Assumptions about Aliens we need to discuss.

The following, are my theories about some of the things that people keep assuming and basing alot of discussions on, and I want to clarify, or discuss, or even gain better understanding of them; These are only four of many assumptions, I may delve into the others, or the discussion might branch to them from the efforts of the people reading.

We shall see, won't we?

Please pardon my grammar, spelling and any other exciting failures of my typing and english smithing abilities... But feel free to point them out if you see them! I speak a bunch of languages and my grammar weirds up sometimes.


enjoy.



Assumption 1. Aliens need our resources!
My question: Why do alot of people assume that a civilization technologically capable of visiting us from light years away would need our raw natural resources and couldn't convert/recycle them or acquire them from non populated regions of space?

Assumption 2. We can trade with aliens!
My question: Why would they need to trade anything with us at all?

Assumption 3. Aliens will invade us and we will fight them with guns and jet fighters!
My question: Why do peopele think we would be at war with them? Or that we could "fight off" any sort of alien attack; if one were to happen?

Assumption 4. Aliens are basically exactly what is in star trek and babylon 5
My question: Why do people need to come up with all these fancy names for aliens? And why do they have to be humans with a bigger nose, or big eybrows, etc?


My theories (answers to my questions) are as follows:

Assumption 1.
The only way this makes sense is if their method of locomotion or space/time movement is not technological in nature, but maybe evolutionary; it is possible with an infinite number of possibilities and ever expanding space, that there is a naturally evolved race of creatures able to FTL???

In which case there might be a need for natural resources, however plenty of minerals are available floating around in the infinite reaches of space... so why earth .. It would have to be certain chemical compounds that are formed from biological processes; that would be the only reason, and it would have to be very specialized to work with whatever biological systems they are using, so maybe, if there is a race of creatures that can get to us and aren't doing it with science, and they need some chemical compound that is abundant on our planet... then yes it might make sense.

HOWEVER, for the classical idea of "aliens" they would be technologically advanced and really wouldn't be after anything produced by us, except our behaviour (watching us).

Assumption 2.
Let's say they were technologically advanced. What could they possibly want from us? nothing. However as mentioned in my analysis of assumption 1, if they have evolved to a state of being able to travel around without technology... then yes maybe they might need/want something from us.

Assumption 3.
If they are hyper evolved creatures then maybe they wouldn't understand certain things that we do, and then it becomes a wildcard. But if they are the classical "hyper technologically advanced" aliens, then there is no "fighting back" except to maybe "salt the fields" so to speak by terminating yourselves, which really isn't a good battle strategy.

Now in either of those two scenarios, there comes into play; the societal evolution level as well. what kind of beings are they? If they have been evolving naturally, it can be a wild card, evolution might have gotten lucky, and they are savages bent on just destroying and using everything up; or they could have taken a billion years to reach their evolutionary stage and could have advanced just as far socially as well, and might regard us as a curiousity, or even nurture us.

On the side of the technologically advanced alien race, they would have to be evolved socially in some manner, because they would have (as we are assuming collectively from what I've seen) that they have spent alot of time getting to where they are technologically, and with time comes cosmopolital and mass understanding, etc.

Of course the final part of this is, what if they are Xenophobic?, and our first (and last) encounter is simply them noticing us then deciding to either mark us as a "no visit" zone in the universe, or they decide to remove us from the pool of life.

As for defending ourselves, any race that is capable of reaching us can probably deliver payloads to us without us even knowing of the payloads existance. That is also assuming that their method of warfare IS to deliver payloads, maybe they employ subtler methods to destroy or enslave, it doesn't matter, we are probably not equipped to handle anything short of some fluke highly evolved race that is susceptible to our technology but somehow can survive FTL speeds NATURALLY in space, or perhaps they live for many magnitudes of time longer than us and only need to survive long trips (really long trips), a 100 years to us might be a fleeting moment of time for them.

Assumption 4.
Nordic Aliens ! (well endowed hairless white women??!)
Reptillians ! (if they are as common as people think there would be pictures)
Grays ! (A favourite, they look like Malnourished humans)
etc (What about lithovores!)

