“It’s on the moth spectrum.”
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I really don’t believe it - any aliens evolved enough to explore space would surely assess the damage done to our planet and fly for their lives…
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Or treat us, as we do feral cats and rats and mice on bird islands?
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Specifically a former US Air Force officer and intelligence official (not a congressional representative), has publicly claimed to have second-hand knowledge of the recovery of alien bodies and tech from crash sites and indicated that he has seen classified photos of crash sites of alien ships. No documents confirming this have been released
Note about terminology: Grusch uses the term “non-human intellegence” or “NHI” to refer to the operators of the crashed ships, saying he does not want to speculate whether they are from another planet or another dimension, but he did refer to the bodies as “biologics”, so I think intelligent robots can be ruled out and the NHI, if they exist as he claims, are a form of life, so i refer to them as “aliens”, as I think that is the term people are most familiar with and fits both interdimensional as well as interplanetary life (I’m not a physicist but I am very skeptical of the interdimensional idea)
I’m not seeing how Animalia becomes paraphyletic as a result of aliens, or how making Animalia paraphyletic would eliminate the need to describe new kingdoms for ET life?
I do believe alien life would be in one or more new kingdoms, and would not share any kingdoms with earth life, but as I understand taxonomy inter-kingdom hybrids are impossible, and alien-human hybrids could only happen in the unlikely event that aliens were somehow in genus Homo or at least Subfamily Homininae
This is true for politicians but it should be noted that the main claims here are originating from an ex millitary/intellegence officer, not a politician (not that he can’t be lying or misinformed)
That is contradictory, but the actual claim that was made is that crashed alien ships and bodies on earth have been confirmed
I disagree with this assumption, if I see an ant nest with the surrounding plants cleared away I think I have made an interesting observation of a different life form that has altered its environment, I do not flee in fear becasue the ants damaged the grassland. I think aliens could view us similarly to how I view the ants, with no distinction between us and nature, they may think of us as just like any other species that alters its environment and competes with and eats other species, creating habitats for some (city rats) while extirpating others just as some dinosaurs could have gone extinct when new predatory dinosaurs evolved, I don’t think there is anything we are doing that looks to an outside species like destroying the planet, just altering the habitat (well maybe nuclear testing)
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[image description] A Far Side cartoon of a layer of clowns at the top of earth’s atmosphere. The caption reads, “The bozone layer: shielding the rest of the solar system from the Earth’s harmful effects.” [end image description]
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Partially agree, but i think it would be evident to most aliens that the way we are changing our environment is making it less suitable for US, and is causing an extinction event. But maybe most or all technology using species go through a phase like that. Maybe it would be like a museum or even a reality show (“do the humans make it? Find out in 500 years!”) Of course it’s impossible to know an alien’s motivations. Hopefully they don’t just want to come blow us up, but if they wanted to do that, and knew about us 50 years ago, i’m assuming they already would have.
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I saw a UFO when I was a kid. It was night and I was out for a stroll in my neighborhood in western NY state with my family. We saw an arrangement of lights pass overhead in kind of a diamond formation. No sound at all, which made it unusual. It was odd but I didn’t think much more about it that night. However, there was a story in the local newspaper the next morning with reports from other people who had seen the same or similar thing. Never did hear if it was explained. (Maybe it was a formation of waterfowl that were reflecting the city lights … I’ve heard that explanation before.)
So when people ask if I believe in UFOs, I say sure I do, I’ve seen one myself. But of course that’s not what they are really asking.
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And what about when we figure out WE are the aliens on Earth? We seem to be poorly equipped to live here without major adaptations.
