Are We Alone in the Universe?

Usually when someone says the word “aliens”, they’re thought of to be crazy, but the idea that other advanced beings exist in our universe is becoming a more realistic situation. A mysterious light was found on a distant star by NASA’s Kepler space observatory, indicating a possible alien civilization.

Star KIC 8462852, which is about 1400 light years away from earth, has astronomers baffled. It’s so distant that the only information that’s been recorded of it is its light curve, or the light that is seen from the star on earth. No convincing explanations have been reached to explain the phenomenon, so some have been saying that the star is surrounded by alien technology to harvest its energy. That may sound strange, but the technology in question is called a “Dyson sphere”. Dyson spheres are large groups of solar panels placed around a star to absorb the solar energy, meaning that some astronomers are trying to account for an alien megastructure being the reason for the abnormal light curves.

A multitude of telescopes are monitoring the activity of the wavelengths the star is emanating; this can help astronomers figure out whether or not there is something solid around the star. Some think that the detected light “dimming” could also be being caused by astrophysical dust, opening up an ever bigger question. Could the dust be from exocomets? Or maybe it’s dust from the rings of a saturn-like alien planet?

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute has also been surveying the star closely, stating they have been trying to measure both narrow and broad-band signals, the latter would prospectively be sent by alien spacecrafts.

I decided to go around the school and ask about 15 people whether or not they believed in aliens; I was surprised that every single one of them believed aliens existed (in the universal sense). No one really believed that aliens would be knocking on our doors anytime soon, but totally denying the idea seems to be a bit close-minded, doesn’t it? The universe is infinite, so why couldn’t there be more intelligent life out there? It honestly makes being on Earth less lonely, but then again, it also makes it a bit more scary.