Apollo 14 Moonwalker Claims Aliens Exist 1268
An anonymous reader writes "Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell — a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission — has stunningly claimed aliens exist. And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions — but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades. Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'"
Pics or it didn't happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the good old days (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the good old days people who leaked a big conspiracy disappeared. Ever since the first Kennedy assassination, the Powers That Be have discovered that the best way to deal with leaks is to just have more and more leaks and bury the truth in a million similar sounding lies.
Suppose Mitchell's right and there really is a big alien contact conspiracy that's being covered up? We've all seen so many photos of streetlights coming from crazy/misguided people that the best policy from the conspiracy's point of view would be to let him yammer on and throw out a lot of phony alien contact crap. They don't have to discredit him, we'd all do that for them.
All they need to do is keep him from getting at any legit relics storage so he can't go public with an alien tricorder or something that people can verify as ET in origin and the world will just think he's a loon.
That's the trouble with real earth-shaking truth, it sounds almost indistinguishable from lunacy. You gotta wonder if there is a percentage of our locked-away crazies who are telling us the truth and we're just too thick to see it.
Last vestige of American credibility... (Score:3, Interesting)
...just went right down the toilet.
Oh well.
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.setileague.org/articles/meat.htm
A Day Before New X-Files? (Score:2, Interesting)
There has been something going on... (Score:3, Interesting)
... with NASA for years. There has been lots written about it. Some, like the secret Egyptian ritualistic cult is bunk. A lot, like the amount of images that NASA has edited or deliberately taken at lower resolutions than the equipment was designed for or at really poor angles.
And if you read though the Apollo transcripts, there are some really bizarre comments that only make sense if you take them in the setting of discovering alien ruins or debris on the moon.
And if you look at the history of the UFOs and alleged government cover-ups, you see that the few that have broken their silence on the matter have effectively been death bed confessions. Others that have done so have just disappeared (i.e. Bob Lazar).
What I find strange, if there is no real cover-up of UFOs, then why has the government spent so much time and effort trying to sweep it under the rug, so to speak. There are documents out there, that have been released through the FOIA process that show how much time and effort has gone into it and how high it goes (I have seen documents from Eisenhower, Truman, and Kennedy on the subject). If there are truly no such thing as UFO's, then why address the issue at all?
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't buy the "space alien" story for the simple reason that the "Area 51" aliens look too much like us. Bipedal, five fingers, five toes, two eyes, one two holed nose, one mouth. Look at the diversity of life on earth, with hooved animals, pipedaal animals with feathers, squids, six legged insects and eight legged spiders, no legged snakes. And all of these creatures presumably evolved from the first earthly protolife, as we've never seen life sponaneously appear since, nor have we been able to cause it to spontaneously appear.
Plus, how would they have found us? Our radio waves are incredibly weak. Even nuclear blasts are weak on a cosmic scale, and nobody farther than fifty light years away could have detected them yet.
If in fact they are aliens, they must be time aliens, not space aliens; a species that evolved from humans and travelled through time to do a bit of archaeology. Considering that humans have only been here a hundred thousand years (and look at how we have progressed since), imagine what our descendants ten million years in the future will be like? We will be less than chimpanses by comparison.
I can believe time travel before I believe faster than light travel.
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
Says who? Hey, we're already arguing on conspiracy grounds, why not argue for fake moon landings while we're at it?
I'm a programmer, but that doesn't make me more credible than someone who has no clue about programming when I claim that Cthuluh is controlling the internet.
Re:old news (Score:5, Interesting)
In The New York Times of June 22, 1971, he verified that rumor, and reported that his experiment had produced results "far exceeding anything expected" but in almost the same breath, he described those results as only "moderately significant."
Mitchell told the Times that he had made arrangements that four persons stationed in different cities would attempt to determine through ESP the order of a home-made deck of standard Zener cards. These are the familiar symbol-cards (circle, plus mark, wavy lines, square, five-pointed star) that are used by parapsychologists. Astronaut Mitchell said that 51 out of 200 of the guesses made by the four subjects, were successful. Chance would call for 40 correct.
