Problems With Alien Visitation, And The Question Of: Where Is Everyone?

Greetings ATSers. I would like to present my take on what seems to be the most common type of alien visitation story – humanoid “greys” who travel across intergalactic distances – and the problems I have with the many reported sightings and general belief that we've been visited, now or in the distant past. My post comes in two parts: the first addresses the issues I have specifically with the lack of evidence for visitation, and the second deals with the question of why haven't we been visited yet. First of all I would like to keep this as scientifically-minded as possible. My arguments would be based more on what I've learned in astrophysics and astrobiology, and less on what many people refer to as “common sense.” I am also no expert on anything I say – I am a senior criminal justice major with a minor in astronomy, who in one month will be a lieutenant in the US Air Force as an Air Battle Manager. A lot of what I am putting forth here is based on what I've learned in my astronomy courses and from private discussions with my professors.

Now, I would also like to state very clearly - I am aware of no scientifically verified data which support the hypothesis that we are being visited by extraterrestrial beings or have been visited in the past, anywhere. I have not seen and/or heard any strong evidence which would lead me to suspect that extraterrestrials exist on or visit the Earth. All of the astronomers that I know personally, though only numbering in the 10s, have no personal evidence for the presence of extraterrestrials. With regards to the latter, please keep in mind that these are people who regularly spend large amounts of time on mountaintops staring at the night sky.

So let's start with the burden of proof. If someone claims to have seen an alien, it is NOT up to me to disprove them. As Carl Sagan put it, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Unquestionably, the discovery of aliens visiting our planet would be the most important one in history. As a result, we need to apply the highest standards of evidence to any claim of alien visitation – it has to be absolutely indisputable. Yet, none of these claims have been able to withstand scrutiny. So what is the current status of all these claims?

The pyramids of Egypt were put forward as an example of alien influence when it was thought to be incredible that the ancient Egyptians could build them. However, over time we've developed many hypotheses that suggest that the Egyptians had the know-how and certainly had the manpower and resources. Of course, these are still hypotheses that are based on millenia-old findings – but why should the alien-aided construction hypothesis, which has NO hard evidence, be considered over the others?

The Easter Island giant statues – some 887 of them – were a surprising find on this isolated, small island (roughly 63 square miles). When Europeans arrived on Easter Island, there were some 8,000 natives living subsistence lives and worshiping the statues without knowledge of how they were created. This scenario sound familiar? Yet, now we postulate through archeology that Polynesians first inhabited the island around 1000 AD. They thrived and grew and eventually depleted the island and depleted the island's resources. At its height, the culture built the statues. By the time the Europeans found Easter Island, they had declined through war, famine, and scarcity of resources. Is this less plausible than alien visitation?

The Nazca lines in Peru can sometimes be considered “too large” for the supposedly primitive people who constructed them. Is this evidence of aliens or are the ingenious people trying to make themselves known to their Gods? Some people still think it is the latter, despite the fact that it has been demonstrated that people could create these lines using the tools and technology that were available to the Nazca at the time – sometimes in a manner of days, without aerial assistance. Crop circles are a similar phenomenon, and have likewise been shown to be the result of humans. Now to take a step in the dreaded “common sense” direction for a bit – would a civilization that is capable of navigating through the interstellar medium and evading human detection really need to construct massive, physical landmarks on the ground to guide them? WWII-era combat aircraft in the Pacific navigated across a vast, featureless ocean with simple bearing and distance measurements.

Natural phenomenon can also sometimes be difficult to explain, and are sometimes seen as evidence for aliens. The Marfa lights in Texas, for example are often attributed to as such. Current research however suggests that these are indeed the result of vehicular headlights appearing to hang in the sky due to refraction. A research study in 2004 found that U.S. Highway 67 is visible from the Marfa viewing platform, and that the frequency of lights correspond to the frequency of vehicle traffic. When the group parked a vehicle on U.S. 67 and flashed its headlights, this was visible at the view park and appeared to be a Marfa light. Electrical discharges such as sprites, blue jets, and ball lightning are also often seen as extraterrestrial or at least paranormal.

