Nasa chief scientist: 'We’re close to finding alien' life

Nasa chief scientist: 'We’re close to finding alien life and making some announcements....but the world is not ready.'

Sarah Knapton

The Telegraph28 September 2019

Dr Jim Green, Chief Scientists at Nasa - © Max Alexander/UK Space Agency 2019; Please credit: Max Alexander/UK Space Agency

The world is not prepared for the discovery of life on another planet even though it may only be a couple of years away, Nasa’s Chief Scientist has warned.

Next summer, two rovers from Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA), will travel to Mars to drill horizontally into rocks and deep into the surface, in the hope of finding evidence of living organisms.

The missions are the best chance humanity has ever had of answering the question: ‘Are we alone in the universe?’

Dr Jim Green, who has been instrumental in both missions, told The Telegraph that there is a real possibility that one or both will be successful. Yet it would have far-reaching implications, and he believes Earth is not ready. 

“It will be revolutionary,” he said. “It’s like when Copernicus stated ‘no we go around the Sun’. Completely revolutionary. It will start a whole new line of thinking. I don’t think we’re prepared for the results. We’re not.

“I’ve been worried about that because I think we’re close to finding it, and making some announcements.

“What happens next is a whole new set of scientific questions. Is that life like us? How are we related? Can life can move from planet-to-planet or do we have a spark and just the right environment and that spark generates life - like us or not like us - based on the chemical environment that it is in?” 

The ExoMars rover during testing in the Spanish desert Credit: Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

Europe’s ExoMars rover, is scheduled to land on the Red Planet in March 2021. Dubbed ‘Rosalind’ in honour of the British chemist Rosalind Franklin, the rover will drill six-and-a half feet down into the ground to take samples. 

The Martian cores are then fed through an aperture on the rover into a mobile laboratory  where they are crushed up and examined for organic matter. Confirmation of life could come within just weeks or months of landing.

Likewise Nasa’s rover Mars2020 will drill into rock formations on the surface and then leave the samples in test-tubes which will later be collected and sent back to Earth for examination, the first time that material from Mars will ever have been brought back.

Crucially, scientists will be looking for the 300 minerals which can only be made by life. 

The rovers will be hunting near the site of an ancient Martian ocean, where life may have lived billions of years ago, when the Red Planet was ‘blue’ like Earth.

Jim Green/NASA Chief Scientist Credit: Max Alexander/UK Space Agency

“I’m excited about these missions because they have the opportunity to find life, they really do, and I want them to,” he added.

“We’ve never drilled that deep down. When environments get extreme life moves into the rocks. 

“When we first started the field of astrobiology in the 90s we started looking for extreme life.  We go down in mines two miles deep into the Earth and if they were weeping with water they were full of life. 

“We have gone in nuclear cesspools, places where you’d think nothing could survive, and they are full of life. And the bottom line is where there is water there is life. 

“In fact, because the crust has so much water in it, we now know that there is more life below our feet than on the surface of this Earth including life in the ocean.”

Dr Green, who has worked at Nasa for 38 years,  believes that as well as small organisms on other planets, there may be ‘weird life’ on Saturn’s moon Titan, and even civilisations in the non-so-distant reaches of the galaxy.

Jim Green/NASA Chief Scientist Credit: Max Alexander/UK Space Agency

Recent research has also found that areas in Solar Systems that scientists considered uninhabitable may have once held liquid water. 

Planets that are neither too hot or too cold for liquid water are said to be in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’, but this month computer modelling showed that Venus could have held water for billions of years, despite being so close to the Sun. The Moon is also now known to have a water cycle. 

“This concept of what a ‘Goldilocks Zone’ looks like has to be modified,” added Dr Green.

“Venus was a blue planet for a significant amount of time. 

“There is no reason to think that there isn’t civilisations elsewhere, because we are finding exoplanets all over the place.

“We now know from Kepler observations that there are more planets in the galaxy than there are stars.”

He added: “If we were going anywhere to look for life that is not like us we would go to Titan. 

“On Titan you substitute methane for the water, so you will have a different type of life, a new set of chemicals that would compose a new type of DNA. It really would be weird.”

The Nasa and Esa missions will take off in the same month as other Mars projects from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China.

