Engineering Aliens

[Alien Agenda]

Engineering Aliens

 
for Astrobiology Magazine
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Nov 15, 2005



What would you call an alien if you encountered it on the street tomorrow? What if that alien didn't come from another world but rather was created in a laboratory right here on Earth and functioned differently from other Earth life?
Either way, Peter Ward has the beginnings of an answer. In a new book, the University of Washington paleontologist puts forth an expanded "tree of life," or biological classification system, to account for a variety of life forms that would not fit in the current system.

Among them are viruses, long considered to be non-living bits of protein and nucleic acid but which Ward argues are as alive as the many parasites that infect humans and other organisms. The revamped classification system also would include life based on RNA instead of DNA, and life found away from Earth that likely would be based on silicon or elements other than the carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen mixture that is the backbone of life on Earth.

"To get to DNA life you had to go through non-DNA life, which we no longer have," Ward said. "But just because a type of life goes extinct doesn't mean you don't classify it. Otherwise you wouldn't have dinosaurs on the tree of life. And until now there hasn't been any place to put RNA life."

In the current popular classification system the highest levels are three domains - bacteria, archaea and eukarya, the last of which includes all animals. Ward's plan places those three domains within a larger dominion, which he calls "terroan" to signify Earth origins. Another dominion he calls "ribosa" because it is based on ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Other dominions could be formed to cover life discovered to have a different base than DNA or RNA.

The dominions would be placed within broader classifications called "arborea," which contain life that does not mix with that of other arborea. The Earth arborea would contain all life forms found on this planet and other arborea would contain life found away from Earth.

Ward presents his new model in a book called "Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life," published by Viking and being released Thursday.

The new system is already necessary, he said, because "alien" life has been created in laboratories on Earth. That includes microbes with at least one amino acid beyond the 20 in the DNA of native Earth life, or organisms that have been genetically modified, Ward said. It also includes some life forms that have been modified to be much simpler than what is normally found on Earth.

"We may never find other life away from Earth, but we have already made aliens on this planet and we will continue to do so at an increasing pace," he said. "In the last five years we've come to realize that we can make microbial life in a lot more ways than Mother Earth did."

Ward believes that if life is found away from Earth, at least some could be based on elements such as silicon, perhaps in combination with carbon. Because environments are far colder on moons and planets farther from the sun, he said, it is less likely that life on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, for instance, will use water as Earth life does. Instead, those organisms are more likely to use compounds such as ammonia that remain liquid at very low temperatures.

Ward is one of several faculty members in the UW's groundbreaking graduate program in astrobiology. The program, the first of its kind, started in 1998 with a grant from the National Science Foundation and has since been bolstered by funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Students work in a variety of areas, such as astronomy, microbiology and oceanography, to prepare themselves for the search for life away from Earth.

Ward also was a co-author, with UW astronomer Donald Brownlee, of a popular book called "Rare Earth," published in 2000. The book advanced the idea that simple microbial life might be very common in the universe but complex life is probably so rare and dispersed that Earth inhabitants might never encounter another intelligence.

Ward said his beliefs haven't changed from the basic "Rare Earth" premise, but it is becoming clearer that simple life found away from Earth could take forms not previously expected. That's already happening in Earthbound laboratories.

"I hope people will wake up and realize this is a whole new biology," Ward said. "There's going to be a zoo of aliens on Earth in the next two decades just from what we make."

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-05zzzzzzzy.html

[Alien Agenda]

New Book Expands Biological Classifications To Account For 'Alien' Life

 
Seattle WA (SPX) Nov 01, 2005



What would you call an alien if you encountered it on the street tomorrow? What if that alien didn't come from another world but rather was created in a laboratory right here on Earth and functioned differently from other Earth life?
Either way, Peter Ward has the beginnings of an answer. In a new book, the University of Washington paleontologist puts forth an expanded "tree of life," or biological classification system, to account for a variety of life forms that would not fit in the current system.

