Would Anyone Be Surprised if Aliens Landed?
Today we live in a media-saturated culture. And much of that media is saturated with aliens. Will Smith alone has starred in four space invader films, contributing to a genre which never seems to get old. Is it therefore any wonder that a 2010 Reuters poll found that 20% of people worldwide believe that aliens walk among us?
With aliens and UFOs so prominent in the public consciousness, would their arrival or official disclosure of their presence really shock the world? In many ways, we seem to have braced ourselves for the news. The Vatican addressed the possibility a few years back. Files declassified by the British government in recent years indicate that law enforcement and the military have taken the potential threat of alien invasion seriously. Public and private institutions seem increasingly positioned to roll with the revelation.
However, this author doubts there will be any such test of public order soon. As The Raw Story goes on to reference in their article about Mr. Smith’s trip to Washington, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy issued an official denial last September, stating that the United States government “has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race.”
There are good reasons to believe that to be true. Aside from the lack of compelling evidence to the contrary, human nature is such that disclosure tends to prevail over secrecy. The potential to profit from knowledge of extraterrestrial life and technology could not be effectively contained, as the vast business in UFO novelty and lore attests. Governments just aren’t that good at keeping earth-shattering secrets, and would benefit far more from the politicization of first contact –presented either as a common enemy or an inspiration to unity — than by keeping the reality of alien life a secret.
Nevertheless, true believers go on unswayed and Hollywood magicians continue to imagine a universe where we are not alone. Given the trend, if contact is made, chances are it will be far less dramatic than the War of the Worlds panic of 1938.
Not even surprised if they have photoshopped birth certificates claiming they were born in Hawaii.
LOL!
That’s why I’m a lot more worried about hostile aliens of the terrestrial variety. And right now, we’re in occupied territory.
Yeah, the aliens are in the House in the form of a bunch calling themselves “The Teabaggers”. What a great place to take over the strongest country on Earth. Take down their government!
How many star systems would we need to posit one has intelligent life. 1,000, one million, 50 million?
Look at the 20 closest stars and see how far away they are.
Look at the speed of light, which supposedly limits space travel.
‘Nuff said. No aliens. Even if we could see a civilization say, 300 light years away – it would already be 300 years old. Could we send them a message at light speed, it wouldn’t reach them for 300 years. Getting back to us another 300. Hello, how are you plus fine how are you – 600 years.
Agreed. We have detected numerous “Class M” planets in other star systems in just the last decade, and so far none shows evidence of intelligent life, let alone technologically-sophisticated cultures. (Radio emissions, etc.)
Even if they do exist, with the Universal Speed Limit (186,262.32 miles per second, or 299,760.746 Km/sec if you prefer KMS), they aren’t getting here anytime soon.
(Yes, I’m familiar with Miguel Alcubierre’s work. Especially the power requirements.)
As for 20% of people believing they are already here, that’s an improvement. When I was in high school, the number was about 40%.
If, and I say IF, we ever find ourselves on the receiving end of an interstellar visitation, I strongly suspect it will look a lot more like the events in “The Wanderer” by Fritz Leiber, or “Orphans of the Sky” or “Methuselah’s Children” by Robert Heinlein. That is, it will be a large, slow craft, probably multi-generational, and it will either be coming here because its homeworld is no more, or it is just stopping for a fillup (say, at the local gas giants).
“Independence Day”? About as improbable as any of the “Men In Black” variants. The difference is, they actually succeeded in being funny:
K (holding up small CD-like disc); “Yeah, this is what’s going to replace the CD. Now I’m going to have to buy the White Album again.”
cheers
eon
Good points. I’ve always liked the Alien Nation/MIB/District 9 scenario. What if the aliens aren’t conquerors or explorers but people who have nowhere else to go? What do we do with them? How do they fit in? How do they affect our culture and we theirs? In Alien Nation, we help them integrate. In MIB, we hide them. In District 9, we relegate them to slums or prisons. Much more interesting than aliens who want to enslave us, eat us, exterminate us, or give us neat-o technology.
It’s far more likely that any aliens advanced enough to travel in interstellar space – aliens thousands, maybe millions of years more advanced than we – would consider us no more than insects to be thoughtlessly crushed underfoot.
In District 9 the narrative clearly states that the “intelligent” members of the ship’s crew escaped it. What we saw was something akin to a slave ship being discovered floating into a harbor with none of its sailing crew onboard.
Aliens with nowhere else to go will be desperate, if (and that’s almost a given) they have technology far superior to ours they’ll have no trouble conquering and wiping us out and certainly won’t have any qualms about doing so in order to create a new world for themselves.
It won’t be out of malice, we’ll just be nasty inconvenient vermin to them that need to be got rid of.
About Generation Ships: they can never travel at a velocity of more than approximately 0.25 C. The reason being, interaction with the interstellar medium will produce a lethal cascade of radiation and particles sleeting through the passengers and crew. At those velocities, these will hit hard.
I’ve been in numerous debates before on this issue. One point that keeps coming across is, why would they even expend such a prodigious effort to visit us? There is every possibility that we are just plain not that interesting. The urge to contact or physically reach another species may well be a human urge, unique only to us.
IIRC, Arthur C. Clark stated in “Childhood’s End” that if aliens ever visited the Earth, there would be no mistaking it. None of this butchering cows and anal probing drunks. It’d be too big to hide.
Agreed. As my mother (a CPA and lifelong SFan)once pointed out, if “UFOs” really were running around doing all the things the believers claimed, we’d be looking at The Invasion of The Escapees From The Interstellar Loony Bin.
And even if we were being “quietly” re-conned by such flying crockery, there would by necessity have to be a carrier “mothership” in the system somewhere. And something that big wouldn’t be able to hide for long, once our scientific and military assets knew that it was out there. Just using astronomical telescopes (optical and radio), we’d find it PDQ.
In fact, it would probably have been the lead story, including cover photo, on the next published issue of Sky & Telescope. Don’t tell anybody in the UFO-nut crowd, but some of the best optical astronomers on Earth operate out of their own backyards, at their own expense- paid for by their day jobs.
cheers
eon
Interesting how you quote Clarke’s opinion as if it were somehow The End Of All Debate, when in fact, he has no more information on the subject than anybody else.
well..all “theories” aside…just because we don’t know how to conquer space..does not mean other species don’t. I don’t care what theories are out there, or who says what is or is not possible according to “our” knowledge.
