I en förlorad artikel (rån strax innan andra världskriget) spekulerade Winston
Churchill om utomjordiskt liv:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38985425
"A newly unearthed essay by Winston Churchill reveals he was open to the
possibility of life on other planets.
In 1939, the year World War Two broke out, Churchill penned a popular science
article in which he mused about the likelihood of extra-terrestrial life.
The 11-page typed draft, probably intended for a newspaper, was updated in
the 1950s but never published.
In the 1980s, the essay was passed to a US museum, where it sat until its
rediscovery last year. ...
Dr Livio says the wartime leader reasoned like a scientist about the
likelihood of life on other planets.
Churchill's thinking mirrors many modern arguments in astrobiology - the
study of the potential for life on other planets. In his essay, the former
prime minister builds on the Copernican Principle - the idea that human life on
Earth shouldn't be unique given the vastness of the Universe.
Churchill defined life as the ability to "breed and multiply" and noted the
vital importance of liquid water, explaining: "all living things of the type we
know require [it]."
More than 50 years before the discovery of exoplanets, he considered the
likelihood that other stars would host planets, concluding that a large
fraction of these distant worlds "will be the right size to keep on their
surface water and possibly an atmosphere of some sort". He also surmised that
some would be "at the proper distance from their parent sun to maintain a
suitable temperature".
Churchill also outlined what scientists now describe as the "habitable" or
"Goldilocks" zone - the narrow region around a star where it is neither too hot
nor too cold for life. ...
Correctly, the essay predicts great opportunities for exploration of the
Solar System.
"One day, possibly even in the not very distant future, it may be possible to
travel to the moon, or even to Venus and Mars," Churchill wrote.
But the politician concluded that Venus and Earth were the only places in the
Solar System capable of hosting life, whereas we now know that icy moons around
Jupiter and Saturn could also provide footholds for biology. However, such
observations are forgivable given scientific knowledge at the time of writing.
In an apparent reference to the troubling events unfolding in Europe,
Churchill wrote: "I for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we
are making of our civilisation here that I am prepared to think we are the only
spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or
that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever
appeared in the vast compass of space and time."
Churchill was a prolific writer: in the 1920s and 30s, he penned popular
science essays on topics as diverse as evolution and fusion power. ...
It was also written soon after the 1938 US radio broadcast by Orson Welles
dramatising The War of the Worlds by HG Wells, which sparked a panic when it
was mistaken by some listeners for a real news report about the invasion of
Earth by Martians."
Se också:
http://www.nature.com/news/winston-churchill-s-essay-on-alien-life-found-1.21467
"Aldrig har så många stjärnor haft så få astronauter att tacka för så
mycket..." liksom.
--Ahrvid
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