News of an extraterrestrial ambassador from the United Nations spread Sunday on the internet. The Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman was expected to take the job as the head of the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs. Othman said on record that it would only happen if it were in response to alien visitors already come. Rapidly increasing discoveries of planets outside the solar system make the possibility of extraterrestrial contact less outrageous than in the recent past. There are a lot of individuals worried about extraterrestrial life including Stephen Hawking who has given a warning to Earth. But the alien ambassador story turned out to be nothing but the latest Web-spawned wildfire, when Othman doused the flames with a denial via e-mail to a British newspaper.
Why would aliens get to hear from the U.N.?
The rumor flew around the world as it “broke” in the Sunday Times that Othman would be the ambassador appointed by the United Nations to visit aliens. Othman was quoted by the Sunday Times talking about the search for transmission from aliens. Othman thinks the U.N. should be the ones making the response that earth needs to have ready. Othman was said by the Australian to be in Britain next week for a scientific conference sponsored by the Royal Society. It said she might be speaking on contacting the aliens at that time.
Planning to find out if other life forms exist
An extra-solar planet is also called an exoplanet. In 1992, this was first discovered to really exist. Hundreds of exoplanets were discovered in the NASA outer space observatory launched in 2009 called the Kepler Mission. There hardly any extraterrestrial existence to exist. Of course, that didn’t stop Stephen Hawking from giving his own personal warning. Hawking does not think that humanity should be working so hard to discover extraterrestrial life, as outlined by the Sunday Times. He thinks we need to be getting our own messages out and get Earth noticed. Aliens would probably be searching for someplace they can get more resources from. He also said we need only to look in the mirror to imagine the consequences. “We only have to look at ourselves to view how intelligent existence might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
Might there be ambassadors from outer space on earth?
The U.N. alien ambassador story was brought down to Earth by Othman herself. The Guardian was likely tempted to just throw out some articles like else’s. Instead, it looked for facts of the story. The British newspaper called the Royal Society to ask about Othman’s upcoming speech on alien contact. No one there knew anything over it. The Office for Outer Space Affairs questions were all referred somewhere else by the United Nations A switchboard in Vienna is where they went. Finally, Othman responded to a Guardian e-mail and burst the U.N. alien ambassador bubble. She wrote “It sounds really cool, however I have to deny it.” Her speech to the Royal Society in the near future will be about how Earth will deal with a problem that really exists, a possible collision with near-earth objects.
Additional reading
The Australian
theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-un-is-to-appoint-an-astrophysicist-to-be-the-first-contact-for-any-aliens/story-e6frg6so-1225929540635
Sunday Times
timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece
The Guardian
guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/sep/27/un-alien-ambassador-mazlan-othman