?? ..I would think they would be afraid of humans. oh not that they couldn’t conquer us, invade us..i think we might contaminate them
If a 22 year old Dr. Mulder was among those crawling over the remains of Roswell’s “A-Bomb Monitoring Balloon” in 1947, he’d be turning 87 this year. He’d be a little old to threaten with jail time if he chose to spill his guts. In fact, the prospect of keeping the secret at the cost of his entire life’s work would be reason enough to go out with a bang.
We better hope “they” aren’t like the aliens in FOOTFALL. This Administration would just roll on its back and surrender.
They already have – to illegal aliens.
Well, according to current estimates using the Drake Equation, there are between 0 and 182 million civilizations “out there”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
And there are other theories that indicate that travel between star systems at some multiple of the speed of light may, in fact, be possible.
So, would I be surprised if aliens landed? Not necessarily. I would, however, be interested in why they landed…
Never much cared for the Drake equation. Big mess of unknowable variables. Even the best guesses could easily be wrong by many orders of magnitude, with no way to be sure.
Still, I suppose it works well enough as a time-passer intellectual exercise.
The Drake Equation is garbage (sophistry with mathematics). Most of Drake Equation’s parameters are either unknown or unknowable.
The Fermi Paradox is a genuine mystery (google “Fermi Paradox” if you never heard of it before). Our galaxy has a diameter of 1.1e5 light-years. Assuming the Laws of Physics limits outward expansion to no greater than 1% the speed-of-light, a single interstellar civilization could transport across the entire galaxy in 11 million years. Mammals first appeared on the Earth 210 million years ago. Assuming that intelligent technological mammals appeared on the Earth 100 million years ago and developed an advanced technology within 1 million years, they could have traversed the galaxy ten times in the remaining 100 million years. It is not unreasonable to assume the emergence of an earlier advanced civilization on Earth could have been possible given that our world has had multiple planet wide extinction events, e.g. the Permian, Cretaceous, etc. The Kepler spacecraft (google it) appears to indicate that there are millions of Earth-like worlds orbiting Sun-like in our galaxy (conclusive empirical evidence for this assertion should come in about two years). Our planet should be littered with the remains of extraterrestrial visitors. There should be discarded alien beer cans serving as the object of worship like the Kaba stone in Mecca. Where are the empty beer cans, shredded tires and old oil filters? This is a genuine mystery. Most of the explanations are ugly, e.g. advanced technological civilizations always self destruct before achieving interstellar capability, there preexists an advanced extraterrestrial civilization that prohibits interstellar communication, there is some unknown aspect to the Laws of Physics the prohibits interstellar travel, etc. There is an utterly profound explanation to this paradox that we currently do not understand but could stop our civilization dead in its tracks.
There is no Fermi Paradox.
One of two things are true:
1) The ones who were first are of a sort that goes around stomping on developing intelligences before they propagate. In this case, they sling a near luminal velocity few million tons at us and the planet explodes.
2) We are coincidentally first. Something has to be first. I hope we aren’t that sort mentioned above.
Bingo.
Except, you are being more kind than you should be.
It’s mental masturbation for pseudo-intellectuals.
Please, Cease to assign omniscience to a mere human. Even if intelligence increases exponentially on our primitive measurement scales, Fermi was just some guy. If his theory implied that extraterrestrial beings could “traverse our galaxy” once per week, the distance among stars nevertheless continues to be so vast that there is a vanishingly small chance that they would encounter our world, and a non-trivial but exceedingly great likelihood that they would turn up their noses at our cesspool of a world.
Absence of evidence – Fermi’s conjecture notwithstanding – is still not evidence of absence!
This is a topic in which I have had keen interest for a long time. Do I believe other life forms exist in the universe? Absolutely. It is incomprehensible to think that in a universe as immense as ours, we have the ONLY planet that supports life. Life elsewhere may not be the same as it is here, but I firmly believe it exists.
Consequently, do I believe in UFOs? Again, yes. I will submit that 99% of all UFO sightings are either honest mistakes, people’s imaginations out of control, or out-and-out frauds. But there is that remaining 1% that simply cannot be explained away as swamp gas, Venus, or weather balloons.
To echo Rusty Bill’s question, why would aliens come here? What possible motive would they have? Also to echo Rusty, many astrophysicists think that intergalactic travel is possible by the use of wormholes. It involves bending space and time in such a way as to allow travel at speeds faster than light.
I’m with you on believing that there is extraterrestrial life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be fairly common. Until relatively recently, biologists mostly agreed that there were a few conditions that had to be met for life to exist, such as oxygen and a temperature and pressure range that would allow liquid water. A fairly large number of organisms have been found now that overturn those assumptions, such as bacteria that thrive near, or even a bit above, the boiling point of water as well as lifeforms that use sulfur instead of oxygen for metabolism. Most of these are microorganisms, but there are a few as advanced as insects.
Given that, I’d expect the vast majority of extraterrestrial life to be microbial, along the lines of bacteria or simple algaes. Even more likely would be quasi-life forms akin to viruses, especially on objects that have elliptical or unusual orbital periods. One possible example would be an organism on a comet that “wakes up” when the comet approaches its star, and goes dormant again when it gets too far away.
Advanced life would probably require a few fairly specific conditions. A main sequence star that isn’t too huge. Enormous stars such as Betelgeuse burn out too fast. The planet would have to be massive enough to hold an atmosphere. While our extremophiles show that liquid water and an aerobic environment aren’t strictly necessary for some primitive lifeforms, they may still be required for more advanced forms. Although, it may turn out that alternates, such as methane, ammonium, or hydrogen sulfide could work. Carbon would probably be necessary. Silicon-based life is a common concept in science fiction, but can’t form the complex molecular chains that carbon can.
While not strictly necessary, Earth also has one big advantage. Or rather, 4 big advantages: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Their gravitational forces have pulled in an unknowable number of extrasolar threats. Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a good example. Even so, the Earth has had at least 5 massive extinctions likely stemming from impact events. Possibly quite a few more major impacts in the early days, including a massive one with a Mars-sized body that is believed to have created the moon. Not exactly Darwin’s warm little pond.
Of course, if aliens do show up next week, just remember Kent Brockman’s advice and welcome our new alien overlords…
If aliens really are (given the occupation of the WH, somethng speaks therefore), they might well land. The surprise would be if they decided to stay, i.e., any longer than to the end of the month to pick of a check for new Obama entitlement program.
