Worlds Beyond Our Own: We May Not Be Alone!

Have you ever wondered if there are other worlds and intelligent life beyond our own on earth? Well, NASA may have just uncovered the answer.

Technology
On Monday, NASA shocked the world by announcing that it has discovered 5,000 new and confirmed planets beyond our solar system. Yes, you read correctly — 5,000 new and never discovered worlds CONFIRMED. With that many planets floating around in space (and likely thousands upon thousands more that we can’t see and have yet to locate), it’s hard to imagine that humans are the lone form of life in existence among so many worlds.

“It’s not just a number,” said Jessie Christiansen, a research scientist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Each one of them is a new world, a brand-new planet. I get excited about every one because we don’t know anything about them.”

This new discovery of thousands of exoplanets is a critical moment in history. Science fiction once predicted it, but it became a reality in the 1990s and continues to this day.

These newly discovered worlds are unlike anything ever found in our solar system. They include rocky worlds larger than Earth called super-Earths, mini-Neptunes bigger than Earth (but smaller than Neptune), as well as scorching hot Jupiters that dwarf our solar system’s largest planet and closely orbit their host stars.

Out of the confirmed new worlds, 30% are gas giants, 31% are super-Earths, and 35% are Neptune-like. However, 4% are terrestrial, or rocky planets similar to Earth or Mars.

Or, in other words, 4% of the 5,000 new worlds are somewhat similar to Earth. If this is accurate, then 200 planets out there hold the possibility of the existence of life.

“The composition of a rocky planet around α Centauri A/B, both on its surface and in its interior, would not be grossly different from that of the Earth. Therefore, the primary ingredients that rendered the emergence of life possible on the Earth may be rather more common on exoplanets than first thought.”

– Paolo Sossi, Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Fellow

So, if there is life outside of earth within the universe, why haven’t they contacted us, you ask?

Well, the succinct answer is: maybe they already have. However, the more complicated answer is: why would they?

Russian physicist Alexander Berezin from the National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET) has an interesting theory. According to him, if life on other planets is indeed intelligent and extremely advanced, they’d have about as much interest in contacting us as we’d have in contacting an ant farm.

“They simply won’t notice [us], the same way a construction crew demolishes an anthill to build real estate because they lack incentive to protect it.”

Think about those words for a moment.

When a human crew constructs a new building, they never stop to check if there are ants, bugs, or other “life” living on their construction site. Those forms of life are so irrelevant, a human crew would simply bulldoze over an unimportant “bug” colony and move forward with their job without blinking an eye.

Interestingly, that’s probably how advanced forms of life think of us.

And if all that wasn’t enough to blow your mind, here’s more info you may want to sit down to hear.

Scientists say they now believe a black hole might hold an exact replica or “mirror image” of our own universe that runs backward in time. Or, in other words, we may also exist in some anti-universe that operates in reverse.

Can you handle it??

OK WASSUP! discusses Science and Technology:
NASA says 5,000 new worlds have been discovered.