Winston Churchill's article on the existence of extraterrestrial life was found by scientists in the United States. A review of an essay by the British Prime Minister from World War II was published Wednesday 15 February in The Nature.
The first version of the essay titled Are We Alone in the Universe? Churchill probably wrote back in 1939 for the News of The World. In the late 1950s, while at the villa of the publisher Emery Reeves, the politician revised his work. In the 1980s, Reeves' wife donated the 11-page manuscript to the archives of the Churchill National Museum in Fulton, America, where it has been kept for all these years.
Churchill's essays, the newspaper writes, largely reflect the views of modern astrobiology. In his work, the former British prime minister relied on the "Copernican principle", one of the postulates of which is that the universe is too vast for life on Earth to be something unique.
Churchill determined that reproduction is a necessary condition for life, and the availability of water is an important factor. He also described the term that is now known as the habitable zone near other stars. The latter means the temperature factor, as well as the need for the existence of gravity for the formation of the atmosphere. Based on these prerequisites, according to Churchill, in the solar system, in addition to the Earth, life could arise only on Mars and Venus.
Speaking about life in other systems, the politician noted that the Sun is “only one star in our galaxy, which contains several thousand million other” stars. He also concluded that most exoplanets must be the appropriate size for water and some kind of atmosphere.
"Given the hundreds of thousands of nebulae, each containing billions of suns, the chances are high that there are many planets out there whose conditions allow for life," Churchill's article says.
In 2010, the National Archives of Great Britain declassified documents from which it became known that Winston Churchill prohibited RAF pilots from talking about encounters with unidentified flying objects. This move was associated with fears that reports of UFOs could provoke panic in the community.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874-1965) - British political and public figure, Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1940-45 and 1951-55.
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