The Possibility of Robotic UFOs—The Drone Hypothesis

The most believable explanation for UFOs, where misidentifications or new physical or astrophysical processes can be ruled out, is the extraterrestrial drone hypothesis.[0] Dr. Michio Kaku, physicist and founder of field string theory, has described this theory on his show 'Physics of the Impossible.'[1]

"By the way if you're a type-3 you will explore the galaxy not by sending Captain Kirk on an Enterprise hopping from star system to star system -- that would take million of years to explore the milky way galaxy!

"The way you do it, is you would create a robot. Have the robot land on a moon. It would create a factory. It would make millions of copies of itself on this moon, which is quite stable, and send these to other moons. Then each of these would create another factory. Starting with one robot you would have a million. Then a million-million, and a million-million-million. Until you had a sphere expanding near the speed of light containing trillions of these robots. They would land on a moon and simply wait. Wait for a type-0 civilization to become type-1. Now where have you seen that before? This is the basis of the movie 2001. The movie 2001 is perhaps the most authentic rendition of the encounter of a type-0 civilization with a type-3 civilization.

"Now at the beginning of the movie Stanley Kubrick interviewed many leading astronomers and scientists, and we laid out this scenario. That the most efficient way to colonize a galaxy is to send robots have them land on a moon, and create a factory, and then they would shoot out and colonize other moons. But at the last minute Kubrick cut the first five minutes of his own film, and the film became super mystical. But the next time you see that movie realize that the monolith on the moon is perhaps a remnant of a passing type-3 civilization waiting for our type-0 civilization to become type-1."[1]

If Professor Kaku's explanation of how technologically advanced species explore the galaxy proves to be true. Then it would neatly explain "crash landings" of off-world objects. It isn't much of a leap to imagine a non-human sapient species spreading von Neumann-esque probes throughout the universe by impacting the surface of planetary bodies, deploying sensory equipment, and manufacturing transmitter towers on a nearby moon as a relay to communicate with the stellar network.[2][3][4] This becomes even more believable when we consider how we as humans explore other planets.

For the sake of argument, simply imagine for a moment little green men live on Mars and that one of them saw the Mars Polar Lander crash land to the surface of the planet.[5][6][7] A Martian skeptic might incredulously say to an eyewitness, "So a non-martian intelligence sent a craft all the way across the solar system, but they couldn't prevent it from crashing into our planet?!" Yet this is exactly what happened. Unfortunately since the martians lack an understanding of the circumstances surrounding the impact, they'd miss out on crucial evidence due to a misplaced sense of a need for skepticism. Where, instead, if they had employed a more open-minded investigative approach it might have helped them to prove that life exists elsewhere on other planets.

If anything this should cause us to pause and rethink the Kecksburg, and to a lesser extent the Roswell incidents.[8][9] Furthermore the drone hypothesis might even explain the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter.[10] Really the only problem with this theory is if drones are observing our planet, it's reasonable to question why we haven't detected any anomalous electromagnetic communication transmissions. It also requires us to ask, "Why hasn't SETI heard anything?" The only defensible explanations are:

1. They're either using technology far beyond what we're familiar with -- perhaps quantum modems.[11]
   
2. The probes aren't from a local star cluster and are perhaps instead from an adjacent n-th dimensional space.[12][13]
   or,
   
3. There are no drones and we're not being visited.

Whatever the case might be the drone hypothesis is an interesting possibility[14][15] and one we need to take seriously as it's likely how we'll explore the universe ourselves.

== Notes/Refs ==

[0] 1967.08.19, Astronautics and Aeronautics, UFOs ~ Extraterrestrial Probes - James E. McDonald -- puhep1.princeton.edu...
[1] "Michio Kaku about future civilization" (occurs at 5:30) -- www.youtube.com...
[2] "We should scour the moon for ancient traces of aliens, say scientists" -- www.guardian.co.uk...
[3] A Scientific Search for Visitation from Extraterrestrial Probes -- www.setv.org...
[4] The Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts (SETA) -- www.setv.org...
[5] Mars Polar Lander -- en.wikipedia.org...
[6] "Mars Exploration Rover 2003" (occurs at 2:29) -- www.youtube.com...
[7] "NASA Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation" (occurs at 1:18) -- www.youtube.com...
[8] "Is case finally closed on 1965 UFO mystery?" -- www.msnbc.msn.com...
[9] Karl Pflock makes a compelling case against the Roswell incident. However, there are credible details about the story that simply won't go away. It's difficult to explain why the USAF would publicly state there was a saucer crash in Roswell only a day later to retract the story, and then decades after officially release four conflicting additional explanations: weather balloon, project Mogul, project Excelsior, and project High Dive. Beyond making repeated changes to the story, even many of the specifics fail to possess any sort of internal consistency. For instance, the Mogul mission was classified, but the equipment used off the shelf parts. Nothing which couldn't be identified by a 10 year old. So, why did they establish military cordons (as described by sworn affidavits of witnesses) and fly the debris to top foreign tech bases such as Ft. Worth and Wright Field? Note, these flights are facts, not suppositions, there are both military and press records of the flights. How could intelligence officers at a base housing the only operational nuclear bomber wing, incorrectly identify balsa wood and foil paper (if Mogul)? Either the officers at the base were wholly incompetent or the Mogul story simply doesn't hold water. A reading of Friedman, Berlitz, Moore, Randle, Pflock, McAndrew, Weaver, Mitchell, and the other principles should give a more thorough overview of the nuance and murkiness surrounding the case. I'd also recommend looking into the research surrounding the Ramey memo.

