YES, THERE MIGHT JUST BE SOMEONE OUT THER

Internet UFO Group Media Archive

From:Doug Roberts
Title:YES, THERE MIGHT JUST BE SOMEONE OUT THER
Source:Daily Mail
Date:January 18, 1996


It was a dry scientific meeting, but the announcement was distinctly wet and

potentially Earth shattering.

Out among the stars, there could be life. As we know it.

Astronomers have discovered two planets - one in the Great Bear constellation,

the other in Virgo - that may contain water. Signs of ice and steam have been

detected in other parts of space, but this is different.

The water is not in solid or gas form, but liquid form, the form essential to

life on Earth. In other words, it could support alien creatures. There may be

oceans on these placets. There may even be the refreshing rainfall and cool,

flowing water so vital on our planet.

In short, the stuff of Star Trek may not all be fantasy. There may well be

simple life-forms, if not new civilisations, on these new worlds in outer

space.

Geoffrey Marcy, of San Francisco State University, and Paul Butler, of the

University of California at Berkeley, announced their discovery at a meeting of

the American Society in San Antonio, Texas.

The planets, each the size of Jupitor, are 35 light years from Earth. One

orbits the star 70 Virginis which is nearly identical to our Sun though several

hundred degrees cooler and perhaps a billion years older.

Scientists put the surface temperature of the planet - which completes an

eccentric, elongated orbit every 116 days - at 85c or 185f.

"That's cool enough to permit complex molecules to exist, ranging from carbon

dioxide to complicated organic molecules" said Professor Marcy, the sort of

molecules, that is, that combined in the primordial soup of oceans on Earth to

produce the first life-forms.

"And because 85c is below the boiling point of water, this planet could

conceivably have rain or oceans." The other planet they have discovered orbits

47 UMa in the Great Bear and comes from a system experts described as "the

closest thing we've seen to anything like our solar system."

Both stars are visable to the naked eye although the planets are far too small

and too dim to be seen, even with telescopes.

Marcer and Butler located them by measuring very slight wobbles caused as they

circle their suns. Last year, the same pair discovered the first planet

orbiting a star outside our solar system.

"Everyone wondered if that was a freak, a one-in-a-million observation," said

Professor Marcy.

"The answer is, no. Planets aren't rare after all."

The astronomers announcement is not quite the Big One. Their discovery, if

confirmed, would not answer the all important question: Are we alone in the

universe?

But it certainly raises it, and rather forcibly. Their evidence clearly

indicates that Earth is not unique, not the only place in the universe to have

the potential to support life-forms. No longer can we dismiss the possibility

of alien life out of hand.

"The conditions indicate that life as we know it could exist on those planets,"

said a spokesman for the American Astronomical Society. "What we are

discovering is that our solar system is not quite unique."

Dr Robin Catchpole, research astronomer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory,

said that whether the discovery increased the chance of finding life in our

solar system was 'the 64,000-dollar question'.

He added: "On Earth, life can exist in very inhospitable places. There are

bacteria that live in volcanic vents deep on the ocean bed, far out of reach of

sunlight. Other bacteria live below the surface of rocks in Antartica. These

planets may well have much more hospitable enviroments than that.

"Even within our own solar system, some scientists are now seriously suggesting

that there could be similar life-forms in rocks below the soil of Mars."

"The big question is, does life potentially exist throughout the universe, or

is it utterly unique to Earth?"

In 1984, radio astronomers at the University of Illinois found the light

spectrum of amino acids in interstellar space.

"Those are the building blocks of life," said Dr Catchpole. "Finding them

floating in space makes it more likely that the potential for life existing

throughout the universe. Given the right conditions, life could rapidly

develop, if it finds a suitable place to do so."

"Todays news can only encourage those who hope to find life elsewhere."

This does not mean that bug eyed monsters are building space ships, ready to

invade us, nor that many tentacled green things are living in alien cities out

there.

"It seems from the geological record on Earth that single-celled life forms

developed here almost as soon as conditions allowed them," said Dr Catchpole.

"But they took a very long time indeed to evolve into higher, organised

beings."

Life on the newly discovered planets is much more likely to resemble bacteria,

or viruses.

But it may bring the day nearer when Man finds the sign that he is not alone.

As in the film 2001, where a mysterious but obviously alien artefact is

discovered on the Moon, from that day the world would never be the same again.