Scientists to Congress: "We have the power to find Alien life..."

www.space.com...

Yep Ats,

That's right. Scientists are telling congress that they suspect that there's a habitable planet in a system that is only 10ly away; that's literally around the corner. Now all congress has to do is appropriate the funds to get this party started. What do you think? Will Congress do it, or will they keep doing what they've been doing? Nothing.....

What say you, ATS?

lostbook
www.space.com...

Yep Ats,

That's right. Scientists are telling congress that they suspect that there's a habitable planet in a system that is only 10ly away; that's literally around the corner. Now all congress has to do is appropriate the funds to get this party started. What do you think? Will Congress do it, or will they keep doing what they've been doing? Nothing.....

What say you, ATS?

How long has nasa been looking for aliens?

Why do we want to find aliens. They may come and take over all our jobs.

Allocate money to help discover their home world? No way they are gonna do this…

rickymouse
Why do we want to find aliens. They may come and take over all our jobs.

edit on 6-12-2013 by rickymouse because: (no reason given)

maybe they mean simple live form not smart like us..then invade them,build over them get the mineral resources..Human are aliens

I would rather big money be invested in new propulsion tech for space based funding. getting us to 1/4th the speed of light would open up many planets in our solar system for exploitation and habitation. That to me is far more imperative than trying to figure out if a planet hundreds of years away by our current fastest mode of transport has trees.
Not that it wouldn't be cool to know, but first lets get the car built and check out our back roads, then discuss where the highways lead.

I agree with Cheesy.

We are the aliens.

Always have been. I always have believed personally, that there are probably humans elsewhere.

If not, there will be.


Just my speculation. =)

I would say go for it if I was a Senator.

Yes we will find evidence of intelligent life on other worlds, I would say by 2020.
We will direct a message of peace in radio and perhaps laser.
If the extra terrestrials are more advanced than us, we will make contact perhaps in 2040.
I believe this is how "they" have chosen the path for disclosure, just one little step at a time.

Here is a list of exoplanets to date www.planetarybiology.com
45 are listed as in the habitable zone

reply to post by lostbook


I say go for it. We lost that winning spirit towards anything space related as a nation after the cold war.
Alot of our tech breakthroughs and innovations has come from nasa and other space ventures.

Imagine if we put as much money into space as we did war... hell even a 1/2 . I truley believe that if that were the case ALOT more progress would been made in regards to space travel and discovery. But its never to late to start, I approve of my tax dollars going to this.

reply to post by lostbook


I find the statement "We have the power to find alien life" a little misleading. What they have, is the power to ascertain whether a specific blob of likely looking planet, has something we would recognize as life upon it. I hardly think that these things amount to the very same thing.

If they had the power to find alien life, then they would have a machine in the offing, or on a drawing board someplace, which had the power to detect life at a massive distance. However, the problem with such an assumption, is that until we get out there and have a butchers, there is no way of knowing what life on other worlds is like. We only have our limited experience as a species to go on, in informing us of what we think life means, what it is, what it does.

So whatever process or mechanism, by which they intend to confirm or deny the existence of life in a given region of space, or on a given planet, must rely heavily on a very limited sample of life in this galaxy, to inform its identification process. I believe that this is a flawed approach. The idea of using a long range identification method at this stage in our understanding of the contents of the universe in terms of life forms, seems wasteful at this point to me. In my view, any results it obtains, positive or negative, will be proven ill informed, misleading, or just plain wrong, when it comes to a point where we can finally lay a foot upon the alien worlds concerned.

I would think congress would be all over it.
The chance to strip and destroy a whole nother planet?
All of the corporations that are pulling their strings are probably drooling.

i say we humans should stay away from any new planets , we've done so many bad things here already , if we still have the money then lets fix our beloved earth

reply to post by Dr UAE


Absolutely.
Couldn't agree more.
Bang on.