In among all the enthusiastic statements made by Mitchell to the reporters, we discover that the experimental conditions through no fault of his had turned out to be less than ideal. He had intended to perform these experiments every day during the Apollo mission, but changes in the schedules meant that he could only work on four of those days, two on the way to the Moon, and two on the way back. But and this is very significant the psychics back on Earth, it turned out, since they were not aware of the schedule change, had written down their impressions of what Edgar Mitchell was thinking about, the40 minutes before he had begun! So, any apparent success in the experiments must be attributed to precognition, not to telepathy.
From: http://www.randi.org/jr/05-31-2000.html [randi.org]
Re:Space Madness! Camouflage? (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe they ARE camouflaged...
If these people have anything to say about it:
http://www.wiolawapress.com/ [wiolawapress.com]
http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/alien-agenda.html [thewatcherfiles.com]
http://www.sherryshriner.com/sherry/faction-three.htm [sherryshriner.com]
Also, a relative of mine told me that around 1969 or 70 or so at night she and a friend were on the porch talking. A light source came down, low/tree-top, over the street, quietly. It was NOT like any aircraft or hobby toys of the time. It seemed to be observing them, or just hanging around, then it abruptly left.
I wish *III** could see firsthand these kinds of things. If I could communicate with (and trust them, and if they'd oblige) I'd instantly declare myself liberated of mad politicians and general human depravity and wealth misalignment. If I could travel away from Earth on MY terms, then why should i (or ANY citizen of Earth) remain subject to human codified laws any longer? It's NOT so much that governments' (wealthy and powerful manipulators) fear panic, hysteria and lawlessness. They fear sudden worthlessness of their "stellar" portfolios should people have an "out". Even if we could travel, and an alien dropped us off with a lifetime of supplies and defensive weapons, you could bet your ass that if Earth governments could find resettled humans, then at the very LEAST the major governments (particularly the US) would
declare they are arriving for the protection of the resettled, then squat on them, then fortify the presence, and graft Earth's depravity on the new colonies.
Star Trek kinda sorta touched on these topics, as did other Sci-Fi, but I'd be among the FIRST to don a uniform of a colonist defending against Earth government take-over. And, I'd DIE, too, for THAT kind of cause. But, here on Earth, I'd die to save an old lady or toddler from being run over, but i'd feel hard-pressed to do the same for a magnate or for well-known politicians or some low-level functionaries who thrive on wealth, power, and such.
There's too much awe and wonder ahead to feel constrained by petty resource-manipulating elitists, not matter how much Earth they move and shake...
Re:Or an insider with knowledge you lack (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not true. Many astronauts claim to have witnessed UFOs either in space or while flying military aircraft. Some examples: Gordon Cooper; Donald Slayton; Robert White; Joseph Walker; and both Gemini astronauts James Lovell and Frank Borman witnessed an object while in orbit together.
Perhaps they're all wrong. Or conspiracy theorists. Or just plain nuts. But if they're all nuts, then they shouldn't be called "flight-ready" now should they?
Not the only one (Score:5, Interesting)
Gordon Cooper (Mercury 9 & Gemini 5) has also made similar claims [wikipedia.org]. I seem to recall hearing such claims also made by other astronauts, as well as engineers etc..
Re:"During the three-day journey... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Space Madness! (Score:4, Interesting)
And how many times have YOU been in space? This guy has BEEN there. He knows the facts on the ground.
response.funny == "I thought the point was that he knew the facts in space."
response.obligatory == "You mean, he had the script handed to him on the sound stage?"
Seriously though, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This guy is either a wingnut or expects proof to be forthcoming. I hope for the latter but expect the former :)
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Says who? Hey, we're already arguing on conspiracy grounds, why not argue for fake moon landings while we're at it?
I'm a programmer, but that doesn't make me more credible than someone who has no clue about programming when I claim that Cthuluh is controlling the internet."
