My I-search

It's what all of you have been waiting for. Oh yes- my I-search. I'm not sure whether it will be able to be all in one posting, but I'll try.
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Kajsa Ryne's Guide to Knowing the Unknown

I am writing this to warn you; to tell you that They do exist, and that They are coming. They are coming with weapons none of us could ever fathom. Their technology is far greater than ours and They will use it for great evil. You cannot run from Them and you cannot hide from Them. There’s no point in attempting to contact the government; they knew this day was coming. They have been covering up information that could help us for centuries, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with a world-wide uproar. The media is in on this too. It seems that anyone who could make a difference in our fate is part of the scheme to keep us in the dark. To keep us from the truth. To stop us from discovering that They, the Aliens, are real.

…well there you have it! Hope you weren’t too alarmed; I assure you, if it didn’t aid the learning experience, I wouldn’t have written it. What’s that? You didn’t know this was supposed to teach you something? Oh, forgive me, forgive me, I’ve gotten too caught up in my Sci-fi drama. Let me introduce myself properly. My name is Kajsa Ryne, and I am going to shed some light on aliens. More specifically, I am going to answer a very serious question; what are the odds of intelligent life on other planets?

Now, I’m guessing you’re interested in why I chose this topic. Well, you see, the unknown has always been exceedingly prominent in my mind. At a young age, when I looked up into the stars, I was wondering what all the ‘bright stuff’ was. Even in my conversations today, I always bring up some controversial topic that we spend at least an hour debating. So, if you know me (even vaguely), you will not be surprised by my rather ‘strange’ topic choice.

And now we venture into the unknown to answer my question. After all, don’t you want to know what the odds of intelligent life on other planets are?

Before you are enlightened in the topic of the unknown, however, I thought that I would give you some idea of how I found my information. As it turns out, there aren’t very many non-fiction books about UFO sightings and abductions in the Jefferson library, and certainly no helpful information (no surprise there). So, I was forced to use the evil tool of doom- no, NOT Wikipedia. Google. Yes, I understand that we were meant to search for information using the ‘educational’ sources given, and believe me, I did look. It doesn’t surprise me though, that websites intended for younger students don’t have much helpful information on extraterrestrials. I was stumped. I searched high and low for some sort of breakthrough. I searched, and searched, and searched and searched. Finally, worn out, I plopped down onto the sofa and turned on the television. I was amazed by what I saw. The National Geographic channel was having an all day special- about everything from alien abductions to area 51! I ran to get my papers and hurriedly started recording information as fast as I could process it (possibly faster). I had finally found what I was looking for.

After that lovely finding, I wave of shock hit me. I had to interview someone regarding my topic. Let me ask you a question; In the small city of Midland, in which we live, do you suppose anyone has been abducted by aliens or seen a UFO? If you answered yes to the previous question, I would honestly like to know who that would be, because at the time, I could not seem to find anyone (that is alive) who would be willing to have me interview them! Could it be because of my odd way of speaking? Or maybe my psychotic genre of writing? You don’t think that I could be, ehrm, how do I say this, off-putting to some people, do you? Oh. You do. Well then. Never mind. I found someone anyways, Kathy Theriot, who was helpful and insightful, no matter how odd I was. More on that later; onward we march!

Now it is time to give a special shout out to the people who helped me find information about my topic. First we’ll start with Kathy Theriot, my very willing interviewee who helped make this happen. Then there was… lets see…there was- oh wait, he was making all that up. Or maybe- no, she read that from ‘War of the Worlds’. Alright, so maybe I was a bit too independent in my search process. However, I assure you that this did not affect the quality of my work. No, everything is as precise as it would have been with extra help. This independence also forced me to make a lot of choices on my own. For instance, when it came to choosing my sources, I had to sift through countless ‘conspiracy’ sites, for something of better quality. Luckily, I have the power of sensing something that has been written well and from the heart. Usually that means the information is correct. Right? Well, even if that isn’t true than this paper will be nothing more than a compellation of common misconceptions. In spite of this possibility, please don’t just drop this paper and run. Take the time to read, and you’ll find out what the odds of intelligent life on other planets are. It’s awfully interesting you know.

