1. Where the conditions conducive to life as we know it exist sufficiently, life exists.
This is to say, "Where life is possible, there is life."
If the intellectually suitable and suitably equipped of the best and brightest of our species are unable to find life in this context, then they do not measure up (and must think and strategize harder and better) in detecting the life, or such life is incipient, dormant or latent, or will return, in the cliche of "in some way, shape or form."
2. Where the conditions conducive to life as we know it once existed sufficiently, life existed under those conditions.
This is to say, "Where life was possible, it existed there."
3. In the energy, matter, space, time, space-time cosmological, exponentially virtually innumerable, interminable rolls of the dice and lottery draws in virtually boundless ontology, it is impossible for life as we know it and don't know it, of lesser, equal and greater organismic and technological, as well as of exotic, intelligence, to not exist pervasively throughout our galaxy, the Milky Way (with an estimated 300,000,000,000 stars unto itself), and the universe.
4. It is an a priori forgone conclusion of compulsory fact that stars very most typically are the nuclei of solar systems with gravitationally entrained celestial satellite bodies orbiting them, despite mainstream, institutional space science's official announcement that 40% of stars have so far been found to have planetary systems -- prior to the 1990s, institutional space science was uncertain as to whether stars other than the Earth's Sun had planets or that life exists anywhere in the universe aside from Earth, with the latter formalized in long held Fermi's Paradox. The finding that less than 50% of stars have planets is a tentative finding based on a small and tenuous observation, and crude, indirect means of observation, of other solar environments and stars, and so is more of a theoretical statistical postulation in the true sense of the term theory than a galactic or universal statistical fact -- so to speak, it is a tentative fact, warranting qualitatively far more acute and direct observational study as well as a statistically far larger sample size of a diversity of star types. However, over the long term, empirical science may conclusively refute, as oppose to concur with, the dictates of logic and mathematical probability in ultimately determining that there are indeed significantly fewer mother stars than maiden or solitary, hermit or loner stars in our galaxy and beyond, where these three approaches to understanding and posing and ascertaining facts are generally in agreement.
A scientific theory, contrary to populist and religious notions of the term theory, is not philosophy, doctrine, ideology, opinion, or reverie or personal or mass arbitrary surmise, viewpoints, supposition, speculation, assertion or belief based on written or spoken tall tales, or written or spoken personal stories or accounts of experience, often of the unusual, incredible, fabulous, magical and miraculous, or sworn or unsworn testimonials, relating to the spiritual or supernatural or cosmological, or hearsay or unsubstantiated or unproven and untestable audacious claims of divinely inspired scripture, or divinely conferred knowledge, status, rank, wealth or authority or leadership or divine contact and patronage or of divine reproductive descent. It is not based on hearsay and say-so or insistence, or trust me or mere trust, without verification or objective assurance, as characterizes and is the mainstay belief foundation of faith-based exponents and subscribers (X says it, therefore it is so; I believe it, therefore it is so), and is not influenced or determined by the social or political power of the religious myth- consuming and superstitious, gullible rabble or majority of the citizenry or by politically pandering government decree. Rather, science is based on concrete information, reason, analysis and fact and is entirely committed to objectively examining, characterizing, defining and understanding things and their composition, structures, processes, functions and behavior, as well as cause-and-effect, action-and-reaction, and stimulus-and-response relationships, and the relationships and associations of things, and interactions between and among things, and verification of these. Fundamentally the endeavor of science is to inquire, survey, inventory, investigate, discern and discover, and to ascertain fact and the essence and nature of things. In a spiritual sense, science might be thought of as a cognitively and emotionally transcendent adventure and experience of exploration and discovery, research and discovery, observation and discovery, analysis and discovery, critique and discovery, and wonder, curiosity, intrigue, probing, insight, comprehension and understanding, and knowledge and learning. Scientific theories are unassuming or unpresumptuous testable extrapolations (tentative or conclusive individual inductions and deductions, or sets of these, depending on the complexity or simplicity of the object of study and its data set) based on systematic observations of a phenomenon -- that is, extrapolations that are insinuated by a non-selective and unbiased body of facts relating to the phenomenon of study. Wisely, a conclusive theory, or a theory that has been consistently and roundedly confirmed by peer review (inclusive of experiments), is still referred to as a theory rather than doctrine, because any fact or theory of science is forever open to challenge or dispute with honest, comprehensive or full-scale proof. A theory itself is an inclusive body or system of available facts -- as opposed to a tendentious, selectively biased collection of facts -- relevant to a particular subject or field of study that explains a phenomenon and from which inferences can be made to reliably make predictions about that phenomenon, as well as often the subject and/or field of study.
Theories may be simple or complex and may evolve and be augmented or amended, and refined and perfected or be abandoned with the accumulation of further definitive information or facts applicable to the extrapolations. Because science is ultimately based on findings of fact and assumes and affirms nothing -- no tendered proposition or hypothesis -- as fact in advance and in the absence of observation, a testable scientific or educated (informed) guess (hypothesis), hypothesis testing and evidence, proof and substantiation, it sometimes comes to an definitive finding, or determination of fact, later (when the determinative data are gathered and evaluated) than more fallible mathematical probability projections and the intuitions or adjudications of rigorous logic may have already argued or postulated to be the outcome -- however, sometimes a projected outcome that may make sense mathematically or according to logic may not correspond to or accord with the empirical reality in nature that is determined by formal science (that is, it may not accord with established fact). In short, scientific theories utilize findings of fact to evaluate, understand and explain phenomena. What are informally referred to as theories in the news media -- such as police and district attorney theories of the reason or reasons for a criminal act or academic theories of personality -- very often are tenuous hypotheses based on the hints of casual and haphazard observations and the verbal reports and attestations of others, if they are based on evidence at all. Most often they are not at all based on an objectively obtained body of insinuating evidence or findings of fact, but are merely subjective explanatory conjectures or conceptions, though they may be well-reasoned, elaborate and not worthless explanations. If an explanations does not meet the standards of an evidence-based (explanatory) model, it is not a true theory.
Because the Cosmological Prophet is not a scientist but admittedly is a science dunce, his conclusion or prophesy that stars most typically have planetary systems or celestial satellite systems around them, arrived at by his exercising lazy or simplistic fuzzy-math common sense, may be ahead in time of the eventual finding of fact of science regarding this matter, as its tools of extraterrestrial observation and discovery are greatly improved. However, like all of the other ignoramus and authoritarian prophets and their disciples, without exception, of heretofore history, he also may be proven dogmatic, fallible, ridiculous, and out of his element and league, and just another status seeker, power seeker, attention seeker and wealth seeker like everybody else in his/her/their own way/s.