While I agree with you somewhat, I've it's a hobby of mine to scour the "crazy's", because frequently because of their over-active paranoia they'll pick up things that most people normally wouldn't that are in fact TRUE, the problem with these people is that - they mix truth with imagined relationships or patterns that aren't there, thereby most people disqualify all of what they say by association, instead of just 'ignoring' what is false, and finding what is true.
The truth of a statement is not determined by:
-The status of the person
-Their education
-Whether or not that society considers them crazy/kooky, etc
-and on and on.
A statement is true whether or not someone is crazy, educated or not, has a job or not, or is rich or not. This 'false by association' stuff is programmed into us from birth, and while it can be a nice heuristic. I'd really like a study done on the amount of true statements vs false statements, done scientifically and with an eye towards taking what is said statement by statement to analyze the truth value's. I imagine the kind of patterns that you'd find would be interesting to say the least.
I imagine paranoid/crazy people would pick up a lot of true stuff that we deem false because we've been programmed by education/the media/entertainment, etc, and vice versa.
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/made_meat/ [atom.com]
(The guys own site : )
http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html [terrybisson.com]
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
We've found life in the freezing cold depths of the ocean where light doesn't penetrate. We've found life on the edges of volcanos. We've mixed together chemical soups and watched life erupt out of it.
Obviously, life isn't a unique and special thing, but something that naturally erupts into existence all over the place. Therefore, there must be life all over the universe, and not just here on Earth.
Which is, of course, consistent with major religions. 'God', aka 'The Universe', creates life 'in his image', aka 'of the universe'.
The universe doesn't tend towards entropy. It tends towards life. We are walking, talking evidence of this fact.
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly, just this morning I was reading QED by Feynman, and photons & electrons do travel faster than 'c', but the probability is low, and rapidly gets lower as the distance increases. And the distances he was talking about where 'c' starts to dominate are those greater than from the nucleus to the electron shells, so "really really small" compared to interstellar distances. However, could it be that with a big enough lens (on the order of a galaxy), that you could "focus" any photons that may have jumped from Earth to there. Of course I haven't done the math, and the probabilities may be such that every bit of energy ever given off by our solar system would still only give a 1 in 10^Googol odds of a single photon getting there before a photon traveling at 'c', but if you believe quantum physics (or at least Feynman), then it's possible for at least single particles to travel short distances faster than 'c'.
and what is wrong with that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Creativity in science is RARE; furthermore, science is loaded with stories about great discoveries by people who were ridiculed for testing theories (often thoughtlessly) dismissed by others.
It is unscientific to criticize a scientist for personally performing their own experiments and not simply trusting the prevailing opinion (especially in a weak area like ESP which has elements of psychology; therefore, it tests the boundaries of science itself which is best suited for rigid subjects.)
A bad scientist is only one who can not properly do experiments or falsifies results. Possibly one could argue that it is bad practice to apply science to subjects where its effectiveness is minimal to non-existent (surely, you'd agree existing religions are one of the worse places for its application?)
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or land their crates safely after traveling for billions of miles, or at least crash somewhere else but in the middle of nowhere, midwest USA.
If you were an alien, where would you land your craft? In the middle of nowhere, where there is no one around to mess with you or your stuff, or in the right in the middle of Central Park, where the Bloods or the Crips might gank you and jack your ride?
One could imagine that they're either more subtle when they try to remain under cover than leaving mutilated cattle and anally probed people lying around after their departure
Mutilated cattle may be an entirely different phenomenon than aliens (see el chupacabra, for instance, for a weirder, but alternate explanation), but as far as anally-probed people -- well, again, if you were going to anally probe people, would you anally probe the President or some celebrity or would you pick some poor schmuck whom no one is ever going to believe?
Why not land in the middle of the Superbowl finals
I assume they also wouldn't want to get involved in local conflicts.
C'mon, try to see it from the alien's perspective.
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think people think too much with their 5 senses when thinking about alien life forms. What's to say there isn't a whole world existing in the same space as us, and we just cant perceive it.
