If all reports of mysterious objects whizzing through our skies are taken as actual encounters, Earth appears to be under attack.
But spoiler alert: For the lead leader SET At the Institute, which was established to research and understand life beyond Earth, there is a need to take a step back and embrace the cosmic reality.
“We have no evidence of any credible source indicating the presence of alien technology in our skies. And we never have,” said Bill Diamond, president and chief executive officer of the SETI Institute, based in Mountain View, California. . “The idea that the government would keep something like this a secret is completely absurd. There is no motivation to do so.”
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SETI is a major research contractor. NASA and the National Science Foundation, and collaborates with industry partners in Silicon Valley. Space.com caught up with Diamond for an up-close encounter with his thoughts and counterpoints to alien visitation claims and asked if there’s any signal in all signals. UFO noisy.
thought experiment
Diamond said we shouldn’t completely discount the possibility that we might one day discover evidence of alien technology in our skies; “Likewise, we should not conclude that UFOs are alien technology unless there is any convincing evidence to that effect.” And there is no convincing evidence,” he claims.
To help visualize why, Diamond encourages people to do a thought experiment.
The fastest spacecraft humans have ever built and continues to move outward from Earth is NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. It was blasted backwards past Pluto in January 2006 and is still adding miles to the odometer.
“If you sent that spacecraft to our nearest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri, it would take 80,000 years to get there,” Diamond said. “Any civilization capable of traversing the incomprehensibly vast distances of interstellar space would have technology beyond our grasp.”
Diamond suggested this would be similar to a smartphone for a Neanderthal.
“If such beings exist, they would probably send hardware here first, not biology, and they would certainly not crash-land in our deserts,” he said, much like the alleged and widely acclaimed nose dive and crash of a UFO in 1947. Prone residents near Roswell, New Mexico.
In short distance lingo, that’s a long way to travel and run out of brake fluid.
Where is the mother ship?
“Long before they sent any vehicles into our skies, they would know a little bit about what they were dealing with,” Diamond said, “because they already knew everything about our atmosphere, our airspace, our technology, and more.”
Diamond emphasized that this will not happen.
“And if they did, they wouldn’t leave them behind. By the way, if you have a small ship zipping around our airspace, where’s the mother ship? And if they didn’t want to be observed, they wouldn’t be!”
Connective tissue
Yet is there some kind of connective tissue between SETI and UFOs in the public eye?
“There’s definitely connective tissue,” Diamond responded. “Why do people have these beliefs? Because they want to believe. Nobody wants to think that’s the way it is.” Soil It’s the only place that is endless space where life emerges. “Even the idea is kind of ridiculous.”
For example, Diamond points to revelations from NASA Kepler The mission was abolished in March 2009.
This hunter/data-gatherer spacecraft has discovered more than 2,700 planets beyond our Earth. solar system. Message from Kepler, which has been compiling deep space data for nine years: There are billions of unseen planets, and there are even more planets stars.
Statistical probability
“Statistically speaking, every star in the sky has one or more planets around it,” Diamond said. Moreover, 50 percent or more of them are Earth-like (rocky surface and similar size) and habitable zone “The host stars,” he said.
“This points to the existence of tens of billions of potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy alone,” Diamond said. “So actually, the statistical probability of us being alone is Universe is zero. Of course there is life beyond Earth!”
However, both in space and timeDiamond continued that the proximity of advanced alien civilizations is another matter entirely. “There are countless variables, and all of them are astrobiologyplanetary science, astronomy And astrophysicsWe’re trying to understand.”
accidental observations
Diamond questions why any alien civilization would send biology rather than hardware.
“The furthest things we’ve sent into space are hardware. That makes sense,” Diamond said. “But if you made Dispatch the entities and the most interesting thing you can do is draw circles on the plants… Go!”
Another skepticism Diamond adds is that each UFO, now associated with the term Unidentified Anomalous Events (UAP), are “incidental sightings.”
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“So they’re extremely unreliable. They don’t have the instrumentation, technology or methodology to discern what they’re looking at,” Diamond said.
Finally, SETI Institute leader, if the government truly believes that ET is buzzing around our planet, where is the study money?
“The lack of government funding to study UAP/UFO is evidence that either the government is pretty sure there is nothing wrong with these incidental sightings, or the government would prefer that we not use existing technology to closely monitor our skies because of our own human technologies.” they are being developed in secret,” Diamond said.
“I think this is the most compelling evidence against the idea that we have visitors in our skies,” Diamond said.
For more information about the SETI Institute and its programs, visit: https://www.seti.org/