Are Aliens Already Among Us?

[TalkingMeatSuit]

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Just saying what everyone else is thinking: that yellow train looks like a wheeled phallus.

 

[mike]

Where is the face palm emoticon when it's REALLY needed. From the article that Mike posted: "Any technology current today will require a 'miracle' of one sort or another to send a probe to the next star in a reasonable time," Howe said.

That's another way of stating that IT is currently located dead smack in the middle of impossible ville. That's not to state however that someday it might not be possible as well. Someday it very well may be possible, or like the present time in which we all live, it may remain for all practical purposes an utter impossibility.

Anything is possible.

BTW, thanks to MR. Obama, we got more than enough aliens walking around among us right now.

The operative phrase being "current today" he goes on to say

Antimatter technology is in its infancy, but is rapidly growing," Howe said. Within the next fifty years, antimatter technology may have the same impact as the laser has had over the past fifty years, he forecasts.

And again 300 years ago that same phrase could have been applied to transatlantic supersonic flight

ie

"Any technology current today will require a 'miracle' of one sort or another to Fly from london to new york in a reasonable time,

1983 - Jan 1A British Airways Concorde sets a new New York to London record of 2 hours 56 minutes.

And again you are trying to posit the notion that if a task is currently undoable, that makes it impossible

And again history and the facts show this to be dead wrong.

300 years ago a 3 hour supersonic flight from london to new york was un doable, beyond the means of the then current technology. But it was never impossible

History and the facts speak for themselves, i can only conclude you are being deliberately obtuse here

And you seem to be doing so for the singular purpose of supporting your claim aliens cant be here, since IT is imposible.

Your premise seems to be since we cant travel intersteller distances IT is impossible, since IT is impossible , ET cant possibly be here.

That we dont have the current technology to do it ,doesnt make IT impossible, nor does it by extension mean its also impossible for ET.

But if you take in to consideration the rapid pace of technological advancement, things look brighter. The Wright brothers’ first feeble flights advanced to a man on the moon in just 50 years. In less than 100 years, we can travel 1,000 times faster. If this rule holds true for the next hundred years, we will be able to travel to the nearest stars with relative ease.
Predicting this future, however, is not easy. We simply lack even the basic theories to travel at above light speed making the engineering of an interstellar drive even further away. There are however, some interesting ideas on the drawing board that are within current theoretical limits.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news8817.html#jCp

Despite these daunting challenges there are still several suggestions and ideas floating around. One would be to leap frog through time and space. Two circumstances that we know of that would make this possible are worm holes and warp drive. In both instances we would travel through a kind of cosmic short cut circumventing space time. The best part is that current physics says it is possible. We just need to work out the specifics and do further research to see if it bears out in reality.

Read more: Interstellar Travel[/QUOTE]

The best part is that current physics says it is possible

The Town of Impossibleville is a fictional place funnily enough
Stories, Listed by Author

 

[mike]

Not required: warp drives and hyperspace jumpsReal star travel — as opposed to "interstellar precursor" missions that just get a little way outside the solar system — is very hard. But it can be done drawing upon physics we know about today. More good news: Warp drives and hyperspace jumps are not required!

Kare said that antimatter could provide enough energy to make fast interstellar treks possible. But it's incredibly expensive to make and we don't know how to store it or use it efficiently for thrust, he said.

Scientists working on the big bang machine in Geneva have done the seemingly impossible: create, capture and release antimatter

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/17/breakthrough-mysterious-antimatter-created-captured/#ixzz2Vx712bKChttp://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010...us-antimatter-created-captured/#ixzz2Vx712bKC

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010...us-antimatter-created-captured/#ixzz2Vx712bKC

Can you believe it folks, the "seemingly impossible" now possible

"I've worked on Inertial Confinement Fusion propulsion designs for years," Halyard said. The best Alpha Centauri flyby design has a terminal velocity of one-tenth the speed of light and a flight time of 50 years. The cost of the effort would be approximately $100 billion, roughly the price tag of the Apollo program corrected for inflation, he said.