But step back from that philosophical stuff, and imagine that why would there be another species similar humans? I think people think aliens, they think human with different features with similar concepts of life, death, morals, social "revealing" ( would they even understand what that is? ) rather then something so foreign, we couldn't even begin to understand it, nor its motivations, if it has those?
Sci fi is fun because we graft human behavior on something different, and its fun for us to say ooh look they are just like us. But in the end it is just the human ego projection our emotions on something else.
I watched wall-e the other day. I was amazed at how well pixar could make a box with eyes utterly human. Our minds see patterns, shapes, and behavior in the right spot, and we fill in the blanks with the emotions. This is the same thing people do with the idea of "aliens". I think it is limiting, egotistical, and utterly human. We just need to remember to keep open minds about what we see, or "alien" life, because in reality it just seems like we are looking for life "similar" enough to what we know, to call it life.
For any geeks out there, orson-scott card's ender books (the later ones) deal with this a bit, as they try to discover whether a virus is actually a species, and wiping out a really smart virus is in fact genocide.
Just interesting stuff, but we have to remember to stop grafting our humanism on top of alien things we do not understand.
This is most certainly *not* Crackpottery (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't crackpottery. It's most probably an ongoing NASA hoax. Especially the smart techie and science people like to do that kind of stuff. And they *do* do that kind of stuff. It's also aparently a good way of venting some of the pressure when working on complex problems. My parents both worked for NASA, so did my grandpa. My dad worked on the Space Shuttle Radar systems as an electronics engineer and my grandpa as an electronics engineer with Grumman on the Lunar Lander. My mother protocolled some of the Apollo missions recorded radio transmission and she can remember NASA astronauts describing artificial structures on the back side of the moon during a mission. And no, she is not senile or a crackpot. She actually still one of the smartest, brightest and educated people I know. And she's closing in on 70.
Now other than this artificial structure thing actually being true, it is more probable that the astronauts and engineers have this little meme going on for a few decades now. Appling Rackhams Razor this is most probably the case. It would be interesting to know if it was Apollo 14 she protocolled. The timeframe (early 70ies) would fit.
I've got two options: "Truth" and "Traditional NASA Family Meme/Hoax". Most of my money and all my pocket cash is on option two. ... Allthough, you never know.
The NASA and contracter teams involved are probably pissing their pants laughing every time this kind of stuff makes it into the broad media.
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd rather be "more poor" and less dicked over than have as much money as I do and still feel like I'm getting shafted by corporation after corporation on a daily basis.
Maybe if you gauge successful systems by how much phat loots they have, we're doing pretty damn good, but I'd give up a hell of a lot if I didn't have to deal with the bullshit that government granted monopolies have bought me (cable, telephone, cell, etc).
But maybe that's just me.
Re:Huh. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can believe time travel before I believe faster than light travel.
Time travel would basically require it anyway. Think of it this way, if you want to travel back in time on Earth you would need to travel to the location of Earth at the time you intend to visit, which isn't the same location Earth inhabits today since we're moving through the cosmos with the Sun which is moving along with the galaxy which is also moving. So to time travel you basically still have to overcome the whole "travel long distances through space" issue we currently have.
Not big news. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Space Madness! (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought Scifi was just a way that people could project racist stereo types and project hate in a non-specific manor. "They're not really people so we can slaughter them. Who cares if they bare a striking resemblance to chinese people."
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
Um... X Files Viral... (Score:4, Interesting)
Odd story... Is there a movie coming out that is sort of based on the story...
VIRAL!
Re:Space Madness! (Score:2, Interesting)
Fantastic response.
I can't wait for an idiot to come along and say something along the lines of, "Physics as we know it today" or some such rubbish.
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
Because we know every detail about every iota of matter and every detail about every energy transfer, right?
