What Is Waiting For Us In Space? Finally, some scientists are agreeing on the fact we should be looking at exoplanets that are not like ours when we search for extraterrestrial life. I have been saying this from day one but the scientific community had insisted in order for life to exist a planet must be in what is known as the Goldilocks zone and contain at least some of the earth like features we enjoy. Well it has turned out most planets seem to have the same basic building blocks we have on the earth which increases chances of life developing on an exoplanet and adapting to the conditions there, after all some creatures on our own planet have adapted to conditions which would kill most of us. I think we are going to find extraterrestrial life someday existing in places under conditions we thought would make this impossible. The Chinese have just built the world’s biggest radio telescope and the news media is constantly saying how much more powerful it is than the one we have at Arecibo, Puerto Rico which was formerly the biggest. What many people don’t know is part of this radio telescope cannot receive signals so when we talk about its overall size it would be best to compare it minus that part and do the same with the Arecibo radio telescope because then we would get a picture of the actual size difference. The overall size of the Chinese radio telescope dish is 500 meters in diameter. The Arecibo radio telescope has a diameter of 307 meters. As you can see the Chinese telescope’s diameter is 193 meters larger. The Russians actually have a 600 meter radio telescope called the RATAN 600. The Russian telescope is more of a ring and doesn’t have a dish in the center so its measurements don’t really qualify for comparison. Only 300 meters of the Chinese telescope are used at any one time. The Arecibo telescope has an effective aperture of about 200 meters. Sorry I didn’t mean to bore a lot of people with radio telescope statistics, I just thought it might be interesting to note none of these telescopes use their entire surface at one time. The search for life on alien planets has so far turned up some very strange places. We have found out the earth is sort of unique in that we have not found a lot of planets like it so far. If it ever turned out earthlike conditions were needed for alien life, there would be far less populated planets and scientists suspect. Some planets have been found to be mysterious, because we can’t really figure out what they would be like. I think when scientists first started searching for exoplanets, they thought they might find more earth like ones. It could be that we don’t have the technology yet and there are plenty of earthlike planets we haven’t detected. As I said in the past, it is hard to search for alien planets the way we do and we are not yet in a position to really know much about the ones we found aside from maybe giving them a spectrum analysis. One has to wonder about what we might find on alien planets aside from aliens? Human beings have a history of looking for remedies, treasure, and ways to prolong life. The Spanish launched a search for the fountain of youth. Could we find such a thing on an alien world? We have to remember there are so many alien worlds, possibly 100 billion just in our own galaxy, and the possibilities of finding almost anything you’re looking for seem to be pretty good. We might find a drug from a plant or animal that would stop our bodies from aging or slow the process down tremendously. We could also find some sort of drug which might cure every kind of disease with one shot. So, going to alien planets is not just about meeting aliens, it is also about what we might find. You don’t hear much talk about these possibilities. You would think alien plants could be the source of drugs which could never be created on earth. As far as treasure goes, can you imagine when we get more capable in space and we send a few astronauts out to a planet outside of our solar system and they discover diamonds or other precious gems. One of the problems is if they were too plentiful, most of them would have to be kept off the market in order to retain the value of these things. I think there is still room for gold. Gold is in such demand if we double the amount of gold in the world it still might not lower the price of gold very much or at all. Perhaps the one thing I haven’t talked about yet is the most valuable and that is finding technology which is far superior to what we have. Think of this for a second, we go to an alien planet and the race that was there has died out. We find some of their technology scattered all over the planet and while it may be rusty and corroded, we bring it back to earth where scientists find it is light years ahead of anything we have. You have to wonder if this is how civilizations advance at some point. Do they reach a certain point where they can travel around and then eventually come across far more advanced technology which gives their society a boost? If we look at earth and its countries as separate planets, we would have to say the European civilization was influenced by the Chinese and others and updated their technology with these findings. Gunpowder was brought from China to Europe and certainly increased technology during warfare by allowing for the development of explosives, cannons, rockets, grenades and other weapons. The crossbow had appeared in China way before it ever made it to Europe. A lot of inventions came from the Middle East and these inventions were adopted to improve technology. The same thing may happen when we really get out into space. Who knows what we may find and bring back to earth? It will only take one incredible find on some super advanced alien planet to jumpstart our technology to a point thousands of years in our future. There is a lot of chatter going around about time travel and how some alien races may have mastered it. If they actually have it, then we may have it someday. There is so much waiting for us out in space it boggles the mind.
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