"There's the rub. The experimental work on the various breakthrough physics propulsion concepts remains to be funded, let alone accomplished," Halyard said.
"But like the Wright Brothers," Halyard added, "there are several people working on designs in their garages with shoestring budgets, and somebody may hit paydirt!"
Although Halyard doesn't personally gauge any breakthrough in propulsion physics as probable, he does see it as certainly possible. "Since this would be like winning the lottery, work in this area is certainly worth the pittance it will cost to investigate," he said.

Another scientists who sees it as certainly possible.

Ive presented the opinions of scientist after scientist who say its POSSIBLE, Jeff says its its smack bang in the middle of impossibleville.

You'll have to make your own minds up folks, but given the math, the physics and any number of scientists say its possible, and given the repeated examples through history where what was eroneously thought of as impossible was later found to be possible.

Well my money is on it being possible, even though we lack the current technology to do it

The limiting factor is merely current technology, as history shows over and over, that does not make a thing impossible

 

[Randall]

Um ... I wonder if there is any way this thread could go back to the subject of "Are Aliens Among Us"? Somehow it seems to have been usurped by the "What's Possible" debate. Not that the What's Possible debate isn't interesting, but I was kind of wondering, since we don't have the benefit of the black sunglasses like in the movie They Live, assuming the aliens have taken on human form, how would we tell the aliens apart from the rest of the crowd? I don't put any stock in the reptilian eye thing and other sci-fi tropes. But we seem to have these stories where ufologists are somewhat mysteriously segregated from society and marginalized in ways that imply some behind the scenes influence that's outside the realm of what might be called "normal". Could there be some connection there to an Invaders like agenda?

On the recent Paracast interview with former police officer Gary Haseltine we heard the story of how he was subjected to disciplinary action for his involvement with ufology. And there are many more stories like that out there. This is really kind of strange because surveys show most people aren't actually bothered by the subject of UFOs and many find it really interesting. So why do many of those who take an active part in it suddenly find themselves in this peculiar situation? Sometimes it's hard not to think there's something more to this whole marginalization and ridicule factor than meets the eye.

 

[Burnt State]

Um ... I wonder if there is any way this thread could go back to the subject of "Are Aliens Among Us"? ... So why do many of those who take an active part in it suddenly find themselves in this peculiar situation? Sometimes it's hard not to think there's something more to this whole marginalization and ridicule factor than meets the eye.

In Ingo Swann's Penetration he recounts a narrative involving seeing an alien in the grocery store. She was, of course, a voluptuous human looking "space babe" who was under surveillance by secret agents - really hilarious MIB the movie kind of stuff - nothing like the more gritty, elusive They Live version of alien presence.

However, my favourite narratives that suggest aliens are already among us come from Jerome Clark's collected tales of strange encounters: i.e. the one about the small, odd looking, out of time in dress, humanoid family. They show up at the late night diner, with manners, and whose use of language and general lack of knowledge regarding universal human customs betray an immigration from somewhere much further away than Estonia say, or even the Andaman islands.

I tend to place more potential on Clark's bizarre tales of otherworldly denizens wandering around out of synch than downloaded brains. However, I do subscribe to the notion of human bodies as devices that house a consciousness, maybe even a personality not directly connected to just that specific body. We all have our different tolerances and experiences of what forms human and alien consciousness can take I suppose.

For those who like anime I got really into Mushi-Shi with my kids. The premise is that there are other life forms, mushi, that are only visible to some but are responsible for very strange paranormal events in the visible world.

The special FX in the live action movie version are hauntingly stunning and breathtaking.

I like this suggestion of a life form that is a part of the planet but just out of sensory reach - a different kind of ultra terrestrial, an almost indifferen alien intelligence rising up out of the natural world.

