Plain Truth 1978 (Prelim No 04) Apr - Herbert W. Armstrong

e little better off than an ancient
Israelite scanning the skies in the
days of Moses. Even on a clear night
you couldn't count any more stars
than he did. Casual observation is of
little help in comprehending the dimensions
ofouter space .
Of course, you couldn't help but
be inspired by the Milky Way appearing
like a star-studded ribbon
across the sky, or by Orion and the
Big Dipper. But you would still be
baffled as to their size and their distance
from the earth.
However, some men have always
looked at the starry heavens with
intelligent eyes. They began to notice
that a few of the heavenly bodies
moved in relation to the stars
and were closer to different stars at
different times. These wandering celestial
bodies were termed planetes
by the Greeks. We call them "planets"
today.
Still men conceived of the earth
as the real center of the universe.
That is, until the research of Nicolaus
Copernicus in the sixteenth
century. Knowing that the earth, in
fact, circled the sun, he postulated
that the sun was the probable center
of the universe.
Today knowledge about the universe
is exploding at a fantastic, unimaginable
rate. Sophisticated
spacecraft and highly sensitive radio
telescopes have revolutionized astronomy
and increased our desire to
solve the haunting question of
whether intelligent beings exist on
other worlds.
The fairly recent discovery of pulsars
and quasars revealed that the
heavens are much more exciting,
mysterious and violent than we previously
imagined in our wildest
dreams. Questions of origin and
eternity are intriguing man as never
before. He wonders why there is no
solid evidence of life on other planets.
Mathematically speaking, the
odds often seem in its favor.
The Known Evidence
The recent Viking expedition to Mars
is just one more example of man's
intense interest in the possible discovery
oflife beyond the confines of the
earth. In the summer of 1976,American
scientists sent two highly sophisticated
spacecraft to the mysterious
red planet. Shortly after touchdown,
6
the Viking lander sent stunningly
clear pictures of the Martian surface
to radio telescopes on earth. Picture
after picture showed a stark, rockstrewn
surface which looked remarkably
like a desert scene in the American
Southwest.
One of our Plain Truth editors
talked with Dr. Gerald A. Soffen,
chief project scientist for the Viking
mission to Mars. When asked about
the chances for life on Mars, Dr.
Soffen said that odds were small,
but not zero. Though scientists are
still debating the data from the Viking
project, one did say that so far
nothing has been detected that
really could be considered biological
life. He concluded that Mars, like
the moon, Venus and Mercury, is a
very, very dead place.
Based on recent findings , scien-
Astronomers
have probed the
universe to a distance
of about 100,000 billion
billion miles.
Yet they have been
unable to find the
edge of the universe.
tists have speculated (and not without
evidence) that Mars once had
an earthlike atmosphere. They had
long suspected that the Martian surface
was the best locale to look for
life in our solar system . But notwithstanding
the fact that Mars is both
geologically and meteorologically
active, the evidence for biological
life is negative. And if there is no
life on the red planet, the chances
are virtually nil for life on Venus,
Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto.
Life Beyond Our Solar System?
But what about life in the far-flung
"limits" ofouter space?
In 1972 man's first attempt at written
communication with alien intelligence
occurred when a special
aluminum plaque was attached to the
Pioneer 10 space probe. This plaque
symbolically describes the origin of
the spacecraft as well as graphically
portraying a man and a woman.
The more recent Voyager probes,
now on their way to the outer limits
of our solar system, also carry recordings
of earth sounds. It is hoped
that extraterrestrial beings will
someday find these tiny spacecraft
and listen to our message.
But space probes are far less
likely to communicate with extraterrestrial
life than radio telescopes
right here on earth. One good example
is the Goldstone radio telescope
near Barstow, California.
Here radio signals from sources in
outer space are being monitored by
means of a giant, steerable 21O-foot
antenna. This awesome antenna has
actually communicated with the Viking
lander at a distance ofover 200
million miles.
Incredible as it may seem, radio
telescopes can detect radio signals
from over ten million million billion
miles away. So scientists are con-
.stantly listening for intelligible signals
emanating from other galaxies
deep in the far-flung expanse of the
universe. Astronomers have been
hoping to detect such signals since
1960 when Frank Drake first used a
giant radio telescope to monitor radio
waves from nearby stars.
Since then the sensitivity of such
equipment has grown enormously.
Astronomer Gerrit Verschuur recently
scanned ten nearby stars for
signs of life. His apparatus was so
.sensitive that it could find in five
minutes what Drake's equipment
required twenty days to detect.
Yet up to this time, no unexpected
signals from outer space
have ever been detected!
Still, man persists in probing the
universe with giant telescopes like
the one on Mount Wilson in Southern
California. So far, using the
largest and most sophisticated telescopes
, astronomers have probed
the universe to a distance of about
100,000 billion billion miles. Yet astronomers
have been unable to find
the edge of the universe. Perhaps it
is endless; no one knows.
The Fortunate Generation
Our fascination with the mysteries
of the heavens is exceeded only by
our never-ending desire to understand
the fundamental question of
what this human experience is all
(Continued on page 41)
The PLAIN TRUTH April 1978