Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Blog #3

 Aliens! What are they and are they even real? Aliens are simply described as a being from another world. I’ve always been scared by the idea of aliens, seeing them on TV shows or in movies always freaked me out. Seeing them usually depicted as super tall, skinny, huge black eyes, and upside-down tear drop shaped head made me feel uneasy. It’s hard whether or not to believe in them because I am personally on a planet so why can’t other planets have similar lives as us? Or at least some type of living thing has to be out there. I’m not alone with this belief either, thousands upon millions of people believe in extraterrestrial existence too.  About 65% of Americans believe in some sort of life on other planets, and many sightings have been made too. The first reported alien sighting being in 1947 by Kenneth Arnold, while flying his plane he claimed to have spotted 9 flying saucers. He believed, and so did many others, that these little saucers were aliens from another planet. Soon after the UFO obsession began. People were claiming to see them everywhere, and soon enough someone claimed to be abducted. In 1961 Barney and Betty Hill said they were abducted while in New Hampshire, they described the beings to be humanoids, with glossy black clothing. Till this moment there is no concrete evidence of aliens existing, but maybe in the future things will prove the non believers wrong.


2 comments:

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  2. Hey, Violet! Great post! I often hear people making a similar argument to the one you made about the existence of extraterrestrial life: if there is life on our planet, and the the universe is so vast, then how could there not be life on other planets? I'd like to point out that this is a misconception. For this class I've chosen to read Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted-World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Sagan, who was an astronomer and scientist, believed there were four necessary conditions that needed to met before life could begin on a planet: biogenic elements, a source of energy, liquid water, and a suitable, reasonably stable environment. Since the writing of Sagan's book, at least five more conditions have been proposed: a supply of nutrients, a high concentration of reduced gases such as CH4, HCN and NH3, dry-wet cycles to create membranes and polymerize RNA, highly diversified environments, and cyclic conditions, such as day-to-night, hot-to-cold, etc. Some scientists have even estimated the number of conditions to be as high as forty for life to begin. Thus, the probability factor of life on other planets is not nearly as high as many seem to think it is.

    Along with this, I'd also like to point out that - when I was younger - I too found aliens alternately terrifying and fascinating as well. The problem is that these ideas have come exclusively from the media. In fact, you mentioned this yourself when writing about seeing them in movies and on television. No one even knows whether or not aliens exist, yet we all somehow know exactly what they look like and how they behave. Don't you find that funny? It's almost as if we're being programmed to believe in them!

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