Are there really space aliens visiting earth?

It was shortly after the Second World War that people began to see what they believed were flying saucers. The question that has wracked the minds of scientists and ordinary people for over half a century is; “Do space beings really exist?” If they do, they are not from our own solar system.

I remember watching the 1984 science fiction movie, ‘Dune’. I found the story fascinating. However, I had difficulty accepting the fact that the beings that were on that desert-like planet (not ours) were just like us; human beings that spoke English to boot. I realize of course that if they spoke anything other than English, the movie would never have been made. The same applies to the Star Wars trilogy and other similar space movies.

In 1958, a movie titled ‘Queen of Outer Space’ a story about women (who looked identical to women on earth) who lived on Venus. Anyone who has any inkling about what Venus is like, will realize that no human beings could ever live on a planet that it is the hottest planet in the solar system (hotter than Mercury). Its hellish surface has broiling temperatures that make rocks glow red under a crushing atmosphere that shrouds the planet in thick layers of clouds. Some researchers speculated that Venus might be a lush tropical world or an ocean planet drenched by thick rain clouds but that is highly improbable. Other scientists predicted a dry desert swept by dust storms. In any case, it is highly unlikely that any living thing could inhabit Venus, let alone beautiful women. I would be less than honest however if I didn’t admit that real forms of life that exist on Earth in extreme environments – under extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean, or in extremely high temperatures, or acidic conditions – offer clues to the real forms that alien life might exist on a planet such as Venus but whatever forms they are, they wouldn’t be human-like forms.

For others with ideas grounded less in science and more in imagination; even those without conspiracy theories about UFO abductions and alien invasions; the bet is probably based more on hope than fact. The idea that we're completely alone in the universe is apparently too difficult for us to accept so we dream of friendly aliens coming to visit us. Of course, we could be facing horrible, terrifying, bone crunching monsters at our door.

But in my opinion, that will never happen in our lifetimes or in the lifetimes of our great, great, great (times a hundred) grandchildren. Despite that, the possibility makes great movies and despite our lack of belief in other beings visiting our planet or we visiting other beings on their planets, the horror novels and movies of being attacked by monsters from other planets will continue to amuse and excite us to no end. That’s the human trait in all of us.

To answer the question as to whether or not space aliens will visit our planet, let’s ask ourselves as to whether or not they would come from somewhere in our own solar system.

The planet Mercury has been now been visited by two of our spacecraft and from the photos taken, it appears to be no different than our moon. Because it is so close to the sun, temperature variations on Mercury are the most extreme in the solar system ranging from 183 Celsius below freezing to 326 Celsius above boiling.

Venus is the least hospitable place for life in the solar system. The pressure of Venus' atmosphere at the surface is 90 atmospheres (about the same as the pressure at a depth of 1 km in Earth's oceans). It is composed mostly of carbon dioxide. There are several layers of clouds many kilometers thick composed of sulfuric acid. These clouds completely obscure our view of the surface. This dense atmosphere produces a run-away greenhouse effect that raises Venus' surface temperature by about 126 Celsius degrees to over 366 Celsius above boiling (hot enough to melt lead). Venus' surface is actually hotter than Mercury's despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun.

Our space craft have circled Mars and it is no different than our moon. There is no breathable air on Mars. No space cities were found there.

Uranus' atmosphere is about 83% hydrogen, 15% helium and 2% methane. Even if space beings lived on that planet, they wouldn’t survive in our atmosphere anymore than we would survive on Uranus.

Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter are gas planets so it follows that no space beings will be coming from those four planets.

Neptune's composition is probably similar to ‘Uranus'. Its atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium with a small amount of methane.

The surface temperature on Pluto varies between about -235 and -210 Celsius. The reason why Pluto is so cold is that the heat from the sun is almost next to nothing. If we stood on the surface of Pluto and looked at our sun, it would appear only as a star the size of a pinhead. If space beings lived on that small planetoid, their systems could never survive in a warm planet like earth.

All the moons that circle these planets are no different than our own moon except that some are larger and others are smaller.

Unidentified flying objects, spaceships or flying saucers are any unexplained flying objects assumed to be from outer space. They are only seen in a glimpse and are usually hidden from human eyes.

There are many who speculate that aliens do not really exist and others conclude that they must indeed exist. If we think about it, we are forced to ask themselves, is it really possible that out of trillions and trillions of stars out there, Earth is the only planet in the solar system to be blessed with life?"

One of the world's foremost physicists, Michio Kaku recently said, "The odds are that there are civilizations much more advanced than us. We can count 100 billion stars in our galaxy and 100 billion galaxies in the visible universe. That's 100 billion squared for the number of stars in the visible universe. The probability that one of these stars has a planet that will have life more intelligent than us, I think, is 100 per cent."

I believe that it is conceivable that there are planets in outer space that have air and water and thusly, vegetation. It is even possible that they have beings that may be similar to human beings and animal life on earth. Where they are, is anyone’s guess. We as a human race may never know the answer as to whether or not similar human beings live in space other than on earth.