So now, what direct evidence do we have for UFOs? Once again, the burden of proof demands more than just hearsay. There are few credible photographs on the Internet, and people trying to prove a point by purposefully photoshopping in UFOs and releasing them make it very difficult to trust Internet sources, unfortunately.

Area 51, a detachment of Edwards AFB located by a dry salt bed, is commonly seen as the place where the government hides crashed alien vessels, greys, and conducts reverse-engineering experiments. This location remains at the core of many conspiracy theories. Which brings me to a tangent – what is the basic idea behind a conspiracy theory? It would seem that, overwhelmingly, it is the government hiding information from the public.

With regards to aliens, people claim that the government is hiding proof of them.
Why don't scientists speak up?
Because the government silences them.
But then what about the many other “claims” by so-called professionals?
Apparently heroes evade the US government.
The US government isn't that effective right? Why couldn't they hide Watergate?
They want to seem incompetant.

Basically, nothing can disprove a conspiracy theory!

Back to Area 51, and specifically the greys. The idea of a grey is something that deeply, deeply troubles me. That is, how is it that a civilization that developed independantly many lightyears away happens to look almost exactly like a human being. Of all the creatures on Earth, how many are bipedal, with two arms situated on the thorax with legs mirrored on the pelvis, with both sets of limbs parallel with each other, with two eyes on a clearly distinct head that also contains a mouth, ears, and so on and so forth. The physiological similarities are much, much too close even for the notion of parallel evolution and Panspermia. The idea of genetic engineering and cross-breeding also has no foundation outside of hopeful speculation.

Also, with regards to reverse-engineering, people rarely seem to think about how unlikely it is that we would be able to comprehend technology that is at least hundreds of years ahead of us. If you showed an Ipod to an intellectual 60 years ago, they'd have been mystified – yet an undergraduate electrical enginner could tell you how it works. If you showed something that is as mechanically simple as an automatic weapon, say with a reflex sight, to people 500 years ago, they would have also been puzzled – even at a time when guns were in use. Yet, a highschooler could tell you how it works. And now, we're talking about breaking down technology that has the means to accelerate a craft at speeds that are many orders of magnitude greater than what we can achieve today? This is another “common sense” approach, but I feel I have to mention it.

On a similar note, I've seen people argue that it is possible that aliens really are not that much more advanced than us, but happened to stumble upon a technology that magically gave them the ability to travel at such speeds. Yet people seem to ignore the fact that the challenges of space travel go beyond going fast enough, and all the appropriate technologies have to be developed hand-in-hand. Because we know that there is no other intelligent life in our solar system, let's look at the next star system, Alpha Centauri, which is 4.4 Lyrs away. Even if they found a way to accelerate themselves to 0.006 times the speed of light, which is 100 times the fastest craft we've produced, it would take them 381 years to get to us. It would also take them 4.4 Lyrs to communicate anything back home.

DISCLAIMER: Let's stay away from discussions involving wormholes and teleportation, since we have no observational evidence for them – although they are at a base level theoretically possible, if you want to keep your fingers crossed.

Said aliens would also have to bring enough supplies, medical and safety equipment (a whole set of escape pods that have to serve the same function as the original craft), and armament, (let's think about the supposed sizes of flying saucers in photographs) for the trip.They would also have to be able to simply build a suitable spacecraft to house the propulsion system. High-energy radiation is stopped by our atmosphere, and theoretically could also be stopped by the hull of a ship. High energy charged particles could also be deflected by a magnetic field. But what about micrometeoroids? At such high speeds, flecks of dust, of which there is plenty out in space, would do tremendous damage to a hull over time. How would you even be able to detect and avoid an object the size of a house before you hit it? That kind of technology would certainly be crucial! Keep in mind that hitting a rock that size at 4 million miles an hour would probably release as much energy as a small nuke. Would aliens also suffer from conditions humans would suffer such as loneliness, isolation, debilitating weightlessness, etc?

