INVESTIGATING UFOs AND ALIENS MOVE OVER LITTLE GREEN MEN Many people's concept of alien life is that of little green or gray beings with large heads and huge eyes These ideas Pulses of light for communication with other aliens Metallic surface for absorbing light Opening to scope chemicals from the atmosphere for growth and reproduction Lenses for detailed viewing of surroundings Orange underside for camouflage Body enlarges in sunlight AS Buoyancy sacks to maintain altitude deflate at lower altitude Just as Earth has life forms that have adapted to their differing environments in different ways alien life forms might have features that are better suited to different
WHAT IS AN ALIEN come from books and films and these aliens resemble life forms we know well people At least one scientist suggests that people are imagining extraterrestrial intelli gence all wrong Dr Maggie Aderin Pocock envisioned one way alien life could have adapted to a planet similar to Jupiter She hypothesized that silicon based aliens could look somewhat like floating jellyfish and survive on sunlight and chemicals They might not necessarily be intelligent enough to make contact with Earth though Aderin Pocock also reminds people that aliens on other worlds might have previously existed but became extinct before human life evolved purpose Work in the field of astrobiology has provided some evidence that evolution of other intelligent species in the Milky Way Galaxy is not impossible EXPLORATIONS Space exploration has been an important part of the search for extraterrestrial life Unmanned probes have visited every planet in the solar system plus many moons asteroids and comets Places in the solar system that seem most likely to 9
INVESTIGATING UFOs AND ALIENS have harbored life most likely microbes now or in the past include Mars M Jupiter s moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus All three have or once had liq uid water at or near the surface Saturn's moon Titan which appears to have lakes of liquid methane is also of great interest Since the 1990s astronomers have detected and studied exoplanets or planets outside the solar sys tem In fact more than Jupiter s moon Europa shown here has a 1 700 exoplanets have surface mostly composed of water ice and most likely salty minerals However liquid been confirmed These rwater is thought to lie below the surface efforts suggest that there could be many worlds on which life or even intelligent life might arise Whether this life has already arrived on Earth in UFOs is a different matter 10
WHAT IS AN ALIEN PROBING FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE A hmm The National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA has sent probes to the farthest reaches of our solar system and equipped them with messages just in case of contact with alien life The Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probes launched in 1972 73 each carry a plaque that depicts a man and a woman our solar system and the location of Earth and the sun The twin Voyager probes sent in 1977 to explore the outer Solar system carry images and sounds of different cultures on Earth music from var ious cultures and time periods and greetings A scientist mounts a gold plated record of in fifty five languages sounds of Earth onto the Voyager 2 spacecraft launched in 1977 and now beyond our solar system 11
