Читать книгу The Big Book of UFOs - Chris A. Rutkowski - Страница 13
ОглавлениеLet’s start with the sun, but let’s make it a bit smaller. Imagine that it is the size of a pea held in the palm of your hand. On this scale, the Earth is actually invisible, but would be about 1.2 metres away from the pea. But where would the next nearest pea be? That is, where, using this scale model of size and distance in our local astronomical neighbourhood, would the next nearest star be located? In front of your home, a block away? Farther downtown?
The answer is that if our star, the sun, was as small as a pea in your hand, the next nearest pea (Proxima Centuari) would be almost 320 kilometres away.
That’s how vast the space between stars is, and how far away we are from even the nearest one. However, the nearest star may not harbour life. In fact, statistics tell us that intelligent life and extraterrestrial civilizations may be relatively rare in our universe. Some astronomers believe that we are completely unique in our Solar System, although most think that there are other civilizations out there, somewhere.
Most readers will have grown up with science fiction TV shows such as Star Trek and movies like Star Wars, in which interstellar travel is commonplace and apparently simple. We live in the Steven Spielberg generation, in which science fiction concepts are accepted as reality or at least seem probable. But while present-day science is making advances in these areas, we’re still a long way from even sending manned spacecraft to other planets within our own local Solar System. The fastest space vehicle launched from Earth to date will take thousands of years to reach the distance of even the nearest star.
The first spacecraft to leave our Solar System was Pioneer 10. It was launched in 1972 and reached the orbit of Jupiter in 1973, after which it continued on, but stopped transmitting signals to Earth in 2003 when its power source stopped functioning. It is heading in the direction of the constellation Taurus and will pass close to the star Aldebaran in about two million years.
DID YOU KNOW?
The belief
that life exists elsewhere in the universe
can be traced back to the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, who
in the fifth century B.C. wrote that the universe is teeming with life.
He coined the term panspermia, which literally means “seeds of life everywhere.”
Pioneer 10’s twin is Pioneer 11. It made a flyby of Saturn in 1979 and is heading in a different direction, this time for the constellation Aquila. It will reach it in about four million years. Both Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 had plaques attached to their sides upon which was inscribed a message to anyone or anything that might find the spacecraft some day. The plaques have pictures of a man and a woman, the Pioneer spacecraft, and instructions on how to find Earth based on navigating between pulsars in our galaxy.
Two spacecraft that were launched after the Pioneers but which will reach nearby stars sooner are Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. The first also went by Jupiter and is heading towards the constellation Camelopardalis, which it will reach in 300,000 years. Its twin, Voyager 2, is going in the direction of Sirius, the Dog Star, and will get there in “only” 150,000 years.
The fastest moving of these four spacecraft is Voyager 1, which is travelling at about 63,000 kilometres per hour. If you could drive a car that fast, you could go around the entire Earth in 45 minutes, assuming that someone built a road around the equator.
Despite what may seem to be a pessimistic view of travel times in outer space, it’s theoretically possible for us to build spacecraft today that could reach a planet orbiting a nearby star within the lifetime of an astronaut on board. Einstein showed that a spacecraft moving fast enough would have time slow down on board the spacecraft while to an observer, on Earth, time would pass normally and it would seem that the spaceship was gone a very long time, perhaps many decades. To the astronaut, time would move more quickly and he or she would age at a much slower rate, reaching the destination in only a relative handful of years.
This is still a long way from “Warp Factor Three,” but it shows that space travel is possible even with our present technology. But here’s the single fact that could change science fiction into science fact: not all stars are the same.
The Milky Way has about 100 billion stars. Some are hotter than our Sun; some are cooler than our Sun. Some are larger; some are smaller. Some are younger; some are older. In fact, some are much older — even billions of years older. What this means is that some stars with planets that can support life have had much longer to nurture and advance the life into highly evolved and technological civilizations. It is reasonable to think that some of these civilizations may have advanced so far technologically that they have discovered a way to travel between the stars like in the TV show Star Trek or at least have lifetimes that allow long journeys between stars. Maybe they have found ways to use sleep chambers to prevent aging on long voyages.