I'm more inclined to think that there is some mechanism at work that causes some brains to intersect with forces, known and unknown, that cause people, in groups and alone, to experience visions, have self-delusional and hysterical heightened moments that might look like they are seeing aliens, ghosts, skinwalkers and/or werewolves.

Are these things really there? The answer to that is about your personal tolerances as proof is scarce. For me there are great, even compelling narratives (Kelly-Hopkinsville being my personal fave), but they are more often about creatures, biobots and very odd looking characters than anything that passes for us.

http://www.ufocasebook.com/Kelly-Hopkinsville.html

 

[Randall]

I like this suggestion of a life form that is a part of the planet but just out of sensory reach - a different kind of ultra terrestrial, an almost indifferen alien intelligence rising up out of the natural world ...

Interesting concept. It has potential where suspension of disbelief for the sake of a visual entertainment experience is concerned, but by what process and in what form could such a concept be considered plausible in the real world?

 

[Jeff Davis]

In Ingo Swann's Penetration he recounts a narrative involving seeing an alien in the grocery store. She was, of course, a voluptuous human looking "space babe" who was under surveillance by secret agents - really hilarious MIB the movie kind of stuff - nothing like the more gritty, elusive They Live version of alien presence.

However, my favourite narratives that suggest aliens are already among us come from Jerome Clark's collected tales of strange encounters: i.e. the one about the small, odd looking, out of time in dress, humanoid family. They show up at the late night diner, with manners, and whose use of language and general lack of knowledge regarding universal human customs betray an immigration from somewhere much further away than Estonia say, or even the Andaman islands.

I tend to place more potential on Clark's bizarre tales of otherworldly denizens wandering around out of synch than downloaded brains. However, I do subscribe to the notion of human bodies as devices that house a consciousness, maybe even a personality not directly connected to just that specific body. We all have our different tolerances and experiences of what forms human and alien consciousness can take I suppose.

For those who like anime I got really into Mushi-Shi with my kids. The premise is that there are other life forms, mushi, that are only visible to some but are responsible for very strange paranormal events in the visible world.

The special FX in the live action movie version are hauntingly stunning and breathtaking.

I like this suggestion of a life form that is a part of the planet but just out of sensory reach - a different kind of ultra terrestrial, an almost indifferen alien intelligence rising up out of the natural world.

I'm more inclined to think that there is some mechanism at work that causes some brains to intersect with forces, known and unknown, that cause people, in groups and alone, to experience visions, have self-delusional and hysterical heightened moments that might look like they are seeing aliens, ghosts, skinwalkers and/or werewolves.

Are these things really there? The answer to that is about your personal tolerances as proof is scarce. For me there are great, even compelling narratives (Kelly-Hopkinsville being my personal fave), but they are more often about creatures, biobots and very odd looking characters than anything that passes for us.

http://www.ufocasebook.com/Kelly-Hopkinsville.html

The emboldened above is primarily where my head has been meandering for a few years now. Consciousness. It's interesting to note the "end game" of many Ufologists. Most Ufologists in the end contend we are dealing with something that's just always been and most likely always will be. Most also seem to surmise that UFOs are not a solely physical nuts and bolts phenomena based on what we understand as physical machinery or technology. I agree with these "premises in the end". There is nothing new here apart from our temporal perceptions of it. To think that UFOs all started in the first half of this last century is a pretty WMSM dependent view that basically ignores an incredible body of reporting that indicates otherwise in an extreme and overt sense.

I personally do not believe that aliens as a collective are here in mass and are running the show behind the scenes. Why? Take a look around. This place is pretty screwed up. If aliens are here and are both superior and responsible for world level events, those are some STUPID aliens that are into some even more stupid game playing.

IMO, referring to non human intelligence, or even non temporal human intelligence (completely hypothetical groups of human beings thought long extinct but much more so evolved than this age of mankind) as "aliens" is like a bird referring to a fish as an alien. Although the fish lives in a completely different environment from the bird, they both share the same planet. So who's the alien here?

