1950, doubtless influenced by the then-novel Flying Saucer Craze. Since that time, science has diligently pursued the question. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a long-running scientific project. Other attempts to pick up signals from extraterrestrial entities have been made using various telescopes. Back on Earth, various scientific investigations have been conducted into UFO sightings, claims of alien abductions and animal mutilations, crop circles, etc.

The results of these investigations have been widely publicized and discussed. The sad fact is that none of them has yielded any evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Meanwhile, the search for extraterrestrial life goes on at breakneck pace – on Mars, on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, on comets, in interstellar dust-clouds and just about every other halfway likely place our instruments are capable of looking.

None of these investigations has yielded any positive results either, but that's just the luck of the draw. How Chandra Wicks can claim that extraterrestrial life is a censored subject is beyond me. I guess he just means his own crank articles can't find a peer-reviewed publisher.

edit on 28/2/12 by Astyanax because: of beer review.

Quantum physics and its "theories" are very non-intuitive, revolutionary, strange and new. Stuff like string theory and an infinite number of universes.. Man weird stuff.

It's also very "theoretical" without much proof. A member here has a very nice avatar - Xtraeme. Two scientists are going over a formula and the discussion is this way:
- "xyz *calculations calculations*, then a miracle happens.. *calculations calculations*`
- "I think you should be more explicit here in step two"

This is the state of quantum physics, they are still trying to prove some Higgs particles exist etc. But nobody ridicules this area of science, it is not disregarded as "crank ideas" and cast out from universities, publications...

It's only when scientists start coming out with theories related to life in the universe and extraterresterials suddenly these theories become "crank articles" and wacky ideas. Then universities stop funding, peer-reviwed publications stop accepting their work. And average joe start calling these people lunies while respecting as crazy and unprooved ideas about quantum physics as "genious!".

I'd say this guy isn't crazy and there is indeed much ridicule and censorship going on in the scientific circles. Theories about ET is touching sensitive issues and is much more real than people realize thus it gets censored. Quantum physics is unintelligible to average guy and much more virtual thus it's not censored. They both are equally crazy and without proof.

reply to post by robbyraw

post by robbyraw
there have been bacteria found on europa, jupiters moon

And you have a source for that ?

reply to post by bilb_o


Good answer. Here is another example of what you are saying. Right now, at our current level of tech and with the tiny budgets we have for space exploration we have discovered hundreds of exoplanets. Another civilization even with a tiny head start on us would have no issues finding and eventually exploring large portions of a galaxy. The trick part in all this speculation is that we have no clue how long your average civilization lasts.

www.scienceagogo.com...

Evidence of living bacterial cells entering the Earth's upper atmosphere from space has come from a joint project involving Indian and UK scientists.

The first positive identification of extraterrestrial microbial life will be reported on Sunday, 29 July 2001 at the Astrobiology session of the 46th Annual SPIE meeting in San Diego, USA by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University. He will speak on behalf of an international team led by Professor Jayant Narlikar, Director of the Inter-Universities Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India.

Samples of stratospheric air were collected on 21 January 2001 under the most stringent aseptic conditions by Indian scientists using the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) cryogenic sampler payload flown on balloons from the Tata Institute Balloon Launching facility in Hyderabad. Part of the samples sent to Cardiff were analysed by a team at Cardiff University led by Professor David Lloyd and assisted by Melanie Harris.

Commenting on the results, Professor Wickramasinghe said: "There is now unambiguous evidence for the presence of clumps of living cells in air samples from as high as 41 kilometres, well above the local tropopause (16 km), above which no air from lower down would normally be transported."

Looks like they were supposed to break the news on 7/29/2001. Guess someone slammed the lid closed. With a little help from 9/11 for endless distraction?

reply to post by bilb_o

Quantum mechanics is built on cast-iron foundations of experiment and observation, and has produced a host of technological applications from tunnel diodes to DVD lasers to hydrogen bombs.

The day we have an equally solid body of evidence for theories of extraterrestrial life or panspermia, we can start comparing them to quantum mechanics. At the moment, unfortunately, there is no evidence at all for them.

reply to post by Astyanax


I'm not sure why Occam's razor says current life on Earth was started here rather than elsewhere? I think that is your own bias. If anything we should assume Earth is not special, that life is highly likely to have evolved prior to Earth becoming habitable, it spread through the galaxy and then landed on Earth (or Earth passed through other areas full of microbe in the Milky Way on it's orbit through the galaxy) and evolved to match the conditions here. Perhaps multiple strains evolved initially but one quickly became dominant. In this case life should have been seeded multiple times after life became firmly established but each time it is quickly outcompeted by the bacteria here that are already ideally adapted to live on Earth.
To me Occam's razor points to life coming from elsewhere as evolution of lifeforms is easy but getting started is obviously a lot harder.

