Alien Life: Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
mNo edit summary |
||
| Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
|resourcenumber=SC0024 | |resourcenumber=SC0024 | ||
|age= Secondary, Year 10. | |age= Secondary, Year 10. | ||
|content=This presentation looks at claims of alien encounters and at arguments on whether humanity is alone. It concludes with a probabilistic argument based on the Fermi paradox. This is lesson 6 of a series of 6 entitled 'Astronomy masterclass' (SC0018) | |content=This presentation looks at claims of alien encounters and at arguments on whether humanity is alone. It concludes with a probabilistic argument based on the Fermi paradox. This is lesson 6 of a series of 6 entitled 'Astronomy masterclass' (SC0018). | ||
|strategy= | |strategy= | ||
|Learning Objectives= | |Learning Objectives= | ||
* | * appreciate that it is extremely unlikely that there is sentient life elsewhere in our solar system,<br /> | ||
* | * appreciate that the majority of "encounters" are almost certainly not real and some of the psychological and physiological explanations for this,<br /> | ||
* | * appreciate that microbial life may be much more common than sentient life, but is also much harder to find<br /> | ||
* | * understand the SETI organisation and what it has found so far | ||
|additional resources= | |additional resources= | ||
|useful information= | |useful information= | ||
| Line 29: | Line 29: | ||
}} | }} | ||
[[Category:Secondary]] [[Category:Science]] | [[Category:Secondary]] [[Category:Science]] | ||
== Teacher's Notes == | == Teacher's Notes == | ||
Revision as of 15:54, 10 September 2012
Lesson idea. This presentation looks at claims of alien encounters and at arguments on whether humanity is alone. It concludes with a probabilistic argument based on the Fermi paradox. This is lesson 6 of a series of 6 entitled 'Astronomy masterclass' (SC0018).
Teaching approach. This last of six presentations to recruit students for A level physics, is more light-hearted and simpler than the two previous resources. It considers the arguments around whether or not humanity is alone and includes an initial look at the bizarre nature of many of the claims of alien encounters - including a fictional one for good measure - before moving onto the more serious side of alien hunting. It concludes with a probabilistic argument based on the Fermi paradox. (edit)
| Resource details | |
| Title | Alien Life |
| Topic | [[Topics/Astronomy|Astronomy]] |
| Teaching approach | [[Teaching Approaches/|]] |
| Learning Objectives |
|
| Format / structure | A 26 minute narrated screencast which is part of the full, six hour 'Astronomy Masterclass'. Also supplied as a Prezi and a Acrobat file should you wish to do the presentation yourself. |
| Subject | [[Resources/Science|Science]] |
| Age of students / grade | [[Resources/Secondary|Secondary]], [[Resources/KS4|KS4]]
|
| Related ORBIT Wiki Resources | |
| Files and resources to view and download | Choice of formats
|
Teacher's Notes
Session 6 – Alien Life
The final session aims to tackle the question “Are we alone?”. It looks briefly at the Fermi paradox and at the conditions needed for life outside our solar system. This session requires you to hide small bits of red card BEFORE the session starts. See below for details.
• Do aliens exist? – full survey data http://www.alieninfluence.com/do-aliens-exist.html
• Video - comedian Peter Cook impersonating an alien abduction victim. It is worth skipping the early minutes where he claims to work in a biscuit factory to get to the alien abduction story before the students realise he is a comedian. This usually happens when he claims to have visited the planet IKEA. If anyone has a better quality clip please let me know!
http://stabbers.truth.posiweb.net/stabbers/html/clive_anderson/01norman_house.htm
• Some abduction stories are clearly stupid, however a search on Google shows how many people seem to believe them. It has been claimed that many different “aliens” have visited Earth over the last 60 years. Whilst it is possible that aliens have visited – it is very unlikely that all exist. So why do people claim as they do?
• Card trick – ask everyone to pick a card and quickly focus on that one card. Switch to the next slide and state “you are all so predictable you all picked the same card and I removed it.” Someone will probably notice all the cards have changed – but many will not and will swear that the original 4 are still there.
• Lack of souvenirs is a good argument against mass alien abduction. However some people really do seem to believe they were abducted. Betty Hill’s story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_and_Barney_Hill_abduction. Betty Hill really believes she was abducted. Of that there is no doubt, so either she is correct OR she has a vivid imagination. The Hill story was the first ever reported case of “abduction” and it may be significant that it followed shortly after the 1953 film “War of the Worlds”. It is certainly interesting that NO claims of alien visitation or abduction were recorded BEFORE the idea was created in the radio science fiction broadcast of WotW in 1938. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)
• The Roswell incident – is most probably a secret US military balloon. However still some speculation as to its origin http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident
• Planetary exploration has ruled out the existence of other civilisations within our own solar system. To get here and abduct people, aliens must have travelled a very very long way. And if these visitation stories are fictional, then there remains 4 possibilities:
- The goldilocks zone - just the right distance from the star http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_zone . It is possible for life to exist outside of the habitable zone – however this is much more unlikely
• How do we find places where aliens could live? See the SETI project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI Searching for regular signals like the green image, they've found nothing but static
• Before the session start, cut a piece of red card into 8 pieces. Hide 7 bits in the room and put the 8th somewhere far away, in your bin at home or something. Offer something really nice (big box of sweets etc) if the group can re-assemble the card in a minute. When they fail, offer to give them an extra 2 mins. Proving a negative is very difficult. How long would they need to search before they would give up? How long until they decided it wasn’t there?
• Carl Sagan, who was a lead scientist on the Voyager project from session 3, developed a way of estimating how many alien civilisations there should be. Video - The Drake Equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
- Video - in the Big bang clip the actors refine the Drake equation to work out the chances of them getting a girlfriend. The Drake equation is full of assumptions – however it is VERY difficult to put in assumptions to give an answer of the order of 101 or 102. Most estimations put the number of aliens at either 106 or higher OR 10-1 or lower.
- This leads onto the Fermi Paradox – where are they? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox Statistically speaking – if aliens exist and want to be found, we should be able to detect them. After spending a significant time searching, IF we do not find them – the likelihood switches from “they do exist but we just didn’t see them” to “there is nothing there”. The probabilities for this are very hard to calculate however the flip point will probably happen at some time in the relatively near future.
• The Flake equation is a parody of the Drake equation that looks back at the area of alien abduction.
• Video - The final video of the session shows Jeremy Beadle spoofing an alien landing in the 1980’s I wonder if Aliens can really drink tea?
End of session 6
Cloudy weather activities
• Create an alien abduction defence kit
• Cinematic showing of videos created in sessions 4/5
• Feedback survey suggestions for next year’s masterclass!