This discussion in the defining of a theory and an hypothesis and in explaining the approach of science and the scientific method as contrasted with the method of the Cosmological Prophet in concluding the incidence of planetary or celestial satellite systems orbiting stars leads to an explanation of the distinction between a theory and an hypothesis. An hypothesis is a scientific guess, in explanation or prediction of something, that is derived from casual observation of an apparent pattern or relationship between or among things or an idea of fact or consideration of fact arrived at from casual observation, the viewing of data or from reading or listening -- it is a scientific guess before the fact-determining experiment or field study has been conducted and evaluated and before revelatory test or field research data are present or available concerning whether the guess is right or wrong. By contrast, a theory is an explanation of the outcome of a carefully controlled and conducted experiment or such field research on a subject of study with predictions based on and/or derived from systematic observations and established facts, after the data set has been obtained and evaluated. The Cosmological Prophet's assertion of fact or projection of fact, an hypothesis, is based on the facts derived from his very limited knowledge of solar systems or his knowledge, and/or maybe observations, of only the solar system in which he resides, whereas a potential theory of astronomical science on the incidence of solar systems or celestial satellite systems accompanying stars might assert that less than 50% of stars in the Milky Way galaxy of stars tend to have, or will continuously be found to tend to have, solar or planetary systems and would attempt to explain why this is so (e.g., star types S, T, U, V, W, X, Y and Z or stars of masses A, B and C tend not to have celestial satellite systems and differ on F, G and H characteristics in XX ways, or in their various environments, from stars that do have celestial satellite systems, which militate against the formation or viability of planetary or celestial satellite systems in their orbits or environments) based on its extensive collection of factual data from its meticulous telescopic observations of scores or hundreds or thousands of stars, randomly selected for examination, and its consistent finding that approximately 40% of stars are accompanied by one or more planets, etc. Nevertheless, the Cosmological Prophet maintains his confidence in his hypothesis, disputed by the data set obtained by astronomical science, based on his opinion that astronomical science's instruments of observation and method of identifying the presence of planets or celestial satellites orbiting distant stars are not sensitive enough nor adequate yet for thoroughgoing detection of many planets, and the like, and may be overlooking or failing to detect many existing planets or celestial satellites of many stars. Where many planets are not observed directly with astronomical science's currently most powerful telescopes, astronomical science infers the presence of unseen planets from patterned gravitationally induced wobbles on stars also observed for such wobbles of stars and our sun associated with detected planets. The Cosmological Prophet conceives that for various reasons unknown to astronomers that many currently unseen or unseeable planets and star-orbiting celestial satellites may not induce perceptible gravitational wobbles of their stars, as, to him, such wobbles are not currently perceptible to the observational power of the best telescopes of our time. Notwithstanding, if and when the instruments of astronomical observation advance to the point where they can directly and clearly permit viewing of the objects associated with the most far-off stars in our galaxy and the evidence is available for common viewing that approximately 40%, or less than 50%, of stars in our galaxy are found to have planetary or celestial satellite systems orbiting them, then the long-held and long-evidenced interim finding and theory that less than 50% of the stars in our galaxy should have or tend to have planetary or celestial satellite systems orbiting them will have been confirmed at the highest level of verification and become a conclusive finding and confirmed or hard theory. As a result, the opposing hypothesis of the Cosmological Prophet will have been refuted, and, if the Cosmological Prophet is rational, he will have to acknowledge the untenability or wrongness of his own hypothesis and accept the validity or certainty of the solar-system incidence theory of astronomical science and be receptive to its explanations (where the explanations of science and scientists are mechanistic, naturalistic explanations indicated or evidenced by the facts as distinguished from spurious or arbitrary supernatural, spiritual, divine, miraculous or magical explanations). The scenario depicted in the foregoing illustrates that theories are not philosophy, abstract thought or dreamy conceptions but are logical extrapolations of fact derived from and anchored in material fact or a body of material facts, and may be found to be confirmed extrapolations of fact in and of themselves, or laws or principles or rules of nature or of a subset or structure of nature.
5. Some celestial bodies are georges; that is, they are macro geoorganisms or macro geoorganismic metabolic systems with an atmosphere, and weather and water (or its analog) systems and water reservoirs or deposits. Planet Earth is a george. Mars may be a george in geodynamic hibernation or suspended animation or a comatose george or the carcass or corpse of a george (that is, it also may be geodynamically permanently inactive, or dead), and very likely Europa, a planetoid moon of the giant gas planet Jupiter, is a hardy, living george, as is the dwarf planet Ceres of the asteroid belt and are likely also the planetoid moons Enceladus and Titan of the other giant gas planet Saturn. While evidence of liquid water oceans or water bodies has been detected beneath the surfaces of Ceres, Europa and Enceladus, oceans, lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane petroleum gas have been clearly observed to cover much of the surface of the moon Titan, also covered with H2O-ice terrain and rocks, ice spewing volcanoes, and large moving or floating land masses that behave like icebergs, or drifting ice sheets or such glaciers. Nowhere else in our solar system are there standing bodies of surface liquid except on Earth and the moon Titan. This circumstance, as well as that of the presence of a thick cloud cover surrounding Titan and frequent and heavy methane and ethane liquid-gas rain falls or downpours there, entice one to conjecture that substantial analog conditions to those supporting life on Earth are present on Titan for perhaps bizarre life as we don't know it to exist on Titan or in its liquid gas analog of Earthly water systems and bodies. Chemical gaseous matter (usually combustible), as distinct from the gaseous or vapor state of a natural atomic element or compound, is always present in large portion, along with miscellaneous-constituent cosmic dust and inherent gravity, in the auto-formation of any supra-atomic object or phenomenon, including stars, galaxies, planets, moons, volcanic eruptions, conflagrations, primordial solar system clouds, and no doubt life itself.
6. Other celestial bodies (planets, moons and large asteroids, apart from the sun, our star, and comets and meteorites), to our own planet Earth, in our solar system, especially those possessing caves for ready natural dwellings, that have sufficient H2O (water in liquid, gas, ice, crystal or plasma form) and access to a widely distributed adequate heat source, such as sufficiently strong sun light, volcanoes, a molten core or high friction between celestial bodies (inter-celestial high friction), etc., are candidates for human habitation, as these core life-supporting natural resources can be harnessed and processed to make oxygen for breathing, water for drinking, cleaning, cooking and fueling, and for raising underwater-based vegetation and organisms -- such as worms, bugs and vegetarian fish and shell fish, as well as escargot snails, rice, potatoes, edible fungi and a variety of bean sprouts, to name a few such food stuffs -- for quick-and-easy-to-grow familiar Earth food and livable shelters, despite the probable otherwise inhospitability of the host celestial body, providing it does not have a thoroughly violent, poisonous, overly hot or freezing environment not locally adjustable to habitability by humans and Earth life forms. Secondary only to the search for sufficient water and adequate heat sources on other celestial bodies to support human habitation should be the search for caves for ready made dwellings, secure and orderly storage space and on-site food growing aqua-culture for humans there. The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, must not be overlooked in this overall exploration for extraterrestrial sites for human habitation.