[10] "Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter" -- en.wikipedia.org...
[11] "Breakthrough brings 'Star Trek' teleport a step closer" -- www.independent.co.uk...-06-04T00:00:25-00:00 . A more recent technical article titled "Experimental free-space quantum teleportation" published in Nature in 2010 can be found at www.nature.com...
[12] "A Study of the 1994 Nellis UFO Video Footage" -- www.aenigmatis.com...
[13] A member of ATS adds the following detail about the Nellis S-30 object, @"2:22 Eats it's own shadow, and now is a dark black in between the outer shell- ... It then morphs into a cylinder shape as it comes closer. Then it re-morphs into the 4 dimensional ever changing (clear) blob, as the now black area is moved up down right and left (The zoom in shows 4 or 5 very dark craft windows) That would be counter productive in a morphing mass IMO." -- www.abovetopsecret.com...
[14] "Lagrangian Points for SETI" -- www.setileague.org...
[15] "Astronomers find huge asteroid sharing Earth's orbit" -- dvice.com... and the Nature article -- www.astro.uwo.ca...

I would like to invite the fine people of ATS to comment on the above essay and offer feedback on the strong points and weak points of the drone hypothesis (especially on aspects I may have failed to mention). Also I would like to get peoples opinons on:

1. Whether UAVs, like the Global Hawk and DarkStar, should be included to illustrate the evolution from manned flight to fully autonomous fly-by-wire flight control systems.

2. Whether the pacing is appropriate as an introduction to the subject, or if I should spend more time explaining what a Von Neumann and Bracewell probe are (or other technical concepts).

3. Whether more time should be dedicated to describing human robotic space missions.

4. Whether the physics of how drones would spread through the universe should be given a more technical treatment (in terms of speed, navigation, communication, self-replication, possible problems -- ala Star Control 2 Sylandro Probes, etc.)

5. Whether the article should mention the Isaac CARET Drone incident (largely considered a hoax), if only to show how our notion of what a probe should or could look like has changed with time.

As, for example, the very real GoldenEye 80,

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/37f892291a73.jpg[/atsimg]
(more details: www.abovetopsecret.com...)

6. Whether there are any other well known UFO cases that scream "drone" that I have failed to mention.

Accuracy is important. Please call out anything that appears to be possibly incorrect or that is poorly supported. Much thanks. Shalom friends!

This was too deep for me. I think any intelligence out there is far more advanced then we are, and definitely on a different wave-length of travel and communication.

We don't see objects crashing into the earth and deploying drones to create factories? Maybe I'm missing something here.

Why are we here? To learn love. That is all. Who cares about what's outside of our atmosphere. We need to be focusing on how to love and be what it is to be human again. We're going through some strange times. All I know is these "Drones" the government is deploying needs to be stopped NOW. No matter if it's to another planet, or to Syria to bomb and spy on helpless people.

Pretty sure I'm gonna get a "off topic" flag but oh well.

S+F for you so people can see this and get their two cents in. Very well written by the way. Too much going on for me.

It's going to be difficult to pin down what cases may be robotic, biological or biological robots even.

The technology (at least aspects of it) observed could be any or all of the above.

There may be biological ET's, who are travelling in 'living, sentient machines', or who carry robotic equipment that is almost or even totally indistinquishable from living organics as we would recognise organic life on Earth...that's the problem, the only frame of reference we have is our own technological history and present...which in terms of high technology is pretty primitive by comparison.