Among them are viruses, long considered to be non-living bits of protein and nucleic acid but which Ward argues are as alive as the many parasites that infect humans and other organisms. The revamped classification system also would include life based on RNA instead of DNA, and life found away from Earth that likely would be based on silicon or elements other than the carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen mixture that is the backbone of life on Earth.

"To get to DNA life you had to go through non-DNA life, which we no longer have," Ward said. "But just because a type of life goes extinct doesn't mean you don't classify it. Otherwise you wouldn't have dinosaurs on the tree of life. And until now there hasn't been any place to put RNA life."

In the current popular classification system the highest levels are three domains – bacteria, archaea and eukarya, the last of which includes all animals. Ward's plan places those three domains within a larger dominion, which he calls "terroan" to signify Earth origins.

Another dominion he calls "ribosa" because it is based on ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Other dominions could be formed to cover life discovered to have a different base than DNA or RNA.

The dominions would be placed within broader classifications called "arborea," which contain life that does not mix with that of other arborea. The Earth arborea would contain all life forms found on this planet and other arborea would contain life found away from Earth.

Ward presents his new model in a book called "Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life," published by Viking and being released Thursday.

The new system is already necessary, he said, because "alien" life has been created in laboratories on Earth. That includes microbes with at least one amino acid beyond the 20 in the DNA of native Earth life, or organisms that have been genetically modified, Ward said. It also includes some life forms that have been modified to be much simpler than what is normally found on Earth.

"We may never find other life away from Earth, but we have already made aliens on this planet and we will continue to do so at an increasing pace," he said. "In the last five years we've come to realize that we can make microbial life in a lot more ways than Mother Earth did."

Ward believes that if life is found away from Earth, at least some could be based on elements such as silicon, perhaps in combination with carbon. Because environments are far colder on moons and planets farther from the sun, he said, it is less likely that life on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, for instance, will use water as Earth life does. Instead, those organisms are more likely to use compounds such as ammonia that remain liquid at very low temperatures.

Ward is one of several faculty members in the UW's groundbreaking graduate program in astrobiology. The program, the first of its kind, started in 1998 with a grant from the National Science Foundation and has since been bolstered by funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Students work in a variety of areas, such as astronomy, microbiology and oceanography, to prepare themselves for the search for life away from Earth.

Ward also was a co-author, with UW astronomer Donald Brownlee, of a popular book called "Rare Earth," published in 2000. The book advanced the idea that simple microbial life might be very common in the universe but complex life is probably so rare and dispersed that Earth inhabitants might never encounter another intelligence.

Ward said his beliefs haven't changed from the basic "Rare Earth" premise, but it is becoming clearer that simple life found away from Earth could take forms not previously expected. That's already happening in Earthbound laboratories.

"I hope people will wake up and realize this is a whole new biology," Ward said. "There's going to be a zoo of aliens on Earth in the next two decades just from what we make."

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-05zzzzzzzi.html

[Alien Agenda]