The problem I have with the standard ET model is that those supporting as much look to the last century as the temporal marker at which point the aliens arrived. That's nonsense imo. They've been here most likely longer than we have. They share the same overall environment that we all do and are most likely millions of years post this age of mankind's evolutionary stronghold. I truly believe it's much more rational to adopt a a contemporary hypothesis that supports the present natural model in which we all live. 100% of this posits denial is relative to mankind considering that he's the center of the universe. The be all/end all of sentient intelligence. Unbelievable IMO.

 

[Burnt State]

Interesting concept. It has potential where suspension of disbelief for the sake of a visual entertainment experience is concerned, but by what process and in what form could such a concept be considered plausible in the real world?

I think the real world is already doing it. Depending on your definition of sentience or artificial intelligence the natural world has already been hard at work in engaging in disease and germ warfare with humans for quite some time now. AIDS and SARS are fine examples of the planet plotting against us.

So just suppose that plant life can communicate to each other (I think this has been proven already with individual plant species) and say they decided long ago to work across species to deal with us, to distract us, to deflect us, to remind us not to mess with nuclear power, to stop killing whales etc...well this train of thought led me to thinking about a repeated set of Ufological themes: it's more than just one source we are dealing with, it's something that's always been part of the planet, it's an intelligence we can't understand, it often produces confusing witness reports and so it goes on. These things plug into my idea of a sentient planet with limits on its power, is normally passive with its intentional actions and has been radically altered by our goings on, so it responds in kind. It satisfies my notion of a living, thinking collective.

I'm not saying there's no such thing as a nuts and bolts craft, or alien biobots that might be also messing with us during their visits, but it strikes me that places like Hessadalen offer insight into other options and that forces that are part of the planet, that may be geographically specific, might be producing very strange effects, you know, places where the walls are thin between two worlds. This also gives elves and gnomes a shot at existing too!

 

[Burnt State]

The emboldened above is primarily where my head has been meandering for a few years now. Consciousness. It's interesting to note the "end game" of many Ufologists.

Agreed. We keep returning to this loop, the three of us over and over again. Something needs to be done about it, but since we can't begin to agree on defining consciousness I suspect UFO's will continue to stay at the edge of our perceptual capacity.

I personally do not believe that aliens as a collective are here in mass and are running the show behind the scenes. Why? Take a look around. This place is pretty screwed up. If aliens are here and are both superior and responsible for world level events, those are some STUPID aliens that are into some even more stupid game playing.

Agreed again. I think the idea of controlling things and running shows are the product of an immature, ego driven species with too much talent and not enough humility.

They share the same overall environment that we all do and are most likely millions of years post this age of mankind's evolutionary stronghold. I truly believe it's much more rational to adopt a a contemporary hypothesis that supports the present natural model in which we all live. 100% of this posits denial is relative to mankind considering that he's the center of the universe. The be all/end all of sentient intelligence. Unbelievable IMO.

No argument here. Our egos demand that we know this reality in a way that betrays our greatest asset which is imagination. Can I lay some Wallace Stevens on you? 'The Motive for Metaphor' has its own paranormal ring to it:

You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, die obscure moon —

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound —
Steel against intimation — the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.

Those ABC's of being, our absolute belief in the concrete reality of the objective world, dominates us. We forget, in all our time spent describing the world, we have been doing it with associative language. We speak, talk, write and mostly think in metaphor. We are always having a subjective experience that we try to share with each other through recalled, eroded human experiences. As my favourite ufologist, Jerome Clark says, we do not have the vocabulary yet to talk about these things.

Maybe next steps in ufology are not about understanding consciousness so much as making new words? Maybe then we will not only be able to see better through the forest, but we may come to know more about this reality also.

 

[Randall]

I think the real world is already doing it. Depending on your definition of sentience or artificial intelligence the natural world has already been hard at work in engaging in disease and germ warfare with humans for quite some time now. AIDS and SARS are fine examples of the planet plotting against us. So just suppose that plant life can communicate to each other ...