At any rate, the possibility that some alien civilizations are much more advanced than us is very good. If so, perhaps they have visited the Earth during our history or are doing so now. Just because we have no incontrovertible evidence they are doing so is not proof they are not doing so.
By definition, aliens will think and act in alien ways, beyond our comprehension and understanding. Maybe we simply cannot detect their existence because of some peculiar characteristic of their spacecraft.
There is a great deal of modern scientific research and brilliant deductive studies in the emerging field of exobiology: life outside of the Earth. Hardly a month goes by without more analyses being completed on another sample of Martian soil or rock in a quest for evidence of extraterrestrial organisms. The duplication of amino acid formation in the early stages of Earth’s history has convinced many scientists that life would likely arise on other planets and produce creatures somewhat similar to ourselves.
We know with a high degree of certainty that other human-like creatures do not exist elsewhere in our Solar System. Speculation is rampant that primitive lichens and bacteria may exist on Mars, in Venus’ atmosphere or perhaps even on a large moon of Jupiter or Saturn. Regardless, our local star system has been more or less eliminated for extraterrestrial life, based on our knowledge of what conditions are necessary for life to be viable, such as heat, light, water, etc. Where else might it occur?
UFOS AND ALIENS IN LITERATURE
The term Martian conjures up images of bug-eyed monsters, many-tentacled monsters and evil aliens, all intent on doing us in, but also a black-headed cartoon character who battled Bugs Bunny in several shorts and features. As well, Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, wrote a series of space romance novels in the early 1900s in which American John Carter travelled to Mars only and battled many strange creatures, often necessary to rescue maidens in distress.
On a clear night, you can see only about 5,000 of the billions of stars in the universe. The rest are too far away and their light is too dim to be seen by us here on Earth. Some of these stars are physically very close to us and can be called our neighbours, even though they are still trillions of kilometres away!
The nearest star system to us is the Centauri triplet of stars right next door, only 40,621,000,000,000 kilometres away! That’s about 4.3 light years in astronomical terms; it takes light waves more than four years just to reach us from those stars.
The nearest of all other stars is Proxima Centauri. It’s a dim, red star that orbits the pair of stars known as Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. These three stars perform a kind of cosmic waltz with one another, with Proxima dancing by itself while revolving around the two others of the trio. Proxima is about 4.2 light years from us, while its companions are 4.3 light years away. Alpha Centauri A is the same colour as our Sun, which means it is about the same temperature as the Sun. All things being equal, it might be able to support planets like Earth and sustain life.
WHAT IS A LIGHT YEAR?
Distances in space are measured not in miles or kilometres, but in light years. One light year is the distance that light travels in one year. Although light seems instantaneous, it actually takes time for it to travel great distances. The speed of light is 300,000 kilometres per second.
For example, since the Moon is about 376,000 kilometres away from the Earth, light takes a little over one second to travel between the Earth and Moon. The sun is much farther away, and light takes about eight minutes to reach us from its surface. But other stars and galaxies are much farther away, and light takes many years to travel that far.
However, with three stars orbiting around one another, the mechanics of planetary formation are complicated, so stable orbits for small planets may be difficult. But the two main stars of this system are a considerable distance apart, about the same as the distance between Earth and Uranus, so there may be stable orbits for planets close in to their stars.
In the movie Avatar, this is exactly what has happened, and one of the large gas giant planets orbiting Alpha Centauri A has a moon named Pandora that is inhabited by the mysterious blue creatures named Na’vi.
Next out is Barnard’s Star, named for Edward Barnard of Lick Observatory in California, who discovered it in 1916. It is a dim, cool star like Proxima Centauri and is the closest nearby star that can be seen from the northern hemisphere, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Although it is about six light years away, it’s getting closer to us, zipping through the galaxy at such a rate that it will come closer than Proxima Centauri in about 11,000 years, then move off again into deep space!
Wolf 359 is yet another small red star, this time in the constellation Leo. German astronomer Max Wolf measured its movement and listed it in a catalogue in 1917. More than seven light years away, it’s very faint and is actually one of the coolest stars known. Any planet orbiting this star would have to be very close to it in order to get enough heat and light to support any kind of life.