In the near future, with respect to research limited to a specific planet or moon, spacecraft commissioned for landing or orbital data collections only on those destinations ought to be strictly multipurpose spacecraft that function also as communications satellites for broadcast and wireless phone and computer communications, for permanent solar or absolutely clean-and-safe nuclear electrical power generators (for possible future repeat but pre-settlement or electrical equipment recharge, or manned, missions) and for sonic device systems for emitting a wide range of tones including for beyond human hearing ranges perceptible by super-hearing-sensitivity animals and insects, and for playing various kinds of music, or even speaking human voices, as well as for recording any endemic sounds the sonic device program does not by intention deny recording of (such as wind noise, and continuously normal on-board mechanical noises). Also on-board ought to be a metal detector, a chemical odor emitting and receiver-analyzer device with a wide range of odors and pheromones emitted by Earth animals and insects, and a two-way, craft under-belly, elevator billboard-television and radio for sending Earth images and receiving any extraterrestrial response to these as well as to provide a permanent on-site window with which to view the planet or moon scape at will -- these can also serve as the initial human colony broadcast infrastructure for local global communications and interglobal two-way human communications. We have to start with and use Earth-based animal and plant sensory ranges because those are the only ones of which we have knowledge, and it is better to survey and probe and get surprise response data than to try nothing and perhaps get nothing for lack of our stimulating a responsiveness, where a surprising potential response may be passively present. We may also use these craft to try fog, mist or water-drop probing, against our preconceptions, by disseminating fog or mist, or depositing droplets of water, as in drip irrigation, into or in the soil -- warmed under a bottom-up clear plastic or glass cup or bowl -- of caves, gouges (semi-deep holes) and shaded locations to observe what in reality happens as a result. We must also look to any sand tracts there as a resource for making on-site glass for green-house gardening, aqua culture and oxygen-holding bubble dwellings.
It is wasteful, shortsighted and irresponsible to send space vehicles and robots to extraterrestrial destinations for single purpose missions that when completed result in the craft becoming worthless garbage and litter at those destinations, like the probe Huygens, now worthless equipment that could still be in use for multiple, and figuratively shot-in-the-dark exploratory, purposes and indefinitely so, left on the giant extraordinarily geodynamic moon Titan of the planet Saturn, and like the Viking spacecraft, and the rover robots Spirit and Opportunity, sent to the planet Mars and left there for and of no further use (other than the initial use) as expendable spacecraft junk -- space scientists and engineers must be given license to engage in proactive irrationality in being open-minded and receptive to the unexpected and counter intuitive. These are examples of technically smart but strategically half-way thinking. In addition to the wastefulness and irresponsibility of these practices, it is fundamentally immoral to heedlessly treat any place on Earth or extraterrestrially as a dumping ground and we need to formulate, now, a space-faring consensus code of ethics among all nations of Earth, within the forum of the U.N., setting the standards for how we will properly and respectfully treat extraterrestrial worlds and whatever life on these we may find. Just as much as we must demand business with a conscience and society with a conscience, we must expect and demand science and technology with a conscience.
Undoubtedly Mars and its two moons are general mineral, precious metals and extraterrestrial geologic, and perhaps biological, fossils rich caches, and will become the mining and fossils gathering grounds of one nation or another or others of Earth engaged in the increasingly intense space exploration and settlement race, especially as spacecraft become dramatically improved and cheaper in cost, and able to carry heavy loads, as of gem stones, uranium, platinum, gold, etc. In its newspaper issue of June 7, 1991, the Washington Post cited the journal Science as having reported the detection of an estimated 10,000 tons of gold and 100,000 tons of platinum on a single asteroid in the asteroid belt next door to Mars, on asteroid 1986-DA (a 1.2-mile-wide solid metal asteroid), as well as 10,000,000,000 tons of iron and 1,000,000,000 tons of nickle on that same asteroid.
The cognitively most advanced technological extraterrestrial societies will have a reverence for scientific knowledge and will largely have a mastery of such knowledge and have maximized and perfected the acquisition and exercise of skills in most applications of these, as well as will have eliminated all cognitive disabilities and barriers to unlimited learning and cognitive development for themselves. They will live under an idyllic global constitutional democratic-republic parliamentary form of government, in a global society free of war and co-existing with respect for and in harmony with wild nature, and accord a secularly-pragmatic ethical and utopian quality of life and governance, with maximal personal freedom (including solo-sexuality, or masturbation, homosexuality and polyandry for pleasurable-sex sexually reproductive species or pleasurable-sex, sexual, but non-sexually-reproductive, species, if and where applicable) from the tyranny of others, for the whole of its species, but will retain invincible safety for its society against alien invaders and wild nature (including disease, the other predator animals, and social and economic cannibals -- the latter being psychopaths, sociopaths, megalomaniacs, weaponophiles, kleptomaniacs, ravagers of nature, ideological and religious fanatics). The history of the elites of India, China, Babylon, imperial Greece and the Roman and Mongol empires attests to the motivating power of raging Eros and libido in the greatness, good and bad, of those civilizations, as do the figures of the homosexuals Plato, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci; polygamous King Solomon of ancient Israel, with 1,000 wives; the polyandrous-polygamous bi-sexual imperial King Alexander the Great of Macedon, with Greek and Persian wives; arguably the greatest ancient philosopher, polygamous Aristotle, with 8 wives; the questionably bi-sexual Julius Caesar (said to have been "every woman's man and every man's woman" in his early adulthood by his political detractors), twice married and the extramarital paramour of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, before her fatal relationship with his top general Marc Antony; and the polygamous founder of Islam, Muhammad of Arabia's cities Medina and Mecca, with 13 wives; among many other such prominent figures, even of our own age. Superior intelligence would be sure to benignly and constructively unleash this energy for the gratification and motivation of the individual and to the benefit of society, but would impose societal control (particularly to prevent sexual harassment, offense and outrage, and child corruption), as well as mental and physical safety limits and controls, respectively over its public expression and unfettered private expression. Cognitively highly and most advanced extraterrestrial species will live under the aforementioned form of government because the majority of a unitary population of critically thinking, especially smart and knowledgeable, denizens of any civilization will inevitably hanker and pressure for an egalitarian society and system of government with individually unalienable equal rights, opportunity and treatment, justice and protection under and before the law, not subject to the biases and caprices of majority or minority rule, and with universal individual, as well as ethical and reasonable group, input into influencing their governance and in selecting and deselecting those who govern them.