Everything reacts to the environmental forces around it including plants and animals, but it's a big leap from dynamic ecosystems to sentience of mind, and the concept of war has a conscious intent behind it. Plants may compete for resources but they don't "declare war". So I don't buy into the anthropomorphism of natural systems ( other than ourselves ). But it could still make for interesting entertainment and philosophical study. AIDs also looks suspiciously engineered and there have been conspiracy theories that it and other diseases in the past have been bioweapon population control mechanisms by our alien overlords ( e.g. as suggested by Bramley in The God of Eden ). We don't have to look far into our religious mythology for that either. Basically if one believes in the Biblical plagues, they also believe in alien biological warfare.

 

[Burnt State]

Everything reacts to the environmental forces around it including plants and animals, but it's a big leap from dynamic ecosystems to sentience of mind, and the concept of war has a conscious intent behind it. Plants may compete for resources but they don't "declare war". So I don't buy into the anthropomorphism of natural systems ( other than ourselves ). But it could still make for interesting entertainment and philosophical study. AIDs also looks suspiciously engineered and there have been conspiracy theories that it and other diseases in the past have been bioweapon population control mechanisms by our alien overlords ( e.g. as suggested by Bramley in The God of Eden ). We don't have to look far into our religious mythology for that either. Basically if one believes in the Biblical plagues, they also believe in alien biological warfare.

Let's skip past the sci-fi trope of secretly engineered diseases for that way points to zombies.

But I definitely can entertain the philosophical contentions around plant consciousness. For plants do seem to exercise some unique traits in how they interact with other plants. Are they more than just information chemical processors? Do they have sensual experiences? Anyone who has watched decent, 'natural world' time lapse movies knows that plants definitely know how to get their groove on. Does their chemical and vibrational communication forms equal language - this is also about perspective and personal tolerances. While I'm not suggesting Day of the Triffids is around the corner I think the following pieces (pro and con) make for the beginning of an interesting investigation.

Sentient Plants, sentient bacteria
By Timothy Morton

Unless an elaborate Sokal hoax in reverse is being played on Research in Microbiology, a slime mold can navigate its way around a maze. And that's not all folks: bacteria send one another chemical signals, a phenomenon now called quorum sensing. This is great news for object-oriented ontology. Why?

Consciousness is seen, absurdly, as a bonus prize for being highly evolved or well organized, qualifications that fail the anti-teleology test that any true Darwinian should apply. As I've argued in The Ecological Thought and now in an essay on plant sentience, both pro- and anti-AI thinkers (and others who are indifferent) have been looking in the wrong place for intelligence.

Object-oriented ontology holds that everything one can meaningfully say about the sentence “I am holding this pencil in mind” can also be said of the sentence “This pencilcase is holding this pencil.”

Consciousness is much lower down than we have been used to think, which is great for ethics. It's weak, not strong; it's not necessary to have a brain to have it, and so on.

From: ARCADE: Literature, the Humanities, and the World

These are some other interesting opinions on the matter:

Plants Display Sentience and Social Behavior « Greenfudge.org


Do plants have their own form of conciousness? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English


Weeping Willow?: The Question of Plant Sentience | james-mcwilliams.com

 

[Randall]

Let's skip past the sci-fi trope of secretly engineered diseases for that way points to zombies ... But I definitely can entertain the philosophical contentions around plant consciosness.

That's all really interesting stuff. I bought the Planet Earth series and there are some plant time lapse sequences on it that are pretty cool. I've also seen several documentaries. I'm prepared to accept that plants have a deeper relationship with their environment than what most people generally assume, but none of what I've seen substantiates the concept of sentience unless we narrow the parameters to below what is reasonable by any human standard ... and yes I think a human standards of sentience are entirely reasonable to use. It's not sufficient to claim that plants just have a "different kind of sentience". BTW when I say "human standards", I mean the standards we've developed to assess cognition, awareness, and intelligence in not only ourselves, but other organsims as well.