Surprisingly, the idea of aliens is a very new one. The modern age of ufology actually started in 1947, when Kenneth Arnold saw the first ‘UFO’ (Booth, n.p). This caused a major outbreak of sightings and supposed ‘abductions’ in the early 50’s. Of course, it didn’t help that all of the authors were experimenting with the new genre ‘Science Fiction’ (Calling all Aliens). Pretty soon, everyone was putting more thought into old paintings and strange monuments. “After my first sighting, I started to look at everything twice” says Theriot. This seems to be the case with everyone. Even cave drawings that apparently depicted alien life forms were found! (UFOcasebook, n.p). Yes, I know that this sounds crazy. Please, just keep in mind, that even though people think that all of this stuff is bogus and influenced by others, the first person who experienced this couldn’t have just dreamt everything up. However, I find it interesting how people can twist even the most ordinary drawings into being ‘aliens’.

The same thing applies to UFO’s. There have been over 100, 000 reported sightings so far, and 646 cases still remain unsolved. (Blue Book Archive). Other than that, there have been six major sighting s over the span of 30 years (Wilson, n.p). “I know what I saw” says Theriot “It was something…strange. Something that could have easily been overlooked. But I know what I saw, and I saw something from another planet”.

Most sightings these days are around Rachel, Nevada. For those of you who have no clue where that is, it’s a small town in the middle of nowhere (Gibbons, n.p). It’s surrounded by deserts and mountains, and most importantly, a very mysterious Government base, Area 51 (Calling all Aliens). Of course, there could be many explanations for this, and it doesn’t help that there is a diner, the little A’le’inn, that’s dedicated to these sightings (Laundenklos, n.p). They all congregate and their stories seem to grow bigger and bigger. This makes it hard to separate the fact from fiction. That’s also why many conspiracies are born.

For instance, in 1947 was the Roswell Incident (The Roswell Incident). It was basically when an old farmer found some old shiny remains of something that had crashed on his field and took it to the government to examine. They shrugged it off as nothing more than a weather balloon, but many eyewitnesses disagree (Carey, n.p). However, it wasn’t until 1978 that all the witnesses started to come out. They stated crazy things, like that the government was hiding the real remains in a bunker in Area 51. After all, with all the rumors surrounding Area 51, why not put the blame on it? (Thomas, n.p).

Area 51 has been shrouded in secrecy ever since it’s establishment in the 50’s. No one knows exactly what goes on there, however there have been many rumors regarding (Calling all Aliens). Some think that it is merely a misdirection attempt, but many disagree. There have been claims that it is actually a facility to try and develop a system of time travel (Stooge, n.p). That’s not the craziest claim; a good amount of the population that believes it’s an alien spacecraft storage! (Area 51 Zone, n.p). Of course, don’t think I’m prejudiced, no, I perfectly accept the fact that some people think I am insane for believing these claims. Again, I’d like to remind you that these ideas could not have been thought up without a certain amount of evidence. Is there something the government is hiding from us? Mrs. Theriot thinks so. “If they weren’t hiding something, there would be no reason why it would be guarded so heavily. Something’s going on here”.

However, the government has publicized the fact that they have spent quite a lot of time trying to find intelligent life (on other planets). First we must realize that the United States aren’t the only ones interested in finding these so called ‘aliens’. Russia has started a program where small children write letters to aliens that are going to be sent off into space. Along with these letters, they also attached a single lock of hair so that whoever receives it can trace the DNA back to Earth (Calling all Aliens). The US has a similar project. On August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 was launched. Why is this so special? Well, when NASA realized that this object would become scrap-metal floating around in space, they decided to add a gold audio plate holding information about Earth. They included everything from a video of the Olympics to the sound of a barking dog. (Angrum, n.p). This wasn’t the first thing the US government has done, though. In the mid 60’s they set up a ‘Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence’, more commonly know as SETI. However, the government decided to drop SETI in 1984, leaving them scrambling for money. (Seti Inc, n.p) But don’t you think that if all of this had no possibility whatsoever that people would have dropped the idea a long time ago?

SETI is basically an independent team that searches the universe for radio signals. (Seti Inc, n.p). It holds at least 50 satellites, which are unfortunately very expensive to maintain. They have to ask for donations from wealthy business owners like people at Microsoft to help pay for the maintenance costs (Calling all Aliens). So far, the only signal recorded that could be extraterrestrial was, unfortunately, a false alarm. On the other hand, the satellites can only focus on one star at a time, so it doesn’t surprise me that nothing has been found. (Shostak, n.p) They’re out there; I’m sure of it! Either that or maybe the aliens don’t wish to speak to us.