“They’re all going at the same time, because it’s when the window opens,” said Dr Green. “It’s like rush hour to Mars, but that’s when the alignment of the planets is just right and we can get there as fast as possible, not chase Mars around the Sun.”

Nasa’s rover will enter the atmosphere at 4 miles per second, and to slow down, the lander must flip onto its side and travel vertically to pick up enough drag that it will not crash to the surface. The lander will then hover and place the rover gently onto the surface using a sky crane.

“We have a little wiggle room but it’s still like hitting a golf ball in New York and having it land a hole in one in LA,” he added.

“Nasa can do that. We do the impossible, and we do it everyday. So does ESA. Our space agencies do incredible stuff. They perform miracles all the time.”

1970, THE CHARENTE, FRANCE

1970, THE CHARENTE, FRANCE:

There are MANY reports that do not conform to the false Grey standard of ufology. The problem comes with the age of a report.
If someone reports an incident 25-30 years after it was alleged to have taken place we only have their owrd on the matter but if it conforms to Greys reports then some doubt arises.

If the reportee told other members of his/her family and/or kept some kind of written account that can be dated -a diary entry in which ink age can be tested- it helps.

Please note that I have tidied up this statement (from Ufologie.com) to make it more readable and I apologise for the translation quality.

1970, THE CHARENTE, FRANCE:
Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

On May 27th, 2007, a gentlemen sent the following story to me by email:

"I was 20 (then), I am 57 (today). My testimony is thus 37 years old and during all these years I was haunted by what I saw that day.

I was heading home at about 1 a.m. (I live in the country in the Charente) there is a field opposite my house and in this field I saw a landed half sphere which could be clearly distinguished in the darkness.

"I did not pay any attention and I park my car a few meters further on. The orange dome is still in the field on the other side of the road. I opened the gate to get to my home and I then closed it behind me.  I was about to cross the yard that separates me from the house (I was in the dark and I found my way by habit) and it was then that i heard footsteps on the gravel in front of me -they (seem to) run away on all sides but I saw nothing. I was very frightened. I rushed into the barn to switch on the outside light .

"In the yard (I saw) nothing but behind the gate I had closed I could distinguish human shapes(of kids) that looked at me. I felt that something was wrong and my fear increased.

"I went to the house to get a rifle and then I went back to the fence then on to the road. The view between myself and the half sphere was clear  and I saw two little beings come toward me. They stopped at approximately three meters from me. They seemed to talk to me but my fear was such that I raised my rifle. They then turned back and went away slowly.

"I went to wake up my parents but on looking they found nothing. All (entities) had disappeared. The sphere too.

"A brief article in the local newspaper reported a ufo was sighted above Angouleme that night. (The witness believes that) it landed in front of me and that changed my vision of the world"
Witness email, non anonymous, anonymity preserved, to this website (Patrick Gross, Ufologie), on May 27, 2007.

There are problems. The witness assumes that what he saw was the "UFO" sighted over Angouleme -but based on standard reporting that might have been a meteorite or anything else!

No one else witnessed the entities or object. A debunker would simply say "hoax".  However, we are unaware of the psychological state of the witness at the time -was he tired, exhausted or under stress somehow? Almost 50  years after the event, even if spoken to today, make that impossible to know.

The use of a rifle is slightly worrying. That the entities moved away on it being pointed at them could mean that they had encountered weapons in human hands before. Or, if this were an "altered state" event then to his mind the rifle did what it was supposed to -scare off intruders.

The "invisible runners" could indicate an altered state as described by "Ruth Syndrome" (detailed in UFO Contact?). One might wonder why an hemispherical object in the field had not caused alarm rather than not much interest? It is possible that the witness just gave it a casual glance and thought it might be something moved into the field by someone since aliens did not appear to be something he was thinking about. OR it might be the point at which he began to enter an altered state -a waking dream, which are quite vivid and very real to those experiencing them.

But if this was all in his head why a UFO and aliens -today you might expect it as the subject is everywhere from Japan to China to India and so on via the internet, TV and so on. 1970 was not a huge year for press coverage of UFOs -the witness mentions a brief news item AFTER his sighting.

No wish for publicity.  A joke? We just cannot tell which is why we really need to investigate -as thoroughly as we can- any and all reports that we find.

We have probably already lost so much information.

