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Why Are We Looking For Life In Universe Like Ours?

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Why are astronomers always looking for extraterrestrial life that is similar to Earth? Can’t life be completely different?

It is indeed true that the search for extraterrestrial life is focused on trying to find life like Earth. Because only those planets that are about as big and heavy as our Earth, and have about the same temperatures, are “habitable”. These are planets with liquid water.

How do we search for life?

One of the methods by which scientists are trying to detect traces of extraterrestrial life is to search for oxygen in the atmosphere of such planets. This oxygen is produced here on Earth by living beings.

You can also look for methane. This gas is also produced in large quantities by terrestrial organisms. In the spectrum of the reflected light of the planet, one can find signs of plant photosynthesis. And so researchers are looking for these “signals” in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.

But isn’t such an approach an indication of the extreme naivety of astronomers? Or even nonsense? Are we really that arrogant and believe that life everywhere in the universe should look exactly like it does on Earth?

Of course not. Scientists are well aware that life in principle can look completely different. And it is quite interesting, in fact, to imagine life forms living, for example, in the gaseous shell of giant planets.

Or in the atmosphere of a star. Or talk about life that does not require water and carbon. And instead, it is based on silicon. Or imagine that somewhere there is life, consisting only of energy. And existing inside black holes. And so on.

It’s not that astronomers have no imagination. Through their experience, they could probably imagine even more alien lifeforms than the average person. But this is not the main thing. This is a serious, scientific search for this life.

We need to do more than just imagine what life might be like elsewhere. But you also need to find ways to discover this life, if it exists somewhere. But for this we need to know exactly how this life works, how it interacts with the environment and how it affects it. And what effect it can have on the parameters we observe.

At the moment, we know quite well only one kind of life: life on Earth. We understand this type of life well enough to know how it will manifest itself on other planets so that we can find it where it is.

It is useless to imagine any “other” life if we do not know how to find it. We can look for something only if we are sure that, having found it, it will be possible to draw an unambiguous conclusion – the goal has been achieved!

Therefore, it is unfair to demand that astronomers look for “other” life, and not just terrestrial life forms. The fact that researchers do not do this has nothing to do with a lack of imagination.

It would just be pointless. Because we can’t find such “alien” life forms anyway.

And by the way, we are not talking about intelligent beings. The search for intelligent life is a different story. This can happen at any moment. For example, if suddenly an alien spaceship lands on the lawn in front of your house.

Astrobiology speculates

The search for intelligent aliens is not anti-scientific (actually, there are many relevant and serious projects on this topic).

However, it is absolutely hopeless. Because while we do not have enough knowledge about life itself. And about how often it can occur in the Universe. And how likely the existence of intelligent life is generally pure speculation.

If we look at the only database we have, ourselves, things look pretty bad. Life has existed on Earth for about 3.5 billion years, and for most of that time it did just fine without intelligence. It only appeared in the last few hundred thousand years. And, very likely, will disappear again in a few hundred thousand years.

Of course, researchers still speculate about the “other” life. This idea is even devoted to a whole science – astrobiology.

Astrobiology explores alternative conceptions of life. And how life can function in a variety of conditions. But so far there is no reliable evidence of the existence of any life that did not originate on Earth. And no one knows how these kinds of life work.

And we just don’t know what to look for at all.

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UFO in the form of a black cube was filmed over Texas

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A video of a strange black object that appears to be a cube was filmed this week on Tuesday at an unspecified location in Texas, USA.

According to the unnamed author of the video, he and his wife looked up at the sky as a military plane that looked like an F-111 bomber flew west to east right over their house.

They regarded this incident as very unusual, since military aircraft had previously very rarely appeared in their area.

But they were even more confused when, literally “seconds later” after the bomber’s passage, a dark object appeared in the sky.

At first it seemed to them spherical, but then they considered that it was more like a cube. It is also possible that the object has changed its shape.

In the video, a man can be heard saying, “It’s so weird. A military plane flies by, and then THIS appears, whatever it is,” to which his wife replies, “I have no idea what it is.”

It is indicated that the man sent the video he shot to the UFO site MUFON. The eyewitness also admitted that the strange object could be something mundane, such as a baby balloon, but he thinks that this “air anomaly” emits some kind of glow, which is clearly not related to the properties of balloons.

In his opinion, this “glow” may be associated with the propulsion system of the aircraft.

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China has put hundreds of satellites in orbit to target U.S., as Space Force commander reveals Beijing’s horrific plan for America

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The head of the U.S. Space Force, Gen. Chance Saltzman, says that China has launched numerous satellites in the past six months and currently possesses 347 orbiting crafts capable of gathering intelligence on American armed forces.

The general warned that China is the “most immediate threat” to U.S. operations in space given its development of technologies such as lasers to disrupt satellite sensors, electronic warfare jammers, and even building crafts that can potentially disrupt rival orbiting platforms.

Saltzman stated that China’s ultimate goal is to become the most dominant space-faring nation by 2045, a part of its plan for a fully modernized, world-class military, the UK’s Daily Mail noted.

“Over the last six months, China conducted 35 launches adding advanced communications and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites to their orbital architecture,” he noted in a written statement to the Senate Armed Service Subcommittee on Strategic Forces earlier this week. “Of China’s over 700 operational satellites in orbit, 347 are People’s Liberation Army ISR platforms providing optical, radar, and radio-frequency capabilities which track the Joint Force worldwide.”

Senior U.S. commanders have issued repeated warnings that China’s advancements in space technology, such as the development of reusable rockets, pose a threat to U.S. dominance in space. Chinese officials have even compared the moon and Mars to the disputed islands in the South China Sea that Beijing is trying to assert its sovereignty over, the report said.

“Both China and Russia continue to develop, field and deploy a range of weapons aimed at U.S. space capabilities,” Saltzman told the Senate panel. “The spectrum of threats to U.S. space capabilities includes cyber warfare activities, electronic attack platforms, directed energy lasers designed to blind or damage satellite sensors, ground-to-orbit missiles to destroy satellites and space-to-space orbital engagement systems that can attack U.S. satellites in space.”

He added that both Russia and China have studied how the U.S. has become reliant on its satellites to conduct warfare.

“Whether it’s our precision navigation and timing, whether it’s satellite communications, the missile warning that we rely on and the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance persistence that we have with space capabilities… they know we rely on that and so if they can blind us, if they can interfere with those capabilities, or God forbid, destroy them completely, they know that that will diminish our advantages and put the joint force at risk,” said the four-star Space Force commander.

“So I can see interfering with, I can see blinding, I can see some of those grey area kinds of attacks on our capabilities to try and put us behind the eight ball,” he noted further.

China’s rapid economic growth in recent years has allowed them to invest heavily in its space program, leading to significant advancements in its space military capabilities. As China races to the final frontier, its space program has become a point of interest for military analysts and governments around the world.

With the launch of Beijing’s first space station and the successful landing of a rover on the far side of the moon, China has demonstrated its ability to compete with other space-faring nations. However, their military activities in space have raised concerns and sparked debates about their intentions and the potential for an arms race in space.

As for the U.S., Saltzman said the Pentagon will be switching from bigger, more vulnerable geostationary satellites to constellations of smaller satellites that will be deployed in low-to-medium earth orbit.

“With regards to grappling satellites and pulling them out of orbit, much tougher to deal with when you have less than maneuverable older legacy satellites,” he told senators. “So again, shifting to a proliferated [low earth orbit] constellation where you don’t have what Gen. Hyten called a ‘big juicy target’ sitting there in a [geostationary orbit] makes that a much tougher proposition for them to execute against.”

By: JD Heyes

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