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One evening, upon returning to the cave that his tribe calls dwelling, the monkey-humanoid Moon-Watcher finds an odd crystal object, a sort of monolith that fascinates him at first, however then shortly loses his curiosity when he discovers that it’s not edible. Quickly after, the true goal of the monolith is revealed to be none apart from penetrating the minds of our ancestors to induce new talents that, over time, will trigger the event of an intelligence able to creating new know-how.
Many readers will recognise this scene from the novel 2001, A Area Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke, and the movie of the identical identify, directed by Stanley Kubrick. It virtually goes with out saying that the crystal monolith in query is the work of an extraterrestrial civilisation that observes life on different planets and “experiments” on them to encourage the event of intelligence in as many components of the cosmos as potential.
Searching for easy solutions to complicated questions
Understanding how we, as a species, got here to be clever is without doubt one of the nice enigmas of evolutionary research. Small mutations, adopted by a means of pure choice to decide on probably the most advantageous, appears too gradual a course of for constructions as complicated because the human nervous system or mind to emerge. It’s this very complexity that permits thousands and thousands of neurons to speak with one another, ensuing within the emergence of qualities corresponding to the power to reply voluntarily to environmental stimuli, or to ask questions concerning the very nature of humankind and the universe.
These days, we all know that there are evolutionary mechanisms which have result in nice leaps by way of complexity, however that doesn’t cease individuals from turning to non-human forces – Gods, extraterrestrials, religious energies – to elucidate issues which can be tough to grasp.
This has all the time been the case, in all human cultures. A traditional instance could be attributing atmospheric occasions – thunder, lightning, floods – to the wrath of God. These concepts took place earlier than people had ever left the bottom, so it’s no shock that we turned our eyes even greater – to extraterrestrials – to elucidate different phenomena that we may solely observe as soon as travelling at excessive altitudes grew to become a part of our every day lives.
The attract of the unknown
The chance that we would have been visited by beings from different worlds has all the time fascinated us. The factor of thriller, of the unknown, solely makes it extra attention-grabbing.
Any phenomenon is made all of the extra engaging when it appears it’s being coated up or hidden for secretive causes. The attractiveness of conspiracies typically leads individuals in the direction of concepts which haven’t any scientific foundation, corresponding to the assumption that the Earth is flat, that people by no means set foot on the Moon, or that vaccines can management our behaviour.
Despite the fact that these concepts have repeatedly been proven to be unfaithful, their fast dissemination by means of social media, utilizing easy, blunt language that appeals to emotion over logic, makes them very highly effective weapons.
The supposed “proof” of alien visits to our planet ranges from particular Bible passages to historic stone carvings portraying creatures or objects that will look like aliens or spacecraft. The latter typically take the type of alien craft.
Nonetheless, we can’t overlook that people have all the time created imaginary creatures that resemble them and attributed them with magical powers. When imagining Gods, people have given them a human look, and virtually all the time imagined them as residing within the sky.
Once we take a look at these representations by means of trendy eyes, we affiliate them with aliens or constructions, when in truth they might be referring to a variety of various issues.
Picture of petroglyphs in Cub Creek (Utah, United States of America).
MikeGoad / Pixabay
When unproven tales turn into bigger than life
Just lately, in the US Congress, UFOs (presently often called UAPs: “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena”) are again within the limelight. It is because a former air power intelligence official has made claims that the Pentagon is in possession of stays of extraterrestrial craft and “non-human organic matter”. The claims have been backed up by the testimony of a retired navy commander and a former navy pilot.
What we could be sure of is that the extra we discover our skies, the extra doubtless it’s that we’ll encounter phenomena that we can’t clarify. Nonetheless, this doesn’t imply that they’re extraterrestrial. Previous expertise has proven us that the majority of those occasions could be attributed to optical illusions, spy or climate balloons, area junk, and even satellites that we ourselves have made.
In Spain, UFOs had been a scorching matter between the Sixties and the Nineteen Eighties. On this period, everybody knew somebody who was satisfied that they’d seen a UFO. This even reached the purpose the place an exoplanet, known as Ummo, was made up. It was populated by a extra superior civilisation than ours who made contact with individuals on Earth. Within the letters these aliens supposedly despatched, the ‘Ummites’ defined ideas corresponding to genetics and cell construction.
The reality is that these days, studying a few of these letters could be fairly amusing. The story of the planet of Ummo was in the end proved to be a monumental hoax, a reality later admitted by its personal creator.
The Ummo hoax was even linked to the creation of a paedophile ring, which ought to make us replicate on the dangerous penalties that the unfold of fabricated information tales can have.
Can we deny the chance that clever alien civilisations exist?
The reply, after all, isn’t any. The universe is immense, and it’s greater than doubtless that circumstances just like these which led to the looks of life on Earth have been repeated on different planets. However there’s a big distance (actually and figuratively) between acknowledging the existence of those creatures and contemplating the chance that they may have visited us.
Exoplanets, also referred to as extrasolar planets, are extraordinarily far-off, and we’re restricted by the pace of sunshine which, as confirmed by Einstein, is the utmost potential pace at which something can journey. Subsequently, the journey to even a “close by” exoplanet would take hundreds of years. Perhaps a civilisation extra superior than ours may discover a method to do it sooner, however to not the purpose of it being one thing straightforward or commonplace.
In any case, if the stays of alien life or spacecraft are saved away someplace, why are they not being proven to us? Scientists would soar on the probability to analyse this natural matter to learn the way it’s structured, the way it metabolises vitality, or what molecules it makes use of to retailer genetic info.
Till there may be proof, this isn’t a query of science, however relatively, of tales. Tales could be very entertaining, however these sorts of tales don’t assist us to construct a extra correct or useful view of the world.
Ester Lázaro Lázaro receives funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and from the Spanish State Analysis Company (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) by means of the mission PID2020-113284GB-C22.