Encounter at Torva

 Although I have been gathering, reading and studying Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3K) and entity cases for over four decades I still find surprises.

John Hanson's Haunted Skies series has turned up a few surprises and mainly because he has either spoken to witnesses and got facts directly from them (correcting what ufologists had written 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand) or they have spoken only to him about their encounter.

One such report came from a Mary Sinton. Details are as follows from the AOP B  Entry:

UK     June 1980   Torva, Cumbria
John Hanson  Haunted Skies vol. 8  p. 103

Mary Sinton, owner of a B&B Farm, told Hanson about an encounter while on a camping holiday:

“I was with my boyfriend, Paul, at the time, and returning back to the campsite in our Hillman Imp car, along the A593, Ambleside to Coniston Road (Grid ref: Long 323, Lat 999/8, No. 7 English Lakes, SE area)  As we turned a bend in the road, close to the campsite, I was astonished to see  nine tall ‘figures’. Stood in a group of trees near the side of the road, caught in the glare of the spotlights fitted to the Hillman Imp I was travelling in.

“I estimated they were at least 7ft tall and identically dressed, wearing silver-white coloured helmets and body armour, carrying what looked like a rod, carried vertically in front of each of them –reminding me of a regiment of soldiers, stood to attention on the parade ground.

“As we drove past, I left it for a few seconds and then shouted out, in great excitement, ‘Did you see them, Paul?’  One look at his face confirmed he had, although, oddly, he had only seen one ‘figure’.  When we arrived at the campsite, we felt very nervous and had trouble sleeping, wondering if anything else was going to happen.

“The next morning, we discussed what had happened and wondered whether we should let the police know but, on reflection, thought they would never believe us”.

Hanson spoke to Paul who confirmed the events given by Sinton. He told Hanson:

“It was the most unusual thing I have ever seen in my life.  It defies explanation”.

Note that no UFO was sighted nor is there any suggestion that Mary or Paul thought "Aliens!" It is interesting that the behaviour of the duo after the sighting is not unusual in that neither could relax after what they had seen and were in fear of something else happening. I have heard the same thing from people who have observed "UFOs" close to -they are naturally nervous that something might happen as they may have seen something they were not supposed to.

Note also that the sighting was in 1980 and there had been similarly reported tall entities in silver outfits that went unpublicised.

There is no suggestion that these were 'ghosts' -I can't think of any reports of 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall ghosts.  There is also the question of why Mary saw several yet Paul saw only one figure.  It is possible that he only glimpsed one and that was enough -again, this is something noted in other shock situations -a person might just focus on one and state he/she saw one person in a criminal robbery yet 2-3 others report up to four gang members.

There is no indication of a time lapse as I called these reports before the term "missing time" became popular.

So what can we infer from this report?  One person we could explain using any number of things. It is impossible to say Mary hallucinated and said nothing but that her hallucination caused Paul to hallucinate. Oh -owls? Not likely -not even luminous ones!

This is a perfect example of a one off sighting -of something "that happened and then you get on with your life":even if the memory sticks with you.

A pity there was no witness drawing of what was seen.

Haunted Skies is a highly recommended series well worth investing in

"So what would you do if you encountered a landed UFO?"

I remember that at school my class was asked a question and that was "What would you say if you saw a ghost?" Really that should have been phrased as "What would you say to a ghost if you met one?" since that was what was being asked.

It was a topic used to excite the imagination and make you think.  Would you be allowed to use this topic in a modern school setting?  No idea.

I suppose that it depends on whether you believe that the spirits of dead people can appear after death.  I for one do not. I would like to but as my late mother kept saying "What you want and what you get are two different things!"

There is a chapter in my book, Some Things Strange and Sinister titled de occultis non judicat ecclesia which translates from Latin as the Church has not yet decided on the matter of ghosts -though "Non tamen in ecclesia constituit super manes" says the same thing really. Well, if after 2000 years the organised churches with histories of ghosts of bishops and others cannot decide who can?

The organisation of investigation into the paranormal that began during the Victorian era soon showed why things are a mess.  Anyone coming up with results was called a fool or charlatan.  "A" had his followers and "B" had theirs and if you didn't belong to either...you had a problem.