I’m not sure where the whole “breakdown of society” thing started. The mere fact of an alien presence wouldn’t cause mass panic. If you start with H.G. Wells, we’ve had over a hundred years to get used to the idea. People are extremely unlikely to give up business as usual in the face of the unknown. At worst, they’ll keep to their homes and offices until they know what’s going to happen next. As long as the “institutions” of society appear to function, people will rely on them for stability.
If aliens ever cause society to break down, it will be by destroying governments, militaries, police, and any other institution or individual capable of keeping things organized. People will not run wild in the streets just because a spaceship appears over the city.
The “breakdown of society” meme’ came from the U.S. Government’s Robertson Panel in 1951. The theory they put forward was that the revelation of intelligent life elsewhere could cause societal breakdown, due to us feeling inferior to a more advanced species.
Unfortunately, the examples they cited mainly involved cases like the pre-Columbian Meso-American cultures, which experienced “societal breakdown” in the 16th Century AD. Being astronomers and psychologists, and not historians (there were none on the Panel or consulted by it), they were apparently unaware that the breakdown of the Aztec and other cultures had more to do with the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores bringing gunpowder and smallpox across the Atlantic, than they did with any sort of cultural “inferiority complex”.
Another example they relied upon was the Native American nations during the 1800s. Unfortunately, they rather overlooked the fact that the breakdown there was less due to the Cherokee, etc., feeling inferior to the white settlers than it did with them being in places said settlers wanted. Sitting on top of things like gold, silver, oil, and farmland. The “culture shock” there came less from their gaining knowledge of a “superior culture” than it did from them finding out about the Springfield Trapdoor .45-70 single-shot and the Winchester .44-40 repeating rifle- the hard way.
Wells’ example (War of the Worlds, 1898) was actually a parable about what it’s like to be a primitive culture on the receiving end of Empire-building. His Martians with their war machines, heat rays, and Black Smoke were stand-ins for the British Army with Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles, Maxim machine guns, and Hotchkiss quick-firing ten-pounders. He just put the British Army in the position of Zulu impis with bull-hide shields and assegais. (He wrote himself into a corner, too, but that’s another story.)
In each case, the incitement to the “culture shock” was that the natives had something the “invaders” wanted; gold in the conquistadores’ case, land in the settlers’, blood in the Martians’. And in each case, it took an actual, physical invasion to get it.
The Robertson Panel rather overlooked this point. Exactly what do we have that some other, technologically superior culture would be willing to spend the equivalent of a few centuries’ worth of GPP (Gross Planetary Product, not Genuine People Personalities), to get here to obtain?
Practically anything we might conceivable have technically- they would already have third, fourth, or even higher “generations” of. Natural resources? If they have even primitive interstellar capability, they are already interplanetary. Their own star system would have anything they might need in that department.
Slave labor? Why? Anything an unwilling sentient slave can do, a machine programmed to be loyal and like its job can probably do better. Based on our present SOTA, I expect that we’ll have robotic units (androids) at close to the “Commander Data” level by mid-century. Why kidnap slaves when you can build your own Marilyn Monroe- who actually can make a decent cup of coffee? (Eat your heart out, Jack.)
Myself, I have long suspected that the Robertson Panel made that classic opinion polling error known as “polling the newsroom”. In their case, what the taxpayers got for the U.S. Government’s investment was a bunch of scientists telling everyone, “There will be a culture shock because we scientists will feel inferior to people who are better versed in the Secrets Of The Universe than we are. We expect that everyone else will be badly put out by our personal discomfiture.”
If I’d been around in 1951, my response would have been, “Deal with it, and refund the research grant, since you obviously didn’t do anything useful with it.”
The UFO believers picked up on the Robertson Report, and have spent the last 61 years waving it around as “proof” of the Conspiracy of Silence about UFO “reality”. Overlooking the small detail that if the report were intended to justify such a “cover up”, it would still be so highly classified that you could probably be executed just for knowing it even existed. You certainly wouldn’t be able to read the darned thing. (It’s been available from the U.S. Government Printing Office for half a century, and I’m betting it’s online somewhere now.)
Bu of course, most UFO believers, if they have any scientific training at all are, like the Robertson Panel members, either psychologists or astronomers. A few, like the late Ivan Sanderson (who was not on the panel), are biologists and/or zoologists. The vast majority, however, are not historians, and few even have any actual training in such areas beyond a few college mandatory course. (Us dedicated history nuts call those “History for Jocks”, the equivalent of a “Dummies Book” on the subject.)
And few have any meaningful experience outside of their professions. In my experience, psychologists are lousy at understanding bureaucracy, worse at understanding history, and hopeless at comprehending the military.
And astronomers tend to be an Epic Fail at all of the above.
(Yes, I have dealt with both professions, and UFO believers, personally. And yes, I have had what could charitably be called a “weird life” in places.)
The result is that UFOlogy tends to resemble the old folk tale about the blind men and the elephant. The difference being that this time, they are speculating in the dark… about an elephant that isn’t even there.
But their “philosophy” nevertheless demands that we all acknowledge its presence.
cheers
eon
Thanks for the thorough, thoughtful reply. Cleared up the societal collapse issue for me.
I’d be interested in knowing where Wells wrote himself into a corner. WoTW is one of my favorite old science fiction novels and I’m always looking for new ideas concerning it. I’ve often wondered how a war with the Martians “really” would have played out if Earth’s defeat hadn’t been necessary for Wells to make his philosophical points. I’m not sure he gave Earth technology enough credit.
The corner occurs at the beginning of Book Two, “The Earth Under The Martians”.
Simply put, Wells had made the Martians so overwhelmingly powerful that there was no way for the human race to win, and even survival was doubtful. (The exchange between the narrator and the artilleryman was intended to illuminate this point.) Wells wanted “our side” to win, but he literally couldn’t pull it off with Earth technology.
Then he thought of the common cold.
Presto. The Martians die in four pages at the end, from Earth viruses and bacteria.
Wells was forced to resort to a literal deus ex machina to get the ending he wanted, which is the bane of serial writing. (Remember, WOtW began as a magazine serial.) Worse yet, from his (philosophical) standpoint, Wells had to credit Earth’s victory and survival to “the littlest things, which G-d in His wisdom had put upon the Earth.”
Wells was a self-avowed atheist.
Oops!
cheers
eon
I suspect that ‘they’ have already been here several times, and periodically recheck to see if we have reached any degree of civilization.
When and if we do they will formally introduce themselves.
Agreed. Probably they need to wait a bit longer..
We’d best hope they’re not really here, or coming any time soon. Any civilization with the technology required for interstellar travel will so outgun us, should they come with hostile intent, that we would probably all be dead before we knew they were here. Just as the termites don’t know the exterminator is coming, neither would we, unless they wanted us to.
