In 1600, the former Dominican monk and philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt alive in the streets of Rome. To humiliate him, the Church first hung him upside down and stripped him naked. What made the teachings of Bruno so dangerous? He had asked a simple question: is there life in outer space? Rather than entertain the possibility of billions of saints, popes, churches, and Jesus Christs in outer space, it was more convenient for the Church simply to burn him. For 400 years the memory of Bruno has haunted the historians of science. But Bruno has his revenge every few weeks: about twice a month a new extrasolar planet is discovered orbiting a star: more than 250 such planets have now been documented. Bruno's prediction of extrasolar planets has been vindicated. But one question lingers. Although the Milky Way may be teaming with extrasolar planets, how many of them can support life? And if intelligent life does exist, what can science say about it?advertisementSome people claim that extraterrestrials have already visited Earth in the form of UFOs. Scientists usually dismiss the possibility of UFOs because the distances between stars are so vast. But last year the French government released a report by the French National Centre for Space Studies, which included 1,600 UFO sightings spanning 50 years, including 100,000 pages of eyewitness accounts, films and audiotapes. The French government stated that nine per cent of these sightings could be fully explained, that 33 per cent had likely explanations, but that it was unable to follow up on the rest.The most credible cases of UFOs involve a) multiple sightings by independent, credible eyewitnesses and b) evidence from multiple sources, such as eyesight and radar. For example, in 1986 there was a sighting of a UFO by JAL flight 1628 over Alaska, which was investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration. The UFO was seen by the passengers of the JAL flight and was also tracked by ground radar.
View: Full Article | Source: The Telegraph