Is it possible that there are other forms of beings in space that are not in human form, such as ones similar to the one in the movie ‘Aliens’ in which their stomach's acid eats its way through metal in seconds and they are salivating from their two sets of jaws? Why not? After all, during the Jurassic period in our earth’s early days, we had monsters also. Or what about the Martians in H.G. Wells's ‘The War of the Worlds’ hideous blobs with Gorgon-like tentacles descending from their quivering mouths, pipetting victims' blood into their own veins? Or, for that matter, the blob in the Steve McQueen movie of the same name? There has been no shortage of alien depictions in literature, comic books and film.

A few years ago, for example, scientists discovered a single-celled organism at a volcanic vent two kilometres under the sea, at 121 degrees Celsius. At those depths, they need no sunlight. Researchers suggest they could survive on a planet that is habitually dark. There are fish at the bottom of our oceans where no light penetrates and for this reason, they have no eyes since they don’t need eyes to move about.

There could be a planet that is more like our own earth, but with much more oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, allowing both plants and animals to grow larger than on here Earth. The air could be extremely dense, allowing all sorts of animals to fly. They could hover above thick forests, which stand at an astonishing 1,000 metres. There is no reason why there can’t be oxygen and nitrogen on those planets.

Where there is sunlight, they could have eyes. The eye, for instance, is found in all sorts of unrelated creatures on earth. The octopus and the human have each developed an eye that's similar in construction. Some of the beings may have two legs like we and kangaroos do or four like our mammals walking on the surface of earth have.

Scientists believe that extraterrestrials would also be subject to the laws of evolution that have shaped life on this planet. If on the other planets, they don't have evolution, they're not going to get from a simple replicating thing to bacteria to a more complex life. We didn't have an aerobic world until 2.8 billion years ago, roughly the time we began getting more complex organisms.

Some of the beings could spray poisonous liquid or an acidic solution from their anuses or their mouths. The skunk and the African bombardier beetle come to mind with the latter spraying boiling hydrogen peroxide at its enemies.

I do however find it amusing that in the TV series, ‘Voyager’ the space ship in that series travels across the universe visiting other galaxies. Needless to say, that would be impossible.

I would like to describe to you in a manner that is easy to understand, just how big our universe is so that you will appreciate the difficulty that space beings would have trying to reach our own planet.

Our solar system covers a very large area. Pluto is the furthest planetoid in our system. If you reduce earth to the size of a pea, Pluto would be two and a half kilometers away and it would be so small, you would need a microscope to see it.

But our solar system doesn’t just end there. We won’t get to the edge of our solar system until we reach the gaseous cloud called the Oort Cloud.

If we traveled through space at 56,000 kilometers an hour which is the fastest one of our space craft has flown, it would take ten thousand years to reach the edge of our solar system. If we flew twice that fast, it would still take as much as five thousand years to reach the edge of our solar system.

Based on what we know at present, and with out current technology, there is absolutely no likelihood that any human being would ever reach the edge of our solar system. It follows that if there are space beings that are limited to our technology, they wouldn’t even bother traveling to earth any more than we would travel to the Oort Cloud.

The nearest stars to us is Alpha Centauri which are actually two binary yellow stars that are 4.3 light years from earth and they may offer life conditions similar to our solar system.

A star must pass five tests before we can call it a promising place for terrestrial life on its planets as we know it. Most other stars in our Galaxy would fail.

Alpha Centauri is the collective name of this triple star system that is closest to us. It consists of two main stars, Centaura A and Centaura B. A third star, Centaura C is the much smaller and dimmer red dwarf star named Proxima Centauri.

Proxima Centauri is our nearest star other than our sun is and that star is 4.21 light years away, and it obviously flunks out as being inhabitable for any living being.

Planetary habitability of red dwarf star systems is subject to some debate. In spite of their great numbers and long lifespans, there are several factors which may make life difficult on planets around a red dwarf star. First, planets in the habitable zone of a red dwarf would be so close to the parent star that they would likely be tidally locked. This would mean that one side would be in perpetual daylight and the other in eternal night. This could create enormous temperature variations from one side of the planet to the other. Such conditions would appear to make it difficult for life (as we know it) to evolve. On the other hand, recent theories propose that either a thick atmosphere or planetary ocean could potentially circulate heat around such a planet.

Another potential problem is that red dwarfs emit most of their radiation as infrared light, while on Earth plants use energy mostly in the visible spectrum. But, perhaps the most serious problem may be stellar variability. Red dwarfs are often covered in starspots, reducing stellar output by as much as 40% for months at a time. At other times, some red dwarfs, called flare stars, can emit gigantic flares, doubling their brightness in minutes. This variability may also make it difficult for life as we know it to survive near a red dwarf star.

Alpha Centauri A is the principal member of the two star system, being both slightly larger and more luminous than our Sun. Scientists believe that Alpha Centauri ‘A’ passes all five tests for the possibility of space beings that may inhabit its planets.

Now let’s assume that there are no intelligent beings in that star system, where then is the next nearest star? Barnard’s star is the next closest star to us. It is 5.96 light years away. That is almost 52 trillion miles away. Why would any space being want to travel that far to see if there is life on earth? Such a being would probably visit another star system closer to it than ours, if that is possible.