Most of these seem to be based on pure fantasy and no real basis in science or theory; I believe that the "gray" idea might work if we are assuming that our particular configuration of macro objects is the optimal one. The "grays" to me just seem like what HUMANS might be like if we let natural evolution take control for another 500,000 years, and don't try and "maintain" what we have now, as far as organs and physical shape/design through technology. As grays are depicted as basically emaciated humans with the non essential body parts and organs having atrophied and less fingers / toes etc. An actual alien will most likely not look like "a grey" unless our shape and configuration is the "average" one and everything comes to where "we" are like in star trek and every other sci fi production out there.


That seems more like a conceit, rather than something based on science, arguably, a sufficiently advanced race could fashion 'intermediaries" such as androids or robots, etc, that look LIKE us or identical to us, so that communication is 'facilitated" in some manner, but that would be the only reasonable explanation I can think of

[edit on 27-12-2008 by Davood]

assumption 1: the crafts\beings reported are aliens.

Great Thead!

First the assumptions.

Assumption One: If aliens are in fact travellers from a distant star system, then it is unlikely that they will need anything from us. They will have passed huge quantities of every element just getting here. I would also assume that any race capable of star travel has also developed the ability to manipulate matter on the atomic level. We have almost reached that level of development ourselves. Our problem is radioactivity. I assume that any race capable of star travel has also solved the problem of radioactivity and can create stable atoms at will.

What if the aliens aren't travellers from some distant star? What if they are from our own solar system, or even our own planet? Then they may not be as advanced as we think. They may need resources in this case. If this is the case, we could be in a lot of trouble.

Another posibility, is that the aliens are from some other dimension or parallel universe. In this case, they may be manifestations of alternate evolutions of earth. In this case the Reptilians are really reptiles, the Insectoids are in fact insects, and the Greys may be an alternate human evolution. If this is the case, they may not even have space travel and they may need resources. This would be just as problematic as the local origin of aliens.

Assumption Two: Any race capable of inter-stellar travel would need nothing from us. However, if they are local, or inter-dimensional, then we may be able to trade with them. This could be very dangerous though, what if they become dependent on our resources? What if they won't take no for an answer? We could be in big trouble.

Assumption Three: Inter-stellar war is so cumbersum and costly that it would be impractical. Can you imagine supply lines light years long? Can you imagine trying to anticipate the needs of an army centuries in advance? It is simply beyond our comprehension. Most likely any planet that would challenge an inter-stellar race would be left alone or completely destroyed in a "bolt from the blue" attack. We're still here, so we don't present a serious challenge.

If the aliens are local or inter-dimensional, then the logistics are much simpler and the chances of a war are greater. I pointed out above though that the technology threashold may be lower though and we may have a fighting chance. The problem is there is a much greater chance of a fight.

Assumption Four: What do aliens look like? How could we identify an alien? That is something that has bugged me for a number of years. When I was just starting to read UFO books, back in the early 70's there were a number of alien races that were identified. I seem to remember that there were 32 different races identified. Some were humanoid, some were not, some were biological, and some were machines. There was even a race of cyborgs that were very similiar to the Borg of Star Trek fame. As the culture developed though the number of races seemed to narrow, until everyone seems to be working for the Greys. I find this very hard to believe. What has happened though is that the culture has come to expect a "certain type" of alien and so this has developed into the Greys.

I would like to hear from people who have encountered the mechanized type of alien. There is one that looks like a droid Bounty Hunter from Star Wars, except that the book that I read was a full 5 years before Star Wars.

I would also like to hear more about the Cyborg type, the Noridics, the Reptilians, and my personal favorite, the Mantis.

There are also the silver, crab clawed type, the squid type, and the ant type. You just don't hear about these guys any more.

How do I know YOU'RE not an alien?

First of all the distance is so vast that I think they bend space and travel like that. Secondly I think all the aliens that are visiting our planet know each other, greys, nordics, reptilians, whoever, they are all in contact with each other. I can only make the human assumption that if you go and travel in space and come across a planet with life on it, you check it out, which is what I think the aliens are doing. I think they observed our planet, saw that we are destroying it, came down to visit us, and we shot at them. That is my theory of why there is a coverup because we might have had a little war with them back in the 40's-50's. Which led to some agreement of abducting for technology. Now the interesting thing is some of the sightings are of huge football field/mile long size craft. Why such a big craft?

reply to post by game over man


The giant sized craft is a relatively new development. I guess that there are a couple of good explanations for the giant vehicles.

