Ben Mcgee Xenoarcheology

Take a look at the POWERPOINT IN PDF FORMAT while you read the blog article! Ben shared it with me after the conference. Ben McGee is a Radiological Scientist and a co-star of the National Geographic television show Chasing UFOs. I spoke with him yesterday and he holds strong in his belief that UFOs and Aliens are probably not here but we may very well come across life soon and how this might play out. He's a cool dude for sure.PRESENTATION:He's word as a Geologist, in Space Studies, Radiological Engineer, is an aspiring astronaut, published paper of Xenoarcheology, and is an adjunct college instructor. So why is he here? CHASING UFOs! Science Outreach and Mixed Signals from the Ivory TowerNASA Objectives relate to alien life. Idea that life may be common is ASTROBIOLOGY. We're finding more and more things that are leading us toward life such as Exoplanets, We have to consider the case of extremophiles, ALH84001 - is a piece of a meteorite where they found a piece of something that looks like a "worm". So Scientists have been pushing this idea that Earth is not special. Carl Sagan has always pushed the idea that life is an awful waste of space. The problem is when regular people say, yeah, cool I believe in life and I think it may be here. This is when scientists shut down. So, if life is so common as we know it on this planet then why resist the ET hypothesis?What do we really know about Life in the Universe?we only scientifically know now that one type of life exists. Us. If we have to look at this as a plotted data point, only one point exists and that would be us, humans on the earth. So the discussion of other life out there breaks down. So for Scientists the idea that life is rare is still on the table until we find another data point out there. So how much life is out there? One can use the Drake equation. -It's a best estimations of rate of planet formation, life evolution. There literally could be THOUSANDS of intelligent extra-terrestrial life out there in this galaxy. So let's define what a Galactic Year is. One year for us is the amount of time it takes for the sun to revolve around our sun. So a Galactic Year is actually 220 million "years" to make one orbit. This means the whichever arm we're in within our galaxy, it rotates one time within that amount of time. The Milky Way has been here about 13.3 billion year and the Earth has been here about 4.5 billion years. Earth's evolution in the big picture of Galactic development is minute. We're simply in the beginning of all of our development. Example, 11 galactic years, have passed simple single cell organisms start to show up. It wasn't until about 6 million years ago, humans started up on this planet. This is a big deal. If you think about how much time it took for this planet to evolve and create life, it's very big and our part in this is SO SMALL. Humans have been around in the galaxy for about 0.00003 Galactic Years. The length of the time of us being around and bumping into ET is same as if you happen to bump into your friend in the subway when your friend only visits there once in your entire lifetime. This leads us to the Fermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi, father of Nuclear Industry. He asked the question about aliens, "Where are they?" If ETI is everywhere out there, then why aren't we hearing anything from them? Thus the paradox. Either ET is willing to respond, or ET is unable to respond. Option one: Cosmic quarantine around Earth. Prime Directive/Don't touch. Option Two: Unable to respond aka Galactic Jungle hypothesis. Galaxy is a threatening place earth has had 5 major extinction-level events in the last 2.5 Galactic Years. This is two major extinctions every major galactic orbit. So if you're not prepared to deal with it then that means the end of your civilization. He showed an example of a picture of an explosion on Jupiter that was the same size as Earth! That really brought the point home. If you explore the Drake Equation, look at the last term, the "L". what is lifespan of a civilization? This makes or breaks the entire equation. We have all these things going on that could harm us. The meteor in Russia was nothing. It was small and didn't even impact the planet. Isaac Asimov played with the Drake Equation and came up with some numbers that read 650 million planets habitable, 32500 planets within the 600000-yr intelligent life lifespan at some stage. 270 worlds have developed writing. 20 planets writing has been developed and on 10 of those planets industrial technology revolution happening. On 2 of these planets they have nuclear technology. So what are the odds of us connecting with them now? all this means 10 worlds have advanced life now - are they traveling/broadcasting?~325 million worlds that have non-intelligent life. On the other side, there are 325 million worlds with archeological relics of a society. Xeno-archeology. Xeno means foreign. So the Apollo moon-landing site could be considered a Xeno-archeological site. If I'm understanding correctly, Ben is saying this is an under-developed area if Science and we really need to put more methods and techniques to do it in a rigorous and correct way. For example, if we find objects on mars that, for example, look like an arrowhead, it may not be an arrowhead. We have to consider the atmosphere, the climate, magnetism, etc. because these things influence the way ANYTHING happens on another planet. For example, earth drill-bits do NOT work on mars. NASA had to re-design a simple drill bit to make it work on another planet.So 'Deep Time' is important when thinking about possibility of ET. If Drake and Asimov are correct then there are several billions of archeological sites out there waiting for discovery on our own galaxy. The odds of encountering them out there are much higher than the subway example from earlier. Ben believes the first contact that will make it in the history books will mist likely end up more like an archeological