On the positive side, the odds that such a civilization would need to attack us are so small (again, based on the transcendently powerful technology which they would have to possess, in order to travel interstellar distances), that we only really have to hope that they aren’t xenophobes. Or easily offended by old radio and TV transmissions. =^[.]^=
Or not; see Harry Turtledove’s “The Road Less Traveled” for a different take.
Mmm-kay. I looked that up, but I saw no explanation of why the Roxolan had such a disparity in their technology between “matchlock muskets and spyglasses to steer their starships” and hyperdrive. Sounds like a fun read, though. =^[.]^=
I looked that up, but I saw no explanation of why the Roxolan had such a disparity in their technology between “matchlock muskets and spyglasses to steer their starships” and hyperdrive.
Sounds like typical Turtledove to me. He’s not very good at explaining the background of his situations. The one exception is one of his earlier works, Guns of the South, which IMHO remains his only good novel. (And I’ve read most of the ones he’s written.)
Yes, it’s SF, yes, it’s about the American Civil War. No, it is not exactly Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee. That would be much too simple for Turtledove.
But I do recommend it.
cheers
eon
The CETI project has been running for decades and has picked up nothing. The nearest species to earth capable of space travel is probably thousands of light years away, if not millions of light years. By way of comparison our moon is a light second and a fraction away. “They” are never going to get here and we are never going to get there. Can make for interesting science fiction, but that’s it.
Physicist Philip Morrison once remarked that if we did receive a radio message from an extraterrestrial civilization, the effect on the ordinary public would be quite temporary.
It would be the top news story in all the world’s news media–for about one week. Then it would be reported as just another news story–for about another month. And then it would gradually fade from the public’s consciousness, and they would go back to their own society’s issues.
I agree with Morrison about that.
BUT: The effect on science, philosophy, and religion would be profound.
For the first time, scientists would have real proof that intelligent life is not just some rare fluke that exists only on Earth–but that it’s not uncommon in the Universe. If the aliens sent us information about their biology and biochemistry, scientists would learn how to generalize long-held assumptions about what life forms can be like.
The effect on religion would be profound too (which is why the Vatican has become interested in the topic). The implication of Man being made in God’s image is that Man is a unique creation, uniquely favored by God. But what about the aliens? Were they made in God’s image too? And if they’re very different from us in everything–biology, laws, morals, ethics, philosophy, etc.–then what does “God’s image” really mean?
So the bottom line is: The more thoughtful you are about the nature of the Universe, your place in the Universe, and your relationship to God, the more profoundly you will be affected by knowing that alien civilizations exist. If you really don’t think much about those things, then the existence of alien civilizations won’t matter to you.
I had the rare privilege of becoming acquainted with Doctor Morrison and his wife, Phyllis, during the mid-late 1980s. Phyllis would take Philip out to the Esplanade on nice, warm days, which is where I’d met them. Hell of a nice guy; really piercing blue eyesd.
No. They would have proof that ONE, and EXACTLY ONE, intelligent life form exists besides us.
That’s all.
One of the very bad side effects of the dumbing down of our educational system is the lack of basic understanding of science & logic that is evident in most of the responses to this column, and indeed, in the so-called “scientific” literature. Rank speculation, without the slightest trace of evidence or basis in reality, is passed off as serious scientific discussion, and even accorded the status of FACT with many.
“If aliens exist, the would act THIS WAY!”
“Our universe is so vast, there MUST be other intelligent life somewhere!”
It’s not surprising that science fiction is often quoted in such discussions – it has as much basis in reality as much of the “scientific” literature which discusses the issue.
Etc, etc. Ad nauseum.
Profound effect on religion? Not really…
Here’s a summary of what C. S. Lewis had to say on the topic:
According to Lewis, the supposed threat of finding ourselves as but one among possibly millions of species that are scattered through millions of spheres in millions of miles of outer space is contained in a question: “How can we, without absurd arrogance, believe ourselves to have been uniquely favored?”
He believed that that threat would only be legitimate if we knew the answers to 5 other questions.
Here are the questions he poses and the answers he provides:
1) Are there animals anywhere except on earth? (p. 85).
Plant life is one thing. Conscious life is another. Right now we don’t know if there is. And we don’t even know if we’ll ever know.
2) Supposing there were, do any of these animals have spiritual sense? (p. 85).
If no, then it is obvious that our species should be treated than theirs: “We teach our sons to read but not our dogs. The dogs prefer bones” (p. 85). And even if we met these extra-terrestrial animals, the answer to this question wouldn’t be easy to decide. In all human beings there exists, however atrophied, a spiritual sense. But it might not be that way with other beings.
3) If there are species, and they are rational species with a spiritual sense, are any or all of them – like us – fallen? (p. 86).
God’s activity on behalf of humanity implies not our merit or excellence, but our demerit and depravity: “No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed” (p. 86). Perhaps the beings we encounter would not have fallen so far as humanity has.
4) If all of them or any of them have fallen, have they been denied Redemption by Christ? (p. 86).
If they exist (which is still hypothetical at this point), perhaps Christ has already been incarnate their world and provided salvation to them. Or perhaps, of all other created species it is only we who fell.
5) If we knew the answers to questions 1-3, and if we knew that redemption had not yet reached them, might it be that “Redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us [to them]?” (p. 88).
Yes: “Those who are, or can become His sons, are our real brothers even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological, kinship that counts” (p. 91).
But suppose all of these assumptions about finding aliens and life on other planets turns out to be true. Lewis answers that “Christians and their opponents again and again expect that some new discovery will either turn matters of faith into matters of knowledge or else reduce them to patent absurdities. But it has never happened” (p. 92).
“The implication of Man being made in God’s image is that Man is a unique creation, uniquely favored by God. ”
I disagree, there is no such implication. If I bring into creation a painting of a person (in my image), must I love that painting more than my painting of my dog?
It won’t have any effect on Mormons. We believe that God created ‘worlds without end’ and there are many millions of inhabited planets out there. The idea of ‘in the image of God’ is somewhat plastic too. Looking at the varieties of human beings on Earth, there’s no reason to assume that every other intelligent species will look exactly like us.