But, let's just say they indeed are highly advanced, and have conquered these issues. Now that we have established that there is no evidence that reaches the standard necessary to prove they have visited us, let's ask - why aren't they here yet?

If we are not unique as a civilization that is potentially capable of colonizing the galaxy, where is everyone else? The Fermi paradox: Planets are common, Earth-like planets are quite likely to be somewhat common, life would likely develop on some of these, intelligence is a natural adaptation (something I have been taught but disagree with a little), so therefore many civilizations should exist.

Our galaxy is 100,000 lightyears across. At a speed of 0.0001 the speed of light, which is what we are almost capable of, we'd cross this distance in a billion years. But the Milky Way is over 10 billion years old, and let's look at how far our race has come in 4000 years – that should be plenty of time! However, we have a big problem – you can't reach every star by travelling in a straight line. The total interstellar distance that would have to be traveled would be over a trillion light years. Does this effectively solve the paradox?

Not quite. Let's say we start out with one planet. We send out two ships to colonize a planet each. Many years later, those planets also send 2 ships. We'll then get 4, 8, 16, 32, and so on. Exponential growth accesses the galaxy much faster, and in the end, time is really only limited by the diameter of the galaxy. So why aren't the aliens here?

Possible conclusion 1:
We indeed are a one in a billion accident – so why do we exist? Maybe it is a one in a trillion accident – we live in one of the universes where intelligent beings exist, and that we exist in this universe because it is perfectly suited to support our existence (the anthropic principle). Note that the long travel times between galaxies (22 billion years travelling at 0.0001c to nearest galaxy) means that we only need to be a once-in-a-galaxy accident for it to matter. A large fraction of galaxies could have a civilization, but we'd never know about it.

Counter-arguments:
Life arose rather easily on Earth, too much so for it to be unique. Many other animals show signs of intelligence, so that can't be exceedingly unique either.

Possible conclusion 2:
Civilizations are short-lived. Assume there are a million planets in the galaxy which form intelligent life during a 2 billion year period. But each one is only capable of, or interested in, interstellar communication for a thousand years, for whatever reason... how many would there be now? Even with that many planets, on average there would be only one communicating right now.

Counter-arguments:
Colonization would effectively make a species immortal – no single event would wipe them out. We, and presumably aliens, would have a strong drive to better our technology.

Possible conclusion 3:
Interstellar travel is too hard! And there is no shortcut! Nobody ever came to visit Earth because the technology to make visits would have been unreasonable. Even though there may be hundreds or thousands of civilizations in the galaxy, each would be confined to their home system. No colonization. No artifacts. It could be that resource depletion becomes too serious an issue before a race develops a means to overcome it (a problem I am afraid humanity may run into).

Counter-arguments:
Think about how far we've come in the past 100 years. Thinking about 1000 years into the future, would we still have such problems?

Possible conclusion 4:
Self-replicating machines are impossible! If they can exist, they can spread without worry about the time that it takes – a race could construct them and let them loose. So why aren't they here? Because they don't exist.

Counter-arguments:
But... (clunky) versions DO exist (just Google self-replicating robots)! Development is needed, but this may be a non-issue in the near future.

Possible conclusion 5:
Mature civilizations have no motivation for colonizing other worlds. Realistically, interstellar colonization is not a solution to the problems on a planet: It’s too hard to ship many people away,
the economic return of colonization is highly questionable, and the benefit to society is questionable.
So why would a world choose to do it?

Counter-arguments:
All we need is ONE species with the colonization impulse. If advanced species are common, this becomes more likely.

Possible conclusion 6:
We live in a zoo. There is an extensive interstellar civilization. Earth is considered too primitive for contact. We have been declared off-limits for now. Observe but do not allow detection. A similar idea is that we are simply beneath the notice of a galaxy-spanning civilization. They only need bother with more advanced ones.

Counter-arguments:
It only takes one to violate the ban and land a vessel on the front lawn of the White House. Also, any species that pursues colonization as an ends to a mean could be considered aggressive – Earth's resources may be considered valuable.

