Origin of the Species: The Greys - An Astrobiological Analysis of a Familiar ET Stereotype

originally posted by: Maverick7
I'd say the Drake equation needs a lot more terms, even to predict the probability of communication.

For one, what causes minerals to be close enough to the surface to mine?

Easy. Plate tectonics.

You have to have minerals, metals, rare metals to construct technology.

True.

What if there is constant cloud cover and no mountains above it to put devices like telescopes and arrays?

Then maybe they'd develop radio and millimeter wave astronomy before optical astronomy. Clouds are mostly transparent to both.

What if the area of space has obstacles to radio wave transmission, higher incidence of bombardment so the sentient race has to live underground?

Anything that would cause all of that chaos would probably prevent advanced life from developing in the first place. I can't think of anything short of constant nuclear explosions going off which would prevent radio wave transmission.

The terms used now are necessary but perhaps not sufficient.

The terms are fine. It's people's (mis)use of them that's the problem.

originally posted by: Scdfa

originally posted by: zazzafrazz
STARRED AND FLAGGED !

What great read on a weekend.

My first thought was to the reports that greys are not actually the extraterrestrial conscious life forms but a bio-robot created by something else, used in deep space travel (some say are part of the craft itself) to feed back information.

According to secret alien interviews that is

Makes your whole thread moot, but who cares!

Good point zazzafrazz. Yes, this whole thread is moot. You could learn more about the greys on the back of a cereal box than you will from this thread. Jadestar's ?analysis? is so superficial as to ignore almost every physiological and psychological aspect of these beings. Instead, she perfers to guess wildly as to their world, like a little girl guesses what land unicorns come from.

And that's what so many at ATS come here for, to treat the alien situation as if it were a guessing game, endlessly going around and around with speculation. Like the questions of aliens were just a mental exercise to wonder about idly, to attach your own personal notions to an imaginary alien.

The sexism is strong in this one....

I don't typically ban someone from a response as I'm all for intelligent debate but to dress your misogynistic rant and personal attack up as anything other than what it is basically is wasted effort.

If I cared I would challenge YOU to get out of your comfort zone and defend the skeptical side of this argument just as I presented some valid scientifically based arguments for the existence of The Greys in this thread but that would take a bit more intellectual fortitude than I feel you are capable of mustering as evidenced by this...

I mean face it, people, jadestar here ADMITS she thinks GREYS ARE NOT REAL. For Pete's sake, how seriously can one take her treatment of the issue?

1. I stated that I did not feel there is definitive evidence for them. They very well could be real but so far there's nothing which can be examined by those would would be competent to do so (you know like a Grey body, or metal screw even) to go before the world with unassailable evidence. It's a nuanced difference.

2. Taking an opposing viewpoint from the one you hold and defending it is not an idle exercise. It's something which sharpens the mind and opens it up to other possibilities.

a reply to: Scdfa
For what it is, an exercise in logic and knowledge applied analogically to unknown things, and even possibly illogical things. I think this thread is cool, the OP seems to get a kick out of it, and its hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm, its why I hate perky people they and there confounded perkiness even make me wish I was more caught in the moment and in it all. But I am not, and never really was, # I could not even stand school. It was the wrong place for me to be, which is probably why I quit it all.

But anyways the logic is based on her and societies current knowledge of things, she seems pretty knowlegeble about things in her field as she always says. Is it wrong? Ya, but not necessarily, merely in the way you apply it. For instance all of it becomes sort of moot point once you apply a simple thing such as the possible fact that humanity itself could have been seeded here and help progress in evolution. Which if true, would throw a monkey wrench into things and our believes and even our knowledge, but would also explain our sudden hike in tech and everything else. So really you could look at it in any number of ways, and all of those ways may and likely will at one point turn out to be absolute.

But hey I dont see you explaining this gray phenomenon, so really do tell if you got the know how and the in scoop on all of us.

a reply to: JadeStar


Jadestar says: "If I cared I would challenge YOU to get out of your comfort zone and defend the skeptical side of this argument just as I presented some valid scientifically based arguments for the existence of The Greys in this thread but that would take a bit more intellectual fortitude than I feel you are capable of mustering as evidenced by this..."


I'm not sure how much more clearly I can say this, but I will try. Please use that intellectual fortitude you mention to understand what I have to say here:

I'm not guessing whether aliens are here, in the way that you are guessing they are not here. We do not come to this question with the same amount of information. My position that aliens are here is based on first-hand knowledge. Yours is admitted not, correct? Otherwise, you would hold my position. These are simply the different circumstances that we bring to this discussion.