I have had a fascination with aliens for my entire life. And I have always assumed that sightings of u.f.o.'s, tales of abductions and treaties with the government are all tales of meetings with beings from other planets in the universe. I have also assumed that if a species did evolve on other worlds, and advanced for a long enough time that perhaps they had also learned to travel the vast gulfs seperating the stars in a short time. This has always seemed logical to me, even though there is not much conclusive evidence to support it. While video tapes of strange flying craft, sworn testimonies of ufo's by qualified observers and such are good evidence, they are not conclusive by themselves. While eyewitness testimony may get a person put in the electric chair, this type of evidence is often met with scorn by most people when the subject matter is little green men.
                                                            There are many reasons for this, the most prominent one being that the US and British governments have been in an active campaign to discredit, explain away at any cost and to ridicule persons that come forward with tales of alien visitations and flying saucers. The CIA has admitted to this after being caught in several embarrasing situations. One in particular case involved these two woman in the US who had taped some morse code on a ham radio, and mistaken it for alien communications. They dutifully reported the situation to the Air Force. So the next thing was a couple of Central Intelligence Agency agents show up disguised as Air Force officers.The women turned over the tape and the story might have ended there except that someone else was interested in this tape.
                                                  A ufo researcher showed up asking to see the tape. After much investigation, this researcher was able to show that the CIA had misrepresented themselves and had illegally destroyed the tape. (Please forgive me for not being more specific with the details of the case, I am to lazy right now to look up the facts, however if you want more information on this or any ufo case, please e-mail me @ Webmaster@subversiveelement.com and I will  happily give you any information I can find.) The short of it is, the CIA had to admit that there was a major disinformation campaign going on, and they had to give a reason why. They say that the reason is they were concerned about reports of ufo's using up resources and possibly interfering with a Soviet Union preemptive first strike. You can check this for yourself here http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/97unclass/ufo.html .
         1) I don't believe most of it.                                                                                    2) It reads like the list of ingredients on a box of dishwasher soap.
                                        Then there are cases like those of the Roswell crash conspiracy and a boatful of lesser known cases that are as equally intriguing. In my own personal opinion, the Roswell conspiracy is true, there was indeed a crash of an alien craft in the desert, and the story was covered up by the US military. There is a wealth of information on the Roswell crash on the web, so for now I am not going to go into it. But one very interesting fact pops up, a fact that seems to pop up in several sensational ufo cases. Every single document that the government had in their possestion regarding Roswell was illegally destroyed. It has also recently been disclosed that the British government did much the same with documentation surrounding the Bentwaters ufo sightings in England. The impression I get is that the governments are saying,"Nothing to see here, move along" while at the same time scrambling like rats on a burning ship trying to hide information.
                              I myself have seen ufo's, and while I am not a pilot, I feel I am a pretty good observer of atmospheric phenomenom. I have been an amateur astronomer since I was a child. I know what planets and stars look like, I have seen thousands of  meteors and have from time to time tracked and watched satellites flying over. And I can say with conviction that these were craft being intelligently powered. I am not going to say that they were absolutely alien craft because none of them have ever landed for me to meet the occupants. Then there are the videos. Believe me, I know a metallic flying saucer is not a temperature inversion reflecting an image of a car on the ground, an image that changes direction vertically and horizontally at high speeds and leaves "wakes" of atmospheric disturbances. So I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that some of those craft are "alien" powered and engineered vehicles, piloted by alien beings. I know there are people who will always have their doubts until a flying saucer lands on the lawn of the White House. All I can say to those people is " Dont keep your mind so open that your brain falls out, nor so closed that it has no room to grow."
                              So that leaves a couple of lines of questiong:


1) What are they doing here?
2) Where do they come from?




                       In the first question, there are as many possible answers as there are possibilities, in other words no one knows for sure. Some of the more popular theories include that they need genetic material from us to survive. Well, I dont really buy into that. I suppose it could be possible, but the way I consider the problem is this: Aliens behave the way they do, and act the way they do because (are you ready?) they are alien to us! Who knows what their motivations can be? They didnt evolve on the surface of this planet any time too recently at least, so who can say what drives their strange green brains? It is too easy to place human standards on them, and it also shows a weakness to do so. For example, the "They need our dna to survive theory". Isn't it a little arrogant for us to think they are dependent on humans? I mean, if they have the ability to travel here from the stars, wouldnt they have reasonably good health care?


                       But the  answer to this question cannot really be answered or to even make an accurate educated guess about unless we know the answer to the second question: Where do they come from? If they come from other star systems in the universe, I can feel safe that I have already partially answered that question. We cannot make any kind of assumption about them, they are alien. That also makes me wonder why alot of aliens seem to share so many characteristics as humans. Walk upright, two eyes, a head etc... Again, my opinion is that most alien life should really be, well.....alien. Maybe if theres enough life supporting planets out there, statistically there will be enough of them similiar to our own that life may follow roughly the same blueprint, and you will get aliens like that.
That is why I feel phenomenom like orbs, flying rods and the like are really the best candidates for intestellar travellers we have. Because they are so different from what we have been conditioned to expect, makes them in my opinion very possibly alien life forms on this world.


                           But as I said, to understand their motivations we must know where they come from. From what I can conceive there are three possibilities.


1) They come from outer space.
2) They come from another dimension.
3) They come from inside the Earth!
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