Possible conclusion 7:
We are too primitive to communicate. This is the Sentinel hypothesis. There is an extensive interstellar civilization. But they are plenty busy without us. Once we have developed the proper technology, either we will easily detect them or they have a sentinel program that will detect us.

Counter-arguments:
Human energy use has risen monumentally with time. The same can be expected for aliens. A galactic civilization should be anything but subtle.

Possible conclusion 8:
They are too alien. Perhaps they think in completely different ways. Communicate in completely different ways.Perhaps their technology developed with totally different logic, in a way that is unrecognizable to us.

Example: in David Brin’s Uplift series, hydrogen breathers have almost no intersection with oxygen breathers. What about species that somehow live inside of stars? Not ones that evolve there, but ones that find such environments higher-energy. We might never detect them.

Counter-arguments:
We've detected plenty of bizarre things on Earth using strange methods. Also, a galaxy-spanning civilization should have some commonalities with us, such as energy use, which would help identification.

Possible conclusion 9:
Technology is a unique accident on our world. Civilizations exist on many planets, but maybe ours is the only one that has the resources to allow us to fully develop our technology. Perhaps the coal and oil deposits on our planet are unique. Perhaps the combination of land, water, and plate tectonics is unique.

Counter-arguments:
Some energy sources, like solar power, must be universal. Other animals on Earth can construct rudimentary structures and exhibit tool usage, so it can't be that unique.

Possible conclusion 10:
Aliens are here observing us but their technology is so superior that we do not know it. Nano-robots could wander the Earth freely with little chance of detection – things the size of grains of sand or
fine dust. Perhaps they are interacting with us and directing our development, protecting us?

Counter-arguments:
This assumes aliens would be delicate. That surely is a happy thought, but are you ready to pay the price for assuming incorrectly? And maybe one alien race would, but why would all? What do they have to gain from helping our development? If they really want to help us, why are they doing it so gingerly and indirectly?


Possible conclusion 11:
We aren’t listening and looking in the proper way yet. Other civilizations exist, but space travel is too hard to do on a lark. Civilizations communicate with each other – but using technologies that we have not yet discovered or not yet exploited.

Counter-arguments:
Easiest way to communicate is using photons – long-distance, energy-efficient. We already observe the entire electromagnetic band – why would such strong signals escape us? Could light be emitted in a way that it only becomes a strong signal if received the right way? How would different civilizations stumble upon the same method of emission/reception without prior contact?

Possible conclusion 12:
The future shown in the movie “The Terminator” never happens – machines never rule. It can be argued that we, biological beings, are a step in the evolutionary process to thinking robots.Thinking electro-mechanical beings could have infinite lifetimes so slow interstellar travel is no barrier. Such beings, controlling the resources of a planet, could easily start colonizing space travel – and would colonize the galaxies in a few million years. Hence, they do not exist if they are not here.

Counter-arguments:
Again, machines are easy to construct. Somewhere, some alien civilization should have been able to do this by now.

So to wrap this section up:
- It can be argued that single-celled life is easily created.
- From there on, it is evolution driven by natural selection – all the time, everywhere.
- Natural selection – survival of the fittest – drives species to maximize their genetic advantages.
- Intelligence is an advantage to be maximized. However, if a species has evolved other means to fully take advantage of their environment, intelligence may not be a necessary tool for survival, which is ultimately what is important. Brains are incredible energy hogs, so there has to be a good reason for its development.

We humans, as a species, came to dominate other developing intelligent species on our planet due to our superior control of technology and aggression. Would anyone disagree that intelligence, tecnology, and aggression is a result of natural selection? Should aliens therefore have the same drives? Species who balance aggression and cooperation survive in the long run… else they die (and another one arises). So any instance of life on any planet should eventually develop an intelligent species with a technical civilization.

So where is everyone?

Questions to ask yourself:
If aliens are here…..
Why are they so good at avoiding definitive detection, yet not so good at avoiding ordinary people?
Why are they interested in sneaking around instead of making real contact?
What is their purpose? This is a large expenditure of resources… for what purpose?
Why would university scientists keep it secret?
Why do they look so much like us?

