NASA Brings Scientists & Theologians Together To Prepare World For Extraterrestrial Contact

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: Erno86
[...] the scientific search for life in our solar system and beyond would become a moot point, and the billions of dollars that they spend on the search for life on other planets could be better spent on how we can defend our planet from otherworldly threats such as comet/asteroid impacts.

I suspect that the U.S. military is spending a few billion here and there to potentially gear up for that kind of thing, should the need arise.

"The entire U.S. Federal budget for asteroid detection is 1/20,000th of what we spend on homeland security."

originally posted by: okachobin
On another note, the article mentioned Seth Shostak. I once exchanged messages with Seth and asked him why he is so sure aliens haven't visited us. He is a stern believer in alien life, but not that it has visited this planet in any forms other than microbial. I argued a few angles, but he was fairly confident that had we been visited, there would be evidence that could not be kept secret. That was at least 15 years ago. I wonder if his beliefs have changed at all...

I had lunch with Seth and can answer that his views haven't changed and why would they? What has happened in the last 15 years that would change them?

He is right though, interstellar travel even for a super advanced species will never be such a trivial thing that they'd come here and not leave some very good evidence that they were here.

I don't buy the cover up excuse or 'they're hiding' excuse either. No cover up is perfect and aliens who can travel light years to get here have nothing to fear from us humans or our most advanced weaponry that they would need to hide.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: okachobin
On another note, the article mentioned Seth Shostak. I once exchanged messages with Seth and asked him why he is so sure aliens haven't visited us. He is a stern believer in alien life, but not that it has visited this planet in any forms other than microbial. I argued a few angles, but he was fairly confident that had we been visited, there would be evidence that could not be kept secret. That was at least 15 years ago. I wonder if his beliefs have changed at all...

I had lunch with Seth and can answer that his views haven't changed and why would they? What has happened in the last 15 years that would change them?

He is right though, interstellar travel even for a super advanced species will never be such a trivial thing that they'd come here and not leave some very good evidence that they were here.

I don't buy the cover up excuse or 'they're hiding' excuse either. No cover up is perfect and aliens who can travel light years to get here have nothing to fear from us humans or our most advanced weaponry that they would need to hide.

you are right, no one can hide indefinitely without leaving some trace of their presence. and how many accounts do we have of people seeing or speaking to aliens or space-faring vessels? these are the traces. we simple don't have the tools to properly follow them up. usually we would just locate their residence and drive on over. can't really do that when our visitors are from the andromeda galaxy or whatever.

originally posted by: Bloodydagger
a reply to: okachobi

The entire "Ancient Alien Theory" has become a religion all to itself. Its just not "practiced" inside of a Church or gathering....yet. I wonder how long before that actually happens though?

The moment we discover a planet where life or a civilization exists will be the moment those people take over some of the vacant churches.

They'll claim the new discover "proves Sitchen/Von Daniken/Hoagland were right" and proceed to worship their alien high consciousnesses or gods.

For a fun look at what a realistic scenario of how it will all play out see this thread i created here in this forum awhile ago: Astronomers Detect First 'Clear Signs of Civilization' Beyond Earth - How will you react?

When Nasa talks about the possibility of finding life on Mars its like we might one day find some microbes or if we are real real lucky some obscure plant life. Then sometimes they shift to the other end of scales in events like this, suggesting hey everyone be psychologically prepared to meet Et in person sooner than you think.

Does anyone else find this very unusual?

originally posted by: TzarChasm

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: okachobin
On another note, the article mentioned Seth Shostak. I once exchanged messages with Seth and asked him why he is so sure aliens haven't visited us. He is a stern believer in alien life, but not that it has visited this planet in any forms other than microbial. I argued a few angles, but he was fairly confident that had we been visited, there would be evidence that could not be kept secret. That was at least 15 years ago. I wonder if his beliefs have changed at all...

I had lunch with Seth and can answer that his views haven't changed and why would they? What has happened in the last 15 years that would change them?

He is right though, interstellar travel even for a super advanced species will never be such a trivial thing that they'd come here and not leave some very good evidence that they were here.

I don't buy the cover up excuse or 'they're hiding' excuse either. No cover up is perfect and aliens who can travel light years to get here have nothing to fear from us humans or our most advanced weaponry that they would need to hide.

you are right, no one can hide indefinitely without leaving some trace of their presence. and how many accounts do we have of people seeing or speaking to aliens or space-faring vessels? these are the traces. we simple don't have the tools to properly follow them up. usually we would just locate their residence and drive on over. can't really do that when our visitors are from the andromeda galaxy or whatever.