Today "ghost hunting" is fake entertainment, definitely a LOT of charlatans and cosplaying. There has not been one iota of solid evidence --garbled noises on a digital recorder are just that.  There is no recorded message along the lines of "My name is Bert Higgins and I lived at 142 Adalia Rd and King George was on the throne".

The obvious, logical quezstion is that if we are not getting any real evidence of "spirits of the dead" then WHAT are we dealing with? Psychology can answer some of this question but there are cases where any right minded investigator-researcher  should have realised they need to look into other areas.

Of course, apart from in entertainment and cosplay fantasy no one ever gets to stand around and talk to a 'ghost'. Certainly ask their name and if they lived where they are encountered and how they died but these things are so fleeting. But we are not hear to talk ghosts -my mother always said that she had no problem living next to the Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol "I'm not worried about ghosts -they won't hurt you.  Its living people you have to watch out for!"

And throughout my life I have to say that I have seen poltergeist type phenomena. I have seen, quite clearly, odd figures -others had encountered but not told me about! Again, I do not believe this the activity of the dead.  Apart from one particular location where I saw nothing but got hit by a wave of fear -even then I looked around and walked back up the steps quickly -even if I was walking backward. I said "That's a weird stairway" and was then told that the lady of the house would not go down there alone and even her  husband had felt the fear (though he never called it that as he was being all manly). I was not even investigating on this occasion but visiting someone.

The main thing is that you must not panic. Grit your teeth and move away from a situation but screaming and running away -never.

When it comes to the field of UFOs I entered it as a bright eyed and bushy-tailed novice who had read all the books and  as I got more involved I realised that, yes, authors did spin yarns (lie) and sensationalise. I found that the much mentioned "high scientific standard of UFO research" did not exist. Petty arguments, name calling and even ufologists outrightly hoaxing other ufologists was quite common.

On the practical side I have observed, in good conditions -and quite clear- light phenomena on about 6 occasions between 1977-1985 and one three occasions at close quarters. I watched the times of the observations and closely observed what I was seeing. Only afterwards did I make notes. Someone pointed out that it was different now as with mobile (cell) phones you can take footage. I pointed out that I do not carry a phone with me!

What I realised -after intense research- by 1980 was that, excluding ball lightning and pizoelectric phenomena, there was a data base showing another phenomenon that I termed UNP -Uninvestigated (by Science) Natural Phenomenon. I also realised from my personal observations that these phenomena contained a large amount of energy which could, potentially, be dangerous at close quarter and might leave behind enough energy (let's call it that) at a "landing site" that exposure could have harmful effects -I think I am a prime example of going into these areas too often (but more of that another time).

However much I would like to see some evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth in the shape of a solid, constructed object (UFOB) I never have.

When I first began recording any and every reported encounter back in 1974 I had what I call "The Common Encounter Dream" or CED. In this I found myself in an isolated location out in the countryside -a small brick building with a window.  Out of this window I saw a landed flying saucer and moving about where a number entities and I realised that they were getting closer.  The dream ended. Obviously, psychologically, if you are reading and processing a huge number of reports then  sooner or later it will burst into your dreams.

In 1977 another person offered to help in the work -that would have made two of us in the UK!- and so he also began processing the reports. One evening this person looked at me and said@ "I had the weirdest dream about this stuff last night!" I asked him about it and he was basically describing my own dream. I found other people reading the material had similar.

Today, of course after Hopkins and Jacobs, someone will shout "suppressed abduction experience!" No. Not many people talk about this because it is seen as mundane and is common and you will hear people mention it. I knew someone who used to work at the old Fry's chocolate factory in Bristol:all day long watching and sorting chocolates and quality checking them. He told me: "For a week I just had this dream of endless sweets and chocolates going past on a conveyer belt -I was told everyone gets that when they first start". 

I once work for Frost and Reed Print makers in Bristol and the routine was to roll a print, package it and then box it. After I first started doing this work I had the dream of endlessly rolling prints, packaging them and then boxing them. The fellow who started at the same time as me related the same dream.  There are many such examples so why not the CED?

In UFO Contact? I noted cases in which people calling themselves UFO 'investigators' ran when an object landed in a nearby area.  I have heard this kind of thing over and over again.  When myself and late colleague Franklyn Davin-Wilson ran up to the copse at Cradle Hill where a moving light was seen some 30 or so sky watchers screamed at us to come back. WHY were they there sky-watching for the "space brothers" and then panicking at what the "space brothers" might do?