Think about how humans have explored. Long sea voyages, many resources needed. We didn't attempt to hide, but rather made every attempt to make contact and explore. This does not guarantee an alien race's psychology, but it sure seems like a long trip to make just to harrass people on lonely rural roads!

I do not have any reason to be AGAINST alien visitation, or whatever that implies. I consider myself to be, at least compared to my peers, someone who more than anything else would like to believe that aliens are right there above the atmosphere waiting to communicate with us. The fact is however, I refuse to pin my hopes on faith, feelings, and just plain old poor evidence. I am interested in what other conclusions people might have about why we have not run into any alien civilizations, even though it seems that we should have by now.

OMG S&F I'll read the rest of this later I've read up to Area 51, I did something similar like 40 minutes ago but mines like a friggin summary of this post... amazing word OP


Edit to show OP:: www.abovetopsecret.com... Its even called ALIEN VISITATION!!! HAHAHAHA

reply to post by qalameid

Area 51, a detachment of Edwards AFB located by a dry salt bed

Edwards AFB is in California.

"Area 51" Would be considered part of the Nellis AFB test range and has nothing
to do with Edwards AFB.

Possible conclusion #13:

Aliens did show up in the distant past.
Humanity was at a far greater level of technology than it is today.
Humanity and the aliens had a war, humanity won but only barely.
Modern humans are the remnant of that conflict.

(titanic wars are described in the vedic texts among others)

People just dont give the human race enough credit...Even if we arent alone in the universe we certainly are alone in our solar system.Interstellar travel theories just arent realistic....

reply to post by Version100


Location doesn't matter, as even though it is in the Nevada test range, which as a whole is run by Nellis, the facility itself is run by the Air Force Flight Test Center, based out of Edwards.

reply to post by Version100


The counter-arguments I see to this are that we'd probably see remnants - our buildings are predicted to last, in at least a state that would make it recognizable as a building, many hundreds of years into the future. If we had the means to fend off an alien race, we'd see everything from dams to solar collectors to machinery. The Earth would not have had enough time to erase all that.

reply to post by VicDiaz89


The beauty of it all is that our expectations of what is realistic is certain to change over 100s of years. I do not question our own ability to reach for the stars, assuming our governments pay more attention to space travel in that time. I think we've achieved plenty so far, and we've reached the point where we can guide our own evolution in a sense - something truly unique in the world of living creatures!

reply to post by R3N3G4D3


I'm somewhat inexperienced with the ATS forums - this being my first thread. What is S&F?

Funny thread.

Not because I disagree with anything you said, but because of the total lack of responses. Intelligent posts don't go down well...

Here at ATS, the majority only want to see bad video clips of aeroplanes to reinforce their delusions. You're challenging those delusions, so expect a poor response.

That and the fact that all too many in here couldn't possibly read that many words in one go. Sad, but true I'm afraid.

reply to post by qalameid

DISCLAIMER: Let's stay away from discussions involving wormholes and teleportation, since we have no observational evidence for them – although they are at a base level theoretically possible, if you want to keep your fingers crossed.

So, your main disclaimer is that we must ignore current advances in physics that could explain how aliens surmount the difficulty of interstellar travel...i.e. the main scientific argument against it?

Sorry, no dice.

You said "we have no observational evidence for them" (teleportation). I beg to differ. Not only do we have observational evidence, we've DONE it...in 1997.

physicsworld.com...

As for wormholes, I'm not sure how scientific it is to rule out the ideas of luminaries such as Hawking, etc. in arguments for alien travel. We've gone from horses to putting a man on the moon in a century, imagine what our technology can do 100 years from now? 100 years ago, the idea of getting across the country in a day was inconceivable. Now, we can cross the planet in a day (or less if in the shuttle).

Your entire argument ignores both our current technology and our speed of technological advances, thereby rendering the entire argument bogus.

Questions to ask yourself:
If aliens are here…..
Why are they so good at avoiding definitive detection, yet not so good at avoiding ordinary people?
Why are they interested in sneaking around instead of making real contact?
What is their purpose? This is a large expenditure of resources… for what purpose?
Why would university scientists keep it secret?
Why do they look so much like us?