Why hide at all?

If aliens came the whole world would know it because if they wanted contact with us it would be very apparent and if they didn't want contact with us they wouldn't exactly care if we saw them.

If they were here we'd have a lot better evidence including physical evidence which would be undeniable as being of extraterrestrial manufacture.

originally posted by: AthlonSavage
When Nasa talks about the possibility of finding life on Mars its like we might one day find some microbes or if we are real real lucky some obscure plant life. Then sometimes they shift to the other end of scales in events like this, suggesting hey everyone be psychologically prepared to meet Et in person sooner than you think.

Does anyone else find this very unusual?

Not at all.

The search for life in the universe is a three way race between distinctly different types of scientists.

1. The search for life in our Solar System

This is pretty much the search for microbes or other small life on Mars or in the future in the ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa or on Titan. Why look for small stuff? Because they've already looked for big stuff in the case of Mars and didn't find anything. It's also unlikely that large life would have had time to evolve on Mars before its environment collapsed when it lost most of its atmosphere.

2. The search for "biosignatures" in the atmospheres of planets around other stars.

This is a search which is just getting started and which many believe may hold the most promise. Thanks to NASA's Kepler spacecraft we now know that around 22% of stars like our Sun have a planet around the size of our Earth in the "goldilocks zone" not too hot or too cold. Beginning in 2017 we will begin to locate planets like these but around dimmer nearby stars with the TESS Mission. In 2018 the James Webb Space Telescope will begin studying their atmospheres. If we're very lucky we might just find that one of our close neighbors has life due to the ratio of certain gasses like Oxygen, Methane and others in the atmosphere.

3. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence or "technosignatures".

Everyone by now is familiar with SETI, specifically radio SETI but there are also other forms of SETI such as looking for laser pulses, or looking through transit data or infrared surveys for hints large scale astroengineering around a star (like a Dyson Sphere or Ringworld), looking for waste heat produced by technology, looking for molecules which can only exist in abundance if they are artificially produced like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and even looking for alien artifacts in image date from surveys in our solar system.

Hopefully that clarifies things.

a reply to: JadeStar

Hopefully that clarifies things.

Your reply was detailed and made sense but I an still seeing contradictions.

What about all the anomalies on Mars and Moon some of that evidence lookings compelling enough for closer scrutiny don't you think? The odd occasion where Nasa did (by Public pressure) gather second photos, on the face on Mars, the quality of the photo was so low you cant tell one way or other.

Lets say Et arrives tomorrow should we assume it will ever be done publically. I mean whose doors will they the Ets knock on, can Nasa presume theyd even want to announce themselves to the selective panel of world representatives, the UN puts togther?

Its a fair possibility Et will communicate according only to its own selective criteria and deciding who they want interact with. It may be unreasonable to consider an Et will have a similar intelligence to humanities. They may have vastly different concepts to morality , politics, science and other functional aspects of global society, e.g economic consumerism

I think it will wise to educate people on a possibility of an Alien mind which is vastly different to ours in many ways.
Always plan for the worse case scenario.

originally posted by: AthlonSavage
a reply to: JadeStar

Hopefully that clarifies things.

Your reply was detailed and made sense but I an still seeing contradictions.

What about all the anomalies on Mars and Moon some of that evidence lookings compelling enough for closer scrutiny don't you think? The odd occasion where Nasa did (by Public pressure) gather second photos, on the face on Mars, the quality of the photo was so low you cant tell one way or other.

Most such "anomalies" are the result of pareidolia. They are usually only mysterious to the untrained eye of laypeople. Most planetary scientists know what they're looking at which is usually just interestingly shaped rocks. In the case of the "face" you have it backwards. Much was made about a hill which due to the low res of Viking's 1970s camera looked more like a face (to the point where mission scientists nicknamed it "the face") than when higher res images were taken in the 1990s which revealed it's true nature.

There are plenty of examples of the same thing on Earth. Rock formations or hills which are named things like "Old Man", "The Witch" etc.

This is because our brains are hardwired to try to fit shapes into familiar configurations of things we know. This is the same reason why ancient people looked in the sky and saw patterns in the stars (which became our Constellations).


[quote[Lets say Et arrives tomorrow should we assume it will ever be done publically. I mean whose doors will they the Ets knock on, can Nasa presume theyd even want to announce themselves to the selective panel of world representatives, the UN puts togther?