Several witness reports have mentioned both biological and apparently robotic elements (the case of the Scottish foresry worker, who had his trousers ripped by several 2-3 foot spheres, which had spindly arm like appendages that grabbed at him)

There are probably machines that are so intelligent and so technological, that for all intents and purposes are actually just as alive as we are.

reply to post by FooScience


Thanks for the wonderful thread
I share the same idea as Kaku, even now we humans are sending probes out in the dark
I would believe that's how you explore big unknown places now and in the future, the probes will of cause be more and more advance,

The mars rover would be much more useful if it was in the form of a human that could simulate sights,sound and taste, and it would be controlled from earth in a virtual reality environment.

That brings me to the "greys" the alien that we hear about again and again from abductees old paintings and writings, and the last thread I posted about a alien interview with a grey from the Roswell crash, it speaks about being a doll, to us a very very advance robot, their version of our mars rover.


This is how our probes look like


This is how their probes look like

reply to post by FooScience


While I remain skeptical regarding anyone or anything actually visiting our tiny little glimmer of a speck of dirt in this overwhelmingly vast universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars, I'm more in favor of a robot, or machine intelligence encounter than any other.

If, for instance, we by chance developed technology that allows us to download our personalities into durable synthetic android bodies, similar to the 2009 movie Surrogates, but permanently as a full prosthetic replacement body, we could, in essence manually, directly explore the greater universe as trans-human androids with the option to recant back into a purpose grown biological body for whatever or no reason.

A subset of humans could opt to simply remain as self guided, self evolving machine intelligences forever turning their backs on the wet fragile messiness of biology.

At the same time, we could indeed send out AI guided probes as suggested.

Machines make more sense as a platform and solution for exploring the universe. Humanoid shaped Autobots and Decepticons make less sense than author Iain M. Banks portrayal of Altruistic Godlike Machine Intelligences in the form of giant kilometers long spaceship/habitats, but, whatever the case, a machine has greater continuity and survivability the hostile environments of the greater universe over the delicacies of biology.

Whatever the case, if we ever encounter anyone, or anything, robots/machines/artificial intelligence/synthetic makes more sense than risking fragile biology.

Hi, I have been leaning to the belief that many of the craft or objects have no living biological beings on them. Early media seemed to have the alien on them, and this has carried on. Recently with our computer technology, NASA and military drones have progressed to a reality for us today. Whatever is behind these objects, must enjoy a much higher technology than we have. Problems with speed of movement, time, and many other issues an alien being might encounter on the craft would not be an issue being a drone.

Also think like the avatar movie, you could send for example alien like the greys and when they are on the new planet you will enter their body and see everything like you are there, you could feel, hear, smell, etc, etc.

The avatar movie is one example of what an advanced civilization could do, if the alien you send to some place die you will not die.

Before I have read that the greys are some type of advanced robots to explore the universe.

Originally posted by lke123
Also think like the avatar movie, you could send for example alien like the greys and when they are on the new planet you will enter their body and see everything like you are there, you could feel, hear, smell, etc, etc.

The avatar movie is one example of what an advanced civilization could do, if the alien you send to some place die you will not die.

Before I have read that the greys are some type of advanced robots to explore the universe.

It's interesting that you mention Avatar, the movie.
Please consider the origins, or etymology of the word 'Avatar':

In Hinduism, an avatar /ˈævətɑr/ (Hindustani: [əʋt̪aːr], from Sanskrit अवतार avatāra "descent") is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being (i.e., Vishnu for Vaishnavites), and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation", but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation".

Now, I'm not an adherent to 99.9% of the Ancient Aliens hilarity and pseudo science that Danikin, Hair Guy and the rest babble on about, but, for whatever reason, the very basic question of what-if aliens visited us in the far past still seems to linger.

The very concept of Avatars (Avataravada) where a greater being aspects into/controls a lesser physical form, whether human or some other comes from Hinduism.
Christianity borrowed this Avatar concept from Hinduism with the Christ figure, but, that's getting side-tracked.
All other representations of gods from other religions/belief system had their gods, or agents of such participating fairly directly in-person.

In Hinduism we get this fascinating and strange concept of Avatars where a greater being puppets around in a flesh vessel, not unlike artificial intelligence set to a certain task, or even androids and robots under direct control.
In Hindu texts we see some 75 Avatars for Vishnu (the 10 best known in the Dashavarta, plus some 40 more listed in the Bhagavata Purana and another 24 listed in Dasam Granth of the Sikh tradition.

We see this phenomenon of avatars illustrated for other important figures in the Hindu tradition as well.