1.) New kids in town. It could be that we are seeing a new race that we haven't seen before.

2.) Bigger is better. It could be that the hoaxers are getting more brazen and telling bigger and bigger fibs.

3.) Show of force. You just can't beat the intimidation factor of a giant starship parked over a major city. If this is the case, we are in deep doo-doo.

reply to post by civilized mammal


Well, you don't know that for sure. I could be a Nordic, they look just like us, err you. You know what I mean.

Also, any race capable of traveling light years can tap into the internet, set up a website, create an avitar, and post.

All you can do is take my word for it, I am not an alien, and hope that I don't have some special alien technology that allows me to trace internet posts.

Originally posted by civilized mammal
How do I know YOU'RE not an alien?

Hee hee.. I'm not an alien ! However I could be lying, as with anything "Said" on the internet, not everything is as it seems;

That said; one thing that is also bothering me in regards to general assumptions about aliens is that...

people always think our governments are "working with aliens" in some way, OK fine, but my question still remains.. what are the aliens getting out of it? The aliens would have to be the non advanced kind that some how evolved to being able to travel long distances without the aid of technology.... however that would mean they would have a particular need for some kind of compound that is naturally derived on our planet and that whatever technology they have or biological system they have/use requires it as an expendable fuel source, or maybe they build things with it, eat it.. who knows/

... the ridiculous case scenario that would be required to have our governments secretly deal with aliens for technology don't make any sense at all, every technological advancement in human history can be explained, documented and backtracked.

The question that should be asked is. what are WE getting for dealing with Aliens? Assuming we are giving them something.. what evidence is there that we are getting something from them in exchange?

Note : I'm not necessarily interested in debunking this assumption, as I personally want to believe that our governments are dealing with Aliens, but I am at a loss to come up with a reasonable explanation for it. Much like religious fanatics, I want to believe, but I need to know how it might be possible and believable.

Some theories:

1. We are giving aliens choice samples of life from our planet that they would have had to work too hard for to find themselves, (yes they could take samples, but we already have libraries and other such stuff)

However this is unlikely, as pointed out in documentaries like David Sereda's NASA UFOs, we have been watched for much longer than recorded history, I doubt they need biological samples from us


2. Aliens are actually running our governments and spearheading the major religions, and there is no actual trade going on, it's just control.

This seems somewhat plausible, but highly unlikely as most religious and governmental systems can be traced and backtracked fairly well in terms of seeing whos doing stuff and where they came from etc.



As for why the aliens are visiting:


3. Aliens are just watching us, for what purpose, I don't know.
Maybe they helped artificially bridge the gap in evolution from neanderthal to homo habilus and homo sapien and want to see how it plays out, seeing as we have much less brain mass than the neanderthal species had.


4.Are we just an experiment?
Theory 3 makes me think.. well if we are just an experiment, it would explain how there was a world wide cataclysmic event that signified an end for a certain set of creatures (dinosaur era(s)). IE things are evolving naturally too much and there is minimal brain and tool use development, let's start over.


5. We evolved on our own and are just being watched by various random alien races, maybe they are interacting with each other and made some agreement not to interfere, with the occasional buzzer that gets in truoble for showing up and doesn't get to come back to cause more trouble???????

Ok one last point I just realized....

This is more in line with "what aliens look like".

What is the deal with people thinking aliens look like aryan supremacists? (Blond, blue eyed, hairless and svelte, humans). Every other week, someone posts a thread somewhere on the blogosphere about how he had sex with five "nordics"; everytime I see the word "nordic" I want to cringe in pain.

I don't buy that aliens are "us", unless of course they are pulling a fast one on us and are just facsimiles so that they can communicate / observe us without alarming us too much.

