There were rumors of the United Nations appointing an alien ambassador spread on the internet. Sunday was when all of these started flying. The job was expected to go to Mazlan Othman. Othman is head of the U.N. Office for Space Affairs. He is also a Malaysian astrophysicist. Othman said there is only one way this would ever happen. There will have to be alien visitors first. Alien contact isn’t as much of a far-reached idea as it was in the past. There are numerous discoveries of planets outside of the solar system. The debate about extraterrestrial life even has Stephan Hawking warning Earth to be wary. But the alien ambassador story turned out to be nothing however the latest Web-spawned wildfire, when Othman doused the flames with a denial via e-mail to a British newspaper.
Why could the United Nations be in charge of responding to aliens anyhow?
The story that Mazlan Othman would be appointed the U.N. alien ambassador “broke” within the Sunday Times and spread like a super bug around the world. The search for alien transmission was something Othman spoke about in a recent seminar. It was quoted in the Sunday Times. Othman said Earth should have a coordinated reaction and that the U.N. would be the best organization to the job. Othman was said by the Australian to be in Britain next week for a scientific conference sponsored by the Royal Society. It said she would be speaking on contacting the aliens at that time.
The search for extraterrestrial existence
An extra-solar planet is also called an exoplanet. In 1992, this was first found to really exist. At least a hundred more exoplanets were found on the Kepler Mission. This was a National Aeronautics and Space Administration outer space observatory that had been launched in 2009. As the odds seem more likely that intelligent alien life may exist, British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking sounded a warning last spring. Hawking doesn’t think that humanity should be working so hard to discover extraterrestrial existence, as outlined by the Sunday Times. He thinks we have to be getting our own messages out and get Earth noticed. Aliens would probably be searching for somewhere they can get more resources from. He knows that this is something we all can imagine. Just looking in the mirror can show us the consequences. “We only have to take a look at ourselves to determine how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
Might there be ambassadors from outer space on the planet?
Othman was the one who begun the U.N. extraterrestrial ambassador story. The Guardian looked for real facts rather than just going with everybody else. Othman’s speech on alien contact was questioned by the British newspaper. It even called the Royal Society to ask about it. It was news to them. Nobody knew about it. A switchboard in Vienna is where the U.N. referred inquiries about the Office for Outer Space Affairs. Finally, Othman responded to a Guardian e-mail and burst the U.N. alien ambassador bubble. She wrote “It sounds really cool, but I have to deny it.” Her speech to the Royal Society in the near future could be about how Earth will deal with a problem that really exists, a possible collision with near-earth objects.
Further 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
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