There it is, hidden in plain sight:
…if there would have had to have been a discussion
The presidential Galactic Translator hiccuped for an instant, tangled in moods, tenses and auxiliaries — and there we were, with Paul on the road to Damascus…
Mr. Hudson today states that, “… the United States government ‘has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet…’ [and] There are good reasons to believe that to be true.” Why he doesn’t bother to cite any of those reasons, however, is a mystery to Nobody Important. Perhaps he didn’t because he isn’t actually in possession of any evidence (on either side; he didn’t bother to cite any evidence in favor of extraterrestrial life either).
PJM readers who are interested in such evidence (on both sides of this debate) are invited, once again, to visit Another Slow News Day’s blog page devoted to subject…
http://anotherslownewsday.wordpress.com/u-f-o-s/
… where they can find what Mr. Hudson chose not to present here today.
It’s fair to call me cranky and my question is slightly off topic–is the situation room now open to the public? Or is there one that’s used for entertaining and another reserved for big effing deals (national security issues and secure communication)?
Of course, we believe aliens are here, the number 1 being the anointed one who acts as if he’s so alien to the United States, every decision he makes makes he think B. Hussein not only is from another planet, but from one that has decided to attack the United State by bankrupting it, neutering its military nuclear capabilities, killing its economy and setting an example that has the youth of American doing crack cocaine.
“…earth-shattering secret?” Hardly. They do walk among us, unseen.
They’re “demons.”
Duh.
I had aliens on my house, but then I sold it and moved into an apartment.
In other words … *yawn* ….
In popular discourse, he subject usually takes a Wellsian or “Stranger In A Strange Land” tack. IMHO, no one ever deals with a more ordinary scenario.
Of course, “ordinary” isn’t very titillating, which is usually the entire purpose of bringing the subject up.
As has been said, our contemporary technological culture is awash in the idea of Aliens, and/or the depiction in print and in films of various dystopias—and I think the two are likely connected, with many explanations for these phenomena, for instance:
Disquiet with that very same contemporary technological civilization/culture, and its disruption, and destruction of what had been relatively fixed and stable places and patterns of living.
Or, as they said in “Forbidden Planet, “monsters from the ID.”
The boundaries of our “consensus reality” –what we believe reality to consist of, what its boundaries are, and what is real and possible, and what is not real and not possible–are way too narrow and constructed, so that even if we see something staring us in the face, if it is outside the boundaries our civilizations and cultures have set as our reality, “outside our ken,” we will not see it.
The best illustration of this concept was the experience of my teacher of Japanese history in college, an American expert in Japanese language and culture who had spent 10 years in Japan and spoke native level Japanese with a perfect Tokyo accent. He went out sightseeing one day and got lost, so he stopped a Japanese farmer in the fields to ask—in perfect Japanese –for directions, and the farmer looked at him and said, in very halting English, “I don’t speak English,” so my teacher tried again, with the same results i.e. the Japanese farmer could not conceive that a westerner could speak good Japanese, or any Japanese at all for that matter ( in fact there is a Japanese nationalist professor who argues that non-Japanese are genetically incapable of learning and speaking Japanese) so he just didn’t hear my teacher—a Westerner—speaking Japanese.
A feeling deep in our guts, the foreshadowing of some fast approaching apocalypse—whether technological, social, political, cultural, economic, or Alien.
Bits and pieces of information and speculations—here and there–that hint at the idea that we may have been—and are being today—visited by Aliens, who may perhaps have had a major influence on our rise as a species, or our acquisition of culture.
And among the “UFO Community” the idea held by some that this growth in Science Fiction, of the idea of Aliens, of them visiting us and interacting with us—depicted in books, on TV, and in movies—Close Encounters, ET, the X-Files, Alien Nation, MIB, Independence Day, etc., etc.–is a deliberate campaign by various governments/agencies to “get this idea out there,” and to get us used to it and desensitized to the idea, as preparation for the day when our authorities decide to release the news, this secret leaks, or some incident makes is crystal clear that such Aliens and visitations are real.
Of course, another theory is that all of the supposed leaks so far—things like the MAJESTIC-12 documents–are disinformation, designed to confuse the issue, and to make people believe that the whole idea of Aliens and visitations is crazy.
My take, who the hell knows for sure.
Further thoughts, it has been commented that such a secret as the existence of Aliens, particularly those who might have visited or crashed on Earth couldn’t be kept, but have any of the key documents in the life of Obama ever leaked to the Press, and been reported by it?
P.S.–I have reviewed several detailed UFO reports in the public domain—the ones that have been seen as most credible–many occurring on or near military bases—here and abroad, observed by “trained observers” such as pilots, military officers, and police, and sometimes observed simultaneously by multiple observers from different locations, and observed through different sensing modalities—i.e. eyeball MK I on the ground, radar observation, observation from aircraft, and some of them, in my opinion, just cannot be explained in any way other than the presence of something Alien.
The Book, of Enoch, and Bible state the son’s of G-d had children with women. The son’s of G-d are always used to describe Angels. In this stated case, fallen Angels.
The Mayan 2012 Dec. 21 is not Doomsday, it is when their gods are to return.
Ancient Aliens have been playing on the TV for a while, and the structures built shown on the programs when we were suppose to be hunter/gatherers have the weight tons.
The flood of Noah was to rid the world of the Nephilim, and the evil of man.
Taken together, Aliens/interdemisional creatures landing, may be the lie that fools the elect.
Personally, I think Nancy Pelosi is an alien. She’s from the planet Harpy and feeds on feeble Republicans. If you took off that plastic mask she calls a face, she would look like a catfish, one of those bottom-feeders that live in the mud and eat whatever junk they can find at the bottom of a dirty pond. Yes, THAT is what Nancy Pelosi is. As for Harry Reid, they’re still looking for a pulse on that guy. People think he’s been dead for years and what’s standing up in front of Congress is really a skeletal creature from another universe that sheds its skin just as its about to devour you. Makes me shiver all over just thinking about it.
I would be surprised.
There are very few signs of intelligent life on this planet.
Seen from outside it must look like a hell of people murdering other people.
Let us pray.
Sherab old boy, its always been human beings–and every other animal on this planet–fighting and murdering each other, its called “survival of the fittest,” and we are all here today because our ancestors were superior practitioners of this art form, and victors in the struggle.
I sometimes think that a lot of our problems come from our inability to admit who we really are and, thus, many people’s unwillingness to take that into account, and to fashion laws and societies built on that knowledge, fashioned in such as wasy as to restrain our darker impulses. Hint, as Heinlein wrote, “an armed society is a polite society.”
Not pretty, not ideal, but real so, “deal with it.”