If we are to make mutual contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species, it probably will be with one that is of a more or less similar level (quality) of technical knowledge and intellectual ability and relative technological development as these of our species, and not with species of far superior intelligence and technological achievement than ourselves, as the latter would probably be able to observe us close up (like an educated, smart, good-eyed human observing an amoeba under an overkill super-magnifying x-ray-featured atomic microscope and/or such an amplifying audio-scope) on multiple sensory levels with godly observational technology or means remotely, without spacecraft, from their home planets or other relay means or satellite celestial bodies, and could contact us remotely and by proxy (thereby safeguarding their own health and lives, and perhaps ability to retain their morality) and influence nature, and more, here with their godly technology and mastery of science. Because comparably intelligent species, with comparable curiosity as the smart and scientific of our species, wishing to make extraterrestrial contact with alien-world intelligence would likely be quite different from our species and others on our same intellectual achievement level in their biological architecture and sensory modes, and cognitively or intellectually dominant sensory mode, we will have to attempt sophisticated communication with them on the gamut of sensory modes to determine the mode or modes on which they are responsive -- bio-chemical communication is a common mode of communication within insect species, especially for ant and bee social insects, and pheromone releases for subconscious and reflexive communication is common within mammal species.
If ambulatory terrestrial life as we know it exists anywhere else in our solar systems besides on Earth, it would have to be subterranean life in the hollows of Mars, its moons, our moon or Mercury, associated with ice or liquidized ice (water) in a temperate zone or enclave (the space area spanning Earth, Mars and the asteroids is the relative temperate zone of our solar system, although the surface of Mars and the celestial objects of the asteroid belt are much too frigid for any life as we know it to survive). Some kind of life as we know it is doubtfully conceivable in a temperate zone of the many temperature zones of Mercury if a stable temperate zone is present within the ice or H2O region of Mercury -- Mercury has globally extreme fluctuations in hot and cold temperatures daily incompatible with life as we know it. Any such life among these candidate hosts for subterranean life as we know it most likely would be non-visual life, in having no exposure to light as even aquatic creatures of surface water bodies do from the sky or the geothermal vents of volcanically active ocean or sea floors on Earth and as such life would have under the global ice shell of the moon Europa of planet Jupiter. Much of any life in these underground hollows, if associated with adequate heat and moisture or water in support of life, would likely be highly evolved fungal and bacterial life, given their eons-long isolation and shielding from external-world dangers and assaults. Long secluded life forms have been found living in caves and caverns, and in the waters of these, of our planet. All ambulatory and mobile forms of this life have been found to be unsighted and unpigmented, including spiders, scorpions, lizards, fish, shrimp, crayfish, lice, crickets and other insects, which tend to feed on bacteria, which in turn feed on the minerals of rocks. It appears that the minimal requirements for some form of life are a food energy source such as plant or animal matter, the magma of geothermal vents, chemical reactions between minerals or the radioactive decay of rocks and a steady source of moisture.
9. The benefits to humanity for its space exploration and robotic and human colonization of suitable other planets and moons (those with ample water) in our solar system are inestimably enormous. The short-term benefit would be a huge expansion of human commerce and the human economy from those that are Earth-bound to new ones that are interplanetary, with initially particularly the mining and quarrying of valuable metals, minerals, clay, sand and chemicals and the processing of these for the building, supplying and servicing of extraterrestrial communities and the on-site making of finished products, including tiles, bricks, glass, cement, spacecraft, sub-compact spacecraft, tools, machinery and equipment, electronics and jewelry, for local consumption and transport to Earth and other colonized planets and moons. Locally produced machinery, devices, electronics and medications would also be used to service, repair and upgrade visiting spacecraft and their and their personnel's devices and performance and health issues. Except for the forbidding cold weather and very thin atmosphere on Mars, it is the ideal planet for extraterrestrial human settlement -- in important ways a better world than Earth -- given its geologic and atmospheric placidity, meaning that it is a world free of hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, storms of any kinds, monsoons, floods, tidal waves, fires, and seismic activity and earthquakes, and its antiseptic, sterile surface environment. In addition, being one of the three major traversable, absolutely rocky planetary bodies in our solar system, and situated between the first of these, our planet Earth, and the last of these, the asteroid belt, with both of these having been found to be endowed with abundant resources, Mars, in the middle, much be flush with a vast variety of industrial and human-settlement-supporting resources below its voluminous surface that would be more easily extractable than anywhere else in the solar system, if the means for this were there, including from Earth, and it would be more easily engineered and readily habitable for human hi-tech society than anywhere else in the solar system, other than Earth -- imagine carefully engineered, non-collapsible underground corridor cities with interlinking plumbing (with thick mist and steam running from faucets and showers for cleaning and bathing, with sparing use of water for toilet-waste flushing and recycling for food-production fertilizer) and high-speed subway rails and roads and office, shop and mall buildings, and homes and plug-in rechargeable all-electric cars charged and powered by electricity generated by surface ground wind turbines and solar arrays feeding subterranean electrical primary and backup, redundant electrical-power smart grids, with escalators, elevators and lighted stairways and tunnel walkways leading from and to lower and deep levels of the interior of Mars. It is a near certainty that the subsurface of Mars contains vast, oceanic, quantities of ice water, if not liquid water, or both, retaining much of the water of that once stood and flowed on it surface as oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and streams, and rain, but that left the surface by ground absorption and evaporation into its sky and loss into outerspace, as well as long evidenced such oil and natural gas reserves, and long known vast deposits of manganese, uranium and iron. Moreover, we can conservatively expect that Mars will harbor vast and wide-ranging caches of gem stones, marble and other aesthetic rock types, and precious metals, all of every kind found on Earth and in the asteroid belt. Industrial use of greenhouse gas-producing and climate-warming coal and oil detrimental to the health and stability of life on Earth, might be beneficial in warming the atmosphere and climate on Mars, and re-creating its cloud and rain system, for enabling it to again sustain surface standing and flowing water and to support again the flourishing of life on its surface. They can also be used to fabricate plastic for making some same, but good, plastic products made on Earth and coal might also be specially treated to used directly as a safe building material. Some aquaculture on Mars can be used as a Noah's Ark to preserve some of Earth's endangered water species and sites in its interior can be set asides for seed and genome banks to preserve permanently all of Earth's plant and animal species cells and DNA from the ravages of gung-ho savage and egregious, extermination and annihilation commercialism and capitalism, and social and political economic psychosis, and war on Earth.
