Lord "Reptilian" Royal astronomer: 'Aliens may be staring us in the face'

[oyashango]

LOL!
======

Royal astronomer: 'Aliens may be staring us in the face'

Aliens may be 'staring us in the face'
according to Lord Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society Lord Martin Rees, president

02-22-2010
Source: London Telegraph

Lord Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen, said the existence of extra terrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.

He made the remarks shortly after hosting the national science academy’s first conference on the possibility of alien life.

“They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognise them. The problem is that we’re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology,” he said.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Lord Rees used the conference in January, entitled The Detection of Extra-terrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society, to ask whether the discovery of aliens would cause terror or delight on earth.

He told Prospect magazine that improved telescopes made the chance of finding extra-terrestrial life “better than ever”.

But Dr Frank Drake, the world’s leading “ET hunter”, told the conference that satellite TV and the “digital revolution” was making humanity invisible to aliens by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space.

At present, the Earth is surrounded by a 50 light year-wide "shell" of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions. But although the signals have spread far enough to reach many nearby star systems, they are rapidly vanishing in the wake of digital technology, according to Dr Drake.

The scientist, who founded the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence organisation in the United States, said digital TV signals would look like noise to a race of observing aliens.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7289507/Royal-astronomer-Aliens-may-be-staring-us-in-the-face.html

[uwaf]

UUMMM, he looks very much like one.

[Tsul777]

So according to Drake, the aliens are incapable of picking up digital versus analog signals? Hmmmm....
Coming from the founder of SETI this seems just a little absurd.

[ekimdrachir]

Maybe we need to use scanners that see beyond normal light..

[Monkeypox]

He should know, obviously being an alien himself.

 

[ekimdrachir]

Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, PRS (born 23 June 1942 in York[1]) is an English cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995, and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge since 2004.

After holding post-doctoral research positions in England and the United States, he taught at Sussex University and the University of Cambridge, where he was the Plumian Professor until 1991, and the director of the Institute of Astronomy. From 1992 to 2003, he was Royal Society Research Professor, and from 2003 Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics. He was Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London, in 1975 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1979. He also holds Visiting Professorships at Imperial College London and at the University of Leicester. In 2008 he received an honorary doctorate from Yale University. He also received an honorary doctorate from McMaster University, in Hamilton Ontario, on June 9, 2009.[2] He is also a Member of Council of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Rees is the author of more than 500 research papers, and he has made important contributions to the origin of cosmic microwave background radiation, as well as to galaxy clustering and formation. His studies of the distribution of quasars proved to be a nail in the coffin of the Steady State theory. He was also one of the first to propose that enormous black holes power quasars. He is also a well-respected author of books on astronomy and science intended for the lay public.

On 22 July 2005, Rees was elevated to a life peerage, sitting as a crossbencher in the House of Lords. On 6 September, he was created Baron Rees of Ludlow, of Ludlow in the County of Shropshire.[3] In 2005, he was awarded the Crafoord Prize.[4] He became President of the Royal Society on 1 December 2005.[5] [6] He is an advocate of the memory of Joseph Rotblat.[7] He has taken to speaking about humanity's future on Earth.















Awards

    * Heineman Prize (1984)
    * Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1987)
    * Balzan Prize (1989) for High Energy Astrophysics
    * Knight Bachelor (1992)
    * Bruce Medal (1993)
    * Bruno Rossi Prize (2000)
    * Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2001)
    * Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society (2004)
    * Lifeboat Foundation's Guardian Award (2004)
    * Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for science communication (2004)
    * Life Peerage (2005)
    * Crafoord Prize, with James Gunn and James Peebles (2005)
    * Order of Merit-the personal gift of The Queen (2007)
    * Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum (2007)

Named after him

    * Asteroid 4587 Rees


  Sir Martin Rees: Earth in its final century?  watch!
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/42
ted.com — In a taut soliloquy that takes us from the origins of the universe to the last days of a dying sun 6 billion years later, renowned cosmologist Sir Martin Rees explains why the 21st century is a pivotal moment in the history of humanity: the first time in history when we can materially change ourselves and our planet.