Mind you, the assumption that aliens "are us" is better than the assumption that aliens are "kind of like us, like how it is in star trek!" because if they are exactly like us, like the horny nordic worshippers, you could at least make an argument as to why they would create androids/robots/bodies in that shape; but something "similar" to us but! ....with "a large forehead" just sounds like some lazy gene roddenberryesque type creative story telling (star trek)

I keep seeing the same ideas (war with aliens, sex with aliens, trade with aliens) appearing over and over, and nobody challenging them realistically for quality and truth.

I'm sure that somewhere, sometime, much like humans have done with animals, there has been an alien who decided to stick it's genital complex into someones ear out of boredom, or scientific analysis....

However, I don't buy into the prolific number of stories about "nordic orgies"

I beg of you my fellow ATSers, as someone who has spent most of it's time hiding in the shadows reading posts, I wish to engage in a discussion!

Flame, bait or challenge me. But please don't ignore me !

Deny Ignorance! (of my post)

I agree that the Nordics (if they exist) must be of local origin. If that is so, then several questions come up.

Where did they originate? When did they originate? Why do they not communicate directly with us? What do they want? Why are they still hanging around?

These are the major questions that come to mind. I guess that there is also, "Why are they so damned horny?" as Davood asks.

When I discuss UFOs with my friends (face to face), I often bring up the possiblity that the aliens are us. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and proto humans for millions. So, it is possible that technology has been developed before. It is also possible that technology advanced to a higher state that we currently have.

So, it is possible that the "aliens" who appear human, are in fact human. If this is true, then who knows how advanced these humans may be? Are they 12,000 years more advanced? 50,000? 100,000? more?

If this is so, then the Nordics would have already colonized all of the planets in the solar system and most of the star systems that are visible with the naked eye. This is a certainty, even if they had to use suspended animation or generation ships. We are on the verge of both of these technologies.

So, why would they still be hanging around? Nostalgia? Somehow I doubt that a very advanced race would put much stock in nostalgia. I guess, that it's possible that they would like to help their less advanced brothers and sisters? Given the history of the human race though, I doubt this premise.

Maybe, they traveled the stars and found no other intelligent life there? In that case they might turn their attention back to lonely old Earth.

There is another possibility. According to some, the Nazis developed saucer technologies during WWII. If this is true, then the Nordics may be Nazi decendants. That might explain their interest in breeding. The Nazis were very pre-occupied with racial purity and breeding.

If the Nordics are Nazis, then what are they doing? Breeding a Master Race, advancing their technology, and biding their time? I really do hope that this is not the case. In fact I would probably prefer a hostile alien race.

reply to post by Davood
There's always Assumption 5 too...

5. That there are aliens in the first place.
I do believe there are aliens somewhere and maybe even here around Earth. To frame the idea as anything more than a belief, calculated guess or even prediction is an assumption. On current evidence, it's assumption and everything based on it is speculation.

UFOs don't equal 'Aliens' and none of us can even agree on what they are

yeah i think aliens are us from the future...look at the shape of the grays they look just like us but more evolved.

i cant figure out how aliens could look like humans, the odds are just to great.
unless they want to look like us so were not afraid of them.

I cannot reconcile myself with the view that alien life will, of necessity, need water as we do to survive/evolve. It's entirely possible that it would be totally different, and we would not recognise it as life at all. The alien life might not recognise us as a lifeform, either. Why couldn't the planets that are unihabitable to us have their own (very different) life on them? Surely it is just egotism to assume otherwise.

reply to post by MariaUpsideTown


Why are the odds too great? How would you calculate these odds?

What if the shape of a human being is like a universal shape of success? I mean, the dinosaurs had hundreds of millions of years to develop into intelligent beings with culture and handicraft, fx, but that didn't happen. We succeeded (by coincidence or because we were just better suited). If indeed the human shape is a guarantee for success, then it makes perfect sense that most of the reported alien encounters are with aliens that look somewhat human.

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Krollspell]

My take on the assumptions:



Assumption 1. Aliens need our resources!
My question: Why do alot of people assume that a civilization technologically capable of visiting us from light years away would need our raw natural resources and couldn't convert/recycle them or acquire them from non populated regions of space?