If there is liquid water, or oceans and/or seas, below the surface and in the interior of Mars, such would mean that the geologic crust and body of Mars may provide permanently sufficient insulation from its cold surface and/or it has a sufficiently hot molten core and maybe simmering magma or volcanic activity within to support and sustain the liquid water and therefore, nutrient fermentation for the feeding of microbial and fungal life and their breeding and most probably, over the eons of its existence as a planet, an abundance of highly developed aquatic and marine life, and possibly ambulatory, subterranean terrestrial life, much of which may be cognitively simple food animals and plants, morally available for harvesting by humans and for human and human pet consumption. These bodies of water would also be oases for biological research and the introduction of scientific exploratory and research non-fossil-fuels-powered watercraft and submarines. Can we send survey spacecraft and satellites to Mars with high powered sonar probes to echo locate and map particularly ice and water, and incidentally valuable mineral, reservoirs and deposits and send follow-up excavation craft or technology to access them? Can we place space stations above Mars, each of its moons and designated asteroids as temporary and residences for rotating construction labor personnel and dock payload freight ferrying space shuttles on Mars and these to shuttle personnel, materials, tools and equipment between these bodies and the space stations in execution initial ground building and mining operations? Can the shuttles also be used to ferry building materials to these celestial bodies to construct settlement sites and to ferry tons of science-related and commercially valuable materials and objects back to Earth?
We cannot leave Mars alone or for expensive robotic pin-prick and scratch, scoop and poke missions, and expect the taxpayers and their representative government to endlessly fund, with enthusiasm, at permanent tremendous public expense and the sacrifice of funding other national needs, space science and exploration to satisfy the curiosity of Disneyland astrophysical scientists, an ivory-tower science intelligentsia, and the government-dependent aerospace industry with no public equity benefit or equity involvement and voice in the space projects. Astrophysical public and celebrity academics, and astrophysical academic and aerospace-industry science advisers to the President and Congress would have to be narcissistic and arrogant in thinking that because of their specialized knowledge in and experience with space science and exploration and the fact that their staffs may have the technical know-how in developing and launching spacecraft that they should have exclusive policy sway in or authority over the decision that space or planetary exploration will proceed with and rely on robots on a tinkering, pin-prick basis forever or indefinitely, without the committed prospect of human space-faring and settlement participation -- the term "astrophysical academics" refers to professors of astrophysics, astrogeology, astrobiology and astronomy. Other intellectuals and highly educated people in other occupations (professors, teachers, doctors, dentists, engineers, mathematicians, scientists in other fields of study, lawyers, science fiction writers, novelists, journalists, entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires, executives, managers, aspiring students, etc.) can think equally well and will only endorse expensive governmentally supported space science enthusiastically en masse, in the majority, if they can perceive the prospect of it opening new vistas of opportunity and wild fascination to themselves and their children, or their species, in the foreseeable future. A vigorous and aggressive, rapid-paced program for a human and robotic presence on and exploration of Mars and its two moons, with truthful public disclosure of life-supporting and economy expanding resources within human industrial and commercial grasp on Mars, will ignite public enthusiasm and passion, of adults and children alike, and generous continuous funding support for the space program. The treatment of the space program as a revolving mega-billion-dollar subscription video game for primarily pure-science, to the exclusion of utilitarian, equity-science, projects to entertain the intellect and tease the curiosity of Disneyland astrophysical scientists and the space-science intelligentsia is a financial and psychological stress on the tolerance of very much of the public and Congress, who want to see spell-binding utilitarian space-science equity prospects for their tax money, in addition to gains in scientific knowledge for their and their children's continuing science education. Space science must proceed concurrently as pure and utilitarian science; that is, it must be both a knowledge and long-term economic investment, with monetary returns to the benefit of the communitarian common good on our home planet and colonized planets. With particular emphasis, equity dividends from revenue generating operations on Mars and in the asteroid belt should accrue to the taxpayers toward funding for their universal health care, free public higher education, Social Security retirement pensions and medicare, scientifically ambitious, routine rapid-turnover NASA and JPL projects and tax cuts on non-excessive bona-fide employment income. This revenue should forever be appropriated for these purposes inasmuch as it has been the decades-long pioneering work of NASA and JPL, funded by government (that is, taxpayer-citizenry money), that has originated, developed, pioneered and spearheaded extensive space travel, exploration and science and technology, that private enterprise successors will need to adopt and from which they will need to branch for their extraterrestrial commercial pursuits, in eternal debt to the communitarian taxpayer government and these two agencies.
Mars is a six-month space flight away, feasibly reducible to a three-month, even one-month, flight within the near future and our moon is a three-day flight away. We need to think and organize in terms of "ships," as in spaceships and spaceship fleets, that can provision lengthy human voyages, in going to this newest New World frontier, a many-fold richer frontier than the European discovery of the frontier of the fabulously flora and fauna, and mineral and water bodies and ways rich American continent and its outlying islands. Cowpokes and city folks, it's time to jump on your star bucks and in your Rocket 88s and high-power zoom it to Mars now! From the very beginning, we must good ecology-caring and preservationist stewards of Mars and the moon, and, as for industrial and commercial enterprises that operate there, we must legislate and strictly enforce sustainability and renewable resource-use and waste recycling practices. We must not tolerate rapacious, irresponsible, pollute, dump, wreck and ruin, depletion, extermination-and-annihilation olde-world, primitive commercialism and capitalism, or racists, or ethnic, national, religious, class or wealth chauvinists, or gun fondlers and weapons worshipers, or white-collar criminals and the other criminal types to reside or visit there -- let them stay on this savage-animal, jungle planet, where they best fit. If capitalism is to abide on Mars, its moons, the asteroids and our moon, it must be reformed, new-era Good-Steward Communitarian Capitalism with a Conscience, but not with a dunce cap. In spirit the name of the Mars civilization to come ironically should be E. Pluribus Unum Pax Humanus, and it would be appropriate for the legacy language of the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras of Europe, that gave rise to the rebirth of democratic-republic government and free-thinking scholarship and science, to be the global language there, which would be Latin. Mars also should maintain libraries and repositories for physical and digital copies, as appropriate, of all of Earth's civilizations' and cultures' science, educational and great, popular and folk literature, and of their such artwork and music, and should have schools, universities, libraries, museums, medical facilities and technical research and development institutions and facilities.
