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TRAVERSE CITY – Is there smart life somewhere in the universe besides on Earth?
"It's certainly a question that has been asked for," says physicist, biochemist and amateur astrophysicist David G. Penney.
But Penney, using an answer to a Magic 8-Ball, says the outlook is not so good.
The Beulah part-time resident recently made a case against the existence of extraterrestrial life at the Traverse Area District Library.
Rather than the 8-Ball, Penney looks to loads of data and the Fermi Paradox in making his conclusion. Extrapolated by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950, the Fermi Paradox points to the contrast between the high probability of alien life and the lack of evidence of it.
The odds that one or more alien civilizations are high, according to Fermi's theory. There are a huge number of stars; there are a huge number of planets, some of which may be Earth-like; there is the likelihood that those civilizations would have developed interstellar travel; and there has been a huge amount of time since the beginning of the year.
"If there are so many other intelligent beings in the universe, where are they?" Penney asks, pointing to the absence of genetic material, crashed spaceships and artifacts. "The chances of discovering life in the solar system are next to zero."
Even so, surveys show that about 47 percent of people believe in its existence, he said.
"Maybe they're hopeful, they're just kind of going with the flow."
Many quotes theories that say the evidence of aliens is too alien for us to recognize; the evidence is being suppressed, as in the Roswell incident of 1947; Golden alien cultures just are not interested in Earth.
"I do not believe that for a minute," Penney said. "We have an extremely valuable piece of real estate."
Penney has no opinion and has drawn no conclusions on crop circles, alien abductions or even UFOs, if hundreds – if not thousands – of people have claimed alien craft in the skies.
The sound of a fireman, Penney grew up in Royal Oak. He earned his master degree from Wayne State University and his PhD in Physiology and Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles.
He spent seven years as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago before coming back to Wayne State, where he spent the next 27 years teaching in the School of Medicine and doing research.
He has become an expert in the field of carbon monoxide poisoning, and working on carbon monoxide poisoning worldwide.
Penney discovered a love of astronomy in the fifth grade. Even then, he was not convinced of the existence of extraterrestrial life.
"I was interested in the question," he said. "You have to be doubted if you're going to be a scientist."
He did not come back to astronomy until he retired about 12 years ago.
"I had more time," he said. "Not only that, I found retirement to be difficult without constant intellectual stimulation."
He now gives readings on topics like dark matter, black holes and other mysteries of the universe at libraries and schools in Traverse City and Florida, where he spends winters.
He says fifth-graders are his favorite audiences.
"I find fifth graders to be really fantastic," he said. "Their brains are shaped, they do not have problems thinking they can ask a dumb question."
Does Penney hope to be wrong about the existence of alien life? He will not be, he says, but there is always that chance.
"I would go with the data that we have, but it's not something where it's going in. It's fluid," he said.
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