The Thought and Fear of Extraterrestrial Life in Space

Science Fiction Individual Research Project Proposal Draft #1

 

The thought of extraterrestrial life being real has been long talked about ever since the Roswell UFO incident back in July of 1947 when a strange “flying saucer” crashed in the state of New Mexico near Roswell. After the news came out, the US military stated that it was just simply a weather balloon that crashed down, but this sparked up a number of conspiracy theories on whether alien life in real up to where we are today. Of course, the thought of alien life has existed way before this, such as with the pyramids in Egypt on how in the world they were built the way they are. There have been reports of their being alien life on the Moon when Apollo 11 in 1969 carried the first human to ever reach the moon. While there were no signs of alien life, the thought of them bringing some form of it still exists 50 years later. There have also been reports of possible alien life on Mars for several years, and just recently Venus was added to the mix. The amount of ideas, theories, pictures, movies, books and all sorts of media, old and new talk about aliens in some shape or form of them being real, or of them being fake.

For this project (proposal) I will be talking about how extraterrestrial life differs from some standpoints. From the human eye, to movies and even the future of our planet Earth. This will be going into certain views on the matter and will go into detail on how these sources go into extraterrestrial existence and future on the matter. Does life really exist in places not on Earth? This could be a possibility but something that many do not have the answer to for many years and can only go by what we know and depict of them.

 

Dorion Sagan. “Extraterrestrial life.” britannica.com, Apr 7, 2020 https://www.britannica.com/science/extraterrestrial-life

The thought of extraterrestrial life has always been something of whatever lives or may have existed in the universe that is not on Earth, and the search for that spawns many questions. For life to be on Earth, there must be carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, water and among other elements that help life sustain itself. However, there may exist planets out there that fit these criteria’s and could be a sign for extraterrestrial life. The search for this is entirely possible, as signs, signals, photos, and videos have all been captured of flying saucers and researchers finding possible habitable planets. This search is getting closer and may happen sooner than anyone can even imagine, but only time will tell if this will really happen. This just gives the basic idea on what extraterrestrial life is and how life is needed, but this is just for us. Who knows what other life out there needs to survive.

 

Robert W. Rieber and Robert J. Kelly. “The Aliens in Us and the Aliens Out There: Science Fiction in the Movies.” ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, Nov 17, 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7122918/

The idea and knowing of aliens happened more from an outcome of occurrences that offers very different points of view from people who have claimed to have encountered such beings. Portrayals of aliens in movies show much of what goes on in the human mind and how this can work the other way around with the alien mind possible looking at us. While aliens may fill us with a form of dread or fear of certain death, they still exert a kind of attraction to us. We want to know more, we shun people who believe it, we say that they do or do not exist, but for everyone, no one can really escape from them. Who knows, they may be standing right in front of us and we have no idea. They can be our family, friends, turn us into mindless zombies, no one knows, the thoughts about them are endless yet we fear them, but still think about them. Aliens may have existed for a long time throughout history, and we are only now figuring out about them, fake or not. Especially in movies, such as “E.T” (1982), “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951), “Men in Black” (1997) and “Blade Runner” (1982), these views on aliens vary. From being helpful, to messiahs and even clones of humans. Again, the thoughts are endless with alien life forms, there is no end until we find a sure answer. These movies give a lot to think about, but this is only what we can think of and not what is really out there.

 

Dion, Lee. “Why we imagine aliens the way we do.” Vox.com, Mar 15, 2018, https://www.vox.com/videos/2018/3/15/17126340/science-fiction-aliens-vfx-seti

What goes on in your mind when you picture an alien? There is no real answer as nobody can really know what they look like. From TV shows and movie adaptations, aliens are seen with a big head, long arms, legs, huge eyes and having either grey or green skin, depending on who and what media they are drawn in, even then, they are all made by us. Science fiction gives us the resources to explore the relationships between humans and aliens to any extent we want to. So as such, people draw them with some form of human features, of course they cannot exactly be like us. In media aliens are looked at as such, but for scientists that is a whole different area to work around. If there is any thought of life out there, they may be using technology in a similar way as we do. So those who work at SETI Research Center are conducting experiments to detect signs of technology in space. For now, it is seen as science fiction, but one day life may be detected on another world. Now, what we have in media is what we see how aliens look like and that may change one day.

 

Cathal D. O’Connell. “Here’s Why The Idea of Alien Life Now Seems Inevitable And Possibly Imminent” sciencealert.com, Apr 30, 2019, https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-how-aliens-went-from-a-sci-fi-fairy-tale-to-a-serious-scientific-endeavour

From CGI, to E.T, the endeavor of alien life has become a scary thought for scientist looking into the matter, and even those normally who live on Earth. For the past two decades, the amount of discoveries made about alien life coming altogether, discovery seems inevitable and imminent. For life to even happen is its own kind of chemistry and those needed are not anything special to talk about. What is special is how 6,500 light years away, there is a giant cloud of “space alcohol” that floats a round there and how that can be used for life on Earth. Even things such as habitable planets have become common to finding out, with the first one being in 1995 and is now to be as high as in the thousands. Berkeley has worked out that as much as 40 billion Earth-sized exoplanets could be habitable around the universe, with the nearest one being Proxima Centauri and only 4 light years away and can possibly be reached with current technology. Since 2016 this project has been underway. The one big planet that could have life on it would be Mars as it has water underground, gas that is related to life on Earth in which changes throughout seasons (even though this is still under debate if this is really the case) and the possible chance of finding bugs in 2021 when the rover will hunt them with a 2 meter drill. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus can also pose life with its ice. Who knows what is out there, and this spawns the ancient question “Are we alone?” many times. Life may exist other than that is currently on Earth and we have to live by that as this source says.

 

Denise, Chow. “What ‘Arrival’ got right about communicating with space aliens”, nbcnews.com, July 6, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/what-arrival-got-right-about-communicating-space-aliens-ncna889061

If there ever was a chance that we could contact space aliens, would we be able to even understand them? Can they understand us? We use a language of just written words and speaking as such, but what if aliens use numbers, shapes, tones, or something else that we cannot understand, and could we even respond to them? These questions all come from the move “Arrival” (2016) as that movie shows those who have contact with human life trying to talk to them in ways only, they can do like they do on Earth. You must know when to be ready and what to say, even if what is in front of you knows more or nothing about you. The movie shows face-to-face interaction, which might not even happen, let alone a possible rouge radio signal from somewhere like in the White House or some random basement in Montana. There is no real way to really contact aliens without something by mistake happening with our current media, if they tried finding us before we had radios, they would have gotten nothing back. Language of itself is a touchy subject. No one knows what it is, no one knows where it even came from, we just have it and go by it without questioning anything about that. When and if this happens, could they understand us like in move “Arrival”? Or will something different happen once we start having contact? We may never know, but this could be around the corner. The movie went into huge lengths about what may be possible when we have real contact with extraterrestrial life.