Thursday, February 12, 2009

NASA AND THE VATICAN TO GO HEAD TO HEAD AT AMES RESEARCH OVER THE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE EXISTING ELSEWHERE

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Pope's senior scientist to visit Nasa and talk aliens. The chat is happening under the florid banner of Are We Alone? The Dance of the Fertile Universe.

The discussion is actually likely to be rather convivial when Lynn Rothschild, astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, debates the topic with the Vatican Observatory's director emeritus George Coyne at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco next week.

The Church's interest in the stars dates back to well before Galileo's time. Five hundred years ago, papal astronomers in charge of fixing Easter's date noticed that the Julian calendar was getting out of sync with the stars, and in 1582 they replaced it with the Gregorian. In 1891, long after the Church had accepted the heliocentric universe, Pope Leo XIII officially founded the Observatory so that "everyone might see clearly that the Church and her Pastors are not opposed to true and solid science."

Today, the Vatican Observatory Research Group boasts 13 professional astronomers and cosmologists, all of them Jesuits. The group specializes in fields like galaxy formation and, to quote from their latest annual report, "the dynamics of inflationary universes with positive spatial curvature."

With a title like astrobiologist, one has to assume that Rothschild is at least open to the idea of life on other planets. The agency has been in on the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life since the 1960s. More prosaicly Nasa's missions as a rule keep a look out for life - or at least the building blocks of life - while tearing around the solar system.

The Catholic Church, perhaps surprisingly, is also somewhat open to the idea of life on other planets, with the current head of the Vatican observatory, José Gabriel Funes, conceding the possibility of extra-terrestrial life just last May.
Biography for Lynn Rothschild

He told the Holy See's in-house rag: "It is possible, even if until now, we have no proof. But certainly in such a big universe this hypothesis cannot be excluded."

Of course, the Church's interest in aliens is as much about their relationship with God and sin. It may be that they are in full communion with the creator - having never nibbled any solar forbidden fruit.

Alternatively - and perhaps much more likely - they could be sinners, and therefore in need of redemption through the ministrations of the Church. Just like us, in fact. Assuming of course they don't all come and eat us first.

Whether the conversation will stray into the likelihood of ET needing redemption is not guaranteed, and it's probably a fair bet neither party will endorse the idea that humans picked up the building blocks of technology from visiting aliens, who will stage a second coming at some point. Which is a pity.

The lecture itself will take place at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley on February 19, at 6.30pm. Tickets will cost $10 for Commonwealth Club members and $15 for non-members.



Source: The Register - UK
Source: Wired Science

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VIDEO: UFO FOOTAGE OVER INDONESIA - FEB 2009

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VIDEO: UFO FOOTAGE OVER ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA - 1997 CLASSIC

Strange light formation hovering over St. Petersburg and seen by multiple witnesses, some of which were air traffic controllers from a nearby airport.
The objects hovered over the city for about 20 minutes.


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VIDEO: UFO FOOTAGE OVER TAUNTON, UK - FEB 10, 2009

Fiona Ferguson from Bishops Lydeard said she saw a UFO while driving home from Glastonbury with her son last week. We watched it as it continued to fly over Taunton towards the Wellington area and beyond. As we got back into the car I noticed another UFO in the sky. This time it was there for about three minutes then, as if someone switched its lights off, it was gone. Also, Jane Merchant from Taunton said she was relieved after reading other people's reports of a UFO sighting and claims she saw a similar flickering light moving briskly and quietly across the sky.



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VIDEO: UFO FOOTAGE OVER RIO BRANCO, BRAZIL

Babelfish Translation: The video of the identified flying object presented by the TV Gazette of the Acre does not start to be a very significant evidence of phenomenon OVNI, and this if must for the happiness of the camera Jailson Fernandez make a filming with the moon serving of control point for the presented phenomenon. It does not have the lesser possibility of the object to be a satellite because these if move straight-line. The time of permanence of a satellite in the sky does not pass of five the eight minutes, and the object in question was in the sky for more than two hours. Satellites also do not radiate red and blue lights. The film presented for the Alert Gazette does not have no indication of fraud, therefore the object in question is not a star, is not an airplane, is not a satellite, is not a balloon, is not one astro, therefore until if it clarifies this mystery, the CUB classifies the object as a real OVNI. One is about as better register in film of a OVNI in Brazil, the first one was made by the Mickson in São Paulo in 1986. The happiness of the camera Jailson Fernandez was enormous and of great value for the ufologia, therefore this not only obtained to catch the moon as control point, as well as a star.


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