Thursday, January 28, 2010

ET Contacts


We have been hearing several stories of ET contacts from 20th century beginning to till today. Many are claiming that different alien races are visiting earth in flying machines. There are three phenomenons which are more popular around the world. The Alien flying saucer sightings ranks One, Since man first started looking up into the skies he saw things he couldn't explain. For the last sixty years or so these things have taken on the label "UFOs." Originally an abbreviation for the Air Force term "Unidentified Flying Object", it has become a synonym to most people for "Alien Spaceship". For the Air Force, though, it is simply a term to refer to something in the skies that the observer can see but not recognize. Usually the explanation is less extraordinary than a flying saucer manned by visitors from other worlds.

The second ranked case is the abduction phenomenon. Large number of people has been experienced being kidnapped by aliens and submitted to various treatments. Abducted victims often experience “memory loss” and "missing time". This process sometimes includes the implantation of possible tagging and tracking devices and the abduction spans generations in a single family. Abduction also empowers cattle, horses, sheep, and possible other terrestrial species for the purpose of obtaining (mining) certain body parts or organic materials.

For many years people are looking crop circles in their fields which forms over night. Many people believe that they are made by aliens who are trying to communicate with us. Crop circles are circular depressions or patterns that appear in the middle of grain fields. Crop circles range in diameter from as small as 10 feet to over 315 feet. They appear overnight, and no tracks leading up to them are found. Most crop circles have been found in the southeast of England since the early 1980s, but others also have been reported in the United States, Europe and Australia. Cases are often accompanied by sightings of incandescent or brightly-colored balls of light, shafts of light or structured flying craft. Up to date there have been over 10,000 reported and documented crop circles throughout the world. At beginning the designs appeared primarily as simple circles, circles with rings. Then they developed straight lines, creating pictograms, and like prehistoric rock drawing found at sacred sites throughout the world. After 1990 the designs developed exponentially in complexity, and today it is not unusual to come across computer fractals and elements that relate to fourth dimensional processes in quantum physics. Their sizes have also increased some occupying areas as large as 200,000 sq ft.

The above cases confirms that we are not alone. We are already visited by aliens from outer space. This is the view that most of the population takes, But the truth is, whenever a hoax is proven to be a hoax, not everyone listens. Some believers remain believers for the rest of their lives, no matter how unlikely their claims. Coupling a desire for fame with a mischievous activity can be a great entertainment for one person but it is a vast cultural adaptation for the rest.

UFO hoaxes became more and more prevalent after the Roswell incident. In 1947 some flying object crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, USA. The United States military maintains that, what actually recovered was debris from an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon. However, many UFO proponents maintain that in fact a crashed alien craft and bodies were recovered, and that the military then engaged in a cover-up. It ranks as one of the most publicized and controversial alleged UFO incidents. Some even claim that the Microchip and Fiber optics are reverse engineered technologies from the debris of UFO crashed in Roswell. When the UFO reports became more and more widespread, some used the new popularity as a way to spread conspiracy theories, or sometimes just to make money. 90 percent of UFO reports are misperceptions of fairly conventional, natural or man-made phenomena, hoaxes. The remaining cases mostly the mistaken sky objects like the weather balloons, advertising planes, stars and planets and other ordinary objects or extraordinary objects. But still there are some cases here and there which are unexplainable. Some scientists are researching those UFO phenomena, but for obvious reasons they play their cards close to their chests.

Since 1950 there were many claims on German developments of revolutionary saucer-shaped crafts. These crafts were believed the same "flying saucers" (later named UFOs) sighted by many people all around the world since 1947. Beside these claims there is no original first-hand historical documents about the development of saucer-shaped aircraft by the Germans. The supporters of the German saucers say that all documents and blueprints were destroyed by the Nazis before they got captured and never released. If the German UFO theory is true, then it is much possible that some genuine UFO sightings were really US govt projects. At the end of world war II many German scientists were given US citizen ship and made to work in US research projects. Which helped US to advance at least by 10 years in their space projects. some scientist might continued their flying saucer project in US or Canada.

