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‘Mankind will make contact with intelligent alien life within two decades, leading astronomers claim.‘

The recent discovery of Earth-like planets outside our solar system and the launch of a major Nasa mission in 2009 has brought extra-terrestrial contact a dramatic step closer.

In a BBC two Horizon documentary broadcast, the American astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake said: “Everything has caused us to become more optimistic.”

The 76-year-old - who founded the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project (SETI) in 1961 - added: “We really believe that in the next 20 years or so, we are going to learn a great deal more about life beyond Earth and very likely we will have detected that life and perhaps even intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.”

Nearly half a century ago, Dr Drake devised an equation to estimate the number of alien civilisations in the galaxy.

It takes into account seven factors including the rate at which stars are born in the Milky Way, roughly how many have planets, whether they might be habitable and a guess as to how long an intelligent species exists.

Although everyone’s answer to the equation differs, Dr Drake said the average estimate was that 10,000 technologically advanced life-forms exist in the galaxy.

The theory was dismissed by many experts until April last year when a Swiss team discovered the first two planets, called Gliese 581 c and d, outside the Solar System that could support life.

Dr Drake said: “It shows the potential that life-bearing planets exist.”

SETI senior astronomer Dr Seth Shostak, based in California, told Horizon: “There are 200 billion stars just in our galaxy and at least half of them probably have planets (orbiting them), so that’s 100 billion planetary systems with, let’s say, five planets in each system.

“That’s 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies.

“To think this (the Earth) is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view.”

The search for life on other planets will take a huge step forward next year when Nasa launches its Kepler space telescope, which will constantly scan the same 100,000 stars over its entire four-year mission to discover Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones around suns.

Once Kepler identifies the planets most likely to sustain life, the team at SETI will focus its deep-space listening equipment on those solar systems, instead of randomly scanning the outer reaches of space as at present.

Source: UFOCaseBook

Waves of UFO sightings over the waters of Lake Erie are earning the great lake a reputation as a UFO hot spot. But the lake’s new popularity may have more to do with a string of popular videos on YouTube than sightings of little green men.

“It’s a hot spot,” declares local ufologist Aaron Clark about the beaches of Lake Erie near Cleveland, Ohio. “Some believe there’s a UFO base on the bottom of the lake.”

While not yet rivaling UFO hot spots like Mexico City or Phoenix, Lake Erie has generated enough buzz that news and documentary filmmakers are taking notice. Several Lake Erie UFO videos have made the national news, and The History Channel is airing a segment on Lake Erie UFOs, due to air in February.

There have been more than 20 credible UFO sightings in the area in the last two years, according to Clark, a spokesman for the Cleveland Ufology Project, one of the oldest UFO-spotting groups in the country.

“There’s a pattern here,” says Sam Phillips, a musician who filmed a UFO hovering over downtown Cleveland in March 2007, which was shown nationwide by CBS News. “There’s a riddle here. And I want answers. I want an explanation.”

Phillips’ video is one of a dozen-plus amateur videos posted on YouTube tagged “Lake Erie Lights” and “Lake Erie UFOs.”

One YouTube video shows several pulsating lights materializing under an orange-red crescent moon.

Another clip, viewed more than 600,000 times, appears to show two UFOs hovering, then merging above the lake.

“There’s a huge story unfolding here,” says Michael Lee Hill, a musician and the person who shot the “merging UFOs” video. “I think they’re absolutely sending us a message. I believe they are here to help us become a galactic society.”

Hill is responsible for most of the Lake Erie videos on YouTube, and has sold clips to news and documentary shows. His video of “merging UFOs” was shown by FOX News and used by ufologist David Sereda in two documentaries, Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs and From Here to Andromeda. Hill, an accomplished guitarist, also produced the music for Andromeda. He will also appear on an episode of UFO Hunters, which premieres on The History Channel in February.

But skeptics question whether Hill is pulling an elaborate hoax, like the notorious “UFO Haiti” video on YouTube, which has been viewed millions of times but was debunked when a professional animator admitted to the Los Angeles Times that he created the hoax using a suite of 3-D animation software.

After Hill posted his “merging UFOs” video to Abovetopsecret.com, a popular paranormal discussion board, the thread took on a skeptical slant. Hill claimed he pointed his camera directly north, toward Canada. But with the help of a flight-tracking map, one skeptic claims Hill’s camera is more likely pointing to the west and is probably filming the incoming flight path of two distant planes in an S-shaped landing pattern. AboveTopSecret.com has labeled Hill’s video a hoax.

Hill denied the video is a hoax. “It can’t be an airplane because there’s no blinking lights,” he said. “It’s one solid light (and) the lights are also flying in two different directions.” The Federal Aviation Administration requires that planes flying at night turn on blinking or pulsating lights.

An official from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport said the airport went to a “near simultaneous” take-off and landing plan in 2003, which sent planes in flight patterns over Lake Erie.

After adopting the new system, people began calling the airport saying they witnessed a near-air collision, but it is an optical illusion: The planes look like they are on top of each other, but are actually miles apart, said the official. In addition, Hopkins runs a smaller airport near the lake, not far from where Hill films. Both airports share the same northerly flight paths.

Ben Radford, a paranormal investigator and managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, said YouTube is fueling a UFO frenzy.

“The problem is anyone can post anything and call it a UFO, a ghost, but there’s no filter,” he says. “You don’t know if that person has a history of hoaxes or mental illness. What happens is a real case is drowned out by a sea of hoaxes, mistakes or misidentifications.”

Source: Wired