OUR NEAREST NEIGHBOURS
1. Proxima Centauri
2. Alpha Centauri A
3. Alpha Centauri B
4. Barnard’s Star
5. Wolf 359
6. Lalande 21185
7. Sirius A
8. Sirius B
9. Luyten 726-8 A
10. Luyten 726-8 B
11. Ross 154
Other planetary systems may have more than one sun in the sky. This artist’s conception shows what the sky might look like on a planet orbiting within a three-star system. Could such a planet support life?
Lalande 21185 is in Ursa Major, better known as the Big Dipper. It was first catalogued by French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1801. Although it’s much brighter and hotter than the previous few stars in our list, it’s not as warm as our Sun. Even though it is a bit more than eight light years away, astronomers have been able to detect a planet around it and it may have more. Could life have formed here?
Sirius, the Dog Star, is in the constellation Canis Major, more than eight-and-a-half light years from us. It is the brightest star in our sky, blue-white in colour and very noticeable when it is shining in the night, often casting shadows on Earth. It’s about twice the size of our sun but much, much hotter. It might be possible for life to form on a planet in orbit around it, but it would complicated by Sirius’ companion star, Sirius B, which is a much smaller star — a dwarf star — that is only about the size of Earth but is made of very dense matter. A milk jug filled with this kind of matter would weigh as much as a four-story building on Earth. Could life form in this two-star system?
Luyten 726-8 A and B are two small stars in the constellation Cetus, and are nearly nine light years away from Earth. They were discovered by Willem Luyten, a Dutch astronomer, in 1948. They are also “red dwarf” stars but have a distinctive characteristic that may make them unfit for sustaining life: they flare up occasionally, sending streams of energy into space. These flares are similar to those that shoot out from our own Sun, sometimes causing electrical blackouts on Earth. However, the flares on the Luyten stars are much more powerful and have greater energy.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN LITERATURE
One of the first stories to describe an alien visiting Earth is the classic literary work Micromegas, by the French satirist Voltaire. Written in 1752, the story tells of how someone from a planet orbiting Sirius travelled to Earth in the company of a Saturnian. These beings were supreme in many ways, least of all their size; one was 120,000 feet tall! The story was essentially a way to poke fun at French society at the time, so was quite fanciful, with the giants plucking ships out of the water and scorning the little Earthmen who thought themselves superior to others. In the story, the alien visitors marveled at our primitive and illogical society.
Ross 154 is another red dwarf star in the constellation Sagittarius, and is more than nine light years from Earth. It also flares, with outbursts every few days.
Some other relatively nearby stars, such as Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, were the targets of an attempt to establish radio contact with extraterrestrial beings in the 1960s. Our messages apparently were not answered, so they don’t feel like answering, they weren’t listening, or they’re not there to begin with.
The nearest star that is most like the sun is Tau Ceti, in the constellation Cetus. It’s only 12 light years away and does not exhibit flaring like other near stars, so it has a better likelihood of having planets with life. This is why it has been the target of searches for extraterrestrial life. No planets have been located in orbit around it, although Tau Ceti is known to have a disc of debris surrounding it, meaning that any planets there would have been bombarded with asteroids, perhaps wiping out life that may have started to form. Still, it may be one of the best local prospects for our finding alien life. No radio signals have been detected emanating from the Tau Ceti system, but scientists have not given up hope. Tau Ceti is one of five “best bets” that are being considered for new searches by dedicated instruments looking for signs of extraterrestrial life.
Another one of the “best bets” is Epsilon Eridani, a star similar in composition to the Sun. It’s less than 11 light years away from Earth, but because it is relatively close, some direct astronomical measurements of it are possible, and it is known to have at least one large planet plus a ring of rocky debris. As long ago as 1960, a radio listening program called Project Ozma targeted both Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, with no success. Recent observations have likewise not yielded any signs of life. However, because its temperature and size are like the Sun, it is the nearest star thought to be capable of having planets that could have life.
For this reason, many science fiction works have involved Epsilon Eridani: the space station Babylon 5 orbited a planet around Epsilon Eridani; Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is set partly in the Epsilon Eridani system; and the popular video game Halo has the planet Reach as a military base that saw much fighting over two game visualizations, with other planets of Epsilon Eridani part of the action as well.