And this is how you missed the entire point of my last post. You treat this issue like it is fiction, to be speculated on endlessly, with no right answer. That is not the situation.

Case in point; In your quote you ask me to step out of my comfort zone and take the skeptic position of this "argument", and debate you. As if serious discussion of the alien situation was just another topic for some collegiate debate society. Then you say I lack the "intellectual fortitude" to do so.

It isn't a matter of intellectual fortitude, it would be intellectually dishonest of me to "step out of my comfort zone" and play pretend with you. Not about a topic this important. Would you ask Paul Revere to "step out of his comfort zone" and argue that the British are not coming? Would you demand Paul Revere prove to you that the British were coming? That could end up costing you a great deal. Costing all of us a great deal, perhaps. The wiser move was to heed his warning, be grateful they did. But today, the lesson seems forgotten.

So too with your treating the alien situation as if it were just "an argument" to be had. It really isn't, and pretending the reality of alien contact is up for debate is a foolhardy use of your intellect, and I know you have a fine intellect.

We need now to move on to the serious questions.

And as for your accusation of sexism and misogyny, I'm offended. You have no real justification to do so. I stated the position you share is like a little girl wondering about unicorns. The analogy fits, I almost said "like a little boy dreams about dinosaurs", but I needed a mythological creature, and dinosaurs are, or were, real. So I went with unicorns. It is an apt analogy.

So call off the thought police, and put the "gender card" you pulled back in the deck. Or is it a now unacceptable to say girls like unicorns?

Now, I will simply bow out of this discussion if you want me to do so, no need to threaten me, I certainly don't want to be where I'm not wanted. You did dedicate this thread to me, I see now that you meant it in a negative way, you've made it clear that you have no interest in what I have to say, and that I regret. You'd have been better served to ask me questions than to simply defend your position. That would have been far more intellectually curious, and more scientific, too.

a reply to: JadeStar

While I am not a die-hard alien believer, I am very interested in the subject. I saw true, legitimate UFO's back in the 60s, in the jungle of Central America. They were UFO's in the truest sense: Totally unidentified. It was at distance, at night, and far from anything other than low pop villages.

Involved a half dozen or so lights in the sky, melding (apparently...perhaps lining up) into one light and then splitting up into multiple lights and flying in a direction directly away from myself.

Consider that Costa Rica had an air force of 2 p-51s at the time, the closest "airport" was in the middle of a crude golf course that could only handle a single one engine beechcraft type aircraft at a time and the most numerous air craft were 3 helicopters used by a company as crop dusters for the banana plantations in the area. (Reportedly, I might add, CIA plants at the time, but not verified).

So there just were not enough craft in the area to generate the number of lights viewed, nor did the helicopters ever (to my knowledge) ever fly at night....locals would have known it if they had. Nothing normal could explain the lights nor their movement as viewed.

Nevertheless, I have never truly bought in to the notion that our skies are teeming with alien aircraft, nor that they are abducting humans and probing them (lol), nor the other various explanations that surround the whole alien encounter/visitation/abduction phenomena.

I find your OP to be incredible...I have not yet read it all, but took a break to post this.

KUDOS to you ... incredibly well thought out, well documented, well presented and researched article here.

S&F and would give you repeats if that were possible.

a reply to: JadeStar

Taking an opposing viewpoint from the one you hold and defending it is not an idle exercise. It's something which sharpens the mind and opens it up to other possibilities.

Again, my entire point was that you treat the alien situation as just an intellectual exercise of speculation, and here you admit that; something to "sharpen the mind" and "open it up to other possibilities." Exactly as I said.

Some people do not want to know the situation to be real, they have much more fun when the question is treated as open-ended.

But jadestar, you should know this: No one wants the grey alien situation to be true.

Especially those who know it is.

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: Scdfa
For what it is, an exercise in logic and knowledge applied analogically to unknown things, and even possibly illogical things. I think this thread is cool, the OP seems to get a kick out of it, and its hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm, its why I hate perky people they and there confounded perkiness even make me wish I was more caught in the moment and in it all. But I am not, and never really was, # I could not even stand school. It was the wrong place for me to be, which is probably why I quit it all.