As for the obstacle of the $20,000.00-per-pound prohibitive expense of space-flight carrying or ferrying of even modest cargo loads with the present generation of spacecraft, this issue will shortly be overcome with spacecraft made of super-light but incomparably strong nano-tube materials for constructing vehicles, mechanisms and machinery, electronics and buildings as well as for constructing return vehicles from Mars and the asteroids loaded with heavy metallic materials to be delivered as cargo to Earth -- as a matter of reality versus impractical political correctness, we might enter into international joint ventures utilizing technically competent but low cast labor for such vehicle and equipment construction on Earth. Indeed, in the meanwhile, given the vast amounts of gold, platinum and all other precious and valuable metals in these locations, without human populations present in them to steal these, and gem stones of all kinds, the spacecraft can be fabricated of these metals (gold, platinum, etc.) and be loaded with relatively light-weight cargoes of whatever gem stones are found there (surely these will include diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, etc., that will compete in size and quality with the best discovered on Earth), and be piloted for touch down on Earth on and in militarily secured, unpopulated islands and deserts -- until nano-tech materials takeover as the primary materials for vehicle construction. Thus, the cargo and its transporter would largely be one and the same. The machinery necessary for mining and manufacturing can be sent in the form of multipurpose spacecraft communities that could serve these functions and as on-site workday shelters and facilities for commuting laborers. Our nearby celestial neighbors will be able to supply Mars itself and the Earth with an untold variety of natural resources, or raw materials, and metallic and mineral wealth and fascinate and inspire the coming generations of our children, as they witness and participate in the establishment and development of extraterrestrial high-tech civilizations, for many centuries, if not millennia -- there are also ideas under consideration for changing the atmosphere of our celestial twin Venus that would cool this planet and make it habitable (again?) by humans. As soon as we begin to set up human extraterrestrial outposts as beachheads for colonizing and mining the Moon, Mars and its two moons, and the asteroids, inter-celestial and interplanetary travel, transport and commerce will commence and the American and space-faring Earth economies will expand and boom again. However, the nations that have manufacturing know-how, facilities and trained work forces will be the dominant beneficiaries of the near-Earth extraterrestrial economy -- U.S.A., be warned and take heed. Russia and the European Union, Japan, India and China have proven themselves to be competent space-faring societies and the U.S. has lapsed to near the bottom of these as a manufacturing society. The nations able to establish themselves extraterrestrially at the least cost are the nations most likely to have a dominant presence in extraterrestrial space and in harnessing it economically.
The outposts and ensuing extraterrestrial villages must be luxurious and appointed with the full range of living and working amenities to make life there as comfortable and enjoyable as possible so people physically and psychologically suited to reside, work and build there will be motivated to go and want to stay there, and soon will no longer be homesick for Earth. We must not waste time and resources in trying to make these celestial bodies Earth-like, with respect to flora, fauna and topographical liquid-water bodies and systems. We should fashion an architectural and topographical environmental aesthetic fusing minerals, stone and technology that is uniquely reflective and complementary of the natural materials and mood of the features of these topographically barren solar bodies -- in time, there will be lights, see-through domed habitation craters, see-through, maybe luminescent, covered canals and high-speed railways and solar-vehicle recharge stations and roads everywhere. Architecturally, a Stone Henge village seems quite right on the moonscape. Craters, with human-made stairways, might be ideal sites for constructing, depending on their sizes, domed or bubble villages and towns with hotels and malls, and governmental, medical and educational centers, as well as for separated R&D, industrial and warehouse complexes, electrical-power and sports and recreational facilities, airports and liquid water reservoirs, etc.
The other benefit of human space travel and settlement will be for the dramatic and continuous development, evolution and adaptability of our species, our cognition and ingenuity, and our science and technology (not to obscure biotechnology and the innovation of super-nutritious tech foods, no thanks to Monsanto Corp.). We would be compelled and would be sure to upgrade and greatly advance our knowledge and understanding of biology, chemistry, physics and engineering, and dramatically advance our application of these, in this undertaking beyond our current ability to conceive. Hopefully, the benefit to us from a close and cordial contact with advanced, technologically intelligent alien-world life would be for our biological and medical improvement, and giant leap-forward, rapid social, scientific and technological advancement as recipients of such life's superior knowledge and scientific and technological achievement and standard of existence (or quality of life). Not only would we hopefully be able to advance our problem-solving knowledge and know-how under the mentorship and education of cognitively and technologically more highly advanced extraterrestrial beings, but they might be able to impart in us super abilities we do not have and of which we have no conception. We should reach out endlessly to whatever friendly, more highly advanced ETs who or that would be available to us to further mentor, educate, develop and improve us and our societies.
XXXXCreatures found in sealed caves in Arizona, New Mexico of the U.S.A. and in Romania and Israel have consisted of scores of newly discovered species of spiders, scorpions, millipedes, lice, crickets, crayfish, shrimp and fish that feed largely on bacteria that in turn feed on the minerals of rocks.
I subscribe to the expectation that life is common in our galaxy, but that highly evolved, sizable terrestrial plant and animal life as is present on Earth is less common and that technologically advanced ET species, as with humans on Earth, are least common, but mathematically, on the whole, are present in the planetary systems of our galaxy, although in low ratios, yet nevertheless in the hundreds of thousands to tens of millions or more among the estimated 200 billion to 300 billion stars in our galaxy. I imagine it to be a stupendous and lucky scientific and technological feat to happen upon and make contact with technologically advanced technological ET species, but regard the effort for this to be a commendable and worthy, and, indeed, a most worthwhile effort for a contact of a potentially unparalleled El dorado of scientific knowledge gains to scientific humanity and furtherance of a benevolent human civilization. I am hopeful for METI and SETI. The history of human achievement counsels us that tenacity and perseverance, with flexible intellect, can achieve whatever is possible.