I'd not assume ET would knock on anyone's door. They could just as easily take over all of our TV and radio and transmit whatever message they wanted. Much safer as well because believe it or not the one thing that alien life might fear on our planet would not be us humans but all of the bacteria, viruses and microbes which call our bodies home. Each human being carries around billions of them.

It would be silly for a biological entity to come to Earth without any sort of protection and knock on doors to talk to people at some sort of presentation.

Contamination is a big thing and unless they had been here for a long time they probably would not have any immunity or countermeasures for our bacterial zoo.

That by the way is why I am skeptical of a lot of the UFO material which describes beings interacting with people without wearing so much as a mask or environmental suit.

Its a fair possibility Et will communicate according only to its own selective criteria and deciding who they want interact with.

Or if they would want to interact at all. Remember we're talking about beings who in the very least would likely be 1 million to 1 billion years older than us.

That's why I do not think we are being visited, if we were they would not need to hide, but their presence would be undeniable even if it was just to observe and catalog our world for their Encyclopedia Galactica.

It may be unreasonable to consider an Et will have a similar intelligence to humanities. They may have vastly different concepts to morality , politics, science and other functional aspects of global society, e.g economic consumerism

I think it will wise to educate people on a possibility of an Alien mind which is vastly different to ours in many ways.
Always plan for the worse case scenario.

Of course, an alien mind could be as vastly different from us as ours is from an ants. I do not however think that alone would be a reason to fear such aliens. Again, if a species has the ability to travel the distances between the stars they probably don't need us for slaves, food or sexual partners or any other 1950s sci-fi scenario for that matter. They also wouldn't need our planet because there are likely billions of others like it in the Milky Way galaxy (i can demonstrate that statement with math if you like).

The only thing I imagine such a species might be interested in would be our unique experiences and our species's history of development.

a reply to: JadeStar

Not all planetary experts agree with each other this reputable figure was adamant the data from the Viking pic was of good enough resolution to pick out artificial features in the face. Looking at the viking and contemporary photo, I in my layman eyes see the contemporary pic having a dumbed down low resolution effect. I say that knowing the satellite technology can read a car number plate from orbit so why does that picture look so low resolution almost to the point where its no descript.

Thomas C Van Flandern (June 26, 1940 – January 9, 2009) was an American astronomer and author specializing in celestial mechanics. Van Flandern had a career as a professional scientist, but was noted as an outspoken proponent of non-mainstream views related to astronomy, physics, and extra-terrestrial life. He also published the non-mainstream Meta Research Bulletin. He died of colon cancer in Seattle, Washington.[2]

If Aliens have been here along time on earth then, they have managed to hide themselves well, and what is revealed is only via folklore , goblins, dogmen etc

Its an equal possibility that they have been here a long time as they have not been here at all, and if they have been here along time the the bacteria, viruses might not be an issue for them . A million years ahead of us the technology may be so advanced that managing the biological hazard of that isn't an issue for them, for example stay in orbit and send down robots forms to do the survey work.

Im not as optimistic as you they will be the prosaic theologians of understanding, where let bygones be bygones and non interference treaties are all the go. It is impossible to know what they would want until a motive is established, once we know their motives we can work out the best options available to us if any at all.

I don't understand people who are absolute thinkers when it comes to other intelligent life visiting Earth. The comments about, "They would have left a trace of evidence...."

We have no way of detecting anything in the dimension inside of a wormhole. There are theories and tests about multi-dimensions, no smoking gun yet. If you think other intelligent life in the Universe is incapable of creating wormhole technology, then my guess is some type of gravity wave propulsion. In both instances, if the intelligent life is similar to humans, they would have observed the Solar System, the Sun, Earth, our atmosphere, technological signals, and so on, like how we are currently looking for alien life. On the other hand, they could be completely different than humans and have a whole other approach to space travel.

Why would intelligent life NOT be stealth when approaching Earth? Do you really think a real life deep space ship would not have maneuverability either? Our Solar System has huge distances between all the planets and moons, I think intelligent life operating a space ship or probe could remain covert and undetectable.

Making contact with us might create a challenge in their return home. If they are stealing anything from us, then of course they would not want to make contact. Their overall mission may have zero intention of making contact.

In addition, you have your Ancient Astronaut Theory, Government Cover-Ups, UFO sightings, and abduction encounters.

