According to a Roper poll conducted two decades ago, nearly four million Americans suspect they've been abducted by space aliens. The experience is not always pleasant, as the aliens refuse to subscribe to the Geneva Conventions. Their victims are frequently laid out on tables and treated to unauthorized and unsavory medical procedures.
It sounds like there's a lot of alien probing going on, and any comprehensive health plan should probably cover it.
But there's a different kind of alien probe to consider, and it's of a type that might actually exist. Namely, space probes -- hi-tech hardware -- that have been placed somewhere in our solar system by extraterrestrial beings keen to monitor our planet. Canadian astronomer Alan Tough has frequently proposed this idea as the type of project that might be tempting to a truly advanced society. After all, if they long ago detected the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, they might conclude that our world -- clearly carpeted with life -- is worth watching.
Now two post-graduate students at Penn State have published a paper considering whether we'd even notice a spy in the sky, observing Earth from orbit and reporting back to someone (or something) many light-years away.
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