We don't know how technologically capable they are. Just because they are very technologically capable doesn't mean that they can do everything. Maybe they have been searching the nearby solar systems from their home planet (like we are now) only with much more sophisticated equipment, and found that our solar system has an abundance of X resource? If they couldn't convert / recycle the resources, why would they acquire them from non populated regions of space, if the resources were to be found in a populated region, ie. our solar system?


Assumption 2. We can trade with aliens!
My question: Why would they need to trade anything with us at all?


Because they are being nice They, of course, would be the setting the terms, as they are probably much more advanced in weaponry than we are. Maybe it's a sign of goodwill and/or diplomacy to say, hey we'll give you something and we'll take something in exchange. Maybe they won't risk being on unfriendly terms with us and our nukes? But that doesn't mean that they can't steal from us secretly.


Assumption 3. Aliens will invade us and we will fight them with guns and jet fighters!
My question: Why do peopele think we would be at war with them? Or that we could "fight off" any sort of alien attack; if one were to happen?


I don't think we're at war with them, or else we'd be dead already. And I don't think we'd be able to fight off an alien attack, unless they have some weakness, like in all other alien invasion movies. *cough* Mars Attacks *cough*


Assumption 4. Aliens are basically exactly what is in star trek and babylon 5
My question: Why do people need to come up with all these fancy names for aliens? And why do they have to be humans with a bigger nose, or big eybrows, etc?


Why not? Read my post above

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Krollspell]

Originally posted by Krollspell
reply to post by MariaUpsideTown

 

Why are the odds too great? How would you calculate these odds?

What if the shape of a human being is like a universal shape of success? I mean, the dinosaurs had hundreds of millions of years to develop into intelligent beings with culture and handicraft, fx, but that didn't happen. We succeeded (by coincidence or because we were just better suited). If indeed the human shape is a guarantee for success, then it makes perfect sense that most of the reported alien encounters are with aliens that look somewhat human.

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Krollspell]

If our configuration is something along the lines of the "optimal" one then I hypothesize that abiogenesis is how life started, because for us to reach the "golden mean" of evolution with our specific shape and configuration we would have to start evolving using the same rules as everyone else. This would also be a definitive case against many of the worlds religions too.

But I digress. We were talking about assumptions people make about aliens and UFOs and discussing the logic and possibilities associated.

Another question that will remain unanswered:

If "reptilians" are aliens, why have they supposedly "been living here for a long time" ? Some people are also saying they evolved here, which means they aren't aliens; except culturally, kind of like when you enter US customs, there is a line titled "aliens" for people coming from another nationality.

In which case you Americans only have to look north to Canada which is home to about 30,000,000 aliens.

Thus; a request:
Can we redefine aliens as "extraterrestrial aliens" ?
Granted we are always discovering new things in the ocean and in rainforests, the amazon, etc; a massive population of "more intelligent than us" (reptillians/whatever) beings all over the planet is unlikely as there would have been some historical or hard evidence available.

In reference to calculating the chance of life on other planets; (this fellow has his own theory: www.jb.man.ac.uk... But let us explore mine first)
First off there is an experiment on abiogenesis;
en.wikipedia.org...

First off, it took us 2.4 Billion years to go from the 3rd rock from the sun to, the 3rd rock from the sun with benefits (Where we are today).

So let's say it takes 2.4 billion years, we need to know how common the conditions for abiogenesis are;
www.asktheatheists.com...
"Approximately one in a trillion, for every 100 years"

We'll need to know how long "stuff" has been around for it to create abiogenesis conditions.
How old is the universe?
en.wikipedia.org...
13.8 Billion years

How many planets are there?
answers.yahoo.com...
Our galaxy has 4 trillion planets, the universe has roughly 125 billion galaxies.
4,000billion * 125billion = 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Which is
5* 10^23 or "half a Yotta" en.wikipedia.org...

What are the chances of an earthlike planet existing? (www.brighthub.com... will get us better numbers eventually)
How many planets are giant planet systems? most of them newsinfo.iu.edu... lets be pessimistic and say that most = 95%
How many suns are similar to ours? (granted it might not be nesssesary for life to occur) one new one is found each year
"5% of giant planet systems could have similar conditions to earth"
www.physorg.com...