Related Article: Are We Alone? A Review of Drake's Equation, by Tim Dean (Frank Drake's, 04-2007, Issue 14, Cosmos Online)
No, We Are Not Alone in Our Galaxy, Let Alone in the Universe Xref Universe Silent Because Humans Are Alone//Do you really believe that all of the other celestial bodies in our solar system and potentially in the 200,000,000,000-plus planetary systems (planets, dwarf planets and moons numbering many times more) in our galaxy, the Milky Way, are biologically sterile or entirely devoid of life, and that life forms do not evolve in nearly endless ways from simple to complex, including in brains (universally present in all complex animal species on Earth) and brain-power? Do you reject recognition of the fact that there is a pyramid or hierarchy of brain development and ability among insect through more physically complex animal species on Earth that is a probable paradigm for other-world ET species? Think about it. T H I N K, rationally. Already chances are more than they are not that there is stable and possibly complex life beneath the ice shell of Jupiter's moon Europa, and even maybe beneath that of the asteroid-belt dwarf planet of Ceres, and perhaps short-lived, fleeting to durable microbial life, at least, in the wet H20 subsurface of Enceladus, a geyser harboring moon of Saturn, I'm happy to say and probably somewhat disillusion you. The evidence is strong that all of these have subsurface liquid water and certain that they have thin surface atmospheres containing oxygen.//Most of terrestrial life has been extinguished by natural geological and astrophysical disasters repeatedly on Earth, only for it to recover with different species newly pervasive and, in the food web and chain, dominant following each mass extinction. These extinctions would probabilistically occur more and less often among other planetary systems of stars of the same type and age as ours, as well as of those of different type stars. Planets associated with stars of our type and age hosting life with no or fewer and much older such extinctions would likely have much more highly evolved plant, wild animal and civilized life forms than those here on Earth, if its civilized life has not destroyed itself or decimated the other major species on those planets. Fortunately for the human species the difference between the wild animal manner of life and the human and its pet manner of life is that the latter are domesticated manners of life, with humans having domesticated themselves and their pet animals to live "relatively" harmoniously together. Civilization equals intelligent or more-intelligent domestication and relative civility and a materially comfortable or splendid manner of life for and among its members. Just as there is a civil feud between the planetary protector-versus-plunderer intelligentsias and actors of our planet, whose outcome will determine the survival of humankind and that of the other major species populating our planet in the near term, same feuds likely have occurred within global civilizations on these other potentially advanced-life-hosting planets, with the protectors prevailing and failing on different such planets. We hope to find and make contact with the protector civilizations that have succeeded and endured. I'm sure technologically advanced ET species and civilizations are out there, residing on celestial bodies sprinkled in the hundreds of thousands to tens of millions among the 200,000,000,000 to 300,000,000,000 potential solar or planetary systems in our galaxy, but am equally sure that they do not resemble us and probably are not evolved primates in most instances or at all.//Just because life has not been created artificially by humans (where sophisticated biological science is less than 200 years old) does not mean that it will not soon be created, with the critical-mass exponential advances in our scientific knowledge and technologies in our time, or that bio-genesis cannot or does not proceed on its from abiogenesis, as only this such genesis could have engendered our own existence from the cosmic gas and dust cloud of manifold chemical elements and compounds, and the forces of extreme cold, explosions and heat, gravity, clumping and consolidation, inertia, electromagnetism, the thermodynamic weak and strong force, etc., that gave rise to and formed our sun and the celestial bodies of our solar system -- a process that can be observed telescopically in solar systems forming and evolving from cosmic clouds now.//A Near Infinity of Different Somethings from Antecedent Somethings//The argument that it is impossible for abiogenesis to accomplish biogenesis, evidentially because it has not been accomplished artificially yet in a laboratory by scientists, is utterly based on ignorance and possibly on loyalty and devotion to religion and a religious doctrine of anthropocentrism and deity creation and divine design of nature and the cosmos. A simple and simplistic illustration, for the sake of easy understanding, for how non-life propagates life is by you yourself combining sufficient mere soil, that is sufficiently nutritious, to a life-viable but lifeless seed or seeds and then by adding respectively sufficient and optimal measures of water, temperature and light and darkness, and time. The result will be that you will have produced a plant or plants, just as nature improvises or engineers life on its own with the inevitable occasional random occurrence of the convergence of the right ingredients and conditions conducive to the emergence of live and its evolution in our mind-bogglingly vast universe (Please, in your eloquence, do not argue there are no other stars or celestial bodies than those in our solar system, as you will just demonstrate again that literacy and eloquence do not constitute intelligence!), with much credit due, at root, to the sufficient and compatible presence of "organic compounds" present in the soil and the seed/s, which naturally occur in abundance in nature/the cosmos on Earth and ubiquitously in our solar system and beyond. It's (molecular and compound as well as biological emergence and divergence) all a matter of the interactive and the synergistic processes and dynamics of energy, matter, chemistry and physics under environmental conditions conducive to the production of life, which inhere in matter and energy.//Correction #1: The term "organic molecules" primarily applies instead of "organic compounds" in the above.//Correction #2: The word "periodic" applies instead of "occasional" in the above.
However, I'm not convinced that SETI's and other radio-signal messaging to ET worlds of other planetary systems of other stars, near and far, has been a flop. The non-response is eerie, like walking with shining flashlights, or torches, in a jungle or forest at night and hearing and seeing no sign of the presence of critter life, whereas one knows there is an abundance of such life every which way. We must also consider that messaging going out and coming in maybe is being intercepted by human technological intelligence (be it military, a government intelligence agency or a religious institution with astronomical-related wherewithal) of our own planet or the presence of an inconspicuous other technological intelligence, unknown to us, in our solar system, that is censoring our ET mail to deny us knowledge of technologically intelligent ET life or contact with such ET life for whatever reason. Finally, if contact has been made, with no in-between interception of signal messaging, the reply may have come from many or all ET worlds capable of replying but on the own terms, such as by scrutinizing us with godly-in-power telescopic or other viewing and eaves-dropping means and not an explicit message.
My my tangent on the SETI and METI approaches to signal messaging advanced ETs of other planetary systems would be for these to locate their messaging radio telescopes beyond Earth's atmosphere, to Earth's moon or to one or both moons of Mars, which have entirely barren surfaces and no atmospheres and are therefore not subject to outgoing or incoming message interference or sabotage by our atmosphere and the electronic space debris orbiting in or above it or from hostile or subversive astrophysical technology based on Earth purposed to deny public-science contact with or its knowledge of contact with advanced ETs.
The concept of survival of the fittest or most powerful, per se, rising to the top of the critter food chain or of becoming the dominant, or alpha, animal species is imprecise. Indeed, it is the ablest, or most able, which, like our species, although we may be quite physically inferior to many other species of animal on the planet on every sensory mode and on the other biological parameters, that nevertheless with our ingenuity, discernment, insight, instinct and drive for know-how and knowledge (civilization, education and science), and our industriousness, tools and weapons, audacity, wonder, curiosity and appetite for adventure and challenge, become and are the dominant, or alpha, and ruling species of the planet. Likewise, we can expect this to be the case with technologically and cognitively advanced species of ET worlds -- that they are cognitively and technologically transcendent species. In short, it is our biologically based transcendent technological and cognitive ability and such internal and external evolution that make our species the alpha species of our planet.
Are Radio Waves the Best Idea?
You've instantly swayed me to this idea, but to be implemented by humans with our star, the sun. You are talking about an artificial mini-solar-eclipser whose visually perceptible shadow or dark image can be modulated in size, duration and on-off frequencies of occurrence (intervals between on-states) like a talking drum or telegraph machine, resembling effective but primitive long-distance communications means of the past. With this device and strategy for interstellar communication with advanced ET civilizations, we have to ensure the device never blocks too large an area of the sun and never a relatively large area for too long or too frequently, as blocking that is too large, too long and too frequent very well may have disastrous planetary consequences, particularly in temperature, precipitation, frosting and climate and on the health and mortality of the life forms on our planet. After we receive reply solar signaling we should eventually make mutual agreement to communicate by radio signaling, or by other electronic means, between barren moons, without atmospheres, in our planetary systems, for optimally efficient signaling or communications between our species and to, in part, assuage the fears of the paranoids, hysterics and zenophobes of our species -- this way neither species may know the specific celestial-body (planet or moon) home of the other
Maybe multiple eclipsers can be computer programmed to operate or signal simultaneously or in harmony, simulating a music melody and/or the drum (snare drum, kick drum and high-hat) and bass sections of a band, or conga and/or bongo drums, with the size and durations of the artificial eclipse dark spots simulating the different music notes. Send out some solar entertainment! A visual song or concert performance! Why not?
