Hostile aliens or legitimate subject of study?
That's one of the questions being raised about all manner of unexplained space phenomena, as debate about extraterrestrial life and UFOs has been sighted in more mainstream venues over the last few weeks.
On his new television series, renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking said earlier this week that if aliens were to visit Earth, it could very well be for some kind of hostile takeover.
"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach," Hawking said on "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking." "If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for material to build more spaceships they could move on. Who knows what the limits would be?"
To remind everyone what conquering and colonizing looks like on this planet, Hawking drew a parallel to a key moment in North American history.
"If aliens ever visit us," he cautioned, "I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the native Americans."
UFOs go to university?
Not everyone agrees that potential alien life is a hostile animal best ignored.
Earlier this month, a New York state professor told The Buffalo News newspaper that "there's plenty of evidence" of UFOs, and that the subject merits its own college credit course.
"It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study," Philip Haseley said. "It's important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated."
Haseley is an anthropology professor at the Niagara County Community College, a state university near Niagara Falls.
As well as being a university professor, Haseley is also the head of the Western New York Mutual UFO Network.
Broadcasting across the galaxy
For scientists working on an advisory panel for NASA's future missions, trying to make contact with alien life is a good thing.
"The search for life is really central to what we should be doing next in the exploration of the solar system," Cornell University planetary scientist Steve Squyres told The Associated Press. Squyres is chairman of a special National Academy of Sciences panel.
As to whether the space agency, or anyone else, should be actively pursuing contact with extraterrestrial life or willfully avoiding it, a senior astrobiology scientist at NASA said they're ready for anything.
"We're prepared to make discoveries of any type of life, of any form," Mary Voytek said during a NASA teleconference.
Although NASA broadcast the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" into the galaxy two years ago, most work on the search for intelligent life in space is privately funded by organizations such as the SETI Institute, Voytek said.
With files from The Associated Press