I think you overestimate your fellow humans there, being that we've oh-so-barely scratched the surface of understanding the world around us. How long have we known about radio waves? Microwaves, particularly? How about Bose-Einstein condensates? Mmmhmmm. Seems to me that there is a WHOLE LOT goin on right under (and inside!) our noses that we BARELY are able to detect, let alone understand in any significant way. Don't get me started on complex systems, the nature of many-variabled interactions or even something so esoteric as 'consciousness'. We know next to nothing (and in some cases, I'd bet we know EXACTLY nothing) about a great many of the universe's more detailed workings. Even those bits we THINK we know oftentimes cannot be verified by lack of proper experimental apparatus.
No offense, but your post kind of comes of as a QBASIC programmer scoffing at the guy writing in C because YOU see no reason anyone would need to use malloc(), as the 'physics' already has a solution for that, and anything beyond your comprehension is, of course, irrelevant.
I'm not making any fiat declarations about aliens, programming languages or physics, just that you DON'T KNOW what you DON'T KNOW. Neither do I, but I (for one) am accepting of that. I am however very unaccepting of the resemblance to Donald Rumsfeld in my first sentence of this paragraph, that's just wrong.
Re:Space Madness! (Score:5, Interesting)
To paraphrase Einstein, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that we can comprehend it.
Of course, he could be wrong about that. I think it is easy to prove that the universe has become more complex since the big bang (if you believe in it, that is). I also think that the universe is not finished becoming more complex. It may turn out that physics is trying to hit a moving target and that we may never have a Complete Theory of Everything, because Everything isn't finished yet.
Something to think about...
Re:Space Madness! (Score:2, Interesting)
We do know practically all of the basic physics--the available particles and how they interact--up to a relatively high energy level. If there's "another world" "in the same space" as us, then it would have as building blocks either weakly-interactive particles or high-energy, likely unstable particles. Neither seems reasonable for supporting any kind of life, certainly nothing remotely similar to us.
Within the Braneworld [wikipedia.org] theories, I think you could have "parallel" universes in the sense that neighboring universes are lined up in space(the large-dimensional bulk, here). These could be separated by small distances (though what is small for the extra dimensions?). That's about the closest I can get to "world in the same space".
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or an insider with knowledge you lack (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me post that list again of people who would really like to TESTIFY UNDER OATH before Congress:
(and risk 15 years in jail if lying!). Mitchell is in good company with people who have very solid track records!
The world is more than ready to hear the truth once and for all so that we come put an end to these perpetuating dichotomies between 'believers' and 'skeptics'.
We don't need all the military, sensitive details and stuff: just a YES or NO, what they look like and their intentions.
Source: http://www.disclosureproject.org/aboutexecsumm.htm [disclosureproject.org]
-----------------
Testimony that Explains the Secrecy
Merle Shane McDow: US Navy Atlantic Command; Lt. Col. Charles Brown: US Air Force (Ret.); "Dr. B"; Lance Corporal Jonathan Weygandt: US Marine Corps; Maj. George A. Filer, III: US Air Force (Ret.); Nick Pope: British Ministry of Defense Official; Larry Warren: US Air Force, Security Officer; Sgt. Clifford Stone: US Army; Master Sgt. Dan Morris: US Air Force, NRO Operative; A.H.: Boeing Aerospace Employee; Officer Alan Godfrey: British Police; Sgt. Karl Wolf: US Air Force; Ms. Donna Hare: NASA Employee; Mr. John Maynard: DIA Official; Dr. Robert Wood: McDonnell Douglas Aerospace Engineer; Glen Dennis: NM UFO Crash Witness; Sgt. Leonard Pretko: US Air Force; Dr. Roberto Pinotti: Italian UFO expert; Dr. Paul Czysz: McDonnell Douglas Career Engineer; Astronaut Edgar Mitchell; John Callahan: FAA Head of Accidents and Investigations; Michael Smith: US Air Force Radar Controller; Franklin Carter: US Navy Radar Technician; Neil Daniels: United Airlines Pilot; Lt. Frederick Fox: US Navy Pilot; Captain Robert Salas: US Air Force, SAC Launch Controller; Prof. Robert Jacobs: US Air Force; Harry Allen Jordan: US Navy; James Kopf: US Navy Crypto Communications