In case of abduction phenomenon, when people who got abducted or people who believe that they have experienced the "missing time" are put under hypnosis, they draw upon what they have seen in the media. Nightmares are often caused by the sleeping disorder narcolepsy, and the "missing time" is not an uncommon experience and is caused when the mind is preoccupied by other matters. Hallucinations during sleep paralysis due to REM (Rapid Eye Movement or during the dream phase) the central nervous system paralyzes the body. Only the pupils can move under the closed eyelids. This paralysis can sometimes last into the first moments of wakefulness: The mind is already conscious but the body is still in the state of sleep. The skeptics believe that the media has been saturated so much with the abduction phenomenon.

Over the years the crop circles have become more and more complex due to aeroplanes and helicopters. nowadays we can have a nice aerial view of what we are doing on the ground. It will also have something to do with experience and skill by the creators. At first Crop circles were just round circles with no pattern at all. It is only after they became known to the public did they become more extravagant. Any one can make a crop circle; all you need is a long piece of string tied to a stick in the center of where your circle will be. Then you just hold the end of the string and walk round in a circle a few times. Many believers in crop circle say that the aliens are trying to communicate with us using the circle patterns on the crop fields. This is what almost everyone believed until in 1996 a group of people came forward admitting to creating many of the circles seen in the English countryside. I do agree that many crop circles looks so complicated that it could be hard for us to believe that humans made them. Unfortunately they are fakes even though it is disappointing.

However, there are cases on record where no good common explanation was ever found. They might be government military operations or well planned hoaxes or who know that we might lost those one or two genuine cases because of thousands of hoaxes.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Search for ET Intelligence


In 19th century, it was mythologies and science fiction writer's brilliant thinking which were running the field of Cosmology. There was only speculations and lots of conflicting theories running around, the genuine data in hand was very less. As a result of cold war, we had a great period of cosmic exploration. Now we do have some data in hand, we do know some secrets of the universe. We know our place within this enormous void. New findings and theories are getting written and rewritten every day; still the ink is wet on the pages.

In the first half of 20th century, our knowledge about the cosmology was very limited, which also limited our Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence to be with in our solar system. The twin voyager spacecrafts sent to deep space also carried invitations for aliens to visit earth. Each of those spacecrafts carried a 'Golden Record' with greetings in 54 different human languages and images of life on earth encoded in analogue form. On the other side of the record, the location of earth in our solar system and its place in the milky way galaxy were printed as a line drawing. The probes are not targeting any star system, They are just traveling on their way in the deep space. As the probes are extremely small compared to the vastness of interstellar space, it is unlikely that they will ever be accidentally encountered by any intelligent being. But still if they are encountered by any beings, it will act as a time capsule or a message to the alien species or may be to the future humans.

In those days Mars and the Moon were the most popular candidates for hosting the alien life. After the human landing on moon, scientists thought the planet Mars might be a good candidate to host life. Using the telescopes in earth some even thought they found huge canal system stretching across the planet Mars; But probes sent to Mars have failed to detect even bacteria-like creatures. Now it seems that we have to go beyond the solar system to find the first planet which hosts life other than earth.

In mid of 20th Century, The Milky way galaxy, stretching across millions of light years was considered as the whole universe. But this thought was changed over a night. In 1990 when the Hubble space telescope took a baby picture of the Universe and calculated the distance between the stars and galaxies. Over a night the Universe expanded from millions of light years to trillions of light years with billions of galaxies. Now the best hope for intelligent life seems to be across the void of interstellar space in other parts of our galaxy. If there is intelligent life in places other than earth, where might they be? If they are so far, how do we reach them with our current technology? We need to travel at-least at the speed of light to find them in this enormous immensity. But traveling at the speed of light seems to be impossible with our current technology. Then how do we reach them?

We may not be able to visit their places but we can communicate with them using our current technology at the speed of light. If those intelligent life forms out there are technologically advanced and aware of radio signals, then we can communicate with them using the radio waves. The radio waves are much faster; they travel at the speed of light, we can also reach or search them at the speed of light. We can send messages to them and let them know that they are not alone. On 16 November 1974, A message was beamed into space  via frequency modulated radio waves. It was aimed at the globular star cluster M13 which is around 25,000 light years away. It will take 25,000 years for the message to reach its intended destination of stars and an additional 25,000 years for any reply. But the fact is, in 25000 years time, those star cluster will no longer be in the same location, the message will not reach its intended destination. But it was more like a demonstration of human technological achievement than a real attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials.

