Are we alone? (2)
A few scientists think that life could not have started on
Earth because the problems are too great. They think life must have come
from Outer Space - not in flying saucers or space-ships, but carried by
meteorites.
It is a fact that some simple chemicals needed for life
do exist in gas couds in space, and some have been found inside the bigger
meteorites. Perhaps some very similar to a virus, may have been formed
in the gas clouds of Space, and carried to Earth on a meteorite.
Most scientists think this is very unlikely. Meteorites
get very hot and often burn up when they pass through the atmosphere. It
is hard to believe that even a virus, which is quite delicate, could survive
great heat. Also, a type of life adapted to Outer Space would probably
not survive in the different conditions on Earth.
Arecibo message
The message sent from the Arecibo radio dish consisted
of 1,679 characters of binary code (zeros and ones). The senders hope that
any alien who receives it will be able to decode it into the rectangular
picture that gives information about the Earth, the Solar System, human
beings, and the way the message was sent.
Alien creatures
Although human life exists on the surface of a planet
and relies on solar energy, oxygen, and water for its survival, alien life
forms may have developed in different kinds of environments. They may,
therefore, look very different from us, and if life does exist elsewhere
no one knows what forms it may take. Science fiction books and movies have
invented many fantastic alien life froms, but no one knows for sure how
close or far from the truth any of them are!
Into the Unknown
Engraved plaques were carried by the Pionner 10
and 11 space probes to Jupiter, both containing messages devised by the
well-known astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan was conviced that the information,
written in scientific langauge, would easily be interpreted by any civilization
clever enough to intercept one of the probes. He also believed that the
most difficult part of the message for an alien to understand would be
male and female figures. But he thought that their oddity would suggest
they were biological and not technological.
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The Naza drawings - giant figures scratched out on the desert of one
of the great mysteries of the world. They show various animals, and may
have been meant as a sign to gods of the ancient Peruvians - an early form
of attempted interstellar communication, perhaps. Photographs of
unidentified flying objects, such as this one supposedly seen hovering
over a football stacium in Colombia in 1979 are easily dismissed as hoaxes. |
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