Ok, this one might get me flamed, but here goes..

One thing I notice among SETI people and astronomy types, is what
appears to me, to be a strong bias against any belief that other
intelligences have visited this planet. I suspect that at least some
of that was the result of Carl Sagon's influence.

Perhaps, the most oft-repeated argument against alien visitation has
been based on the enormous distances between star systems, and the
fact that it would take a great deal of time to travel from one to
another.

But several years ago, as I was listening to a recorded lecture by
Stephen Hawkings, I had a number of thoughts about this issue.
Hawkings said that intelligent life could have begun in this galaxy,
more than a billion years ago. If that is correct, there might today,
be a multitude of intelligent species that are more than a million
years ahead of us.

Hawkings also discussed his belief that during the centuries to come,
humanity will become increasingly cybernetic, employing robotics and
computer technology into our own physical construction. That makes
sense - who wouldn't want to be able to outrun a Corvette and be
capable of trillions of math calculations per second?

Of course, along with that technology, at some point in time, will
eventually come a kind of immortality, or more accurately, elimination
of death by natural causes.

So, what can we expect from these multi million-year-old,
technological civilizations? I would think that long ago, they would
have long conquered the mysteries of their physical world. That is,
they would have done pretty much everything technologically possible,
that they wanted to do.

Shouldn't we expect them to at some point, want to spread out and
explore the galaxy?

But despite their technology, we know that Einstein's speed limit will
hold them back. Even if they could travel at say, 10 percent of the
speed of light, it would take them centuries or millennia to visit the
closest star systems.

But why would they care? If these beings are effectively, immortal but
lack the patience to wait, why can't they head for a targeted star and
then just go to sleep, setting their alarm clock for whatever
thousands of years it will take for them to arrive??

If Hawkings was correct, and technologically advanced civilizations
existed a billion years ago, then this galaxy could very well be
teeming with life which has continually spread from one solar system
to another. 

If so, then it is not at all unreasonable to consider the possibility
that this planet has been visited and studied, by civilizations that
are vastly more advanced than we are.





Robert Harris
 






The JFK History Page
http://jfkhistory.com/