If I were to see a planet where the trench warfare of WWI takes place, with hundreds of thousands, on both sides, were launched to attack horizons full of machine-gun’s fire, and gas was used
If I were to see a planet where millions are sent to the gulags
If I were to see a planet where the Holocaust happens
If I were to see a planet where the Murdering Fields of Cambodia happen
If I were to see a planet where these four examples are a nothing compared to the daily crimes, rapes, tortures, terrorist attacks
I would not land there
I live there,
and I repeat,
let us pray.
Lest we take this horror for “normal”.
“Lest we take this horror for “normal”.”
It is normal. What is called the human condition makes it inevitable.
When we have found other “alien” intelligences, we will find the “human” condition is a corollary of sentience.
P.S.–Look around you, and you will see what happens when all of those “old fashioned,” “constraining,” “stultifying”, “illiberal,” and “nonsensical” social, cultural, and legal expectations, restraints, standards, practices, and penalties–put in place by much more conservative (and realistic) political, cultural, and religious leaders of past generations, and formerly part of and informing and directing our culture–are, first, ridiculed, and then, one by one, weakened and, finally, stripped away.
Referring back to my comment #18 above about “consensus reality,” when in past decades and centuries our consensus reality encompassed a much more strict moral code and expectations that were enforced by law, society, and custom, our “reality,” I would contend, encompassed far fewer varieties of evil, perversion, savagery, and degeneracy, and our conceptions of and standards concerning what was “bad” and unacceptable were much more strict, and much less expansive and baroque than they are today.
And many things we see all around us—and presented to us, in glorious color and detail, sound effects included–almost every waking minute by our MSM and our “Entertainment Industry,” in books, plays, and DVDs, video games, on TV, and by Hollywood today were “outside our ken” generally, because we were very rarely exposed to in your face gore and violence, slasher movies, and the depiction of every perversion and violence known to man, or them in such intensity and quantity.
So, because we weren’t immersed in it, because we didn’t often see or read about these things, we just didn’t usually think of those things, because they were not a normal or accepted part of our “reality.”
Thus, when I was in junior and high school in the late 1950s early 1960s (yes, I’m an old guy)—a “bad kid” was usually one who did something like run through the hallways, or smoked cigarettes in the bathroom, today, from what I see in the news, a “bad kid” often has a “rap sheet,” perhaps has a few robberies, a severe beat down of somebody or even a kill or two under his belt, is a drug taker and/or dealer, and likely the “baby-daddy” of one or more children, and all of that is part of his “reality,” which he is very familiar with and is “within his ken.”
I was speaking of conflict and violence in civilian society in general, war is a special case, but I have to say I think that–in the eternal human (and animal) scramble for territory, resources, dominance, and mates–we, unfortunately, have a “talent for war” as well.
Jimmy Carter, US President from 1976 to 1980, promised while on the campaign trail that he would make public all documents on UFOs if elected. He said: “I don’t laugh at people any more when they say they’ve seen UFOs. I’ve seen one myself.”
General Douglas MacArthur, the Korean and Second World War soldier, said in 1955 that “the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets. The politics of the future will be cosmic, or interplanetary”.
J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI from its inception in 1935 to 1972, said of a famous incident when flying saucers were allegedly fired at over Los Angeles in 1942: “We must insist upon full access to disks recovered. For instance, in the LA case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.”
Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a Vatican theologian, said: “Extraterrestrial contact is a real phenomenon. The Vatican is receiving much information about extraterrestrials and their contacts with humans from its embassies in various countries, such as Mexico, Chile and Venezuela.”
Professor Stephen Hawking: “Of course it is possible that UFO’s really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the Government is hushing it up.”
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Dr. Herman Oberth, a Nazi rocket engineer who was taken to the US after the war and became one of the fathers of modern spaceflight, said: “It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are spaceships from another solar system.There is no doubt in my mind that these objects are interplanetary craft of some sort. I and my colleagues are confident that they do not originate in our solar system.”
Dr J Allen Hynek, director of the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigation into UFOs, said: “When the long-awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap… we had a job to do, whether right or wrong, to keep the public from getting excited.”
Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, commander of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain: “I am convinced that these objects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nations on earth.”
Ronald Reagan, US President from 1980 to 1988, “I looked out the window and saw this white light.It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, ‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’ He was shocked and he said, ‘nope.’ And I said to him: ‘Let’s follow it!’ We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light.We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR’s last head of state: “The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.”
Richard Nixon, US President from 1969 to 1974: “I’m not at liberty to discuss the government’s knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO’s at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject.”
Dr. Walther Riedel, research director at the Nazi rocket research establishement at Peenemunde: “I am completely convinced that UFOs have an out-of-world basis.
It is rather myopic to suggest that our knowledge of physics suggests that the speed of light is the limit set on movement of mass, since the strange occurrences of quantum physics can’t even be described by our current earthly vocabulary. How can things be in two places at one time? How can separated particles begin spinning in the same direction or appear only when observed?
How do we explain ALL the people ALL OVER THE WORLD who have seen UFO’s? To suggest that they do not exist is blind arrogance.
We don’t know what we don’t know.
And, we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
Most importantly, our understanding of the science isn’t sophisticated enough to limit the possibilities. No, the question is NOT settled. To be dismissive on the subject is to be a fool.
It is neither blind nor arrogance – the view there have been no aliens flying around us is based on established science and opposed by anecdotal quackery based on exactly nothing.
There may be aliens but how in the world would they ever get to us and why would they always be simply watching at the edge of our vision? Why are there no ghosts on sunny days at the beach? When we’ve gotten to the point where we believe in unproven science more than proven science that is its own answer.
There is not a single credible story or video concerning an alien spaceship.
No credible stories? Have you watched this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk
A large number of ex high ranking officials including air traffic controllers, ex secret op. officers, commercial pilots, numerous military defense specialists with top secret clearance, people who had access to very sensitive documents
lieutenants, ex commanders in the u.s airforce,
astronauts,etc…
all going before the national press club to discuss what their experiences have been regarding u.f.o’s and all are willing to go before congress to testify
Why haven’t they openly landed and made contact? The same reason the U.S government doesn’t bother to establish diplomatic relations with a troop of chimps roaming the depths of the Congo jungle.
Yea, I suspect they are out there, and they know we’re here, but they’d be dam fools to touch down at the White House or the UN. You and I know Mogadishu is there. We might fly over it and shake our head as we wing our way to some more civilized place, but we aren’t going to land and take a vacation in the Sudan. At most we might send the occasional spy from the CIA to sneak in to see what’s going on.