The final variable I can think of is that since the universe is 13.8 million years old, what is the average age of the planets themselves, because we are "late bloomers" as far as the universe is concerned.

Let's just cut the age of the universe in half and be pessimistic about the average age of planets;

so we will say that we have 6.4 billion years to play with numbers for possible abiogenesis;

Let's review the variables really quick(assuming life always begins the way ours did):
6.4 billion years available
0.5 yotta planets
1/trillion chance of planet having life every 100 years
2.4 billion years for us to get to where we are now from abiogenesis
95% planets are giant planets
5% of giant planets could have similar conditions to earth
??% of stars are solo, and simliar to ours

I started doing the math, then realized that each star has a life expectancy, and the chances of a civilization existing at the same time as us also limits this equation.

If someone can find out the last variable (% of stars like ours that are solo) and wants to do the math, go ahead, i'll work the equation out later when I have time, so we can plug that last variable in.

There will be another variable as well which will be the "longevity" of an evolutionary line, or rather, how long life lasts before the nearby sun destroys it.

We'll talk more soon I promise.

That's all fine and dandy, but as many (or most) of the numbers you posted are just guesswork, we won't be able to calculate this without having many more known factors. FX, we don't know how many planets there are out there, because we can't see them directly (yet). We have only spotted a few hundred planets (which are all extremely big, else we wouldn't have spotted them), so how on earth could we come up with some number for how many planets there are in our galaxy (and how many earth-like planets there are - we can't see them!), let alone in other galaxies, and include the numbers in the equation without the result being very very wrong - we take results from other equations with a load of unknown factors and include them in this equation. Therefore it's inevitable that this equation won't lead us anywhere, in fact, we could just skip the equation and make a very educated guess

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Krollspell]

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Krollspell]

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Krollspell]

Fair enough; I believe there has been abiogenesis elsewhere in the universe.

The question we really need to ask is, have we been visited, and what are the chances of it? First off, a civilization would have to figure out how to get around the whole mass approaching high speeds needing infinite energy. Maybe there are other dimensions of reality that make this trivial?; we don't yet understand anything past the 3rd dimension outside of theory do we?

And with the extreme distances between galaxies, solar systems, etc. observing things from a distance might not work for "cheap" space exploration; unless of course.. it does! using neutrinos (smaller and faster than photons) our scientists are saying that maybe in the distant future, those particles can be used to get "maps" of the universe and of things much farther away than light would let them learn about.

But I digress again.

I wanted to talk solely about the assumptions people make about alien life, assumptions that are generally ludicrous.

I was half-hoping to hear some arguments FOR nordic orgies, but I am glad nobody has stepped forward with one.

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Davood]

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Davood]

[edit on 14-1-2009 by Davood]

While reading through this the topic of what they might want to trade with us came up. I can think of a couple of things that they may be interested in.

1) Biological Data: Like any explorer type they may be interested in how we (and our planet) ticks. Everything from DNA samples to Enzymes to what have you. They can take samples right now but if peaceful contact can be made this process could speed up immensely. Imagine the difference between having to clandestinely get samples verses having the locals bring stuff to you willingly.

2) Culture: Paintings, writings, music, sculpture etc. We are a very creative species. I can imagine an Alien sitting somewhere in a bar drinking his heart out to a Jimmy Buffett song.

OK, so we could give them biological data - but what do we get from it? Are they then giving us information or technology? How are we "rolling out" what we have gained? Or is it so mastermindedly perfect that we can't figure it out?

Or maybe, and this is a stretch, they are providing some kind of essential service to us that we couldn't otherwise procure ourselves, because they might have rules against giving us new math or technology..

David Sereda in his "NASA UFO" documentary, highlights an interesting phenomenon of super massive balls of ice coming in from deep space and hitting our atmosphere continually.

The result of these balls of ice hitting our atmosphere? When the ice passes through the atmosphere the intense heat causes the creation of Ozone (O3).

The other interesting fact(?) about them is that they have never hit any of our sattellites and we can't seem to figure out where they are originating from.

The best part about that is that they are fixing our ozone layer.. hah! Thanks aliens.. now we need to do something about pollution so that you can provide a different kind of essential service.. like a map of the universe and information on other civilizations!@#