Do aliens really exist?

• Are we alone in the universe? Do you think there’s life beyond earth?
• Do you think aliens exist? And if they do, are they as intelligent as us, or perhaps even more advanced?
• Have aliens ever visited earth? What about UFOs, Area 51 etc.? Are their sightings really genuine or are they just baseless conspiracy theories?
• Are Gods worshipped by billions of people really just aliens?
• Is NASA, US Airforce, and Russia developing new technologies by reverse engineering alien technology?

These are few of the questions that humans have been asking since long. And that’s what we are going to explore, discuss and reason out in this article.

Table of Contents

• Huge Universe size
• Various UFO sightings
• Aliens depicted in art
• Encounters of 2nd and 3rd kind
• Spiritual/Philosophical Angle

Huge Universe size

Our universe is huge. Even our galaxy, the milky way, has hundreds of billions of stars, many even larger than our own star Sun. And our galaxy is an average-sized galaxy in the universe that contains billions of such galaxies.

It seems almost impossible that among the trillions and trillions of planets in our universe, only our planet will have developed life. The Drake equation (developed by Frank Drake) estimates the number of intelligent alien civilizations in our universe, capable of communicating with us to be around ten thousand.

NASA launched Kepler space telescope to search for earth-like exo-planets. Recently, scientists have found many exo-planets in the goldilocks zone - the zone near a star, where temperature is just right for liquid water and life to exist. In fact, as we are exploring the universe, we are finding that water is very abundant - Moon has it, Mars probably had it, even Titan (a satellite of Saturn) has it.

The fact that we have not encountered an alien may be just because we have not explored enough. Even nowadays we are still struggling just to explore our nearby planets Mars and Venus and our satellite moon.

Moreover, given the vast size of the universe, we won’t be able to reach or connect with an alien civilization that is thousands of light years away, even if it exists. Just our galaxy is hundred thousand light years across. It essentially means that even if a planet like earth exists on the other end of our galaxy, we will need thousands of years to reach there or for them to reach us, even if we travel at the speed of light. Our radio or visual messages will also take the same amount of time.

Something to ponder!

It’s possible that some advanced civilization might have developed a way around these difficulties, e.g. by developing the capability to create wormholes, using which inter-galactic travel may be possible. But for aliens that advanced in technology, we will be nothing more than insects, some backward tribe at the most. Such alien encounter may not prove that rosy for us, as many experts have suggested, including Stephan Hawking. As per Hawking, sending out messages to aliens is not a very smart idea, for the same reason.

Various UFO sightings

There have been various UFO sightings, some of which have even been recorded. Though most of them remain unexplained.

UFO

UFO just means Unidentified Flying Object. It may or may not be of alien origin.

Though there have been many cases of bluffs and pranks. Also, some natural phenomenon or human activity have often been confused with UFO sightings, e.g. some electro-static phenomenon, launch of satellites etc.

But not all of them can be discredited as hoaxes or explained as some natural phenomenon. There have been many cases that have numerous witnesses and which really sound genuine.

Even allied force pilots witnessed some of these UFOs during World War - II. They termed these UFOs Foo Fighters (later a music band also adopted this name).

Recently, even US Navy admitted to some UFO sightings. The video of those UFOs recorded by armed personnel was widely circulated even in mainstream media like CNN in 2021. It was taken as the first official acknowledgement of UFO by American authorities.

Also, around 1949 US armed force ran a project named ‘Project Sign’, whose aim was to study UFO sightings. Around 12 thousand sightings were investigated. Many sightings (around 800) were placed under ‘unknown origin’ category by experts conducting this project.

There have been many conspiracy theories that connect any strange phenomenon to UFOs. For example, disappearances of numerous ships and aircrafts over the Bermuda triangle have often been connected to underwater alien bases and UFOs. Restrictions near Area 51 in USA are often attributed to UFO research being conducted there, but it may just be a secret military research site, and nothing more.

There are a few more evidences put forward by people who claim that aliens exist:

Aliens depicted in art

Many archaeologists believe that alien looking creatures have been depicted in caves around the world, e.g. in Charama region of India. There are also many ancient Indian books that mention other-worldly creatures, very advanced technology and even planes (called vimanas).

Even many paintings, drawn in Europe during the Renaissance period, seem to depict alien UFO type flying flat-discs, e.g. in the painting of ‘The Madonna with Saint Giovannino’ (now also known as the UFO painting), drawn in 15th century.

The alien footprints are not limited to caves and paintings. Aerial photography in the last century has exposed many new grand designs drawn on the Earth, that are not visible to the naked eye on the ground. A few of such features exposed recently are the Nazca lines and Crop circles.

Nazca lines are a collection of around ten thousand lines found in Southern Peru. Some of these lines are so long (even 9 kms long) and straight that it’s doubtful that men in ancient times could have possessed the technology to etch such lines on the ground. Moreover, they whole design is only visible from up above the ground, so they must have made with an aerial view. Only aliens could have done so hundreds/thousands of years ego. Humans started flying just in the 20th century.

Encounters of 2nd and 3rd kind

There have been some reported cases of encounters of second and third kind with UFOs and aliens. People have seen UFOs landing/crashing and being carried away by government agencies.

Some people even claim to have been kidnapped by aliens.

Though many of them turned out to be mere hoaxes. But, some of them are pretty solid, and hard to debunk.

Types of Alien Encounters

• Encounter of first kind - mere observation of UFO from a distance.
• Encounter of second kind - it means observation of physical interaction of something with UFO, e.g. broken branches, crushed vegetation etc.
• Encounter of third kind - it means physical interaction with aliens themselves.

Spiritual/Philosophical Angle

We humans believe the universe to be human-centric, we always have. We think that God made us to be the best species, to be on the top of the food chain. In ancient times, many civilizations used to think that earth is the centre of the universe and all stars, sun, planets revolve around the earth. Such ego!

It took scientists like Copernicus and Galileo to prove otherwise. Though, it’s suspected that some ancient Indian monks knew about it too.

Anyways, it you are a theist person, who believes in God, then it would be rather egoist to think that God only made humans. If you believe in God, then the logic suggests that you should believe in the existence of aliens too.

In fact, many conspiracy theories suggest that humans got the concept of God due to their encounters with aliens and UFOs in ancient times. Some even believe that the reason behind rapid intellectual development of human species may be due to some experiments conducted by aliens. But these are but conspiracy theories, with not much proof to back them up.

Winding Up

So, we may not have a concrete proof of aliens as of now, but we have enough to keep us curious and interested. The probability of alien life or an alien civilization sure is high.

However, no matter what we believe in, or what your opinion is, it means nothing if that’s not the reality. We should always seek out the truth:

• using objective observations or
• via our experience.

But there seems to be some limitations to what we can objectively observe, as at the end of the day everything is being observed by our subjective perception. The issue of ‘observer’ looms large over physics.

Also, what we observe in our experience may not be sharable with others. And even if we do, will others believe? Even if you saw an alien for certain, and you want to tell the world, will they believe you? Should they?