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I almost addressed this in my other comment, but didn’t want to make it too long. I do think aliens would likely recognize that we are starting to change the climate in ways that are against our own interests, and causing the extinction of other species, but I still don’t think this will cause the aliens to avoid the planet out of fear. An animal that is altering its habitat against it’s own interests and making other species extinct could still be interesting to study, and is not automatically dangerous, I think aliens are more likely to fear us becasue of our missiles than our environmental impact
Either they don’t want to attack or are not confident that they can win the battle (or not confident they can win without destroying whatever they want from earth, for example trying to conquer the planet for themselves but making it radioactive). Some of the reported UFO behavior looks like they are testing the US navy’s reaction to them, which could indicate some level of concern over our military capabilities (although this could also be evidence that UFOs are actually human craft from another country, since the Russian and Chinese militaries test the US military in similar ways)
In what way are we poorly equipped? We seem to be quite a successful species
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If you count breeding success, oh yes, humans are successful.
For my own experience, my body is not able to protect me from the elements, temperature, weather changes. Can’t do winter the way I was born. I have ineffective self defense capability against predation, from mosquito attacks to say, to large carnivores.
It seems to me that the other indigenous creatures haven’t the need to go through the damaging adaptations humans do.
The longer we persist, the farther we get from a natural life. We’ve already put so much pressure on ourselves we have developed disorders and diseases from how we unnaturally raise our young.
So I wonder at your term of success, and whether we have forgotten how we got here.
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I’ve seen a flying saucer when I tripped over the coffee table. Of course I denied it.
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I consider having the brainpower to create clothing and shelter sufficient to expand our range to the arctic when we originated in the tropics quite successful
As for predation, we may not be able to win an unarmed fight with a predator, but we are still preyed on a lot less than most species, and despite the diseases of modern life, the burden of disease overall has been greatly reduced relative to pre-industrial times thanks to medicine
Carbono
Shoutout to that brave future inatter who inats for the first time on another planet
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…as long as they don’t rely on the CV suggestion.
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I’ve probably watched too many sci-fi shows, but those first encounters with an alien biosphere typically don’t go well. Should probably upload their pics quickly, before the bad stuff happens.
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A long time ago, Francis Crick and Lee Orgel wrote a paper expressing the idea that life as we know it didn’t originate on planet Earth, but that life spread to Earth through the universe, either by itself naturally (panspermia) or artificially through the agency of advanced intelligent life forms, whether deliberate or accidental. Later on, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, and Brig Klyce expanded on the possibility of natural spread of organisms or genes (maybe even in molecular form, not as part of an organism). Fred Hoyle’s book “Life Clouds” covers this idea with proposed mechanisms. Brig Klyce tracks all of the evidence at his web site, panspermia.org.
Also, I’ve seen informed speculation that Cambrian life is not of Earth origin, but the earlier Ediacarian life is actually native to Earth, another take on the so-called “Cambian explosion.” But the Ediacarian life could also have itself evolved from basic genetic material that somehow spread through the galaxy.
Regardless, the point I wanted to suggest here was that if panspermia (natural or intentional) is true, life arriving here from other planets could be of the same tree of life that we already know, but of course would reflect a different adaptation and course of evolution within the kingdoms and orders, and would likely have many branches different from our own, all depending on the detailed history of how organisms arrived and when.
Not claiming this is the case, but we were invited to speculate, so there you go.
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Which would make all present-day life on earth essentially invasive species.
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I’m going to be the Debbie downer here but so far there has been zero physical evidence of any kind of intelligent life, at least as far as we know from all our or space exploration. I doing we will ever encounter such life unless we find a way to speed up space travel (or use AI for this) or like in Project Hail Mary (very cool super nerdy book, totally recommend) such life comes to us.
Regardless I’ll humor you. We have very specific parameters to determine what life is, what if this alien “life form” completely challenges our definition of what life is? We might have to create a completely different system of identifying that ‘life form’.
Seriously if you haven’t read Project Hail Mary I totally recommend it. Andy Weir, the author, kind of tackles that subject a little bit.
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Yes, while it seems certain that self-replicating chemistry would have evolved repeatedly throughout the universe, the same laws of physics almost guarantee that we will never encounter any with an origin outside our own solar system. The best hope for detection is with the incoming electromagnetic spectrum.
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