Post by auntym on Jul 26, 2014 15:15:09 GMT -6
www.timesherald.com/opinion/20140721/leodora-finally-confirmed-we-are-not-alone
Finally confirmed -- we are not alone
By Tony Leodora, The Times Herald
Posted: 07/25/14
FINALLY the truth is coming out.
Finally we are confirming what Orson Welles cried into the radio microphone in 1938, during his War of the Worlds broadcast.
Finally we can appreciate the terror displayed in the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
Finally we can relate to the tall tale from the Stephen Spielberg movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Finally we are understanding what the family in the 1982 movie “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” experienced.
But it took until 2014 for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to admit it.
We are not alone.
Speaking at NASA’s Washington headquarters last Monday, the space agency outlined a plan to search for alien life using current mega-telescope technology. This effort has been launched after a prediction by NASA that 100 million worlds in our own Milky Way galaxy may host alien life.
“Just imagine the moment, when we find potential signatures of life. Imagine the moment when the world wakes up and the human race realizes that its long loneliness in time and space may be over – the possibility we’re no longer alone in the universe,” said Matt Mountain, director and Webb telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
I DON’T KNOW about a feeling of loneliness … but I’m not startled by the prospect of other forms of life way out there in the universe.
We grew up in a family where space travel, the effects of weightlessness, the apogee and perigee of an orbit and the order of the planets revolving around the sun was everyday dinner conversation. Coffee cups became Saturn and Jupiter. Salt and pepper shakers became Mars and Venus.
We learned about “black holes” and asteroids … sun spots and lunar expeditions.
My father was an engineer for General Electric. He worked on the Mercury and Apollo space projects from beginning to end. He met astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn.
But I met Gordo, the monkey that rode in one of the first rocket ships to enter outer space. We called them rocket ships in those days … just as Flash Gordon did in the 1930’s comic strip and movies.
It was an exciting time in American history. And it fueled the imagination of people who liked to tell fictional stories about Martians and aliens and UFOs. Remember the ’60s television show “My Favorite Martian?”
EXCITING FOR SOME … terrifying for others.
CONTINUE READING: www.timesherald.com/opinion/20140721/leodora-finally-confirmed-we-are-not-alone
Finally confirmed -- we are not alone
By Tony Leodora, The Times Herald
Posted: 07/25/14
FINALLY the truth is coming out.
Finally we are confirming what Orson Welles cried into the radio microphone in 1938, during his War of the Worlds broadcast.
Finally we can appreciate the terror displayed in the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
Finally we can relate to the tall tale from the Stephen Spielberg movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Finally we are understanding what the family in the 1982 movie “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” experienced.
But it took until 2014 for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to admit it.
We are not alone.
Speaking at NASA’s Washington headquarters last Monday, the space agency outlined a plan to search for alien life using current mega-telescope technology. This effort has been launched after a prediction by NASA that 100 million worlds in our own Milky Way galaxy may host alien life.
“Just imagine the moment, when we find potential signatures of life. Imagine the moment when the world wakes up and the human race realizes that its long loneliness in time and space may be over – the possibility we’re no longer alone in the universe,” said Matt Mountain, director and Webb telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
I DON’T KNOW about a feeling of loneliness … but I’m not startled by the prospect of other forms of life way out there in the universe.
We grew up in a family where space travel, the effects of weightlessness, the apogee and perigee of an orbit and the order of the planets revolving around the sun was everyday dinner conversation. Coffee cups became Saturn and Jupiter. Salt and pepper shakers became Mars and Venus.
We learned about “black holes” and asteroids … sun spots and lunar expeditions.
My father was an engineer for General Electric. He worked on the Mercury and Apollo space projects from beginning to end. He met astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn.
But I met Gordo, the monkey that rode in one of the first rocket ships to enter outer space. We called them rocket ships in those days … just as Flash Gordon did in the 1930’s comic strip and movies.
It was an exciting time in American history. And it fueled the imagination of people who liked to tell fictional stories about Martians and aliens and UFOs. Remember the ’60s television show “My Favorite Martian?”
EXCITING FOR SOME … terrifying for others.
CONTINUE READING: www.timesherald.com/opinion/20140721/leodora-finally-confirmed-we-are-not-alone