1. Currently, we have a variety of stealth technology, even the beginnings of invisibility tech. Surely, technology levels capable of interstellar travel can also grant many stealth capabilities. Besides, from numerous photos and videos, it isn't always successful.

2. That is the question isn't it? What is their agenda? They aren't here to take us over, or destroy us, or they would have done so by now. They aren't here to help, or likewise, they would have made themselves known. Assuming they've been here a while, ample time to study us. So, logically, the only other thing I can deduce is "containment" and monitoring.

3. Really the same questions twice. If they were containing us, and keeping us from spreading out faster than they feel is healthy, then it would justify it. (also, with interstellar travel at your disposal, the idea of resources is a no-brainer...no resource problem at all).

4. Same reason all secrets are kept. SCI. Secret, Compartmentalized Information. Each person knows only the part of the puzzle they need to know. Scientists may not even realize they are working on something "real", they could think it an exercise for example. My father has worked for top secret projects for most of my childhood, and I have only a vague idea of what he did. Between the threat of jail and losing one's livelihood, you don't talk about it...not the folks doing such things.

5. Why do most animals on Earth have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears (or ear-like areas), and limbs?

Yet people seem to ignore the fact that the challenges of space travel go beyond going fast enough, and all the appropriate technologies have to be developed hand-in-hand. Because we know that there is no other intelligent life in our solar system, let's look at the next star system, Alpha Centauri, which is 4.4 Lyrs away. Even if they found a way to accelerate themselves to 0.006 times the speed of light, which is 100 times the fastest craft we've produced, it would take them 381 years to get to us. It would also take them 4.4 Lyrs to communicate anything back home.

Technological advances are a wonderful thing. Remember these?

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

"Space travel is bunk." -- Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." -- Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the Audion tube and a father of radio, 25 February, 1967.


P.S. - Bravo on this as a first thread though.

The lack of photos and pictures may mean this thread doesn't get the good reading it deserves.

A good thread, like all ideas on this subject, we could all argue and counter argue (i mean discuss in a gentlemanly manner) the ideas and possibilities surrounding this topic.

Nothing is impossible however, just highly improbable. My own personal conclusions are:

1) There is a vast intergalactic community and We are being monitored without interference (or subtle guidance).

or

2) they haven't found us yet. We are quite a way out from the Galactic Center, (the tattooine of our galaxy).

If it is number 1, then I would hope that they are smart enough not to make contact with the worlds Governments.

Number 2 is a good point (and going to show my geekiness here), yep, we are basically in the backwater part of our galaxy, very much like Luke's planet in Star Wars.

Still though, our visitors may also be in the neighborhood...galacticly speaking. The Hill Case still interests me here, when Betty claimed they told her they were visiting yellow suns like their own (and nevermind the fact that not only did Betty produce a starmap with stars only later discovered, but also stated the correct COLOR of said stars, prior to astronomer confirmation...which came later)...

I tend (obviously) to go with number 1 though. It's the only thing that makes sense (other than I think they are also actively involved in containment policies. Of course, they are alien, so could have a completely "alien" way of thinking that we're simply not grasping as a motive also...who knows?

Are you familiar with Jacques Vallee and his theory qalameid? Because you might want to look into it if not. If they're as far beyond us as some think they could easily be coming from different dimensions, which resolves any problems with space travel over distances. Link to his hypothesis incase you've not read of it :

en.wikipedia.org...

I don't think we can really have a clue what's going on with them if they're out there to be honest, we just have to try and discard the theories that eventually seem wrong to us until we're left a lot closer to the truth.

Anyway, good luck with your career, maybe if you get to a certain point you'll find out a lot more stuff from within the Air Force. You probably won't be able to share it with us though!

reply to post by Gazrok


If only there was solid evidence of visitation in the past or present. That they had helped us from pre-civilization and put us on the path to where we are now. I personally would like to believe thats the case. It's like trying to find the right key out of 1 million keys to fit the right lock and recover all our past history.