But anyways the logic is based on her and societies current knowledge of things, she seems pretty knowlegeble about things in her field as she always says. Is it wrong? Ya, but not necessarily, merely in the way you apply it. For instance all of it becomes sort of moot point once you apply a simple thing such as the possible fact that humanity itself could have been seeded here and help progress in evolution. Which if true, would throw a monkey wrench into things and our believes and even our knowledge, but would also explain our sudden hike in tech and everything else. So really you could look at it in any number of ways, and all of those ways may and likely will at one point turn out to be absolute.

But hey I dont see you explaining this gray phenomenon, so really do tell if you got the know how and the in scoop on all of us.

Hello, thank you for the post. I'd be glad to try to answer any questions you have for me, within my rather limited scope of understanding.

But I'm going to offer some serious advice, if you'll allow me to do. In todays world, nothing is worth more than an education. This world is so hard, you must give yourself the advantage of an education. If you dropped out in high school, start looking into a GED. You can do it, have faith in yourself. Yes, it's hard. But not half as hard as living the rest of your life without a diploma. If you are a young person, or even if you are older, you must get an education to have a fighting chance at a decent life.

I wouldn't have said anything, but you yourself mentioned school not working out for you, so I think it is something that is on your mind, as it should be. Listen, I knew a guy who dropped out of high-school with no prospects, drove a cab for a while and made no money. He decided to study for his GED. He got it, even though it was hard. Got a great job. He retired at 45. Not a worry in the world. Don't sell yourself short, you can do anything you put your mind to.

If I'm out of line saying this, I apologize, and I apologize for the topic drift, but I just wanted to help. I bet your loved ones say the same thing. Now forgive me for butting in.

a reply to: Scdfa
I could, but the gray hive mother told me that i should not bother with such nonsense, and that she will spontenuesly combust me to ash, or zap my head into ity bitty chunks with a laser from space from another galaxy, or even another dimension, if I so much as did it by my own volition. I am very fond of not being turned into ash, or my head suddentely blowing up, so I figured I would comply.

But you know! # happens.

So are you going to tell me about your experiences with aliens or not? What makes you the expert. You still have not said anything. Nope nothing at all.

a reply to: Scdfa

Some people do not want to know the situation to be real, they have much more fun when the question is treated as open-ended.

Well, from a scientific viewpoint it has yet to be proofed that "the situation is real".

So i don't really understand your problem here. If you do have had experiences which led you to the conclusion, that these grey beeings are real (meaning they are here and real) no one can either proof or disproof this without hard evidence.

originally posted by: Tichy
a reply to: Scdfa

Some people do not want to know the situation to be real, they have much more fun when the question is treated as open-ended.

Well, from a scientific viewpoint it has yet to be proofed that "the situation is real".

So i don't really understand your problem here. If you do have had experiences which led you to the conclusion, that these grey beeings are real (meaning they are here and real) no one can either proof or disproof this without hard evidence.

"Yet to be proofed". Hard to argue with that. Wow.

"Grey beeings". Bzzzz!

Yes "yet to be proofed" in a scientific way. Nothing more to add to that. Or do you happen to have an alien body lying around in your fridge?

originally posted by: Tichy
a reply to: Scdfa

Some people do not want to know the situation to be real, they have much more fun when the question is treated as open-ended.

Well, from a scientific viewpoint it has yet to be proofed that "the situation is real".

So i don't really understand your problem here. If you do have had experiences which led you to the conclusion, that these grey beeings are real (meaning they are here and real) no one can either proof or disproof this without hard evidence.

Do you suppose these grey"beeings" might have a hive mind?

Do you suppose these grey"beeings" might have a hive mind?

Maybe they have, maybe not. But i'm not quite sure what you intend with this question.

I love this post, and have been looking for a post to posit the following explanation.

Drones.

Radio-controlled craft have existed in some form since the late 19th century. Tesla and Marconi both developed technologies that allow for the distanced control of mechanical bodies through the sea and air before the advent of WWI.

What if the UFO phenemona has been about the secret testing and advancement of drone technologies across decades of secrecy? What if this technology, now being used openly in war and for entertainment, have in fact been used in large and at rude scales since before the 20th century? Drone tech could explain the varied sizes, shapes, and movements of supposed extraterrestrial craft without breaking the laws of physics and without the need for visitors from other planets.

This is an idea, one that I think could explain much outside the abduction phenemona (especially when one considers that security agencies may have been deliberately designing such craft to resemble the public perception of UFO craft as the culture evolved). I have no proof, but I think the technology supports the possibility, and the explanation is more probable and rational than the alternative.

