Copyright: This file © Oliver Hahn 24.08.95


ROSWELL The OriginalROSW_e2yesyes24/08/95


Table of Contents
On Extra-Terrestrial Life Forms

A plane carrying businessmen was late. Kenneth Arnold took off in his private plane to look for it. During the flight, on  June, 24th 1947, something extraordinary happened. He saw nine flashing discs flying in formation over the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington.

Arnold was not the first - and certainly not the last to observe these strange events in the sky. He was however, the first to compare the manoeuvres with those of a "saucer rocking back and forth on water". This comparison was then used by a reporter, who wrote about "flying saucers", an expression that was to become popular all over the world. Specialists use a different term: UFOs, short for unidentified flying objects.

Two pilots and two members of the intelligence agency were at Maxwell Airport in Montgomery, Alabama on June, 28th 1947. They claim to have seen something bright making seemingly impossible manoeuvres.

A week later, two pilots flying a DC-3 plane saw five objects flying in formation. It was 45 minutes before sunset. Soon after the five objects had gone, another four appeared. Were these discs the same nine discs that Kenneth Arnold had seen?

According to American agencies, there is a natural explanation for 99% of all UFO-phenomena. They speak of light reflecting from planes, various sorts of weather balloons, birds or meteorites and other natural causes.

The Gendarmerie in France passes on hundreds of reports about UFOs a week to the space agency in Paris. According to the agency, 62% have a rational explanation. This leaves a third of all cases still unexplained.

The US Air Force, who has always doubted UFO-phenomena, admits to only one case of an alien earth-landing. The "Blue Book", the report delivered by an official investigation committee, mentions Sheriff L. Zamora. He had seen two strange beings near a UFO that had landed near Socorro in New Mexico.

On July, 26th 1947, soon after the events in Roswell, the US President called up the National Security Council, the first occasion in times of peace that this had happened. Several new organisations were founded, responsible for various areas of US security. One of these groups was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They received, among other things, the following instructions:

"The Director of the CIA is to devise and conduct a set of measures, containing both scientific activities and espionage, to immediately recognise unidentified flying objects."

On March, 22nd 1950, the FBI sent a Telex to Edgar Hoover, in charge of the FBI at the time, telling him what the Air Force had known ever since the Roswell incident.

"An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centres, approximately 15m in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 90cm tall, dressed in metallic cloth of very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suit used by speed flyers and test pilots. According to the informant, the saucers were found in new Mexico due to the fact that the government has a very high-powered radar set up in the area. It is believed that the radar interfered with the control mechanism of the saucers."

Is it not striking, that the state spends time investigating things that they so often claim do not exist?

Whilst some people believe in the existence of intelligent, extra-terrestrial life (after all, who else could have built and flown these UFOs), others still  have their doubts. As well as those who dismiss UFO's and everything surrounding them as complete fantasy, there are others, scientists, who objectively approach the question of alien life.

Many years ago people spoke of little green men from Mars (people who claim to have actually seen UFO crews speak of grey beings). That people believed in life on Mars means they thought that extra-terrestrial life was quite close. "Close" in the astronomical sense means belonging to our own solar system.

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, the four inner planets in our solar system, have many similarities. A closer look at them however, shows that three of them are not capable of supporting living beings.

The temperature on Mars fluctuates between 0 and  minus 80 degrees Celsius. The air pressure is lees than a tenth of that on Earth. The oxygen content of the atmosphere is less than 0.1% and there is not enough water available for the genesis of organic life. It is not suprising that Viking, a probe that landed on the planet, found no evidence of biological activity.

Mariner 10 transmitted splendid images of the craters on Mercury. There is no life on this planet. The temperature fluctuates between +430 degrees Celsius during the day and minus 170 degrees at night. One day on Mercury is the equivalent of 88 days on earth. Mercury has a very weak atmosphere consisting of helium and no water.

Venus, a planet hidden by clouds of acid, is very similar to the earth in terms of size and density. It has been around about the same length of time as the Earth. However, there is neither water nor oxygen on Venus. The atmosphere, with 90 times the pressure of that on Earth, contains 97% carbon dioxide. The temperature is constant at around 470 degrees Celsius.

The only planet in our solar system capable of supporting life is our Earth. But, is there life on any of the planets outside our solar system? This is principally possible, although noone ca be certain. Technically, we have not been able to prove that there are planets outside our solar system. The stars, heavenly bodies that emit light (like our sun), outshine any planets that may be close to them.

Even if there are millions or billions of solar systems in our galaxy, the home of any UFO must be a planet as old as the Earth. It must have enough of the important elements needed for the development of life-forms and the temperature range that allows living cells to develop. The same chain of coincidental events that we call "evolution" must also have occurred on that planet. Intelligent beings, like us, must have evolved.

Even if the same evolution had occurred on this distant planet, there are two main problems that would make it difficult for us to get to know these extra-terrestrial forms of life: we probably have different "wavelengths" and, more importantly, these beings might not exist at the same time as man.

This problem becomes clearer when one considers the 30 billion years it took for life on earth to evolve. If we assume this is one day, then the 3000 years we call "civilisation" amount to a little less than a second.

When one considers the immense distances in space, it is obvious that any star-traveller needs not only a very long life, but also technology that we can not even begin to imagine. Alpha Centauri, the star closest to us is more than 4 light years away. The light we see from this star takes 4 years to it reach us. If this star did have a planet with intelligent life, and these beings had the technology to travel at a hundredth of the speed of light, they would need four hundred years to arrive on earth. Our spaceships are capable of around 25,000 mph. This means that we would need 100,000 years. And that just to get to our nearest star...

However, all this does not mean that other lifeforms will not manage to overcome the barriers of time and space. Or maybe they already have. Long before our  time...