Will the Aliens Be Nice? Don’t Bet On It

Many people look forward to the day that earth first contacts intelligent extraterrestrial life. A recent study by Penn State and NASA suggests that we should be careful what we wish for.

The probability that there is intelligent life somewhere other than earth increases as we discover more and more solar systems that seem capable of sustaining life. The thought that there might be extraterrestrial intelligences (ETI) somewhere out there excites us and has led to organized efforts to contact any such beings. We have sent space probes with data about us, and we transmit signals with a structured content (like symbols expressing mathematical formulae) to what we hope will be an intergalactic audience. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence project (SETI) is obviously based on the assumption that the possible benefits of contact with ETI outweigh the possible harms. But do they?

A recent study by researchers at Penn State and NASA provides a useful outline of the various ways that encounters with ETI could be beneficial, neutral or harmful to us. The study faces up to the most chilling possibilities: ETI might “eat us, enslave us, attack us,” inadvertently infect us with horrible diseases or just decide to eliminate us for the greater good of the universe. (Regarding this last point, the report is especially concerned that ETI might be at least metaphorically green and see us a threat to the universe’s ecology.) Read more

The Search for Intelligent Alien Life... on Earth

Apparently, not all scientists nowadays are close-minded paper pushers. Astrophysicist Paul Davies of Arizona State thinks we may be able to discover intelligent alien life by scouring the earth for signs of extraterrestrial visitation. Has he been reading Erich von Däniken in his spare time?

If smart aliens exist, they may have visited Earth millions of years ago – and left signs of their technological prowess that should be cheap and easy for us to detect.

So says astrophysicist Paul Davies of Arizona State University in Tempe. Traditionally, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has focused on listening for deliberate dispatches in radio signals. But in 50 years of searching, this costly approach has drawn a blank.

So Davies suggests scouring our own planet, even our cells, on the off-chance that aliens visited and did what amounts to scrawling "We were here" on the walls. "We can answer the question 'Are we alone?' without picking up messages," he says. "We may see indirect evidence of alien technology based on the footprint it leaves." Read more

Searching for Strange Cauldrons in the Valley of Death

Ivan Mackerle describes his search for the strange "cauldrons" said to have been left by alien visitors - or ancient demons - in the Siberian taiga.

The Siberian taiga is a vast stretch of mainly barren coniferous forest as unspoiled and unexplored as the Amazon jungle, and more than 100,000 sq km in western Yakutia are completely uninhabited. Devoid of any sort of trails, the terrain is mostly thick forest, full of uprooted trees, sprawling swamps and swarms of mosquitoes. In short, it's an ancient wildwood - an ideal setting for myths and legends about strange creatures and anomalous zones where bizarre things happen. Even the local wild man - Chuchuna - is far from exceptional here, and the most fascinating mystery of all is a strange legend about a terrible 'Valley of Death' filled with unnatural, dome-shaped structures.

Local traditions record that lone hunters from the nomadic Evenks and other Yakutians who wander into these weird valleys - there could be more than one - have described odd hemispherical 'iron houses' (kheldyu) that proturude from the perpetually frozen ground. These smooth, reddish formations often have an opening at the top, with a winding stairwell leading down to a circular gallery with numerous 'metal' rooms. Read more

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