Recently, astronomical techniques and imaging have advanced so much, it has been possible to detect planets around some stars. More than 400 extrasolar planets have been found using high-powered telescopes and spectral analyses of starlight. Because of their incredible distances, nearly all of these planets are much bigger than Earth, and in many cases, far bigger than Jupiter, the largest planet in our own Solar System.
In January 2010, astronomers discovered a planet only about four times as massive as Earth. What’s more, it is only about 80 light years away from us, in the constellation Hercules. However, this relatively small exoplanet is very close to its star (named HD156668) and is therefore far too hot to sustain life as we know it.
In 2004, astronomers detected a large planet orbiting the star Gliese 436, a dim red dwarf only 33 light years from Earth. It is about the size of Neptune, smaller than Jupiter but much larger than Earth. In 2008, astronomers announced they had found a second planet inside the orbit of the first one, possibly less than twice the size of Earth. This very hot planet zips very quickly around its parent star, only a fraction of the distance from it that Mercury orbits our Sun, and we know that the surface of Mercury is hot enough to melt lead! In addition, other astronomers believe there may be other planets in this same system. This is exciting news, because it adds support to the theory than most stars will have a system of planets, similar to our own Sun. What’s more, one of these planets orbiting Gliese 436 is not much bigger than Earth, possibly Earth’s own twin. Could it possibly harbour life, too? And it’s practically our next-door neighbour, only 33 light years away; if an alien civilization existed there, maybe its inhabitants are curious about Earth!
Let us suppose that there are sentient beings somewhat like ourselves (with whatever degree of sentience we have) on a planet circling a relatively nearby star, perhaps Tau Ceti. For some reason, these beings decide to visit us and launch a rocket ship (or flying saucer) towards us with a select group of space travelers on board.
If they travel with a top speed of the fastest space vehicle Earth engineers have themselves launched in various directions, the one-way trip to Earth from Tau Ceti would take approximately 50,000 years. This is because although Tau Ceti is 11 light years away from us, light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second, a speed which we can barely consider, let alone achieve.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Thousands of UFO sightings are reported each year. Throughout this book, examples of actual, unedited letters from UFO witnesses will show how the phenomenon is observed and how it its interpreted. In all cases, the names of witnesses have been removed for their privacy.
Talkeetna, Alaska December 21, 1994
I sat in the outhouse about midnight with the front opening to the northwest. I looked up about due north and saw bright strobes of red and green, thinking it was a jet en route from Anchorage to Fairbanks. (Talkeetna is in the Anchorage-Fairbanks air corridor.) I looked up again and the lights had not moved any appreciable distance like jets do. I noticed that one of the blinking lights appeared to be purple and blue, unlike any aircraft markings. The lights appeared about 40 degrees off the horizon almost due north and did not appear to move. The strobes were quite bright for what seemed to be an object quite far away.
My wife joined me in the observation and saw the same red, green and blue strobe-type lights, but did not see purple. I put the binoculars on the lights and could make out no shape, but the colored light flashes appeared to come from the top and bottom. I got out my daughters telescope and tried to find the object but only found a luminescent sphere somewhat like the moon except without dark areas. Since it was near zero with a bit of wind, I had trouble stabilizing this small telescope, and am not sure I focused on the object I saw with the binoculars. I did not see any other bright objects in that part of the sky.
We continued to observe the colorful strobe lights for more than an hour and a half, during which time it travelled a few degrees to the east and became increasingly distant. I’ve observed planes and satellites, but never anything like this. The night was so clear that anyone for many miles around could have observed the same thing.
I spoke about it on the radio to a neighbor a few miles away the following night, and she said she had seen a similar thing about this time of year some years ago. There are military operation areas nearby, and maybe there is some sort of super slow satellite or some extremely high helicopter, but I am curious to know what it might have been.
Reported by Anonymous
Source: Ufology Research
It would be a long voyage, even if the Tau Cetians are placed in some sort of cryogenic suspension or stasis, or if they are extremely long-lived. There is no guarantee that their equipment would continue to function properly over such a long period of time. Not only that, as they travel, their home planet and the Earth itself will age in normal time; drastic geological and biological changes will occur in the course of 50,000 years. We (or their kin) may not be here. Our technology and society may have advanced to an unbelievable level, or perhaps not.
