UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Journeying to space is an honor bestowed upon a fortunate few, but it comes with some seldom-discussed side effects. For example, in the absence of gravity, the human body tends to expand—painfully. Astronauts' faces swell up due to excess bodily fluids that no longer have to contend with gravity—a condition known as "the Charlie Brown effect"—while forcing all sorts of liquids out their various face holes. Grody.

These occasionally gross and painful conditions are inescapable consequences of transplanting the human body into an alien environment. And they're perfect examples of how humans are NOT designed to live and work outside Earth's atmosphere. But they generally only last "a day or two" and are small prices to pay for a trip to the cosmos, right?

There's still much we don't understand. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly lived aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for 340 days (the record belongs to Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who racked up 438 days) and the effects of his stay included bone density loss of 1.5 percent per month, heart shrinkage (the heart shrinks since it doesn't have to work as hard), radiation exposure (no protective ozone layer), vision problems (eyes adapt to operating in gravity), and even skin irritability (resulting from not constantly coming into contact with things).

While Captain Kelly's prolonged stay resulted in a lot of science, one year for one individual is still a very limited data set—especially if you consider the time necessary for a human to travel throughout the solar system with current technology.

As space exportation and colonization become increasingly viable prospects, we are forced to confront a great unknown: what will happen to our bodies after decades in space? We're kind of rolling the dice on this one, and what happens on the other side is anyone's guess. Things might even get super weird.

"Would we, in the future, even have skeletons anymore if we were up in space for a long time," pondered NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski, who stopped by PCMag's offices for our Q&A series The Convo to talk about his new memoir The Sky Below.

Aside from his five journeys to space, Parazynski is a medical doctor who specializes in space physiology and is the co-founder of Blue Marble Space, which aims to use technology to help humans explore space. "That's such a crazy thing to think about it. But we have skeletons here on Earth to resist gravity. But without it, over many generations, we'd probably evolve in some crazy ways."

This is not to say that astronauts or first-generation colonists are in immediate danger of turning into boneless goo. But it's not insane to question if their descendants will be. When placed in an alien environment, evolution can take some weird turns. Consider the Mexican tetra (AKA the "blind cave fish"), which long ago found its way into a lightless subterranean environment and—over many generations—eventually lost its eyeballs as they became unnecessary drains on resources. Might a similar dropping of dead biologic weight occur in humans on a future space colony? Short answer: We have no friggin' clue.

Now, there are things like centripetal motion, which can recreate gravity in a weightless environment (think A Space Odyssey or Interstellar), and could be implemented for any long-term human space habitat. However, the more immediate concern regarding gravity's effect on our bodies will be in an environment like Mars, where gravity is only about a third as robust.

Over the generations, human bodies living in low-gravity locations like the Red Planet will change character. This may sound like some inconsequential sci-fi pondering, but a human civilization in space is closer than many realize. The good news is we should be able to engineer our way around any problems we face.

"Anything that we humans set our mind to we can usually solve. And that seems like a very solvable problem," explains Parazynski. "You've seen all the artists' renditions of future Mars colonies with these modules on the surface of Mars, but they'd probably be buried for radiation protection. And we could do hydroponic plant growth—we can extract water from the soil. There's actually a lot of water on Mars. We can then generate oxygen to breathe. We can do a lot there. But it will take infrastructure and time. And by the way, send money."

I don't think that future colonists will become formless jelly-people, but the fact that we don't know for sure shows just how many unknowns there are about humanity's ability to survive outside Earth's protective bubble. It's about time we at least start to consider what our weird space future will look like.

The Convo is PCMag's interview series hosted by features editor Evan Dashevsky (@haldash). Each episode is broadcast live on PCMag's Facebook page, where viewers are invited to ask guests questions in the comments. Episodes are then posted on our YouTube page and available as an audio podcast, which you can subscribe to on iTunes or the podcast platform of your choice.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.

The SETI Institute used its Alien Telescope Array in California to confirm an intriguing radio signal coming from the star HD 164595, located about 94 light-years from Earth.

Credit: SETI Institute

In 1950, a learned lunchtime conversation set the stage for decades of astronomical exploration. Physicist Enrico Fermi submitted to his colleagues around the table a couple contentions, summarized as 1) The galaxy is very old and very large, with hundreds of billions of stars and likely even more habitable planets. 2) That means there should be more than enough time for advanced civilizations to develop and flourish across the galaxy.

So where the heck are they?

This simple, yet powerful argument became known as the Fermi Paradox, and it still boggles many sage minds today. Aliens should be common, yet there is no convincing evidence that they exist.

Here are 12 possible reasons why this is so.

1. There aren't any aliens to find.

As unlikely as it seems in a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars and as many as 40 billion Earth-size planets in habitable zones, we could be alone.

2. There is no intelligent life besides us.

(This assumes, of course, that humans count as intelligent.) Life may exist, but it could simply take the form of miniscule microbes or other cosmically "quiet" animals.

3. Intelligent species lack advanced technology.

Currently, astronomers utilize radio telescopes to listen intently to the night sky. So if alien species aren't broadcasting any signals, we'd never know they existed.

4. Intelligent life self-destructs.

Whether via weapons of mass destruction, planetary pollution, or manufactured virulent disease, it may be the nature of intelligent species to commit suicide, existing for only a short time before winking out of existence.

5. The universe is a deadly place.

On cosmic timescales – think billions of years – life may be fleeting. All it takes is a single asteroid, supernova, gamma ray burst, or solar flare to render a life-harboring planet lifeless.

6. Space is big.

The Milky Way alone is 100,000 light-years across, so it's conceivable that the focused signals of intelligent aliens, which are limited to the speed of light, simply haven't reached us yet.

7. We haven't been looking long enough.

Eighty years. That's the amount of time that radio telescopes, which allow us to detect alien signals, have been around. And we've been actively searching for aliens for maybe sixty years. That's not very long at all.

8. We're not looking in the correct place.

As previously mentioned, space is big, so there are tons of regions to listen for alien signals. If we're not listening precisely in the direction from which a signal is originating, we'd never hear it. As Andrew Fain explained at Universe Today, it's like trying to speak with your friend on a 250,000,000,000-channel CB radio, without any knowledge of the frequency on which they are transmitting. You'll probably be channel flipping for a long time.

9. Alien technology may be too advanced.

Radio technology may be commonplace here on Earth, but on far-flung worlds, alien societies may have graduated to more advanced communication technologies, like neutrino signals. We can't decipher those just yet.

10. Nobody is transmitting.

Instead, everybody may be listening. That's basically how it is here on Earth. Apart from a few paltry efforts to broadcast strong signals over a narrow frequency band towards the stars above, we've barely made our presence known in the universe. In fact, if aliens have radio telescopes similar to what we have on Earth, our television and radio broadcasts would only be detectable up to 0.3 light-years away. That distance doesn't even transcend the farthest reaches of our solar system.

11. Earth is deliberately not being contacted.

On Earth, we have policies about contacting indigenous peoples; it's possible that the same thing could be happening with us. Just like in Star Trek, advanced alien societies may enforce rules that limit contact only to species that attain a lofty degree of technological or cultural evolution.

12. Aliens are already here and we just don't realize it.

Conspiracy theorists love this unlikely explanation. While the chances are remote, it's not impossible that government agencies are concealing the presence of aliens. Although it's more likely that aliens are already amongst us, observing humanity in the clever and ironic guise of lab mice.

Original article on RealClearScience.