It's reaching and thin gruel as far as speculation goes, but, entertainment at the very least in consideration.
While the rest of the planet was imagining their gods as having a tradition of direct in-person interaction even if ambiguously through pillars of fire and smoke, this unusual concept of Avatarism is played out in the ever complex, mysterious, convoluted traditions of Hinduism.

The premise is obvious but you expanded it nicely, op. But..we send robot ufos to other worlds. Why wouldnt aliens do it? Makes sense eh? Also, i dont think alien technology is the same as ours. I think they grow their ships, via nanotech. Nanotech replicators would be pretty straight forward.

reply to post by FooScience
It's not often we have a chance to criticise a physicist for being overly-simplistic and especially not one of Kaku's standing. Here goes!

His concept of a self-replicating robot is wildly over-simplified if we even begin to consider the processes and materials needed to construct such a device. The initial device would need to be able to mine for ore and minerals, smelt, manufacture component parts and then program the results with some element of evolutionary design in the operating system/s.

All that aside, it's still a concept that captures the imagination and expands the possibilities some way past the sticky issue of space being so awesomely huge...and spacey. It's less of a leap of faith to imagine inter-stellar travel taking place without having mortal beings aboard.

Instead of singular robots, efficient, life-less manufacturies could be programmed to seek out suitable signatures for life in the atmospheric scintillations of moons and planets light-years away from their origins. Grand ideas! On arrival, they could manufacture a watcher-technology to remain behind and direct a stream of communication at the 'designer-craft' to be relayed across the networks.

An idea I've been chewing on for some time is that of making digital analogues of our minds. When I say 'digital' it's only for ease of conversation and would probably be a more evolved term if it ever occurs. If we can map consciousness, we might one day be able to replicate it within a machine. If we could do it once, we could do so an infinite amount of times. In that sense, the consciousness of our theoretical 'alien' from elsewhere could be sent out into space to explore or seek new experiences. Taken in one direction, these analogue intelligences would be theoretically immortal, eternally open to evolving new ideas and potentially exist long after their creators have vanished.

Out on an even more hypothetical limb, a mapped consciousness could conceivably be restored to a biological body. Of course, I'm just speculating here! In such a concept, our travelling manufacturer might not be limited to replicating intelligent machines. Perhaps it could also re-create an analogue of whatever intelligent species it encounters? Let's say one arrived in our system last century? What better way to explore than to put a digital copy of the analogue intelligence into a meat-suit and get amongst the natives?

What if the sentient machines start an nwo?

Originally posted by phroziac
The premise is obvious but you expanded it nicely, op. But..we send robot ufos to other worlds. Why wouldnt aliens do it? Makes sense eh?

It makes one wonder doesn't it?

Really truly great work OP.
It may get said a lot in threads but I mean it.
The title doesn't hint at how well you thought this out.
The Kecksburgh incident is exactly what I thought of after
starting into your thread.
Fantastic work again.

The drone theory is a good one imo and it makes a lot of sense, first thing any exploration team does is send in an advance party, I don't see why any other race would be different. Couple of examples of what I believe to be possible drone craft (albeit E.T. or otherwise):

From 1956::

www.abovetopsecret.com...

And the 90's in which farmers shot at it and attempted to chase:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I also consider this to be some kind of drone craft(due to size), truly remarkable video:

4. Whether the physics of how drones would spread through the universe should be given a more technical treatment (in terms of speed, navigation, communication, self-replication, possible problems -- ala Star Control 2 Sylandro Probes, etc.)

Ha. The idea of a probe with a crazy software bug causing it to attack anything it comes in contact with is (sadly) as believable as it depressingly hilarious. I can just imagine Voyager beaming back a message from interstellar space with a "We come in peace" only a minute later to find that the transmission cut-out.



I guess I have a new game to try out.

sc2.sourceforge.net...

Great thread! Thanks.

That could toss this whole theory out the window,or step it up a notch. If we're still considered a type 0, boarder line type 1 and we're considering this... What would a type 3 be capable of?

io9.com...

It's always difficult to imagine exact technologies of the future, just look back at eg. late 1800's writer's imagination of the future. They had foresight - yes, imagination - yes but exact details regarding that technology they've envisioned or deducted - not really. But that was/is probably not needed anyway. Sending robotic or quasi robotic entities is really something of a discussion but by my guess it's just a "change of topic" by the mainstream media/sciences to circumvent for example findings of the COMETA report or The Disclosure Project.

reply to post by FooScience


Nicely presented thread FooScience S+F

I think its a feasible way of exploring the galaxy and may very well explain some of the UFO cases youve cited.

Ive got few erins to do but we'll be back to comment later..thanks for a great thread