In the end however, does any of this qualify as alien? It seems to me that the concept of something being alien requires that it comes from outside the environment in which it is found. In this case from outside the environment defined by our collective global civilization. Plenty of that includes national parks and other natural areas, so I'm not so sure that something inherent within our natural environment really qualifies as alien. But it's still interesting to think about.

 

[boomerang]

I guess one could posit reasons why greater intelligences might want to somehow download individuated sentience (if they are indeed individuated) into the human platform. Perhaps its a kind of vacation or virtual reality experience for them. It''s hard to imagine what they could learn from this that could not be otherwise observed. Except, perhaps, the sensory aspects of being human.

As humans, we have always searched for "the other" amongst us--the wiser, the smarter, the transcendent. These have been in the form of shamans, channelers, gods born to human women, witches in league with dark forces and so on. In a way the search for space aliens among us is a continuation of this tradition. As long as we can only infer the inner thoughts of others and take on a kind of faith that they are like us at heart, such suspicions will probably be always with us.

 

[Randall]

I guess one could posit reasons why greater intelligences might want to somehow download individuated sentience (if they are indeed individuated) into the human platform. Perhaps its a kind of vacation or virtual reality experience for them. It''s hard to imagine what they could learn from this that could not be otherwise observed. Except, perhaps, the sensory aspects of being human.

As humans, we have always searched for "the other" amongst us--the wiser, the smarter, the transcendent. These have been in the form of shamans, channelers, gods born to human women, witches in league with dark forces and so on. In a way the search for space aliens among us is a continuation of this tradition. As long as we can only infer the inner thoughts of others and take on a kind of faith that they are like us at heart, such suspicions will probably be always with us.

Interesting question. The logic of the proposed scenario suggests that upon reaching destination, in this case Earth, the most compatible existing life form would be us. Why? The assumption that the aliens are of a "superior intelligence" is somewhat perilous. Studies indicate that human brain size is optimal for a bio-neural system and that larger brains wouldn't necessarily produce a significant increase in intelligence. So the aliens may not be more intelligent than we are, only more technologically advanced, which would make a human template a good choice for a template, and also serve to obscure their true identity.

 

[mike]

There are aspects of the natural world that are very strange

Anti matter in lightning for example
Thunderstorms Make Antimatter - NASA Science

Sprites and elves caught on camera
Lightning Sprites, Elves Caught on Camera

All lightning on Earth may have its roots in space, new research suggests.

Cosmic Rays Could Spark Earth's Lightning | What Causes Lightning | LiveScience

So yes many of the strange things we see could be natural poorly understood local phenomena.

But that doesnt by extension mean it can all be explained as such, there is room for both ET and local phenomena in the big picture

 

[mike]

Post biological sentience:

Its one of those areas where its hard to think outside the box you actually inhabit

But if we are to attempt to grasp the significance of such a possibility we must try.

Imagine for a moment you are no longer biological in nature, that the same mental process you now emply reside on a non biological substrate.

The following video is a spoof, but it still works as an exercise in imagination

You cant breed anymore, think about that. you are now a member of a society that cant breed, cant make any more "people".

The process of native biological existance we see here on earth is now alien to you, Yes you have things in common namely sentient mental process, but you are now very different to these biological ancestors.

How does a PB society who cannot breed avoid stagnation ? how does it grow ? from where does it source the sentient "component" it needs to to maintain its vigour ?

Where does any "component" come from ?, they come from factories, manufactoring plants.

If you were a PB entity perhaps living free from the constraints of linear time, how would you view places like earth ? Chugging away in linear time stamping out native biological sentience components ?.

If ET is transbiological, then we have to think in these terms if we are to have any hope in understanding them.

From this pov it makes no more sense to land on the whitehouse lawn, than it does you to visit the factory that made the components in any number of products you utilise on a daily basis

 

[TalkingMeatSuit]

There are aspects of the natural world that are very strange

Was anyone else unable to load the lightning sprites and elves video?


