Life (Not) on Earth

One of the most off beat news items in the past week was the White House denying that it is in contact with extra terrestrials.

This is the type of news item that immediately draws one's to attention due to its very unusual nature. So strike one more blow against UFO conspiracy theories: The U.S. government is not in contact with any extraterrestrials from other worlds, nor has any confirmed proof of alien life been found, White House officials said.

"The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race," Phil Larson of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy wrote in a statement published Friday. "In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye."

The message came in response to two petitions posted on the White House's "We the People" site, which allows the public to air grievances through petitions. In this case, one asked the government to "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race," while another requested that the Obama administration "immediately disclose the government's knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings."

As of Monday, the first petition has garnered 12,078 signatures, while the second has 5,387. The White House has promised to respond to any petition that gains a certain number of signatures within a given time - in this case, the requirement was 5,000 signatures.

"This Petition calls for the President to disclose to the American people the long withheld knowledge of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings and call for open Congressional hearings to allow the people to become aware of this subject through those whose voices have been silenced by unconstitutional secrecy oaths," reads one of the two recent petitions.

"The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth," said the other. "If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it is sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response," according to the "We the People" site. A lot of people believe that the authorities know about the existence of alien life.

Many UFO proponents say that extraterrestrial craft crashed near Roswell, N.M., in 1947 and were sent for government study at the Area 51 Air Force base in Nevada. Plenty of books have been written on this subject. There are many films and TV series too.

But the US government has consistently denied ever having encountered any UFO hardware or other evidence for extraterrestrials, and scientists say no credible proof of aliens has ever been made public. But there will be people who will always believe that aliens have visited us and are among us, perhaps disguised as humans or other animals.

But in a bid to satisfy the curiosity of the public, Larson openly acknowledged two US government-supported efforts to search for signs of Extraterrestrial life. NASA's Kipper space telescope, which was launched in 2009, is on a mission to search for Earth-like planets around other stars in the hopes that some might prove habitable to alien life. It has indeed found hundreds of exoplanets, at least a few of which may potentially harbour some form of life, not necessarily intelligent life.

They even found a planet having two suns, though life on that particular planet seems to be very remote possibility. Moreover, NASA is gearing up to launch its new Mars rover this month, which will investigate Martian geology for signs that the Red Planet may once have been hospitable to microorganisms.

Larson also cited the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project that uses radio telescopes to scan the celestial heavens for intelligent signals from alien species, as opposed to natural cosmic radio chatter.

So far, SETI, featured in the hit film Contact, has not yielded any positive result. "Many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe, there is a planet other than ours that is home to life," Larson wrote.

"Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them - especially any intelligent ones - are extremely small, given the distances involved. But that's all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth." But the search for E.T. will go on.

We will be extremely lucky (or in extreme danger depending on the nature of the alien species) if they come in search of us.

On the other hand, even if we catch an alien broadcast, we will have a glimmer of hope. But there's a catch: If a signal comes from a planetary system 500 light years away, that signal has taken 500 years to travel to Earth. Our reply, if any, will take another 500 years to reach there.

These are the pitfalls of intergalactic communications, unless we learn to exploit those wormholes so beloved of Hollywood. Whatever the White House might say, let's look at it this way: There are billions of stars in our Milky Way alone, leave alone the other galaxies. As proved by the Keppler telescope, exoplanets are not rare in the universe.

It is all too possible that at least a few hundred of these could be harbouring life in some form. One day, when humans learn to travel at warp speed it might be possible to visit those planets. A better alternative is to send robotic probes, which we have already done.

The interception of a radio signal is another alternative. Most scientists now believe that alien contact will happen in the next 50 years.

That will fundamentally alter the way we look at the universe and at life itself. As Geoff Goldblum says in Jurassic Park, "life finds a way" even in the unlikeliest of places.