What gives us the right to go forth and discover new worlds and signs of life if we haven't got the humility and responsibility and conscience and respect and the balls to get our own house in order first.

I am sure all of the homeless, deprived, financially crippled, down and out people not just of the USA but the world at large would be delighted to hear that a gazmuctuous amount of the papery stuff with pretty faces and fancy symbols on was going to be used to discover Johnny Cosmic Foreigner rather than try to rectify the ever growing list of total feck ups committed on their own front door step.

Sure, nice one, get in your tin can and go for it, maybe if all of the right people boarded the space ship, on a one way ticket, the rest of us could be left alone with out brooms to sweep up the mess and start over.

Even if room was tight in the said craft, I would be crow barring in a few more for good luck. Plenty of people would be in the queue to light the fuse.

You know If I could figer out how to post photos I could easly show you alian Space junk.
Here we have for years been getting thousands Of photos Of these alians space craft and so far not even one person has noticed.And I am not talking about a funny glow or swamp gass or a rock that is a rock taht is a rat. I am talking about close up photos of these craft showing clearly much of the equment they have. I find it so funny ever time someone post another mars rock says Look its a lizzard .yea sure a rock lizzard maybe. Meen wile in the same photo maNY TIMES IS CLEAR PHOTOS OF THE alian EQUMIENT.
Really it baffels my mind why wast time with a funny looking rock?

reply to post by lostbook


The scientific community has to keep promising proof of alien life as that's what gets them funding for new toys. All these billions and billions of dollars every years just to get either a 'yes there is life' or 'sorry we need to spend more cash'.

Id love to know if there is life out there but the whole cost to benefit to mankind ratio seems much to high for me.

lostbook
www.space.com...

Yep Ats,

That's right. Scientists are telling congress that they suspect that there's a habitable planet in a system that is only 10ly away; that's literally around the corner. Now all congress has to do is appropriate the funds to get this party started. What do you think? Will Congress do it, or will they keep doing what they've been doing? Nothing.....

What say you, ATS?

Congress, without approving funding for the New Worlds Explorer telescope or a starshade for one of the NRO donated telescopes (or even extra funding to NASA so that they can actually use them) will simply pay lip service to the whole exciting world of astrobiology.

If they wanted to get serious they would reinstate funding for the Terrestrial Planet Finder, reinstate SETI funding and mandate that one of the NRO telescopes be dedicated to exoplanets.

I don't expect much unfortunately.

Right now I am debating whether it makes more sense to go into astronomy or space policy because without the funding the former will have far less jobs in it.

PhoenixOD
reply to post by lostbook

 

The scientific community has to keep promising proof of alien life as that's what gets them funding for new toys. All these billions and billions of dollars every years just to get either a 'yes there is life' or 'sorry we need to spend more cash'.

We wish it was "billions and billions.

You know who gets billions and billions? The NSA, the NRO, etc....

For an extra dollar in taxes per year it is quite likely we'd have already found alien life.

Here's the hearing that was referenced in the article:



And an earlier one on exoplanets back in May:

reply to post by JadeStar


When you add up all the earth based telescopes , satellites , computers, mars lander's , seti etc etc..its billions for sure.

PhoenixOD
reply to post by JadeStar

 

When you add up all the earth based telescopes , satellites , computers, mars lander's , seti etc etc..its billions for sure.

Actually it isn't. You are quite wrong.

Would you like me to break it down for you?

The amount of money that the US spends on astrobiology is less than a billion a year. I know this. It's my field of study. Look below.

reply to post by JadeStar


The cost of the Mars Rover was 2.5 billion alone.

Spacecraft Power: Multi-mission radioisotope thermoelec- tric generator and lithium-ion batteries
Total Cost: $2.5 billion, including $1.8 billlion for spacecraft development and science investigations and additional amounts for launch and operations.
References:
Mars Science Laboratory, NASA Facts, October 2011
Mars Science Laboratory Launch Press Kit, November 2011

That was just a single project.