That isn't at all startling. There are estimated to be around a billion bacterial species on Earth, the overwhelming majority of them unidentified and unclassified.

reply to post by Astyanax


I agree that bacteria are found just about everywhere on earth. Until they find these three new species of bacteria ON earth, you can't positively conclude they came from earth.

Don't be pedantic, they were found in Earth's athmosphere, same thing really. If they were found in deep space it's a different ballgame. It's most likely they are terrestrial bacteria that are adapated to living in the athmosphere and therefore resistant to high UV levels.

As for Chandra, he could be right about panspermia but wrong about some other theories. Newton believed in alchemy.

Originally posted by Arken
...comes from one of the major astrophysics scientist in the wolrd. Professor Chandra the same scientist of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Maybe I missed it, but from what I read, this is NOT the same "Chandra" having anything to do with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. No?

Originally posted by ManInAsia
Don't be pedantic, they were found in Earth's athmosphere, same thing really. If they were found in deep space it's a different ballgame. It's most likely they are terrestrial bacteria that are adapated to living in the athmosphere and therefore resistant to high UV levels.

As for Chandra, he could be right about panspermia but wrong about some other theories. Newton believed in alchemy.

I don't think I am being pedantic. The only way these organism could have reached these heights are:

it is possible that micro-organisms reach the stratosphere from the Earth as a result of volcanic eruptions, the updraft caused by blue lightning strikes (Pasko et al., 2002), thunderstorms and forest fires (Fromm et al., 2004) and gravitophotophoresis (Rohatschek, 1996).

ijs.sgmjournals.org...

So they should be found on the surface of the earth. Until they are found on the surface or at least close to the surface, we can't be certain they are not extraterrestrial.

reply to post by Astyanax


I'm aware that quantum mechanics assists in practical applications such as quantum cryptography etc. but there are other fringe dimensions of that particular science also. How would you prove or let alone experiment on such a thing as string theory? Yet, scientists don't get disregarded for talking about string theory they are regarded as open minded.

They are still trying to find hints of evidence, a probability of certainty, for Higgs particles with this massive collider. They won't have actual solid hard evidence as we understand in the end, they will just have "proof with probability to a certain degree". Nobody is disregarding that.

When you say there is "no evidence" regarding extra-terresterial life you are also ignoring claims suchs as discussed here. Some people try to discuss their findings about microbial life but they are being disregarded and then we all go "but there's no proof". This guy says he has, he says his findings were also studied in Cardiff uni. back in 2001. Maybe if they weren't cast aside, hushed and ridiculed but be supported half as much as these guys experimenting on the hadron collider (with half the press support and funding) they would present more hard evidence.

Right now, the way it is, we can't even confirm the evidence they claim to have or get decent coverage and review for such studies. As I said, just compare such work and claims to the work done on proving the Higgs particle and you'll realize that the reactions are not equal and they are not just.

reply to post by Nicolas Flamel


I doubt they are the only way that bacteria could get up there but thunderstorms are a very common phenomenon anyway. The bacteria can simply be adapted to living at high altitudes, they may never even get close to the surface of the Earth.

Ok , so scientists say the subject is to be censored.
Fine by me, who really wants to go into outer space anyway? after all we have our wars, manmade diseases, corrupt policitian, and greedy bankers what is out there for us really?

No seriously though are these scientists really that DUMB to believe that the public could not accept the truth of possible life in space?

Just like the public didn't accept the possibility of manned flight, television, and any other pletora of inventions that we take for granted now. Surely future generations would have an easier time of having to live with alien life, only our generation would have the hardest time adjusting, but then I remember someone once said about Pnuematic tyres as opposed to solid rubber ones " They'll never catch on".

Let the public decide Scientists, after all your supposed to be discovering the truth about the world we live in, and scientists came up with the best and worst that Humanity has to offer, from Nuclear war, to beneficial healthcare and longer life, stop deciding amongst yourselves what we should know.