Knowingly and unknowingly we have been sending signal into the void for decades, every broadcast of this planet, every FM radio waves, every television transmission goes out into the infinite space. The radio signal from earth will take 4.5 years to reach the nearest star and it will take only 100 years to reach the second nearest star. Some of our early transmissions might be getting closer to them by now if they are there and listening.

In that case then what about the reverse? Could alien civilization be sending signals into the void for thousands or millions of years? We should be able to received them by now. This thought gave raise to SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) program. The United States government contributed to earlier SETI projects, but recent work has been primarily funded by private sources. Now scientist are listening the radio waves from space using some advanced radio antennas. SETI has conducted a number of programs on trying to use radio waves to detect the existence of other civilizations. One by one SETI is listening to every star in sight. So far no SETI program has been successful in finding intelligent life. But Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are millions of stars in our galaxy alone some might have planets that could harbor life. There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting. One day we may receive a Hi! signal from them.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The Great Silence

Are we the only one who looks up at the stars and wonder, is there anything, is there anybody else out there? It is perhaps the greatest question that we can ask of the universe. As we know, today, we are the only globally known civilization with advanced technology and this is somewhat unusual among many astronomers most of them take the view that life is common throughout the galaxy and that Intelligent life is common.


Our sun is one of billions of stars in the milky way galaxy and our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions, may be a trillion in the known universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living being in this enormous immensity. A simple life can be incredibly widespread. Wherever there’s water on Earth in liquid form, at a temperature within a reasonable range life manages to seek out an existence, but the probability of that life evolving as an intelligent life and becoming a technologically advanced civilizing might be rare. But it is always possible as it happened here on Earth virtually the instant that conditions were suitable.

We’ve got billions of years of evolution, going from single cells on the Earth to intelligent life, but that hasn’t been a progressive evolution, there have been fits and starts, there have been great periods of evolution and then a break. One of the biggest breaks happened 65 million years ago when a meteorite impacted the Earth and wiped out most species. At that particular time the dominant species, the dinosaurs, were wiped out. Without that impact perhaps intelligent life might not have emerged on the Earth, or it might be completely different. There are number of factors which helped intelligent life on earth. We got a very stable environment for a very long time, the plate tectonic system recycles the CO2, helps to regulate the temperature, we have a large moon which helped to stabilize the rotation axis of earth, huge amount of water, Oxygen, Gravity, distance from Sun etc... But the same pattern or the environment which triggered or helped the evolution of intelligent life on earth may not happen in any other places of the universe.

One of the problems with trying to define and understand ‘Intelligence’ is that we only look at our own patterns of behaviors. It’s possible that there are different types of intelligences that we don’t understand, that we don’t appreciate, something which is so completely beyond our ken that we wouldn’t even recognize it as intelligence when we see it. Ant colonies, bee colonies have a certain amount of intelligence, we perhaps say, ok, they’re intelligent in one way but not in another. Remember, Terrestrial life is embedded in the cosmic web, and it is common throughout the Universe. The challenge that we are facing today is to move this speculation to a fact.

Using some simple math we can conclude that if technological civilizations were common then the galaxy should be fully colonized (assuming only standard physics). Contact should be completely inevitable. Since we cannot readily detect evidence of technological civilizations, there is a paradox here. Any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

However, we see no signs of galactic federation. Why does the cosmos look so untouched and unconquered? What is keeping advanced extraterrestrials from claiming every star system in sight? This paradoxical failure is sometimes called "The Great Silence". The Great Silence suggests that space traveling technological civilizations is extremely rare (or very discrete). There have been a number of explanations for why such civilizations might be rare. Let me list out some here, You can choose the one you like.