Witness Testimony Overview
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell: May 1998; Monsignor Corrado Balducci: September 2000
Radar and Pilot Cases
FAA Division Chief John Callahan; Sgt. Chuck Sorrells: US Air Force (ret.); Mr. Michael W. Smith: US Air Force; Commander Graham Bethune: US Navy (ret.); Mr. Enrique Kolbeck: Senior Air Traffic Controller; Dr. Richard Haines; Mr. Franklin Carter: US Navy; Neil Daniels: Airline Pilot; Sgt. Robert Blazina (ret.); Lieutenant Frederick Marshall Fox: US Navy (ret.); Captain Massimo Poggi; Lt. Bob Walker: US Army; Mr. Don Bockelman: US Army
SAC/Nuke
Captain Robert Salas; Professor Robert Jacobs: Lt. US Air Force; Lt. Colonel Dwynne Arneson: US Air Force (ret.); Colonel Ross Dedrickson: US Air Force/AEC (ret.); Harry Allen Jordan: US Navy; Mr. James Kopf: US Navy/ National Security Agency; Lieutenant Colonel Joe Wojtecki, US Air Force; Staff Sergeant Stoney Campbell: US Air Force
Government Insiders/ NASA/ Deep Insiders
Astronaut Gordon Cooper; Merle Shane McDow: US Navy Atlantic Command; Lieutenant Colonel Charles Brown: US Air Force (ret.); Dr. Carol Rosin; âoeDr. B.â; Lance Corporal John Weygandt: U.S. Marine Corps; Major A. Filer III: U.S. Air Force; Mr. Nick Pope: British Ministry Of Defense; Admiral Lord Hill-Norton: Five-Star Admiral, Former Head of the British Ministry of Defense; Security Officer Larry Warren: United States Air Force; Captain Lori Rehfeldt; Sergeant Clifford Stone: United States Army; Major-General Vasily Alexeyev: Russian Air Force; Master Sergeant Dan Morris: US Air Force/NRO Operative (ret.); Mr. Don Phillips: Lockheed Skunkworks, USAF, and CIA Contractor; Captain Bill Uhouse: US Marine Corps (ret.); Lieutenant Colonel John Williams: US Air Force
(ret.); Mr. Don Johnson; A.H.: Boeing Aerospace, December 2000; British Police Officer Alan Godfrey; Mr. Gordon Creighton: Former British Foreign Service Official; Sergeant Karl Wolfe: US Air Force; Donna Hare: Former NASA Employee; Mr. John Maynard: Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.); Mr. Harland Bentley: US Army; Dr. Robert Wood: McDonnell Douglas Aerospace Engineer, ; Dr. Alfred Webre: Senior Policy Analyst Stanford Research
Re:Space Madness! (Score:4, Interesting)
But step back from that philosophical stuff, and imagine that why would there be another species similar humans? I think people think aliens, they think human with different features with similar concepts of life, death, morals, social "revealing" ( would they even understand what that is? ) rather then something so foreign, we couldn't even begin to understand it, nor its motivations, if it has those?
Sci fi is fun because we graft human behavior on something different, and its fun for us to say ooh look they are just like us. But in the end it is just the human ego projection our emotions on something else.
The other reason for this is because it is astonishingly hard to tell a good story with alien characters who have no common ground with humans. We tell human-centric stories with human aliens because we can connect on an emotional level, so that's where we get Spock caught between the human and Vulcan cultures, all that angst. It's still not even remotely plausible that alien humanoids would evolve to look like us and be like us right down to interbreeding but there ya go. The only real story you can tell with true aliens is just how frickin' alien they are. The Borg are fairly alien. We can't relate to them on a cultural or personal level, we can only relate to them as competing lifeforms, the only common points are a desire for food, shelter, and procreation, and we'd still disagree about the relative definitions of those things. And true aliens would be even more alien than the Borg.