I have my own theory: they’re idiots.
“the view there have been no aliens flying around us is based on established science”
really? What science from which scientist? …fail.
The world is flat and if you go too far out in the ocean you will fall off the end. The speed of light is an absolute and cannot be exceeded. Duh!
I once read a SciFi short story where humans finally developed interstellar space travel and decided to go in search of others. As they traveled in one direction they discovered human like civilizations older and more advanced than those of earth. As they traveled the other direction they again discovered younger human like civilizations until finally they started to discover relics of another much more advanced civilization.The further out they traveled the fresher these relics became until finally they found a gigantic spaceship wrecked on a planet. It was enough intact that they were able to recover the ships log and began to translate it. As they read the log it began to talk of an infestation of what they determined to be a roachlike creature with two legs and two arms and was feeding on the wiring and internal parts of their ship and that was breeding so fast it was destroying their ship and had left colonies on every planet they had visited so that they dared not return the way they came. Hello human infestation!
I assume there’s a ring of quarantine signs out in the Oort cloud saying “Do Not Enter! This system is not ready for galactic civilization contact.”
The fact that we haven’t been overtly contacted speaks to the alien’s intelligence. /sarc
I assume there’s a ring of quarantine signs out in the Oort cloud saying “Do Not Enter! This system is not ready for galactic civilization contact.”
Haha, great thought.
No, not a “great thought”, rather, an old and tired meme from 30′s science fiction.
If by alien you mean something comparable to the mass of a human, then yes, I would be surprised given the physics involved and the energy required to travel such cosmic distances: and just to get to this toilet?
UFO’s exist that’s Unidentified flying objects.
Flying saucers could even exist under the present day technology but would not be the Star ship/Space craft from another world variety they are built by Humans.
Aliens who are intelligent from another star system are myth or speculation if aliens do exist most likely they are bacteria, viral or single cell organism and quite primitive.
The area of the universe and Space is way too large to be fully understood by any human. The universe is so large it means travel will have to be almost god like just to get here.
Space it self is extremely hostile as are many closer planets, asteroids and moons it will take genetic modification of the Human’s who wish to live there and colonize. The damage to Human eyes after so many months and years in space so far limits time spent there.
So are there such things as objects that fly yet cannot be Identified? yes
Are these UFO’s space craft? No.
So, let me get this straight.
According to our present state of knowledge, roughly some six or seven thousand years ago the first civilizations arose here on Earth, by two thousand years or so ago Rome ruled most of the known world, and some two hundred fifty years or so ago the Industrial Revolution started that has brought us to the technological heights we here in the West have reached today.
Moreover, it was only a hundred years or so ago we learned how to fly, and only fifty or so years ago that we reached the Moon.
Yet, you are telling me that the work of 19th-20th century physicist Einstein—a man who didn’t bathe, and who didn’t brush his teeth because he believed toothbrushes would eventually wear away and destroy his teeth—work which established the speed of light as the limiting factor for velocity in the Universe, is the final word on this issue.
That there is never going to be any new and more correct, superseding set of observations and theory, no greater, more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the Universe, no new technological breakthrough that might make faster than light travel possible?
Really?
Physicists have been throwing every test imaginable at Einstein’s theories for 100 years now and it has stood up to every one. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible that the theory will ever be proven wrong, it’s just saying that it has proven incredibly robust.
Perhaps some day, some experiment or observation will point out a flaw in the theory of relativity. Perhaps that flaw will prove that the speed of light isn’t a barrier after all. Or perhaps someone will find a way to achieve extreme velocities without violating relativity, such as the warp drive of science fiction.
Until then, I wouldn’t bet against Einstein’s work. It has held up remarkably well.
Yeah, you forgot to mention Einstein was just a lowly clerk in the Swiss patent office when he revolutionized physics on his own time and not a modern climate scientist on the government payroll doing bad science with a great pension and healthcare benefits proposing climate theories that can’t be falsified.
The president’s coy response is perhaps due to the fact that ufology remains a great resource for distracting people’s attention and even for concealing secrets. The Soviets, for example –being philosophical materialists– were great suckers for that stuff. Americans –being mostly practical materialists– are mostly suckers for it as well.
Disclosure is done. There is no coverup, only avoidance at this point. Ultimately it may be necessary to let people panic as they will, little more prepared than they were in 1938.
One or two of them are in the White House.
I’m surprised that no one talks about The Disclosure Project.
“The Disclosure Project is a nonprofit research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems. We have over 500 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret.”
All of these individuals have given testimonial about their experiences and are willing to testify in front of congress.
It’s hard to discredit these folks because they are some of the brightest minds and warriors of the United States. Unfortunately many are are from the GI generation, served during WWII and the cold war and are dying of old age.
Watch the testimonials and prepare to be fascinated.
http://youtu.be/ud49Gh9yYLs
It’s easy to discredit them. Watch: they’re idiots.
I’d be extremely surprised if there is not intelligent life on thousands or millions of planets in just this galaxy alone.
However, if this universe is depressingly as it appears to be today to conventional science, and fusion power is extremely difficult and the speed of light is an absolute limit, then they may not be able to get here.
OTOH, if they *do* get here, then they must have a lot more technology than us, or at least a lot more patience. And when they get here, they may or may not want to serve man, one way or the other.
Are they here already, have they been here for thousands of years, or millions? Dunno.
I like to believe that if they can get here, or if they are already here, they are SO far in advance of us that they find us quaint and amusing, not at all threatening nor nourishing. I’d look carefully at anyone buying a Chevy Volt, they may be shipping those back home as alien laughingstocks. Of course they can probably just scan one and then produce them by replicator back home, but *authentic* Earth-made crap might be that much more valuable.
What a stupid, non-informative article. Why did anybody bother to read this (or write it)? Doesn’t say a damned thing.
Why did you read it then?
The shear arrogance by the supposedly educated populace here is astounding. With our extremely limited knowledge of Physics, and our extremely short time in the universe as Human Beings, what makes any of us think we have even a tiny clue about the true nature of that Universe? A civilization that is just a 1000 years older than we are, evolving under unimaginably different circumstances, would in all probablility be so far beyond our limited capacities, that we would be incapable of even the most basic communication, or recognition. A society a 100,000 years or a 1,000,000 ahead of us would pocess technologies that would seem to be magic. Fact is we don”t know, period. To assume we can make the detrmination that we are alone on this planet is the height of arrogance and ignorance.
