{"id":505,"date":"2025-11-03T02:02:43","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T02:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.sciencepicker.com\/?p=505"},"modified":"2025-11-03T02:02:43","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T02:02:43","slug":"aliens-do-exist-but-our-theories-deny-their-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/aliens-do-exist-but-our-theories-deny-their-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Aliens do exist \u2013 but our theories deny their existence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If we\ndiscovered evidence of alien life, would we be still able to understand it?\nLife on other planets could be so different.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the\nlast few years, we have seen extreme shifts to the theories about what counts\nas a biosignature and which planets will have aliens\u2019<\/strong> existence. So,\nwhat can we do best? The best we can really do is to understand the data and\nknowledge we have with our current best approach instead of some future idea\nthat doesn\u2019t even exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is\nreally an issue for those who are involved in the exploration of\nextraterrestrial life or presumably alien<\/strong> life. Member of Nasa’s<\/strong>\nAdvisory Council, Scott Gaudi<\/strong> has said that “One thing I am pretty\nsure of after having spent more than 20 years in this field of exoplanets is,\njust expect the unexpected.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to\nExpect the Unexpected?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you\nthink it is actually possible to anticipate the unexpected? Multiple inventions\nhappen by accident, from the result of penicillin to that of the cosmic\nmicrowave radiation left over from the Big Bang<\/strong>. These findings often\nreflect the luck on behalf of the researchers included in it. When it comes to alien<\/strong>\nexistence, do you think it is enough for scientists<\/strong> to assume\n“we’ll know it when we see it”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been various outcomes that seem to tell us assuming the unexpected is really very challenging, according to a cognitive psychoanalyst. Daniel Simons\u2019<\/strong>, famous for his work on inattentional blindness investigations, has shown how people can miss a gorilla banging its chest in front of their eyes. There are similar experiments that also show how blind we are to non-standard playing cards. In the last case, we miss the gorilla if our attention is adequately occupied. In the end, we miss the unusualness because we have strong expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are\nalso various examples that are important to the history of science.\nPhilosophers term this sort of phenomenon as “theory-ladenness of\nobservation”<\/strong>. What we notice depends on our theories, concepts,\nbackground beliefs, and prior expectations. Even more commonly, what we take to\nbe important can be influenced in this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studying\nthe entire universe largely disconnected from theory is not only a legal\nscientific attempt, but it’s a crucial one too. The strength to demonstrate\nexploratory science disparagingly as “fishing expeditions” is likely\nto harm scientific progress. Investigation of under-explored areas is\nnecessary, and we can’t know in advance what we will find.\n\nIn the search for extraterrestrial life or alien\u2019s<\/strong>\npresence, scientists<\/strong> must be completely open-minded for every law. Space\ninvestigation agencies, such as NASA<\/strong>, must learn from such incidents if\nthey truly believe in the search for alien<\/strong> life or extraterrestrial\nlife. We should “expect the unexpected.”\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If we discovered evidence of alien life, would we be still able to understand it? Life on other planets could be so different. For the last few years, we have seen extreme shifts to the theories about what counts as a biosignature and which planets will have aliens\u2019 existence. So, what can we do best? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-and-astronomy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}