  • Technologically advanced civilizations may rarely form. We live in a very dangerous universe. One big gamma-ray buster can sterilize a galaxy. Supernovae are common, and they sterilize a pretty good chunk of space every time they blow.
  • Technological civilizations may be very short-lived, they may universally fail. They might play with some dangerous nuclear toys during the development stage and destroy them self.
  • All technological civilizations may lose interest in exploration quickly and comprehensively. One possible explanation is that interstellar travel is just too costly.
  • The Earth may be in a kind of 'Galactic Quarantine'. We may be, being shielded from rogue civilizations by other races intent on protecting us, until we reach the required level of maturity they will wait for First Contact.
  • The aliens may not wish to contact the populace in general. They may be simply interested in studying us and not opening full diplomatic relations.
  • God created the world in 7 days, and he made it for man alone. He didn't want anyone else in our galaxy, maybe in the entire universe.

Any of them in the above might be true or Nonetheless. Will all the aliens find colonization too costly? Is all the places in the Universe is dangerous in all time? Are we so special that someone has really gone to the trouble to put us behind invisible bars? We have no answers.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Are We Blind Followers ?

If you see a mob of sheep running in a field, try this challenge, but be careful, do not hurt yourself. Take a hurdle and keep it in their runway. The forerunners will make a clever jump and continue their journey, the followers also will do the same clever thing and happily follow their forerunners. Till the hurdle is there every follower is a clever chap. Now, here comes the play. If you remove the hurdle on their way, and notice, you can still see the follower doing a clever jump at the same place where their forerunners did once upon a time. The followers do continue that clever thing even when there is no hurdle in place anymore.

It doesn't mean that only the forerunners were clever chaps. Now somehow you make the forerunners to join the end of the mob. If you notice, the ones, which started all these practice for some reason, will do the same thing now, for no reason. Now guess who a blind follower is.

Many of the rules we obey nowadays have no real foundation. But society continues to follow them. The society created some systems in the past for some reason, but in the fullness of time, they lost their reason for existence, but even today we still continue to follow them for no reason. Let me illustrate this with a simple story. Being a fan of short stories, how could I miss a short story in my blogs?

A great Buddhist master had a cat, which was his true passion in life. So, during meditation classes, he kept the cat by his side in order to make the most of his company. One morning, the master who was already quite old – passed away. His most adept disciple took his place. As a tribute to the memory of their old instructor, the new master decided to allow the cat to continue attending the meditation classes.

Days passed, some disciples from the neighboring monasteries, traveling through those parts, discovered that, in one of the region’s most renowned temples, a cat took part in the meditation sessions. The story began to spread.

Some years passed. The cat died, but the students at the monastery were so used to its presence, they soon found another cat and trained it and made it sit with them during the meditation practices. Meanwhile, other temples began introducing cat in their meditation sessions. All started doing cat meditation, they believed the cat was truly responsible for the fame and excellence of their old teacher, and in doing so forgot that the old master was a fine instructor.

A generation passed, thesis was developed, which were even accepted by the academic community – that, cats have the ability to increase human concentration, and eliminate negative energy. And so, for a whole century, the cat was considered an essential part of Buddhist studies in that region.

Until a master appeared who was allergic to animal hair, and decided to remove the cat from his daily exercises with the students. There was a fierce negative reaction – but the master insisted. Since he was an excellent instructor, the students continued to make the same scholarly progress, in spite of the absence of the cat. Little by little, the monasteries, which were already tired of having to feed so many cats, began eliminating the cat from the classes. In twenty years time, new revolutionary theories began to appear, with very convincing titles such as “The Importance of Meditation without a Cat”. Another century passed, and the cat withdrew completely from the meditation rituals in that region.


But two hundred years were necessary for everything to return to normal – because during all this time, no one asked why the cat was there. Even today, we do have so many cats and other animals sitting beside us in our daily life. We don't know why they are sitting with us, but we just let them sit over there and feed them. Maybe, because we are one of the B' followers. It is not easy to remove those animals from our daily life because today we do not know whether it is a cat or cow. Who has seen the cows these days; we do see only the milk packets from Aavin or Nandini. So it is not an easy job. Well, I am not out of the topic here; I am just preparing you to realize some truths of the Universe.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Its My Story

Why am I here? What is going to be so special in my blogs ?