Charlatans out to make money from turning the subject into a jokey entertainment I do not expect to do anything seriously. I have seen LITS (Lights In The Sky) reports take up ufologists time -sometimes weeks. All over a small, moving light in the sky seen at a great distance. But multiple witness CE3K (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) relegated to the "gather dust" files.  Ufologists dismissing CE3K reports is odd because the question is then -who is piloting these "craft" they claim people see?

"Truth seekers" seems to onl;y go so far as press and media attention but not in real life.

There is a question I always think about and that is what if the entities encountered are non biological -androids or whatever used for the task involved? A number of cases involving 'robots' that I looked into were imaginary in one form or another which was a little disappointing. Ufologists have often attempted to explain away unusual actions by entities in certain cases as possibly indicating "robots" of some kind.

The major problem is, of course, that no one has actually met or studied an extraterrestrial at first hand so we have to go by what a witness/percipient reports and that is tainted by their own mindset or beliefs. Extraterrestrials may not have the same interpersonal reactions as humans do -they would be from a totally alien civilisation after all. "They behave  very coldly" and "They seemed indifferent" are phrases you will often hear. The other thing you will hear often is that there was a voice stating "You will not be harmed". In the latter instance this seems to be trying to let a percipient know that there is no intention of doing any permanent harm and calming them.

I was once asked what I would do if I was in a car on a lonely country road and a UFO landed yards in front of me?  Firstly, I would be surprised since I do not own a car nor do I drive! But joking aside it has to be defined what this "UFO" is? If it is UNP then I would stay in the said car until it moved off -collisions with this phenomenon are recorded and can result in some vehicle or personal injury. If I see ball lightning float past me am I going to grab it?  No.

If we see the supposed "UFO" as looking for all the world(s) like a constructed craft then things change.  No one can really say how they would react in a given situation but after 40 plus years opf thinking about this I decided long ago what I would do -presuming that I was not paralysed by some strange force.

I would get out of the car and move slowly toward the said "UFO". In past cases entities are reported to have 'fired' beams of light in front of witnesses as if to warn them to keep a safe distance.  In other cases witnesses have been waved back. My assumption would be that either this was an unplanned landing and I had been in the wrong place at the right time or that this was a deliberate landing with the intention of intercepting a human. Me.

You have to see this as being similar to encountering a landed helicopter or other aircraft.  It is a means of travel even if it is "not from here". If you approached a landed helicopter then you have no idea what the crew will do or be thinking.  You have to assume the crew will be friendly.  Likewise with any landed UFOB you would have to assume that they are not hostile but, perhaps, carrying scientific work or surveys and do not really want any form of long term contact with humans -which is understandable.

Over the decades I have known people who have lost half their face during war, others who had plastic facial prosthetics after accidents and even badly scarred. So the idea of meeting someone/thing that does not look "normal" is not a problem. I never screamed or ran away from those people with facial scarring or prosthetics so why run away at a point where my work and research can finally be completed?

It has to be realised that we are talking hypothetically here and that from the point of my voluntarily exiting a car to being allowed to approach a landed object is just that.  What happens after is Unknown. The ideal situation would be to attempt to converse with any entity(ies) and learn what I could and observe.  It would be a very strange version of being approached by foreign tourists who speak little English but need information -and you usually find out more about them (again, I have had this experience more than a few times).

I know what I would like to do -rather like I know what I would ask a 'ghost' in a conversation- but exiting the car and walking toward the object might be all I could guarantee. Looking at past encounters when percipients have seen a landed object and entituies they have approached them -as I noted in UFO Contact?

Ufology has been misled by decades of myth taken as scientific fact.  No flying saucer crashed at Aurora, Texas in the 1800s. No craft crashed at Roswell, New Mexico.  There are not hundreds of ET space craft as well as ETs in official custody around the world.  There is no mass kidnapping of humans in their millions by little Greys...or reptilians..or whichever Jacobs has come up with now.

We need to study the reports of the past 60 years and where  ever possible speak to witnesses/percipients because of the inadequacies of ufology and learn what we can.

Will I ever get the opportunity to come across a landed craft from beyond Earth?  Sadly, I doubt it. However, I hope that if I ever did I would follow the plan!