I saw a large triangular shaped UFO with three bright lights at each tip fly over my car in June of 1997. The craft was totally silent, as large as a passenger airline, and appeared to drift more than fly. This occurred approximately four hours drive from a large military base on the American East Coast. The craft, I am certain, was not conventional. It looked and performed like nothing I have seen before or since, yet I am hesitant to call it 'alien'. The craft's design and movements could easily be explained as three small rotary drone craft attached to a large balloon.

Anyway, it's an idea.

Most of you know that I am not that interested in the crop of "UFO Reality TV" shows. Sure, they may be entertaining, but I feel they miss an opportunity to educate. Instead they often do the 100th show on the same 60 year old case and focusing, not on the actual investigation and sound investigative techniques but stuff like any other reality show: fights, squabbles, staged drama, etc.

Of course that view doesn't come as a surprise from a skeptic like me but what about from a UFO investigator who has spent a majority of his life uncovering various documents related to UFOs?

I wanted to offer up another wonderful example of the UFO community and the Astrobiology community working together on something with educational value.

Many of you are probably familiar with John Greenwald of "The Black Vault" UFO/FOIA website fame. What many of you may not know is that he produced this show: The Universe: Alien Faces which takes a scientifically based look at the possibilities of who and what might be out there with guest appearances by people from the science world like Michio Kaku.

John Greenwald on most UFO TV shows:

"We need to take that next step, we need to get beyond that reality TV bit. The percentage of actual learning something is so small with this reality TV shows. A lot of these big time (UFO) shows stage arguments for entertainment value. Away from UFOs, maybe that works? But a show about UFOs, expanding who we are as a human race deserves better. This is something we have to figure out to understand who we are and where we are. Unfortunately, the format is wrong right now. What we need now is science not sensationalism."

If you haven't seen the show, here is a short clip of it below (full show is at the History Channel link above):

Also another great show if you are interested in the type of astrobiological analysis I did here in this thread is this one:



Sidenote: I've met a few people the show features like Nathalie Batalha, Sara Seager (The Seager Equation) and Geoffrey Marcy ("King of Exoplanets"). It also features people from NASA Ames Research Center Astrobiology Institute where I attended a summer program for undergrads.

originally posted by: Herolotus
I love this post, and have been looking for a post to posit the following explanation.

Drones.

What if the UFO phenemona has been about the secret testing and advancement of drone technologies across decades of secrecy? What if this technology, now being used openly in war and for entertainment, have in fact been used in large and at rude scales since before the 20th century? Drone tech could explain the varied sizes, shapes, and movements of supposed extraterrestrial craft without breaking the laws of physics and without the need for visitors from other planets.

That's very sound reasoning and there's evidence in support of it. We know for example that drones like this one....





And this one....



Also....



...have produced UFO sightings. We also know, thanks to the book and documentary "Mirage Men" that the people involved with classified aircraft development have used the UFO subject as a cover to hide black projects including drones and drive "UFO researchers" like Paul Benewitz and probably John Ford mad.

And it's still going on today....



SEE ALSO: Mystery Aircraft Photographed Over Texas

SEE ALSO - ATS: UFOs of the Future

This is an idea, one that I think could explain much outside the abduction phenemona (especially when one considers that security agencies may have been deliberately designing such craft to resemble the public perception of UFO craft as the culture evolved). I have no proof, but I think the technology supports the possibility, and the explanation is more probable and rational than the alternative.

I saw a large triangular shaped UFO with three bright lights at each tip fly over my car in June of 1997. The craft was totally silent, as large as a passenger airline, and appeared to drift more than fly.

Which sounds like it may be a DARPA developed triangular rigid airship which has been widely rumoured for years to be a secret cargo/troop carrier.

It is my opinion that a large amount of large black triangle sightings are due to it.

This occurred approximately four hours drive from a large military base on the American East Coast. The craft, I am certain, was not conventional. It looked and performed like nothing I have seen before or since, yet I am hesitant to call it 'alien'. The craft's design and movements could easily be explained as three small rotary drone craft attached to a large balloon.

Anyway, it's an idea.

Well I like you're thinking here. You should know that the National Institute of DIscovery Science did an analysis of black triangle sightings in the 1990s and found a close correlation with military bases and transport routes between them:

SEE: Silent Running: 'Black Triangle' Sightings on the Rise - Space.com, September 02, 2004

The years 1990-2004 have seen an intense wave of Flying Triangle aircraft, the study observes. Sifting through reports by hundreds of eyewitnesses, the NIDS assessment states that the behavior of the vehicles "does not appear consistent with the covert deployment of an advanced DoD [U.S. Department of the Defense] aircraft."

