Are We Alone?

This past weekend was a long one for me; here in Canada we were celebrating Victoria Day and lots of firecrackers filled the night sky. During the time between blogging and watching fireworks, I was able to catch some of Larry King Live on CNN which made me wonder Are We Alone?. On his show he had Ryan Seacrest but that was not the part of the show that interested me sorry to all of you American Idol Fanatics that stop by my blog. No, the last part of the show was dedicated to the news of Britain's ministry of defense releasing some of its research into the UFO phenomenon. The British government has a lot of files on the phenomenon and will be releasing the files into their national archives.

I am aware that one of our Canadian Prime Ministers I think it was Paul Martin announced the existence of UFOs to promote more free speech on the subject. Whether or not this was a catalyst to getting the British to release documents to the public I'll never really know. Anyway, the fact that these files are being released; regardless if they will be released over a period of four years is a step towards getting an answer to the age old question "Are we alone?" I've liked science fiction for years but that does not mean I believe there are aliens out there. I do believe it is possible; because it would be an awful waste of space if there wasn't extra terrestrial life.

I've had a chance to glance over one of the documents that were recently released. If you want to take a look at the releases you can find them here. The first thing I noticed was the large amount of black space in the document. Now they have released more than one document in .PDF format I have not had much of a chance to look through them. Mental note, take a look at more of them. I just opened the first one of the releases. After scrolling down quite a bit I finally made it to what would be a UFO report. So far I have not seen any elaborate investigations into the report but I am still going through some of the material.

My preliminary conclusions is that these releases are just filed reports of sightings. As for what this means to Canadians or better yet, everybody is that we now have a source to look to when we are curious about the UFO phenomenon. This certainly means that the flow of information on the phenomenon will certainly increase and sooner or later we will be able to draw a conclusion. However, we still need to keep an open mind on the subject; the phenomenon will never fully be explained until alien visitors make themselves known to the masses. But one thing that I found a little odd was the Pope's astronomer released a statement prior to the release of the files to paraphrase that alien beings are a product of God. Kind of made me think. What do you think of the news?

Source: CNN Transcripts
Image source: Public Domain Clipart

Invading Aliens

Apparently aliens are being found in Antartica. Not the little green men kind of aliens, but species that are alien to Antartica. Forms of life such as moss, lichen, insects, seeds and spores that are alien to the Antartic continent are being found. As our climate changes the average temperature in Antartica is rising and becoming a new environment for life.

It's said that visitors to the continent are carrying seeds and spores as well as cargo ships bringing rats and mice. Some plants have already taken hold on the island of South Georgia. A European species of grass is suspect, not that there really is anything alien about grass. It's not unusual for life to be invasive, considering that a some years ago there was a lot of press for an invasive species of mussels in the great lakes area. The zebra mussel was originally from Russia and was found to be clogging pipes here in the North American Great Lakes area.

It seems like everywhere we go, different varieties of life always follow us. Visitors to the Antartic continent have unknowingly brought seeds, spores and insect eggs with them. The continent is the last pristine environment on the planet and people are trying to keep it that way. There has been patches of grass found underneath tents and invasive plantlife found out side of Russian reseach tents. Right now researchers at the Troll Station are only allowed fresh fruits when visitors are flown in to a local airstrip.

There was one swedish scientist who found eight different unknown species in a small pond. This is just evidence that life can survive in harsh climates. But tourism groups are making an effort to reduce the risk of foreign invading species to the continent. An Australian group requires visitors to vacuum their clothes to remove any seeds or spores that may be travelling with them and visitors are banned from bringing food ashore. Are all these restrictions enough to keep life from flourishing on the Antartic continent? Maybe, but really only time will tell. What do you think?

Image source: WP Clipart
News Story: FEATURE-Antarctica on alert for alien invaders