Take the "Grey Aliens" for example, if they are real, can you really picture them living in harmony with us on Earth? The "Grey Aliens" are a perfect example how visiting intelligent life would not leave a trace of evidence.

What kind of intelligent life would arrive in their space ship, before sending a signal to Earth they are coming for a friendly visit, and say hello to the world? A space ship runs the risk of being attacked, and those intelligent beings on board run the risk of not making it back home.

Other intelligent life would have to observe Earth so closely to understand by what means we could receive a signal. At that point their technology would be so advanced, what good would they get by making some intergalactic relationship? They might as well observe our planet and study it or steal from it.

Only in the Ancient Astronaut Theory does it illustrate intelligent beings making contact with humans, and they are declared Gods. This would be the same thing today, and for one I would imagine contact like that would be covered up, because of greed. Secondly it's almost silly to imagine the most perfect intelligent life visiting Earth to save it and make Earth a utopia so to speak in our current state. If that happened, we would be so lucky, almost too lucky....

People are afraid of the unknown. I have prepared my mind for years, expecting themselve two shows up at any time. I'm not acting cocky, but to pretend that something does not exist out there in space are too stupid.
I would welcome them.

a reply to: LightAssassin

Right, I didn't read the entirety of the thread before posting.

Well, if we assume that aliens are here on planet Earth and they have only made contact with our leaders, then how does this make them any better than the greedy #s who currently rule us? If they can travel through space they sure have the technology to change things for good on this planet. Then again, I believe they are here.

a reply to: AthlonSavage

Not all planetary experts agree with each other this reputable figure was adamant the data from the Viking pic was of good enough resolution to pick out artificial features in the face. Looking at the viking and contemporary photo, I in my layman eyes see the contemporary pic having a dumbed down low resolution effect. I say that knowing the satellite technology can read a car number plate from orbit so why does that picture look so low resolution almost to the point where its no descript.

The 1976 Viking 1 photographs were only good enough to suggest a human-like face because of the low resolution of the photos. The shadows and highlights became an eye socket and mouth. Once the high resolution photographs 20+ years later came out, it was obvious these were tricks of the lighting. The features actually turned out to be hills and valleys caused by erosion on the hill/mesa originally photographed.


This is not an artificially created monument. It's too bad when presented with facts otherwise, some die-hard believers scramble to find excuses and reasons to continue this myth. This is where you separate the real truth-seekers from the naive blind believers.

a reply to: Ectoplasm8

. Once the high resolution photographs 20+ years later came out,

I want someone to tell me how the high resolution pictures can be called high resolution pics. To be honest they look like they have had deliberately all the detail filtered out electronically.

originally posted by: IWasHereEonsAgo
From April 2013...

brotherguy.livejournal.com...

Pisses me off that baptise remark, although I don't know who to be pissed at: the media or the vatican guy.

Why do we insist on believing the medieval mindset that is judaism, Christianity and Catholicism??!!
Aliens wouldn't give a bloody damn about being baptised.

This! The Pope and the Vatican are one of the most evil blasphemous and self righteous groups of me ever. This Pope guy is getting what's coming to him in the long run anyways. I'm gonna like my life trying to stay away from hearing him or Obama, and If I do, I suggest you do like me and dissect what they're really saying here.
First of all, this life on other planets crap is part of the plan to chip all humans. The Pope is gonna get so much credibility and such a large following from it... It's sad but most of my friends it seems believe more in a lie a than in God.. It's truly sad.

a reply to: bitsforbytes

Yep, so I thought it pertinent to alert you to some of my findings. Maybe they have the same religion, maybe they are the religion

a reply to: LightAssassin

Perhaps, so far judging by their elusive and deceiving nature, I fear they could be on the other team. The dark side.

We must be vigilant.

a reply to: AthlonSavage

...the data from the Viking pic was of good enough resolution to pick out artificial features in the face. Looking at the viking and contemporary photo, I in my layman eyes see the contemporary pic having a dumbed down low resolution effect.

I want someone to tell me how the high resolution pictures can be called high resolution pics. To be honest they look like they have had deliberately all the detail filtered out electronically.

Is this more silly belief in the UFO/alien conspiracy cover up by the government? The government (or NASA or whomever) purposely "dumbed-down" the photographs to look less like a face? If that's the case, why didn't they simply airbrush the shadowed eye socket on the original? That makes no logical sense. I assume there's an unsubstantiated explanation for that as well.

This:


Is not more detailed than this:


...unless you are a follower of the UFO/alien conspiracy cult.