Supposing that we're talking about aliens coming to Earth, that excludes all the potential aliens who have no desire to go mucking about in the universe, we're talking aliens with some sort of curiosity, be it scientific, religious, or philosophical (or something else we cannot fathom) who want to go out and explore. Since they're paying attention to us, we're of interest on some level, but were we the point of the mission or just an interesting footnote? How do they perceive the world, how do they interpret it? One hypothetical alien I came up with was essentially a plant-like organism. It consisted of a mass of tendrils, like a mass of tentacles with no central body. These aliens constructed walking scaffolds so that they could move across the landscape. Their natural thought process is complex but moves at a far slower rate than ours so to them the world is a blur. Not normally a problem because they like taking their time to think things through. But in times of emergency, they need to react quickly, instinctively, so they grow an emergency brain that can react to danger. To their own perception, the world is spinning by and then suddenly they are somewhere else. They then review the memories of the emergency brain to see what has happened, the threat encountered and how their body reacted. These plants have the ability to finely control their own physiology and can actually adapt their genetic code on the fly. So while in terran species evolution takes place between generations, with these aliens there is no difference between generations. Genetic material is traded between individuals, new individuals can bud off at any time, and the only death comes from accident. Memories are encoded just like genetic material and can be traded so there is not quite a group mind but a universally shared experience. An individual could go off and have an adventure far away, come back with the unique experiences to share and everyone can now have the same memory of experiences as that individual.
So right there is an example of an alien we can imagine that humans cannot talk with, only correspond through a written medium. And even at that, the alien grasp of reality is so different from ours, common points of experience and metaphor become troublesome. And even allowing for that level of communication is a huge reach when thinking about truly alien aliens.
Re:Space Madness! (Score:3, Interesting)
Because logic is objective, and for presumably sentient beings, universal.
Re:Space Madness! (Score:3, Interesting)
And of course Poul Anderson's High Crudase, or the silly movie of the same name, take this to an entertaining extreme. Given circumstances that are only midly far-fetched, a bunch of guys with swords could end up carjacking your space ship, flying back to your cities, and attacking them with trebuchets! It pays not to be too cocky.
Re:finally a sane comment! (Score:2, Interesting)
But for argument's sake, the tourist theory would be a possibility: the many advance scouts/scientists/explorers, etc. wouldn't be detectable unless they chose to be seen, presumably in a manner too large to cover up.
But what if that first, cautious/responsible wave is finished/bored with us? Now we're at the mercy of their equivalent of hick tourists; the kind that go to Paris, Rome, etc. and bitch about not finding a McDonalds or 7-11. How good are their village-idiots-on-vacation going to be at staying hidden from us?
Re:finally a sane comment! (Score:3, Interesting)
To find monkeys with stone axes, you'd have to find a planet with land and water mass.. which requires very specialised conditions. Any other planets capable of sustaining life would likely be water planets (it's currently assumed that our planet had a lot of atmosphere and land mass ejected when hit by a massive object, and the stuff that was ejected came together and formed our moon), and therefore it would be pretty difficult for the inhabitants to evolve to be able to develop even writing technology, nevermind intergalactic travel..
Our planet is also protected from most asteroids by Jupiter and its massive gravity well - if we didn't have Jupiter then there would be much less chance of life being able to evolve on earth because we'd be getting hit by more interstellar objects..
So basically the chances of other races with FTL travel is probably even more remote than you think. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's pretty difficult. Maybe more likely is that there would be beings from another dimension (a la Indiana Jones :P )
Re:finally a sane comment! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, you have the ancient towns "visited by gods" or even run by them if you can believe certain archeologists (like Inca and Aztec golden cities).
Sounds like some might've crossed "that fine line", if you take Nephilim [wikipedia.org] as partial fact.
Yea, those damn kids with graffiti everywhere! Nazca lines [wikipedia.org]. Some literally seem to display "monkeys live here, don't bother."
All taken with a large grain of salt, ofcourse ;)