Answers for Aliens By Jon Ripley (member D5B) Here are some of my answers to John Robson's questions from issue 53. I have not approached any of the points he raised in his article before asking these questions as I would end up writing a few thousand too many words for Chris's magazine to deal with! I have already used almost one and a half thousand in this brief response. 1. Energy based life forms? In a sense we are all energy based life forms because matter itself could be described as being made of frozen energy, or energy in it's solid state. It seems to many people that all life forms whether organic or non-organic (which are bound to exist somewhere) should eventualy evolve to the level where a physical body is no longer necessary and either pure energy or plasma could be the replacement. An energy based life form would be free from all constraints aside from the laws of physics - our knowledge of the laws of the physical usiverse is still very basic - the constraints of space-time which hold us prisoner at the moment may no longer present a barrier.Theorists are now beginning to postulate what the next step up from pure energy life forms may be. If anything, it is still far in our future's future. 2. Life in binary and multiple star systems, does it exist? Perhaps there are beings in multiple star systems who are wondering the same thing about single star systems! In reality, there is no real reason why the presence of more than one local star should prevent life from developing. Certainly the planet (or similar object) should not be highly affected by the orbit of the planet around the suns. There would probably be no concept of day/night unless one sun dominated the others in it's brightness creating a period of semi-darkness when the part of the planet not facing the star would only receive light from the others, it would probably still be very bright. Either way the populace might probably have no concept of the number of stars beyond their own planetary system and pinpricks of light they would see; such distant but very bright stars and planets in their own system that were visible would be few and far between. Indeed if a total solar eclipse ever happened it might be very scary for a race that had never experienced a sky not lit by one or more suns and the spectacle of the countless stars in the sky may well overwhelm them. If there had been a lot more stellar dust in our own solar system when the planets were still forming it is almost certain that Jupiter would have been a second, smaller sun and not the gas giant it is. 3. Ideas on how complex life became on Mars before extinction or possibly still existing? The thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere and almost complete lack of an ozone layer indicate that Mars may have reached a similar level to our 20th century. Mars may then have been very similar to Earth, certainly it is close enough to the sun to sustain life similar to that on Earth. Mars may have had a problem with a thinning ozone layer far worse than the one we are suffering from now. If they had reached our level of technology then ozone-destroying chemicals would most certainly have been developed. With a thinning and patchy ozone layer the UV rays from the sun would have bleached the soil and slowly killed off all or most life on the planet; without any protective layer around the atmosphere it may have bled into space causing the planet to cool, freezing the water, and making it the inhospitable place it is today. A face, very similar to a human face, has been seen carved into rock on the surface of Mars. Perhaps it is just coincidence as many suggest, that the face was eroded out of the rock by the turbulent winds on Mars. Or it could be a message, certainly it seems unlikely that the primitive Neanderthals could have evolved side by side homo sapiens who at that time in history would have been almost identical physically to us now. Perhaps all humans as we now know ourselves are descendants from a mass exodus from Mars before it became impossible for life to exist there. 4. Views on Earth society 200 years from now? Perhaps it might be very similar to life today. There is a lot of evidence that civilisations more advanced than ourselves once lived on this planet. It is certainly true that the Greeks were very advanced, more advanced than us in some ways and less advanced in others. They certainly didn't have cars! What followed were the dark ages where almost ALL knowledge was forgotten, many of the scientific facts that we had thought we had discovered in the last 100 years have been proved to have been known by ancient scholars. Perhaps another dark ages will follow or we may destroy ourselves and only a remnant of how we are today will exist. There are a lot of problems with environmental pollution that are slowly killing us. One true but terrifying example is that chemicals that mimic oestrogen ( the female sex hormone ) are causing each generation of men to have just half the sperm count of their father's, also the large number of babies born with gender disfunction is rising. It is almost certain that if we continue to develop at our present rate, or even at a higher rate as is indicated by recent trends in science, society may itself be radically different. In short, anything is possible! 5. Alternate realities? A rising number of people believe that there are an infinite number of universes, some would be different only by the position of a photon and others may be completely different. A recent television series 'Sliders' shows this. It also follows that every possible outcome happens with new universes splitting from others to accommodate all possibilities. Perhaps in this universe you decide to go and watch Star Trek:First Contact, in another universe you would go and see the First Wives Club, other than that the two universes would be exact in every other detail. 6. Grey race, origin and purpose? Well, first the crystal people may exist, probably at a different address though! Life on Earth is based mainly on Carbon, over 99% of our bodies is made up of just 5 elements, Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Calcium and one other I can't remember at the moment. The rest, less than 1% is made up of other elements. Silicon-based life has been suggested, no, not computers (although it is a possibility), silicon is atomically very similar to carbon. By 'greys' I assume you mean the aliens that almost all abductees describe. It is certainly not impossible and it is really only a lack of publicly available proveable evidence and our own short-sightedness that prevents us from accepting their existence. Perhaps they are just waiting for a time when we will be able to accept them. 7. The afterlife, the big question? There is almost concrete proof out there, readily available and often seen in the media or just down the local pub (or graveyard!). The afterlife must exist, even many atheists admit that the thought of completely ceasing to exist is too terrifying to contemplate. All the major (and minor) religions believe in some form of life after death, perhaps it is reincarnation, as has been widely proved to exist as with other post-death happenings. In short, if there is an afterlife, everyone will find out eventually, one way or the other and if there isn't, well you'll never know about it because you'll not exist to find out.S