Why billionaires are funding the search for extraterrestrial life

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The founder of Bigelow Aerospace, tycoon Robert Bigelow, in an interview with the American television channel CBS, said that he was confident in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.

Moreover, their representatives can be "right under our noses."

Relatively recently, the question of the existence of life outside the Earth has interested not only scientists, but also large entrepreneurs. Bigelow is far from the only person willing to spend millions of dollars looking for aliens.

Fearless statement

Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace and a partner of NASA, on the air of the prestigious public-political program "60 Minutes" on the CBS television channel, said that he did not doubt the existence of aliens. Moreover, he is sure that representatives of alien civilizations are already among us.

“I am absolutely convinced of this. I say it as it is, Bigelow told reporter Lara Logan.

The businessman also answered in the affirmative when asked about aliens visiting Earth.

“This presence was and continues, the presence of alien beings. I have spent millions and millions - probably more than anyone else in the United States - to study this issue,”the billionaire explained. He added that representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations "are right under our noses."

The presenter of the program asked if Bigelow did not consider such statements to be risky for a public person and a major entrepreneur, to which the tycoon replied that he was not interested in the opinion of others, since it "does not change the essence of what I know."

Land of Dreams

Robert Bigelow was born and raised in Nevada, a place inextricably linked with the history of UFOs and alien visits to our planet. At 133 kilometers north of Las Vegas, there is a secret airfield and Groom Lake airbase, known in popular culture as Area 51.

The real task of the base is not known to the public, but historical evidence indicates that experimental flight technology and weapons systems are being tested there.

It was there that the flight tests of the famous U2 reconnaissance aircraft took place. In ufological folklore, the airfield is the center for testing equipment made using alien technology obtained by the US Air Force as a result of the Roswell incident in 1947.

The legendary base, also known as Homey Airport, got its name from a declassified letter from CIA Director Richard Helms during the Vietnam War.

Thousands of tourists flock to the vicinity of Groom Lake for the opportunity to see the famous "black triangles" - UFOs, which, according to eyewitnesses, appear from time to time in the skies over Area 51.

Bigelow himself told reporters that he was interested in space from early childhood. At the age of 12, he made the decision to get rich enough to afford to hire a team to launch his own space program. Until the full implementation of his plan in life, these plans he kept secret even about his wife.

After developing a successful hotel business under the Budget Suites of America brand, he founded the aerospace company Bigelow Aerospace in 1999. His company successfully launched two experimental modules Genesis I and Genesis II, and the BEAM module was delivered to the ISS by SpaceX in April 2016. The billionaire himself stated that he plans to spend up to $ 500 million on the development of the first commercial space station.

Bigelow really should not be afraid of condemnation from the rest of the captains of the industry, because he is not the only billionaire who is seriously concerned about the search for extraterrestrial civilizations.

The truth is out there somewhere

Except for a short period in the 1950s and early 1960s, the search for extraterrestrial life has long been of interest only to conspiracy theorists and ufologists on the outskirts of society, and public figures like the hotel magnate Bigelow did not risk their reputation in advocating the development of such research.

However, the latest discoveries in the field of exoplanet research have again returned this issue to the bosom of official science. Nevertheless, despite a new round of popularity, the scientists did not receive additional funding. A new class of patrons began to support them, supplying scientists with money and research facilities to search for life and advanced civilizations on other planets.

Among these patrons is the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. With the participation of legendary astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, he launched the Breakthrough Starshot project, the goal of which is to send a spacecraft in the next 20 years to search for habitable planets and traces of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Alpha Centauri system.

Milner has already spent about $ 100 million on high-tech radio telescopes to search for signals of alien origin.

The main rival of Milner and Bigelow is Elon Musk, who founded the aerospace company SpaceX to deliver humanity to Mars.

Musk has also declared his commitment to the search for extraterrestrial life forms. They have good reasons for this.

Far star

For the past two years, the attention of all scientists and enthusiasts interested in alien civilizations has been riveted on the star KIC 8462852, also known as the Tabby star.

In 2015, astronomers recorded a constant change in the intensity of the light it emitted. The nature of the changes gave rise to suggestions that the star may be surrounded not by a series of natural objects like asteroids, but by artificial structures.

A number of popular science media published suggestions that Tabby could be enclosed in the so-called Dyson sphere (an artificial structure around a star to maximize its energy) or encircled by an artificial orbital ring.

In 2016, Harvard astronomers published a study in which they reported that they cannot say with certainty that there are any artificial objects around the star, but they also cannot attribute unusual processes occurring in the star system to natural phenomena that can be observed in outer space.

First-hand testimony

The Chilean authorities' statement made in January 2017 also gave food for thought to seekers of alien life. The Chilean State Committee for the Investigation of Anomalous Phenomena in the Atmosphere (CEFAA), part of the Department of Civil Aeronautics under the jurisdiction of the local air force, said that the crew of the military helicopter managed to obtain very unusual footage.

While patrolling the coastal area west of Santiago in 2014, the crew used a thermal camera to capture an unidentified flying object, which the military described as a flat, elongated platform with two thermal centers.

In their official report, the Chilean Air Force and CEFAA stated that the object was not an airplane, hang glider, parachutist, piece of space debris or an atmospheric anomaly.

The report and video footage is the most official confirmation of a UFO incident to date. Given these findings, it can be assumed that the pursuit of aliens by billionaires will only gain momentum.