In Search For Aliens

From the famous sci-fi movies PK, Koi..Mil Gaya, Joker or Star Wars, we all, surely at one point or another might have wondered if aliens existed.

The question “Are we really alone?” has been going through the minds of billions of people on earth since the beginning of time. Humans are very curious to know if we are all alone in this HUGE universe. We all wish we had the answer to it and knew what these “aliens” really look like, where they live and how they live. Unfortunately it’s all based on theories for now. There are personal stories of sightings of aliens, and alien ships, and some people even claim they’ve been abducted. There are strange photos and videos of supposed alien interactions. All these evidences must be true. Some say, it’s because of humans over imaginative power, but the sheer quantity of these evidences such as abduction, sightings of UFOs, US government concealing details about Area 51’s strange activity and strange signals received on random stations are clearly pointing towards theses undiscovered mysteries. True or not, lakhs of scientists are looking for aliens with their sophisticated gadgets since decades. One of the most famous scientist who firmly believe the existence of aliens Stephen Hawking announced

“aliens almost certainly exist.”

The observable universe is about 90,000,000,000 light years

The observable universe is about 90,000,000,000 light years (1 light year = 9 billion Km,) in diameter. There are at least billions of galaxies. Each with 100 million to 1,000 million stars. Recently, we’ve learned that planets are very common too. And there are probably trillions and trillions of habitable planets in the universe. Which means, there should be lot of opportunities for life to develop and exist, right? But where is it? Shouldn’t the universe be teeming with spaceships? Let’s take a step back. Even if there are aliens’ civilizations in other galaxies, chances are they are really- really far away. It’s their sheer distance that makes the search for extraterrestrial life complicated. Many Government Space Agencies have taken up this challenge by using large telescope on earth or sending them to space , like the Hubble Telescope or our very own –ISRO’s Astrosat. These have the power of seeing galaxies millions of light years ahead. NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, which rose from Earth on a September morning 36 years ago, has traveled farther than anyone, or anything, in history. Now Voyager 1 is in the space between the stars. It holds the Golden Record, which have images and audios about earth, sent in a hope that someday aliens would find it and contact us. These gigantic efforts are what makes me wonder, why we haven’t still got any concrete evidence, apart from mathematical predictions.

Now Voyager 1 is in the space between the stars. It holds the Golden Record, which have images and audios about earth, sent in a hope that someday aliens would find it and contact us

Stephen Hawking at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. Credit – Lwp Kommunikacio

A 14 billion year old universe should be popping with aliens everywhere, even in Milky Way. That indicates that intelligent extraterrestrial life is extremely rare owing to these missing gaps

The Fermi Paradox, is one other disappointing hypothetical answer to these missing gaps. Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial being, unless aliens living far away from earth are not advanced enough to communicate. Our way of communicating could be entirely different to aliens. A 14 billion year old universe should be popping with aliens everywhere, even in Milky Way. That indicates that intelligent extraterrestrial life is extremely rare owing to these missing gaps. The announcement that philanthropist Yuri Milner was pumping $100 million into SETI—The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has gotten us one step closure to the answer. SETI is the science of using telescopes, radio and optics, to search the skies for signals from alien civilizations.

Whatever strategy is used, searching for Extraterrestrial beings is still a huge shot in the dark. There may be no intelligent life out there, or even life of any sort. But to not even try would be hugely disappointing. Part of what makes us human is our sense of curiosity and adventure, and even the act of looking is a valuable exercise. SETI or some other program is really a search for ourselves, who we are and how we fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things.

The search for aliens in on…..

#aliens