Classical music, the idea of a woman astronomer, has already been broadcast as a message-signal of our presence to potential ET worlds of nearby and distant stars, with no known reply so far. I have thought of sending music also, but a months-long streaming, or pulsing stream, of an assortment of the best sellers of music of every genre of music, in addition to selections of tribal music of primitive societies and folk music of past centuries, as well as of bird and other animal vocalizations, including those of whales, dolphins, porpoises, and insects (amplified). I still hope very much this is eventually done.
I clicked on the URL and read the abstract. We cannot just send Beatles music or classical music but should send a broad variety and extensive inventory of music, as, by analogy and example, there are many subcultures of humans with strongly different musical tastes as well as aversions. Let the listeners respond as to whether they like anything from our music menu and discover whether they have a craving to hear more of something and let us know.
The historical background upon which your apprehensions about making contact are based is one in which the contacts were initiated by, or made between, highly irrational, superstitious and religiously and ethnically/racially bigoted and chauvinistic people, living in absolute-authoritarian feudal and monarchical societies, ruled and commanded by scientifically ignorant and wealth and power driven leaders. While some of these bad traits still afflict much of human society, a generally cordial knowledge-oriented, if not loving, and scientific-minded and educated class of people has arisen worldwide to a prominent stature of considerable technological and quality-of-life benefit for much of humanity, as well as of credibility, respect and influence. It would be of this class of humans that an effective contact with ETs could be made, ETs who or that would necessarily have to be of at least the same cognitive class and capability of their world/s in order for them to effectively handle a human contact and make an effective reply to us. And it would have to be between these cognitively capable counterparts of our different civilized species that a common means and language for long-term communications and rapport could be mutually improvised or forged and evolved, and not with or between freelancing psychopathic or sociopathic idiots or predatory, savage carnivore animals, although national security personnel on each side might expectedly be involved with the communications or their oversight, monitoring or censorship. This proposition is based on logical deductions and is not an arrogant assumption. Probably our intellectual intelligentsias would be fascinated with and exchange knowledge with each other, like -- in the absence of ideological ethnic/racial and economic bigotry between the knowledge or intellectual classes of the socialist former Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China versus the capitalist U.S. and western Europe -- with the positive intellectual relationships that developed between the music, sports, medical and scientific communities of the concerned nations. However, admittedly relative parity of military might made this possible, by sanction of the political leaderships of these nations.
Until fact is established to the contrary, an untraversable galactic ocean of space does surround, separate and quarantine our solar system from possible physical contact with or invasion by any mortal creatures of any other solar or planetary system or visits to or from any of these for eternity -- if indeed it remains true that nothing can travel in excess of the speed of light. Thus, no inter-solar system imperial threat is possible or posed for us, but we can still have intellectual relationships with ETs of nearby planetary systems with a civilization/s. Among the possible contacts lies a grand motherlode, or multiple such, of scientific and technological knowledge, and more, beyond our ability to imagine.
I once was in a small restaurant in Italy, and, in practicing my rudimentary Italian language skills, I translated into English an aphorism I saw in a picture frame hung on a wall that in essence said "The educated man is not necessarily the moral man." This saying strongly impressed me and I personalized it to better fit my own perception and experience to "An educated person is not therefore or thereby an enlightened or moral person." I find both of these aphorisms to be borne out as true routinely. However, I find many times more often and overwhelmingly that particularly scientifically highly educated persons are truly more socially enlightened and demonstrate more conscience than lowly educated persons and educated persons with little or a dismissive regard for science. Both you, albeit with sarcasm and cynicism, and Brin demonstrate this conscientiousness in your comments. The tendency I have observed may be so probably because science-minded people are educated or acculturated in the inherently moral endeavor of the pursuit of truth, or of determining fact, and treating it with reverence and in conforming their minds to it, to the abandonment of their errors in knowledge and thought. Yes, there are rogues, demagogues, cheats and frauds in science and immoral and amoral mercenary and dangerously mad-men scientists and it is probably this niche of scientist that is feared so much. Even I have to ask myself "What if the Nazis and Imperial Japan had triumped in World War II and it was their scientists attempting contacts with advanced ETs?" or "What if we have been unwittingly initiating contacts with triumphant Nazi-like ET scientists?" Such would be grievously awful but since they could be no closer than 4.22 light years away in the nearest neighboring planetary system, they would pose no danger to our planetary system nor would we to theirs, as anything traveling at the speed of light to reach our solar system would shed all but its pure energy mass in achieving the speed of light and probably become mere light or energy itself, hopefully innocuous such light or energy. Anything traveling at the speed of light to reach our planetary system would have to travel 186,292 miles per second or 299,792,458 meters per second x 60 seconds per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 24 hours per day x the number of days in four years, to get to us in four years and have some way of not disintegrating. If technologically advanced ET life could travel at these same numbers in miles or meters per hour, which is still highly improbable, it would take centuries for its spacecraft to travel this distance. If malevolently intelligent advanced ETs found such travel to be impractical, as it is, they could look elsewhere to many more practical exoplanetary destinations. I think that there is a valid concern about blithely reaching out in blind love to contact technologically intelligent ETs given our scares on Earth with passe hi-tech imperialist Nazi and fascist belligerent and genocidal governments.
However, we have to remember that a cabal within the German military high echelon attempted to kill psychopathic and megalomanic Reich Fuhrer Adolph Hitler, a marginally educated political leader of a superstitious and pseudo-science mind, and many German scientists rejected the Nazi Party and Hitler, and that it was Italians who executed fascist Il Duce Benito Mussolini and dragged his corpse through the streets.
A fatal flaw with my advocacy, and that of others like me, calling for contact with technologically advanced ETs, is that some of these species may reside on planets or moons with a day that is hundreds or thousands of years in Earth time and with incomparably very long years to ours, and that may have as well evolved metabolisms in them very unlike ours and for which space travel to them, at a modest fraction of the speed of light, that measures centuries or millennia in human time, may measure weeks to months in their time and count for little of their lifespans and stress on them. Harmful species with such a different sense and system of time and biology to go with it, and their celestial-home microbes journeying with them, may be able to comfortably reach our planetary system and would present a grave danger to us.
Let us not cower in fear and not venture as a species outside of our caves.