Thanks to the BBC’s recent programmes on Stargazing hosted by professor Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain there has been an explosion of interest in Outer Space. This used to be in the realms of Science Fiction but now it is, moving closer to reality. Scientists used to pooh pooh the idea that there may be other life on planets in the universe but now with the discovery of Exoplanets they have done an about-face and admit that yes there is possibly other life out there.
Any life out there in Space could well be more advanced than us. We have only discovered Radio telescopes 60 years ago and we are mere babes-in-arms. It reminds me of the words in a David Bowie song, “There’s a star man waiting in the sky, he’d like to come and see us but he thinks he’ll blow our minds”
But to get back to Exoplanets, it has now been established that if they orbit at a certain distance from their sun known as the ‘habitable zone’, where conditions mean that water can exist in liquid form then life as we know it could potentially exist. There have been some exciting discoveries, such as VB10b a small star that could have a solar system similar to our own but on a miniature scale. Then there is HSD209458b, which scientists discovered in 2007 and detected water vapour, which makes it the first exoplanet on which water has been found.
However, perhaps the most notable is Gliese 581c,s the most Earth-like planet discovered to date. It is the third of four planets orbiting the red dwarf, Gliese 581, 20.5 light years away, completing each orbit in a mere 13 days. Significantly, it is one of the smallest known Exoplanets, measuring only 1.5 times the Earth’s diameter and only 5 times its mass and is certainly a rocky planet like own. A small rocky planet with a mild climate where water can flow? Sounds like our own world, and brings us ones step close to the discovery we are waiting for: another earth, orbiting a distant Sun.
So there could be other life in the Universe, but what would these “Alien life forms” look like? Would they be similar to us? Scientists have said that they will possibly have eyes. They have found 9 different cases on this planet where species have developed and they have all developed eyes. To move on from here, if there is water they must drink so they would have some sort of digestive system. They would probably have some means of movement too, be it legs, wings or fins or something else. We all loved the adorable ET and my favourite was the hero in John Carpenter’s, ‘Starman’, whose spacecraft is shot down by the US government. He uses a lock of hair from the decease husband of recently widowed Jenny Hayden and clones into her husband. I’ll never forget the scene when he sees a dead deer on top of the hunters van and brings it back to life and deeply moves the hostile Jenny into helping him to reach the landing areas where a ship will pick him up.
So what is my interest in Aliens and what they might look like? Well, I have just published a book ”The Grail of the Unicorn Planet”, where all the mythical creatures of our world, Fairies, Elves, Leprechauns, Dragons, Fenghuang, Kitsune and Mizakeen etc. really exist and live on the planet Altair. They do not think they are strange but live in harmony in different tribes. They are extremely advanced beings and I have invented a form of space travel that they use: a system that converts a person or matter into photons and transports these through radio waves to be reassembled at the desired destination. on arrival. They have been visiting Earth or ‘Terra’ as they call it for many thousands of years. As it is one of the ‘primitive’ planets they visit they are not allowed to show themselves, but occasionally a drunken Irishman has seen a leprechaun, and other races have seen other creatures. And this is how our myths have grown. This is just a story. A crossover novel meant to be enjoyed by any ages from 8 yrs to 80 yrs. It is pure fantasy but I can’t help thinking what if….?