Rather, it is consistent with (a) the routine and open deployment of an unacknowledged advanced DoD aircraft or (b) the routine and open deployment of an aircraft owned and operated by non-DoD personnel, suggests the NIDS study.

"The implications of the latter possibility are disturbing, especially during the post 9/11 era when the United States airspace is extremely heavily guarded and monitored," the NIDS study explains. "In support of option (a), there is much greater need for surveillance in the United States in the post 9/11 era and it is certainly conceivable that deployment of low altitude surveillance platforms is routine and open."

Of course the powers that be WANT people to think they are aliens. Better that than to think they and their neighbors could be monitored with terahertz cameras which can see through walls.

It's kind of like how they may have perpetuated a SETI hoax to cover up a classified NSA surveillance program called Project 415, decades before Snowden blew the whistle on such programs.



SEE: By the Time the Aliens Don't Get to Arizona

Excerpt:

'It has all the earmarks of a hoax,' said Darren Leigh, a radio astronomer who operates one of the largest such search efforts in the world today, the BETA project...Nevertheless, Leigh said, the 84-foot dish of the Oak Ridge Observatory's BETA telescope was trained on the region of the sky where the signal had been claimed, just to be sure. And there's nothing there."

The Wednesday press conference was abruptly cancelled.

On Wednesay, November 4, people trying to access the EQ Pegasi website "found a National Security Agency logo" filling the screen.

Peter A. Gersten of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) telephoned NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland and spoke to Vanessa Taliery of the agency's public relations department.

Gersten reported that Taliery had told him that "anyone can download the NSA seal and emblem and place them on a site." He said Taliery "seemed unaware of the story" that was burning up the Internet.

Speculation about the EQ Pegasi signal continues to spur a fiery debate. (See the Boston Globe for November 4, 1998, "Earthlings say: Not so fast," page A-10)

Or how Brookhaven National Laboratory covered their development of high energy weapons by shooting down a drone which landed in a Long Island park and drove UFO researcher John Ford to the funny farm.

SEE: Brother John and the Diabolical UFO Coverup

Excerpt:

OUT THERE
They Thought UFOs Had Landed.
A Case of Hysteria, Politics, Poison and Toothpaste

"He was arrested for conspiring to murder three local politicians.
By poisoning them with radium. Police charge that he schemed to
put the radioactive material in their cars, in their food and even
in their toothpaste ... According to prosecutors, Ford was a
terrorist intent on killing, to help end a UFO coverup. Today,
Ford, 49, resides in a state-run psychiatric center, having been
found unfit to stand trial ... But for the believers, the story isn't
over. The coverup continues, as always. The coverup is eternal."

And these stories serve to illustrate why I remain a skeptic of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis being the most likely explanation for the puzzling UFOs people report. Could a UFO be of extraterrestrial origin? Sure. But it is much more likely to be secret stuff made on Earth by very clever humans with huge budgets we in the above ground sciences could only dream of.

originally posted by: Parthin
They are usually described as being telepathic, although this ability could be the result of non-biological implants. a reply to: JadeStar

But the greys are commonly claimed to be telepathic to human minds. Since we presumably don't have implants for for technological telepathy, how would that work?

a reply to: Scdfa
Really dude. So are you going to go ahead and say what you know, or think you know. Or are you going to keep changing the subject and asking question which various people have provided all ready. I suppose hive mind can mean and be interpreted in many ways. So ya! Back at ya.

a reply to: Ross 54
Obviously you have not been keeping up with the space thingamajiggering going on. You know its been explained time and time again in them something files of the intergalactic whatever. That humans were once telepathic but it was removed during one of the stages of entrapment, some say we lost a space war so they stuck us all here, others say in our evolution we originally had telepathy it but it was removed to make us more easily controlled.

And others say other things. Really you do have to keep up with the general information here you know, you must be up and par with the various strange people all over the place saying all kinds of things. You got plenty of people channeling some alien or god or demon who all have there opinions on things, complete with picture stories and backdrops to the setting.

Besides. You have to ask yourself what exactly do you mean by telepathic. It has a bunch of different variation and meanings, and yes one is hive mind, not unlike the Borg. Or it could just mean they more easily process information from there surroundings or anything else. Or merely being in synch.

Here this guy is the more interesting one when it comes to this channeling space entities or creatures from galaxies and dimensions far far away. For what it is worth its an interesting phenomenon. Here are a few on how one branch of telepathy works and a bit on the grays and hybrids. Make of it what you will.