What if Mars Attacks?

Whenever a conversation flairs up with my friends about space, planets other than our own and the possibility intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy, I am always afraid that someone will over hear our conversation and think we are inner city equivalents of a stressed dairy farmer from Iowa who claims to have been abducted and experimented on by aliens. Just to be safe I tend to keep my voice down during such conversations.

However over recent years since the observation of the first planet orbiting a star other than our own (extrasolar planets

Hawking and his aliens

Earth is calling…or maybe not!? In a new Discovery Channel series, Stephen Hawking has answered the question that has plagued scientists for years. In his mind it is totally logical to assume that aliens are out there and that we should not invite them over here. The reason why there has to be extraterrestrial life is the sheer number of galaxies in the universe and the resulting huge number of planets in every single galaxy. Somewhere there has to be life. Hawking admits that this life can be in the form of microbes and small animals, but he is adamant that there can also be intelligent life and that these aliens can be very very dangerous for us Earthlings. They might be on the hunt for resources or space to live in and might be far advanced from us. For hundreds of years the idea of extraterrestrial life has challenged astronomers, because the sheer assumption leads to a whole plethora of philosophical relevant questions. First of all, would we not have to change the term “alien” and apply it exclusively to extraterrestrial life?