It is the technology that may be the important factor. A possible scenario would be the following:
IF their star began its planet-forming process before our own sun did, then they may very well be far in advance of us technologically; and
IF they are more advanced than us, they may have been able to design spacecraft that can attain velocities far in excess of our own capabilities, perhaps even speeds a significant fraction of light; and
IF they can obtain such velocities, then a 50,000 year journey could be condensed into a much shorter time span, perhaps only a few years or months; and
IF they decided that a trip was warranted, they might choose to visit Earth; then
IF they are visiting us, their means of transportation here could be observed by us as UFOs.
DID YOU KNOW?
The Outer Space Treaty, drafted by the United Nations in 1967 and signed by the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union, holds that if any extraterrestrial life is discovered, the secretary-general of the U.N. must be notified. (Part Two, Section A, Article 5, Point 3.)
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is the name of scientific studies of distant objects in the universe in the expectation that extraterrestrial life exists and can be detected. Some SETI projects search for electromagnetic transmissions like radio signals from civilizations on distant planets, while others are more passive and involve the search for extrasolar planets. Some SETI projects have been government funded, while others, especially recent research, have been primarily funded by private sources.
In 1960, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake used a radio telescope at Green Bank, West Virginia, to examine the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani for radio signals that might be from alien civilizations. His experiment was called “Project Ozma,” after the Queen of Oz in L. Frank Baum’s books about the Wizard of Oz. However, Drake did not detect anything out of the ordinary.
10 REPORTED SHAPES OF UFOS
1. Saucer
2. Sphere
3. Cigar
4. Egg
5. Boomerang
6. Triangle
7. “Fuzzy”
8. Fireball
9. Starlike
10. Blob
In 1971, NASA funded a program called Project Cyclops that proposed the construction of hundreds of small radio telescopes linked together so that they could act as one huge eye to look for signals from other civilizations in the galaxy. It was never built, largely because the price tag in the 1970s was more than $10 billion.
In 1974, an experiment at the Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico sent a signal into space towards the globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, about 25,000 light years from Earth. The signal contained a detailed message from we Earthlings, giving our location in the Solar System, information on our planet, and what we look like. Of course, since the message will take 25,000 years to reach its destination, even if aliens there received our message and replied right away, we wouldn’t know for another 50,000 years!
The 1970s saw many astronomers scanning the skies for possible indications of life in the universe. And, in 1977, something remarkable may have been detected. On August 15, a researcher monitoring space for radio signals using the Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University noticed a strange signal that was not manmade. It was called the “Wow!” signal because it may have been from aliens across the galaxy! Wow!
Other SETI programs have included SERENDIP, META and BETA, each becoming more and more efficient and powerful at scanning more and more radio frequencies for possible signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.
In 1999, the University of California created SETI@Home, a user-based system for sifting through a vast amount of radio signals recorded by a SERENDIP radio telescope. Its concept was as ingenious as it was simple. Rather than using one expensive and massive computer to look for alien signals within a mass of data, the SETI@Home project invited anyone with a home computer to download a program along with small collections of data and run the analysis during the personal computer’s downtime. With almost 200,000 volunteers, the result is a combined effort that is more powerful than that of one large computer.
However, not everyone is a fan of the SETI program. In 2009, Brad Niesluchowski, an information technologist at Higley Unified School District in Mesa, Arizona, resigned after an audit of schools’ computers found that he had installed the SETI@Home program on many of them in 2000. It was claimed that the program had slowed down the schools’ computers and interfered with other operations. It was estimated that it would cost about one million dollars to bring the computers back into normal operation. Even though Niesluchowski’s intentions were purely scientific, his passion ended up costing him his job.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN MOVIES
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) is a classic even beyond ufology, turning the alien invasion theme on its head. When the alien Klaatu’s saucer hovers over Washington, it creates absolute chaos, despite his good intentions. When he tries to give humans some gifts and wisdom, the response is less than warm. This is a story of hope and peace dashed by our inherent xenophobia, and the inappropriate and unwise use of military force when faced with what we might perceive as a threat to ourselves and society. How will we react when an alien spaceship does land on Earth?
