Aliens
are Real Argument Paper
Since
the beginning of time, human beings have always been curious about things, which
at that time, they did not know about, for example, the cave men creating
fire. One of the more recent curiosities
of humans is the possible existence of aliens.
There are several items that point to the existence of aliens, such as
the appearances of UFO’s, the vastness of space, no one knows what an alien
would actually look like, no one knows where black holes in space go to, and no
one knows if the aliens exist, but they just move too quickly or too slowly to
be seen by the human eye. In order to
logically argue the existence of aliens, it is necessary to know what the
definition of an alien is, what the signs of life are, and what known planets in
space currently have these signs, as well as the places where astronauts are
thinking the possibility of alien life is greatest.
The key question in the debate of
alien existence is the question of ‘what constitutes an alien?’ According to both Phil Hardymon, my former
8th grade Earth Science teacher, and Steven Gipe, my 11th
grade Earth History teacher, an alien is classified as any animal that is not
native to Earth. According to my
teachers, it does not matter what the size of the creature is, just as long as
it comes from a different planet other than Earth (Hardymon)(Gipe). This definition is key in the debate of alien
existence because there are currently 9 planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way
galaxy, and the scientists haven’t even seen all of these 9 planets in their
entirety yet. Likewise, Mr. Gipe said
that there are several other galaxies in the universe, and each one of these
galaxies also have multiple planets in them that have not yet been explored by
scientists. A question that people may
ask who believe that aliens do not exist is if humans eventually start moving to
other planets, does that mean that your family members would be considered
aliens on Earth. According to the
definition, they would be aliens, however, if this happened, the definition
would probably change so that members of whatever planet some humans move to are
not considered aliens.
The second key factor in discussing
the belief of alien existence is to determine what the signs of life are, as
people on Earth know it to be.
Currently, the signs of life on Earth are recognized to be water and
carbon dioxide. However, in outer space,
scientists have found traces of pre-biotic amino acids on certain planets, which
are considered a good sign for the probability of alien life (Pietrogrande). A couple of the possible responses that
people who do not believe in the existence of aliens would make to this
statement are what are how do scientists know what the signs of life are on
other planets? Currently, scientists do
not know what the signs of life would be in other planets in outer space, but
since they have found traces of pre-biotic amino acids, which are the building
blocks of protein, the scientists are guessing that these play a large role in
the creation and discovery of life on different planets, just as they do on
Earth.
The third largest question in the
debate on alien existence is what planets in space have the signs of life on
them, which are currently recognized as water, carbon dioxide and amino
acids. There are currently three
different locations which scientists are looking to explore for the signs of
life in outer space: Titan, Europa, and Enceladus. Titan is currently the largest of all of
Saturn’s 62 moons. On Titan, scientists
are going to look in the lakes of ethane and methane, and although there is no
current plan for exploring these lakes, the scientists are in the process of
creating a mission to explore these lakes.
Europa is one of the 67 known moons of Jupiter, and this is another
location scientists believe there could be evidence of alien life. Currently, the scientists believe that the
signs of life are located in the ocean, beneath the miles of ice located on the
moon. The current plan of scientists to
explore this location for the possibility of alien life is the Jupiter Ice Moons
Explorer (JUICE), which is scheduled to launch in 2022. During this mission, scientists are planning
to search
for organic molecules and use ice-penetrating radar to find the thinnest
sections of the crust (Fecht). Even if
there are no current day aliens on these planets with the signs of life, there
may have been aliens in the past, even before human beings. The planets which may have sustained life in
the past are Venus and Mars. The
evidence for previous life in Mars is that billions of years ago, Mars had a
clement climate, and had an abundant amount of liquid water, much like current
day Earth has. The evidence for life on
Venus previously is that hydrogen
sulphide and sulphur dioxide, as well as carbonyl sulphide were found in Venus,
all of which are created by living animals only (Billings). Some of the people who do not believe that
aliens exist say that just because the signs of life have been found on other
planets in the universe, it does not mean that the aliens exist. This is argued because the planet Mars, which
most people associate as the planet that aliens comes from only showed the
evidence of water, as evidenced by the Mars rover. As was communicated earlier, just because no
proof of the existence of aliens were found on Mars, does not mean that there
are, or never were aliens on Mars. A
likely cause of no discovery of aliens is that the aliens are either too small
to be seen, they may be hiding from the Mars rover, as they are unfamiliar with
it, or the aliens may be on the next planet of the galaxy, or they are moving
farther and farther away from Earth as humans explore space.
As I stated earlier, I do believe in
the existence of aliens for several reasons.
The primary reason why I believe in the existence of alien life is
because of the basic definition, which is any creature that is not from Earth is
an alien. Another reason why I believe
that aliens exist is because nobody knows exactly how large space is, and like I
said earlier, the aliens could know what planet people are going to explore next
for alien life, and the aliens just move one planet farther out in the galaxy,
or the aliens move to a planet that has already been searched for alien
life. The third reason why I believe in
the existence of aliens is because nobody knows what an alien looks like, as
every person has their own idea of what an alien looks like in their mind. The fourth reason why I believe that aliens
exist is because aliens could be too small to be seen with the telescopes that
are available to scientists today, as well as scientists finding traces of
pre-biotic amino acids, which are the building blocks of life in a sense. The fifth reason why I believe in the
existence of aliens is because according to the Drake equation, there are an
estimated 800 planets in the Milky Way galaxy that could sustain life (Shostak), most of which scientists have never explored. The last reason why I believe in the
existence of aliens is because there are several black holes in outer space,
which nobody knows where they go. These
black holes could be an alien’s gateway to move between the planets that aliens
live in, or perhaps aliens are actually are living in the black
holes.
Works
Cited
Billings, Lee. "Light of Life." 24 September 2011.
Academic Search Complete. Document. 16 October 2013.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.cscc.ohionet.org/ehost/detail?vid=17&sid=bf5cbb07-bfce-4976-8521-b0db06421981%40sessionmgr112&hid=124&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1aWQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=a9h&AN=66473009
>.
Fecht, Sarah. "The Case For Alien Life." July-August
2013. Academic Search Complete. Document. 15 October 2013.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.cscc.ohionet.org/ehost/detail?sid=bf5cbb07-bfce-4976-8521-b0db06421981%40sessionmgr112&vid=11&hid=124&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1aWQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=a9h&AN=89359461>.
Gipe, Steven. 11th Grade Earth Science Kyle
Andrew Burk. 2011. Interview.
Hardymon, Phillip. 8th grade Earth Science Kyle
Andrew Burk. 2008. Interview.
Pietrogrande, Maria. "Enantioselective separation of
amino acids as biomarkers." October 2013. Academic Search Complete.
Document. 14 October 2013.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.cscc.ohionet.org/ehost/detail?vid=16&sid=bf5cbb07-bfce-4976-8521-b0db06421981%40sessionmgr112&hid=124&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1aWQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=a9h&AN=90290925>.
Shostak, Seth and Ben Zuckerman. "Is Anybody Out
There?" n.d. Academic Search Complete. Document. 15 October 2013.
<http://web.ebscohost.com.cscc.ohionet.org/ehost/detail?vid=29&sid=bf5cbb07-bfce-4976-8521-b0db06421981%40sessionmgr112&hid=124&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1aWQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=a9h&AN=88361394>.
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