Posts Tagged ‘Aliens’
Does Jesus Save Aliens?
Hannah Devlin writes in the Times:
Four hundred years after Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his belief in the “plurality of worlds” (aliens), scientists and religious leaders gathered this week at a seemingly more open-minded Vatican for a conference on astrobiology (aliens).
The meeting focussed on current science, rather than the theological quandaries thrown up by the possibility of other life forms beyond this planet. But that hasn’t stopped debate spilling over outside the conference.
Yesterday I spoke to Paul Davies, a cosmologist from Arizona State University, just after he addressed the conference. In his view, the possibility of other civilisations — potentially more intelligent than our own — puts Christians “in a real bind”. Specifically, he says that nobody’s satisfactorily addressed the question of whether aliens get saved.…
Vatican Looks to Heavens for Signs of Alien Life
VATICAN CITY — E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.
“The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration,” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.
Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.
Funes said the possibility…
U.S. Military Listened for Messages from Mars
On the fascinating site Letters of Note:
Here’s a 1924 telegram from then Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Edward W. Eberle, instructing all Naval stations to monitor the airwaves for any unusual transmissions due to anticipated contact from Martians. August 22nd of that year was witness to the closest Mars opposition since 1804 (a mere 55,777,566 km), and as such provided desirable conditions in which to receive radio signals from the Red Planet. The man tasked with clearing the airwaves — a Professor David Todd — somehow managed to persuade both the Army and Navy to report any findings for a three day period, but failed to silence the country’s private radio broadcasters for even two days. Needless to say, the three day exercise produced nothing but static.
Will E.T. Look Like Us?
Michael Shermer asks an imponderable question in Scientific American Magazine:
What are the odds that intelligent, technically advanced aliens would look anything like the ones in films, with an emaciated torso and limbs, spindly fingers and a bulbous, bald head with large, almond-shaped eyes? What are the odds that they would even be humanoid? In a YouTube video, produced by Josh Timonen of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, I argue that the chances are close to zero:
Richard Dawkins himself made this interesting observation in a private communication after viewing it:
I would agree with [Shermer] in betting against aliens being bipedal primates, and I think the point is worth making, but I think he greatly overestimates the odds against…
Town’s Alien Rumor Has Lived 112 Years
From ABC:
With alien themes coming back to television, the folks in one tiny Texas town will be watching the shows — and the skies — even closer.Legend has it that residents of Aurora, TX, had their own alien encounter more than 100 years ago. Just north of Fort Worth, Aurora has a population of 376. Something about it is different — mysterious, and some say, down-right weird. “It’s just a legend,” said Barbara Brammer, Aurora Historian.
April 19, 1897 would change this town’s identity forever. “They said, ‘Have you heard of the Martian that crashed his aircraft into a well site in Aurora?,’” Brammer said. “And I said, ‘No.” A former mayor, Brammer first heard the story of the UFO crash shortly after her arrival in the 1950s “I kept the…