Someone on this forum posted a topic related to this theory and in there was stated "we are a species with amnesia" when it comes to our own history. I can't find the thread or I would give credit for this quote.

If there is a higher intelligence it would be fairly easy for them to stay undetected, as they would have better technology due to minerals that we will have never heard of from different planets, or Michio Kaku who says there are other dimensions so this is why we are not aware of other intelligence as we arent able to perceive the higher dimensions, although difficult for me to comprehend science is trying to prove other dimensions and there is evidence to suggest this may be true.
There is much we still dont know, so that is why i keep an open mind.

reply to post by ATSecretAgent


I think they likely did visit us in the past, but like now, I don't think they interacted with us. In some ways, claiming aliens helped build the pyramids, etc. kind of belittles the ingenuity of our ancestors, who really did miraculous things with the tools at hand.

I'd have to think that if aliens had guided us, we wouldn't see the gradual tech progression we've had, but more of the accelerated curve we have since 1947.

As for Jacques Vallee, he's had a few different theories over the years, including that the whole abduction phenomenon is mass hysteria, etc. The case files seem to me, to indicate more of a flesh and blood being, using technology, vs. some kind of high-order dimensional being.

reply to post by Gazrok


Well, like I tried to stress in my post, I am standing on the shoulders of established science. We've made rudimentary advances in teleportation (transporting information between photons). On paper, wormholes should exist. But we've seen no observable evidence. Likewise, blackholes should exist on paper, but even though we cannot see them directly, their heavy masses affect their surroundings, which in turn are detectable. What I'm trying to get at is that the scientific community does not see evidence for wormholes currently, and the current understanding of teleportation would mean transporting massive objects would be exceedingly complicated - something that would really represent the pinnacle of technology.

And sure our technology can advance, but what if, like one of my conclusions to the Fermi paradox states, we run out of the necessary materials to advance that technology. Or rather, we run out of the materials that would allow us to get the necessary materials. This is a problem that I never thought about until I learned about the monumental energy costs of launching large spacecraft with our current propulsion systems.

Question 1 really should be a big issue, because an advanced spacecraft that can evade visual, radar, IR, and whatever form of detection world governments and militaries have should not be seen by random people out in the country. If aliens did have a secret agenda, they'd put every effort into avoiding detection with anything - for example, how would they know we are the only animals on Earth that have a developed memory and communication system? For all they know dogs can communicate with people - therefore, they'd try to avoid all lifeforms.

Question 5 is also a big deal. I'm pretty sure the majority of the biomass on Earth belong to single-celled animals. They at least outnumber everything else. Multicellular lifeforms go from jellyfish, to fungi, to rotifers, to crustaceans. Unless intelligence somehow is the product of, or is the driving force behind, human anatomy, I do not see why alien life should have to look so similar to us. Why not have the same limbs, but 4 eyes? Why not have ears on their fingertips? Again, not saying it isn't possible at all, but this is the main reason why mainstream science does not agree with the idea of greys.

And personally I do think it'd be cool if one day we're invited to drink at a bar populated by different alien species, a la Star Wars.

reply to post by Gazrok



My belief is if "they" did guide us and teach us the basics, then that would explain why a lot ancient cultures had very similar gods (pre-christ).

Once the roman empire was finished, we seemed to slip into this medieval, dark age, god fearing phase. If hadn't been for this period, we would already be living on the moon, or mars. Perhaps they had a hand in correcting us way back, when scientists like Galileo and Newton were re-discovering what the ancients already knew about our sun and the stars.

Just a thought.

reply to post by qalameid


Yo are right, any form of life is possible, but as basic as it sounds, form follows function and the need to survive. We advanced to our present form because we could adapt our environment. We could do this because of the way we, as a species evolved. While other animals on this planet show high levels of intelligence, other than primates, they are limited in how they can influence their environment.

Perhaps, the primate is the most optimal form life for advancing itself as a dominate and intelligent species, perhaps not, but we wont know for sure until we have the chance to meet ET.