But you may ask, just how far away are those stars? Let me describe to you what a light year is with respect to speed.

A light year is 5,878,499,814,186 miles. (almost six trillion miles) The distance to the Alpha Centauri stars is over 25 trillion miles away from earth. To give you some idea as to how much twenty five trillion miles is, let me just say that if a space ship traveled through space twenty five trillion miles at one mile each second, (86,400 miles an hour) it would take at least eight hundred thousand years before a space ship from one of the Alpha Centauri stars arrived at our planet.

I appreciate what many people think. They believe that man will be able to travel at the speed of light and that being as it is, it will only take 4.3 years to reach a planet circling Alpha Centauri A and to visit Sirus, our next cloest star, it would take another 4.6 years to reach it after we have passed Alpha Centauri A.

Here is the bad news. Man will never exceed the speed of light because the faster Man would travel, the slower the molecules in the human body and everything else traveling at that speed would move. At the speed of light, a human being would be in a state of suspended animation. Once in that state, the space travelers couldn’t operate the controls to slow down the space craft so in effect, the space travelers would speed through space forever unless their space craft is sucked into a black hole.

Many years ago, I had an opportunity to speak with the late famous rocket scientist, Werner von Braun who was in charge of the rocket program in Germany during World War Two and after the war, the rocket program with NASA. I asked him how much time would pass on earth if a human being flew to our nearest star at the speed of light and then returned to earth at the same speed. He replied that since the molecules of the human body would be in a state of suspended animation both to the star and back to earth, the body would only be 8.6 years older but when the space traveler returned to earth, the earth would be five thousand years older.

At first, I found that hard to believe until I learned years later that scientists had placed an atomic clock on a space craft going 20 thousand miles an hour and an identical atomic clock on earth and in one week’s time, the clock in space had slowed down since the molecules in the clock in the space craft were moving slower than the molecules of the atomic clock on earth. That meant that the clock on earth had aged faster than the clock in space had.

Let me say from the get go that I do not believe that space beings have traveled to earth. I have never seen a flying saucer but that isn’t why I don’t think aliens have visited us. First of all, it would take them thousands of years just to reach us from the planets of Alpha Centauri, if there are planets surrounding those two stars that could support intelligent life. For space beings to travel that long in space, they would have to have a space craft large enough to carry other space craft that would fly about in our world’s atmosphere. If such a large space craft closed in on earth, sooner or later, we would have seen it through our space and large land telescopes.

Further and this is most important, what intelligent being would want to leave its own planet circling a star trillions of miles from us just to see if there are other similar beings in space? Even if they did and returned to their own planet, many thousands of years would have passed on their own planet so they wouldn’t even know who to report their findings to. Besides, if there were intelligent beings on a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system, they would have received our transmitted messages and responded in some manner or other. That goes for other star systems also.

Now back to my initial question; are their aliens in space that could visit us? Not very likely. However, I do believe that considering how many billions and perhaps trillions of planets that may be in the universe and providing that they have the approximate gravitational forces on their planets that we on earth have (if the planets are too big, the beings couldn’t move about) and they have the same kind of atmosphere as we do and that they have at least some form of vegetation on their planet that can support them. Hence there could be beings on those planets that are similar to us. Notwithstanding that fact, we will never see them either here or on their own planets.

Our attempts however to communicate with intelligent aliens, largely through the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, listening to radio waves, hoping for contact has been fruitless so far. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t out there. Remember that radio waves travel at the speed of light so it could be thousands of years before we get a reply from an inhabited planet somewhere far away in our own galaxy.

Our own galaxy, which is called the Milky Way is enormous in size. Going at the speed of light, it would take a hundred thousand years to travel from one end to the other. It is estimated to be a thousand light years in thickness. Our sun is as far from the central bulge of the Milky Way as 35,000 light-years.

Stars inside a galaxy do not collide because the distances between them are hundreds of thousands to millions of times larger than the sizes of the stars. Our Milky Way has several small galaxies orbiting it that are one to two hundred thousand light years away. The closest large galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is about three million light years away from us.

The farthest galaxy is so far away, we are seeing the light from its stars that emanated from them 12 billion years ago. It was pumping out stars at a rate of 4,000 a year. It only takes light from our sun eight minutes to reach us on earth at the speed of light so this gives you some idea of just how far away that galaxy is from us. Multiply 12 billion by 5.8 trillion and you will have some idea of just how many miles away that galaxy is. No! We will not be getting space beings from one of that galaxy's planets visiting our planet.

There are billions of galaxies in our universe and they are many trillions of miles away from each other except some which are intermingling with one another. The chances of the living beings on those planets speaking English is about as remote as a thousand monkeys working together to write a Shakespearean play. If they do exist, their method of communication will certainly be different than ours is which may explain why we aren’t getting any responses from SETI.

If you believe that space beings are visiting our planet, then perhaps I can interest you in purchasing some land on one of the planets circling Alpha Centauri A. Admittedly, I haven’t see it, however I have it from a good source that it is habitable. Of course, your neighbours may be green slimy things that look like spiders whose bodies are larger than a house; but what the hell; take a shot gun with you.