The scientific study of extraterrestrial life or life beyond planet Earth is called xenobiology (or exobiology or astrobiology).
Panspermia holds that extraterrestrial life is prevalent through space in a
form analogous to spores. Extraterrestrial life forms, especially intelligent ones, are often referred to as aliens.
Scientists are searching for extraterrestrial life in two very different ways.
Firstly, they are searching for evidence of unicellular life within the solar
system: searching Mars and meteors which have fallen to Earth, and a proposed mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons with a liquid water layer under its surface, which may contain life.
There is some evidence for the existence of microbial life on Mars. An
experiment on the Viking Mars lander reported gas emissions from heated Martian soil that some argue are consistent with the presence of microbes, though the lack of corroborating evidence from other experiments on the Viking indicates that a non-biological reaction is a more likely hypothesis. Indepedently, in 1996 structures resembling bacteria were discovered in a meteorite known to be formed of rock ejected from Mars. Again, this evidence is vigorously disputed.
Secondly, it is theorised that any technological society will be transmitting
information: man-made electromagnetic radiation is already detectable within an eighty light-year radius of Earth, and is constantly spreading. SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, takes the data gathered by the world's largest radiotelescopes and analyses it for artificial patterns using
supercomputers and one of the largest distributed computing projects in the
world, SETI@home.
Some scientists believe that some UFOs are the spacecraft of intelligent
extraterrestrials; however since these scientists are currently very much in the minority, work such as SETI continues in the hopes that a signal will be
detected.
Astronomers also search for extrasolar planets that would be conducive to life. Current radiodetection methods have been inadequate for such a search, as the resolution afforded by recent technology is inadequate for detailed study of extrasolar planetary objects. Future telescopes should be able to image planets around nearby stars, which may reveal the presence of life (either directly or through spectrography revealing, for instance, the presence of free oxygen in a planet's atmosphere).
DISCLAIMER
The following is the opinion of the writer/s and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, gender, sexual orientation or individual. The views of the writer/s are his own, and do not in any way reflect the views of the site they are posted on, other sites affiliated with this site, the staff involved with the site, or any other members of this site. Furthermore, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the the people who live in the author’s neighbourhood, city, province, country, continent, hemisphere, planet, star system, galaxy, or universe of orign. Please also note that the fact the piece is written in English is in no way meant to malign other languages or linguistic entities, nor to malign those who are illiterate or visually impaired and thus are unable to read the piece. Furthermore, the individual letters, words, and punctuation marks involved had no option but to be placed into the story, and should not be held accountable for the writers’ statement. Any spelling or grammatical errors are not the responsibility of the the schools the author/s attended, the teachers the author/s was taught by, the regional governments who did or did not fund the authors’ educational system, or anyone else involved in the authors’ education. In point of fact, the author/s also do not take any responsibility for his actions and opinions and does not hold his parents, siblings, other relations, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, people in any proximity, or that strange guy he talked to on the bus three weeks ago responsible for anything in the following work, or for anything else the author may or may not have done. The author/s freely admits that his views may not be the same as those of his religious group, gender, species, ethnic group, or other club. The author/s has written the posts based on his/her point of view at a particular point of time and is only a snapshot of his/her mind at the time he / she typed the words through the keyboard or mouse or any other physical and mental gestures possible, and subsequently his/her views may have changed but they did not have sufficient time to make those changes in the posts. The authors do not take any responsibility for any losses incurred, physical and property damage and any other catastrophe caused to the readers as a result of reading the blog posts. The readers have to read the blog posts at their own peril.No animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, viri, spores, seeds or any other living things were harmed during the making of this disclaimer or blog. Further, no environmental damage was caused to any ecosphere, existing or nonexisting. All electrons used in the production were strictly volunteers, and all paper was made of trees that died of natural causes.
This website may inadvertently link to content that is obscene, prurient, useless, hate-filled, poisonous, pornographic, frivolous, empty, rotten, bad, disgusting, hostile, repulsive, virulent, infectious…This website in no way condones, endorses or takes responsibility for such content. The accuracy, completeness, veracity, honesty, exactitude, factuality and politeness of comments are not guaranteed.
No comments:
Post a Comment