Aliens Around the Corner?

It seems as if everyone from the Vatican to the military to scientists conducting the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, are getting on the ET bandwagon.

Just last week, in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Study group created new guidelines for how earthlings should best handle official contact with extraterrestrials.

"The guidelines were and still are: Do good science and don't cry wolf. Make sure that what you're about to announce is, in fact, what you think it is," Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute's Center for SETI Research in California, told AOL News.

"In the case of the first protocol, it was: Don't respond until there's some consensus, a) that we should respond; and b) when we respond, who's going to speak for Earth and what are they going to say?

"We originally took that to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and it's duly filed away. When we presented that, we suggested that the U.N. might want to be proactive, and to think about the fact that this might happen."

For decades, SETI scientists, using radio and optical telescopes, have searched the heavens for proof that we're not alone in the universe. In the new SETI guidelines, the protocol for confirmation of an alien intelligence is clearly laid out:

"If the verification process confirms -- by the consensus of the other investigators involved and to a degree of certainty judged by the discoverers to be credible -- that a signal or other evidence is due to extraterrestrial intelligence, the discoverer shall report this conclusion in a full and complete, open manner to the public, the scientific community and the secretary-general of the United Nations."

Last November, Tarter was a participant at a Vatican-sponsored astrobiology conference -- a gathering of international scientists and religious leaders who considered the idea that life may exist elsewhere in the cosmos. In fact, a Jesuit astronomer, Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, had previously suggested that the idea of "brother extraterrestrials" would not conflict with Catholic doctrine.

Tarter, whose work formed the basis of the character portrayed by Jodie Foster in the 1997 movie "Contact," suggests religious groups would be fine with the idea that Earth is not the only inhabited planet around.

"People say, 'Oh, my God, it's the end of religion if you detect a signal,' and I think organized religion is a lot more flexible than that," she said. "It's been around for millennia. Our view of the universe has changed hugely, so I don't think that this would be the death knell or the singularity in organized religion."

It's also hard to escape all the recent UFO items in the news.

Two months ago, the National Archives of England released UFO-related documents, including some that revealed how former Prime Minister Winston Churchill reportedly covered up wartime accounts of UFO sightings because he feared they might create a panic among the population.

Later this month, we'll find out how the European Union will finally respond to Italian Northern League leader Mario Borghezio's request, made in June, that EU member governments disclose their UFO files and establish a European UFO commission.

Ten days ago, at the National Press Club in Washington, several former Air Force officers came together, offering testimony of their experiences with UFOs at nuclear weapons sites, both in the U.S. and abroad, going back several decades.

An upsurge of UFO reports in China this year has prompted a planetary astronomer at the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to speculate that "contact between humans and extraterrestrial life will, hopefully, come this century."

Last week's announcement of the discovery of an Earth-like planet in our galactic neighborhood created a stir in the scientific community as well as the media.

While Tarter is engaged in the search for radio signals from possible distant civilizations, she acknowledges the significance of finding a planet that may harbor only primitive life forms.

"The universe is appearing to be more bio-friendly as we get closer to having a real Earth analog," she said. "It's really nice to see something that's about Earth-sized in an orbit that might, in fact, allow there to be a temperate and water-filled area on the planet."

And this week, British researchers hope to find alien life forms closer to home, in Earth's upper atmosphere, a prospect Tarter finds intriguing.

"There could be, in fact, another shadow biosphere on Earth where there's a different form of metabolism that might not use DNA, or might use different bio-solvents -- it's actually not completely out of the question."

Tarter suggests that life might even be found in non-Earthlike habitable zones, in places where "extremophile" organisms may thrive -- life forms that may actually require hazardous conditions.

"As we've looked at extremophiles and looked at our own solar system better, we appreciate that," she said. "There might be life under the ice of [Jupiter's moon] Europa, and that could happen in other planetary systems. The nice thing is that we're getting close enough to it being science -- that we can actually go after the details and not just have to tell a story. It's really exciting." See Chick's THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.