I am here to take you through the journey of the universe and its truths. It will make you to look, feel and realize the reality just above from your current level. And, not just above your floor or city or the country, and not just from the top of the earth or the milky way galaxy, but from the point just above the millions and billions of galaxies in our Universe. It is not one of a science fiction writer's fantasy; its a cosmic reality!

Every thing in this vast universe started from a single point after a bang which gave birth to endless expansion of time, space and matter. It was the atoms from that single point which evolved as a star, planet, light, air, water, chemicals, life and Intelligent humans. Recognize the truth that atoms that constructs the molecules in your body now, were once part of the high mass point from where every thing began.

Being from a single point, every thing in this Universe is connected - you are connected to each and every atoms of this Universe. To all life forms you are connected biologically and to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. We all are part of the universe, we are with in the universe and the universe is with in us. This thought sometimes makes me smile, when we run behind every thing, were every thing is with in us.

Every Story has a beginning; Even my 'Are We Alone?' research story has a beginning. A split second in the summer of '99 triggered me to think differently rather than thinking different things. Being bored of reading comics and short stories for a long time, I thought of going to the city library to find some thing new. On that eventful day, It was over there, I got a chance to browse through an article with a title "Is GOD an Alien Life form?". Even though I did not get a chance to read that article in complete, as it was pretty late to go home. But that simple question made lots of sense to me. That was the second I felt like all my questions answered through a question. At times feeling like, we got answer for some question results in thousands of new questions. That simple question was thrown like a stone on a silent lake. It did not create ripples in me, instead it created thousands of big waves. You do not have to be great to start something, but you have to start to be great. On that day, my journey in search of answers for those big waves started. Even today it keeps on hitting the shores in quest for answers.

Every thing in this universe came to motion around some time between 14 to 16 billion years ago, These numbers may seem to be very huge, even we cannot imagine those to understand how big they are, Imagination is a cage of ignorance beyond imagination there is only ignorance, so its better to just realize the fact here. Our planet formed around 4.5 billion years ago and life created on earth about 1.5 billion years ago and it evolved as an Intelligent life. If this might happened any where else in the universe just some billion years before it happened on earth, then those Intelligent Lifeforms could have reached earth very long back. Did our Ancestors meet those Intelligent Lifeforms from Outer Space? Did they help in the development of human race ?

Being born from a country with great Ancient Mysteries and Prehistory. I decided to dig the Prehistory and Mysteries of Ancient India which were passed to us through Myths and Vedas. When I started reading those, I was surprised as to why till today none noticed those scientific details encoded in those Ancient scriptures. The reason is simple - the younger generations have lost faith in the genuineness of the Ancient Indian texts. They find contradictory thoughts and confusion in most of what is claimed to be Ancient. As a result, the Ancient past remains unlinked with the present. It appears as there was never any Indian prior to the modern period who could think rationally or clearly without being obscure or religious. It made me to remember of a statement from LOTR "History became legend and legend became myth… and those things which should not have been forgotten… were lost… ". In the fullness of time we too lost the truth.

In the current modern civilization on earth, if we consider the modern technological revolution started from 1500 AD. The first nuclear bomb was created roughly around 1940's. Till date, which is considered to be a king of all technologies. It just took 440 years for the modern humans suffering from wars and natural disasters to create a nuclear technology. Why could not have the Ancient Civilizations like Rama Civilization or Krishna Civilization or any other Civilizations on earth might have created it in their time. The possibility of Ancient Civilization creating a nuke is not very remote nor very easy, but there is always a chance that someone might have built it. Did Ancient Indians use advanced technologies like we use in modern days ?

Let the waves hit the Shores...

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Are We Alone ?

In the beginning, it was dark, it was silent, it was empty, all of a sudden there was a bang, all was fire, it started spreading in all directions. There was no molecules and no life, Eons passed, and life appeared on one small blue green planet orbiting an average star in a spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. On that planet, one species, endowed with the capacity to think and speak, began to wonder: Did it happen only here? Are We Alone ?