….Or maybe they’re already making contact with us in a different sort of way. Have you ever heard someone claim they’ve been abducted? Odds are that they aren’t, in fact, insane. They are just most likely suffering from the disease ‘sleep paralysis’ (Kristoff, n.p). Sleep paralysis is when you think you are awake, but you aren’t able to move or interact with the world around you. Sometimes, people’s imaginations run wild, and they believe that they have been ‘abducted’ by aliens (Cromie, n.p). Unfortunately for scientists, many who have experienced this say this is not the case, and search for other explanations. “I don’t know why people don’t believe me” says Theriot “If it had happened to you, you would have known they were actually there. I just can’t accept the fact that this was all in my head.” Some say that what it really is is ‘Recovered Memory Syndrom’. Recovered memory syndrome causes people to forget extremely dramatic and scarring events from their life. This could be why some ‘dream’ about the abductions; they could just be replaying the activities in their mind (Pervia, n.p).

Finally, the piece of information that finishes my intricate puzzle of confusion has been found. In 1961, Dr. Frank Drake discovered the equation to find (approximately) how many stars, containing life, in the Milky Way there are. The simplified equation is ‘N=Nx*pf*ne*fl*fi*fc*fL’ (Aguirre, n.p). I understand that none of you here understand what that means, so allow me to simplify. Let N=the number of civilizations that can communicate in the galaxy. Then ‘Nx’= the number of stars in the Milky Way. Estimated, this is about 100 billion. ‘fp’ is the percent of stars that have planetary systems (planets around them). Scientists guess this is anywhere from 20% to 50%.Now, ‘ne’=the number of planets per star capable of sustaining life. Basically, this is one planet. ‘fl’ is the percentage of ‘ne’ that evolves. This is where things start to get iffy. The percentage can range anywhere from 0% to 100%, causing serious dispute among scientists (Seti Inc). Moving on, though. ‘fc’ is the fraction of ‘fi’ that want to communicate. Again, this is widely argued, but it’s anywhere from 10% to 20%. And finally, ‘fL’; the planets life during which communicating civilizations live. Again, this is only a estimate, but scientists are guessing it’s about 10 billion years. If you multiply all of these numbers (have you been keeping track?) you get 1000 civilizations! Amazing, right? I hope I didn’t loose too many of you all there. I know that math may be a bore, but it’s essential to this project.

Speaking of this project, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bring this journey to an end. I’ve learned all I’ll ever need to know about intelligent life on other planets. I’ve searched all I’ll ever need to on Area 51. I’ve spent enough time unhealthily obsessing over possible UFO’s in the sky…and yet, I still haven’t found the answer to my question. Yes, I’ll admit that I have a good amount of evidence, and reasoning to back it up, but when push comes to shove, this is only a paper based on what others say or heard or experienced. This was a very interesting project, and I had fun researching, but I don’t think I learned anything about myself that I didn’t already know. I learned I’m eccentric- but I already knew that. I learned I’m obsessive- not anything new there. But honestly, I’m really sad to say goodbye to this piece of writing. It was like my best friend. I could argue with it and not have to deal with snarky comments back. I could write things in the most bizarre ways and not be judged by it. I could even share everything I knew without having it tell me to shut up. So yes, sadly, this project has influenced my life. It has actually touched my heart in many ways, and it pains me to say that I’m sorry to see it go. But life must go on, so here I sit writing my farewells. Oh, right, you want me to write my conclusion as well. Okay ::sniffle::, just let me compose myself….

After many tears of frustration shed, I have indeed come up with an answer to my question, ‘What are the Odds of Life on other Planets?’. Truthfully, my answer is that it should (and shall) remain in the realm of the unknown. As I stated before, my reasoning is based on nothing more than claims of believers and non believers. However, I hope that my I-Search has shed a new light on aliens and such. I tried to capture both sides of the arguments in my paper, but I have the feeling that my sci-fi side got in the way sometimes. What can I say? I am just so passionate about this topic I find it hard to control myself. This is another reason why I can’t bring myself to answer my overall question. I gave you the information and a different point of view on things. Now you make the choice; are those lights in the sky UFO headlights, or nothing more than stars? Are those footprints from a bear, or something not from around here? Am I an alien in disguise, or nothing more than a 7th grade student with an odd name and strange attitude?

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There you have it! Of course, the printed version (which was double spaced) was exactly 15 pages! How awesome is that? I hope you all enjoyed!

~Kajsa