Extra terrestrialsWhite House: no evidence of, contact with extra terrestrials
Published 8 November 2011 Two petitions, signed by 17,000, were submitted to the White house; the first demanded immediate disclosure of the U.S. government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings, the second a formal acknowledgement from the White House that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race; in response, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy wrote that the U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race
White House acknowledges no contact with extraterrestrials // Source: the-missing-piece.com
Two alien-related petitions were submitted to the White House: the first one, signed by 5,387 people, demanded that the White House immediately disclose the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings; the second, signed by 12,078, requested a formal acknowledgement from the White House that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race.
Phil Larson, who works on space policy and communications at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, wrote the White House response to the two petitions. The response was posted on the White House Web site. Here is a summary:
The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race, Larson writes. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.
This does not mean, however, that “the subject of life outside our planet isn’t being discussed or explored,” Larson notes. “In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth.” Here are a few examples:
— SETI — the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence — was originally stood up with help from NASA, but has since been moved to other sources of private funding. SETI’s main purpose is to act as a giant ear on behalf of the human race, pointing an array of ground-based telescopes towards space to listen for any signal from another world.
— Kepler is a NASA spacecraft in orbit, the main goal of which is to search for Earth-like planets. Such a planet would be located in the “Goldilocks” zone of a distant solar system — not too hot and not too cold — and could potentially be habitable by life as we know it. The Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-sized, rocky planets in or near the habitable zone of the star (sun) they orbit.
— The Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, is an automobile-sized rover that NASA is launching soon. The rover’s onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and other geology in an effort to detect the chemical building blocks of life (for example, forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the Martian environment was like in the past to see if it could have harbored life.
Finally, Larson notes that many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life.
“Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them — especially any intelligent ones — are extremely small, given the distances involved,” Larson concludes. “But that’s all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.”
The Paradigm Research Group, the organizer of one of the petition, was quick to respond to the White House response: “As expected it was written by a low level staffer from the Office of Science and Technology Policy — research assistant Phil Larson.. The response was unacceptable.”