Here's one of my fav's: Quantum Zeno effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "the situation in which an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay"

 

[Jeff Davis]

You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, die obscure moon —

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound —
Steel against intimation — the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.

Those ABC's of being, our absolute belief in the concrete reality of the objective world, dominates us. We forget, in all our time spent describing the world, we have been doing it with associative language. We speak, talk, write and mostly think in metaphor. We are always having a subjective experience that we try to share with each other through recalled, eroded human experiences. As my favourite ufologist, Jerome Clark says, we do not have the vocabulary yet to talk about these things.

Maybe next steps in ufology are not about understanding consciousness so much as making new words? Maybe then we will not only be able to see better through the forest, but we may come to know more about this reality also.

And of course, this *is* my point with what I refer to as "temporally relevant speculation"and in my estimation could not be anymore on the money in terms of the way you put it here. It seems to me that since the very awakening of this age of humankind, from primitives to what I imagine to be "really primitive" , the UFO Phenomena has been associatively redefined anew just about every 150 years with that time frame starting out much larger and then getting shorter and shorter as we march forward throughout our evolutionary trek. It does seem that UFOs, whether loosely in terms of historically reported observation in what might be referred to as a "observation based calling card", or directly by means of what is referred to, and reported as being the AP (Abduction Phenomenon), are somehow inextricably tied to humanity's evolutionary pathway.

I sometimes see the UFO phenomena, and indeed all of the Fortean considerations, as being this "natures way" (like the old Spirit tune) of communicating just how far off the natural beaten path we really are. It's quite possible that technology itself is our greatest nemesis. Maybe the idea of a much larger natural unity is our pathway to "real" change, and all that scientific technology does is to widen the gap in an illusory sense between us and what is naturally our most potential progress as a species.

It is exceptionally odd that within most metaphysical considerations we view relative accomplishments that seem to raise man's consciousness to commune with, and adaptively meet nature on it's terms, not by controlling it, but rather by willfully changing mankind internally in an effort to adapt to the larger scope of the nature within which man is located. Continuity wise, this is seemingly a very consistent and logical progression. Within science and technology however, it's exactly the opposite. Humanity via science is constantly attempting to overcome nature via artificial facilitation.

Which makes mankind stronger? Which actually advances mankind?Are UFOs truly a technological light at the end of mankind's evolutionary tunnel, one that mirrors us as a species via another advanced sentient species, or, are they a beacon that serves to show or indicate just how lost and distracted we have become as a species due to our false/thwarted/corrupted notions of what is natural human specific progress?

 

[Ezechiel]

Well... its almost a given considering the age of our universe.

UFOs are real and sometimes the aliens interact with us.

The moment we actually detect atmospheres on alien planets with artificial signatures pointing to the presence of sentient life, the next question will be... can they travel here ?

The moment we can travel at near-light speed using fusion power and arrive in the alpha-centauri system we'll be asking has this been done before ?

One good reason there is a S.E.T.I. program in place listening to distant signals is that we are defenseless against any local presence of alien intelligent life potentially having inter-stellar travel capabilities.

S.E.T.I. reinforces the notion that we are safe in our little water bubble until we are ready to ask the next scary question lol.

The Sun is near the inner rim of the Galaxy's Orion Arm, within the Local Fluff of the Local Bubble, and in the Gould Belt, at a distance of 8.33 ± 0.35 kiloparsecs (27,200 ± 1,100 ly) from the Galactic Center.[8][47][89] The Sun is currently 5–30 parsecs (16–98 ly) from the central plane of the Galactic disk.[90] The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 6,500 light-years (2,000 pc).[91] The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is found in the Galactic habitable zone.

Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Only about 3000 stars (and counting) within 65 light years of earth... can't wait for the GLIESE atmosphere detection space-based observatory

 

[TalkingMeatSuit]

Well... its almost a given considering the age of our universe.

Made me think of another favorite quote from Clarke - "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."