Aliens, the kind in the Ridley Scott movies, have already penetrated into the White House. Proof? Compare a side by side picture of the Alien monster from the movie and Moochelle Obama. Not only are obviously from the same species but they both feed off of humans. Case closed.
I would be surprised if Aliens showed up en mass. It’s not that I don’t believe they exist, I remember living on another planet as an “alien” and coming here to incarnate as a human.
I would be surprised because until the majority of earthlings raise their spiritual consciousness and see and act much differently on this planet then they currently do…openly conversing with other star races is just not going to happen amongst many other things that are related…
There are many comments here and I haven’t read them all so someone may have mentioned this: in the book Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, the story that thousands were distraught by the War of the Worlds is thoroughly debunked. The newspapers spread the tale of thousands being scared because the new upstart technology, radio, was competition for them. Newspapers wanted to paint the new technology as dangerous due to its immediacy, while newspapers were more “deliberative”.Tthe people who listened to the show were not as stupid as we have been led to believe.
Published on May 13, 2012 This was filmed in Elgin, Illinois about 40 miles from Chicago. I assume it’s for the NATO summit this week as a security measure. Footage of a drone!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzrS0BVJynM&feature=player_embedded
Suppose the “Alien” is really, really Alien?
Aliens in Science Fiction are all basically extrapolations from the only example of beings we have and really know–us, and are almost invariably portrayed as having some points of contact/congruence with us humans–some motivations, behaviors, organizational schemas, categories of thought, social structures, roles or thoughts–that we humans can at least somewhat comprehend, relate to, and understand, otherwise it would be very hard to write those stories, and they would likely not be of much interest to readers.
But, if there are indeed Aliens about somewhere, why need this congruence and/or comprehensibility be so?
Aliens are, after all, by definition not us but, “the Other.” Who says that this “Other”–quite possibly the product of an “alien” chemistry and biological basis, structure, ecology, and history that has little or nothing in common with ours– has to be at all comprehensible by or to us humans, or that they have to have motivations, or behaviors or, say, social structures and roles, or technologies that are at any point congruent with, comprehensible, or similar to ours?
What, for instance, says that they have to live and have their being in, or totally in, the same number of dimensions that we do?
Who, for instance, says that such Aliens would have to have sensory apparatus that allows them to perceive the Universe and us is ways that are in any way similar to what we perceive? Who says they have to see light, and on roughly the same wavelengths and section of the spectrum that we do? Who says they have to communicate using sound, or use numbers as we understand them or, if they do, number systems and mathematics that are at all like the ones we use?
Who says that they have to have nervous systems similar to ours in architecture and function, or that, if they have such, they have to work at something like our “clock speed?”
So, the questions of “are their Aliens out there” and “have they visited Earth” and ”why haven’t they made themselves known, if they have visited or are visiting us,” may be much harder to answer than it first appears, and if there are such Aliens and they are here, we may not recognize them as such, and/or they might not have the remotest interest in meeting us, or even recognizing that we are the supposedly “intelligent” species here on this planet.
Why would any alien in it’s right mind want to come here? Really…..one good reason? Because where they come from citizens prey on each other or perhaps their leaders are corrupt and without integrity or inhumanity or inalienanity has become the watchword or any and all other social ills one can think of happen on their world too.
I dare say a world on which people would kill the person sent to save them is not a place anyone would want to visit. It just could be that this world is Hell and we just don’t know it yet. Very Dr. Who-ish huh?
Well, surfing through TV channels I just happened upon the question part of the Miss USA contest a few minutes ago and, Oy, seeing this I have to say that no, there is no intelligent life on earth.
Yes, the babes were all pretty uniformly gorgeous, but the I.Q. levels revealed by their answers rivaled room temperature, and the answers were so exquisitely politically correct-i.e. would you object if a transgender contestant won this year?
“Well, we are all people and, well, everybody here in America is free so, that’s fine with me.”
Next year we are thinking of having gorillas and spiders compete, is that OK with you? “Well, gorillas have the same number of chromosomes as we do, so that seems only fair but, I draw the line if the gorilla had a really hairy back.”
My favorite aliens are the ones in the movie “Signs”. They came to earth to start a ruckus but had trouble with locked doors.
LOL!
Yeah, they can master interstellar travel, but darn it, locked wooden doors are just too much for them!
And since when is a farm like that devoid of at least a side-by-side shotgun?
“Signs” haiku:
stupid aliens
forgot to pack the wetsuits
swing away, Merrill
(And lest anyone accuse me of hating, it’s one of my 20 or so favourite movies.)
Just in case you didn’t understand what the movie about, it wasn’t about tentacled, world conquering aliens. not at all…
Heh, I always chuckle at articles like this. Three of my family members work for three different intelligence agencies. The shortest tenure is 17 years, the longest 35 years. Full disclosure, I am not, nor have I ever been an employee of an intelligence agency or federal position of any kind.
They’re here folks, and they have been for quite some time. The line that always gives me the giggles is “There’s no way the government could keep this a secret for so long”. This is wrong for a couple of reasons:
1. The United States government is REALLY good at keeping secrets. Sensitive items that have leaked over the years are greatly outnumbered by the items that haven’t.
2. In this case, they haven’t kept it a secret at all. Dozens upon dozens of ex-military, ex-intelligence agency, ex-government contractor and ex-nasa employees have stated that they have not only first hand experience with the phenomenon, they have confirmation from their superiors that “they” are here and that we’ve been in communication with them for decades. Hell, damn near every year these same people go to the D.C. press club and state their experience with the ET phenomenon in their official capacities and state that if given the opportunity, they will testify under oath about these experiences in front of Congress.
They haven’t kept it a secret, they’ve just done a pretty good job of training the American people to label anyone with belief in this sort of thing as kooks.
The reason it’s still a “secret” is that there’s simply nothing in it for them to admit it. Zero, nada. No benefit to the U.S. Government whatsoever to say “yeah, sorry.. we’ve known about this group of individuals from another planet that have technology that dwarfs ours so there’s nothing we could do to stop them if they were dicks and wanted to attack us… And uh, sorry for lying to you for decades.” That would go over so well.
I realize my comment here will be interpreted by many as meaningless because I’m not offering indisputable evidence but after reading the comments here (and being a very long time pj media reader), I felt compelled to say something. Especially since it’s been common knowledge in my household for a very long time that we’re not alone.
P.S. I’m not one of those “UFO” people. There’s no posters of aliens on my wall, I’ve never been tempted to make a pilgrimage to Roswell, I don’t watch shows about UFO’s nor do I read books on the subject.