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Published online 30 July 2008 | Nature 454, 562 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454562a
News in Brief: Sidelines
Sidelines
Scribbles on the margins of science.
Scorecard
On the Record
Number crunch
Wordwatch
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Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
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Ian you think like I do...very funny. Other than that I've learned to take what scientist and engineer Dr. Mitchell says as the gospel. Of course it is a great leap to one's career to admit they believe other entities have visited Earth. Mitchell and some other astronauts have expressed the "fact" that aliens exist. Not to believe in life elsewhere would seem to take much more faith than simply believing. The question becomes if such living beings exist are they dwelling in the spacetime continuum as we? Or are they inter-dimensional beings? It does seem somewhat telling that many of these 'fact-knowers' come forward late in life. I'd like to sit down with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and Dr. Mitchell. Oh the stories he could tell.
That would be a good evening! I agree that to believe we're the only (intelligent) life takes more faith than believing we're not. I doubt very much if we're even the only life in our solar system (although I bet the rest are still in the "pond scum" stage we spent the first 2 billion years in). However, alien life visiting earth... unless they have faster-than-light travel I just can't see it... the distances are too vast, the journey too long, all for a crap shoot that there might something worth talking to when you get there? We'e only been broadcasting our presence for a hundred years or so. Are there any stars within a hundred light years that could support life?
Oh, this number crunch! I hope it is not a worldwide trend. One would have wanted to expect more Americans to be aware and to accept the solid evidence of climate change in 2008 than in 2007. Instead, it drops by 6 percentage points, notably among the Republicans. Perhaps politicians do play a key role in global warming. Had the public been over-exposed to or subjected to an overdose from the pessimistic alarmists, so much so that some are already getting fed up? Or are some people behaving more and more like an ostrich, pretending to be oblivious to what is actually happening and refusing to acknowledge the gradual (albeit slow but sure) rise in temperature? The danger lies in those not willing to accept the fact, for this may nullify whatever effort others are putting up to make the environment cleaner and greener. (Tan Boon Tee)