Extraterrestrial Existence has always been a subject of great controversy. Some are strong advocates and believe that alien life forms do exist and others simply don’t. One thing which is certain is that there are anomalies on this planet that have questioned our sole existence on planet Earth like the Egyptian Pyramids and their staggering accuracy, The Nazca Lines, Stonehenge, The Pentagon videos which were released in April 2020 and many more. Let us review everything we know so far about extraterrestrial beings.
Egyptian Pyramids
One of the most well-known pyramids is the Great Pyramid of Giza. The construction of this Pyramid has been a great subject of controversy. The Great Pyramid is made of millions of precisely hewn stones weighing at least two tons each. Even with today’s cranes and other construction equipment, building a pyramid as big as that of Pharaoh Khufu would be a formidable challenge. On top of that, the Pyramids are over 4,500 years old. Back then engineering was relatively basic and the task of assembling such huge polyhedrons was extraordinary. Lastly, The exact geographic coordinates for The Great Pyramid itself are 29.9792458°N. The speed of light is - rather remarkably - exactly 299,792,458 metres per second. Now, this last fact may just be a coincidence but what is even more mind-boggling is the astronomical configuration of these pyramids, which is said to align with the stars in Orion’s belt, and the tombs of these pyramids are aligned almost exactly to true north. The level of accuracy and intricacy warrants the question: How did they do it? Did they get help from anybody?
A large number of experts have concluded that the Egyptians must have used the stars in order to be so precise. This is a highly contested theory, but one hypothesis which may make more sense is that the Egyptian used a tool called the plumb bob to plot the perfect direction between two stars which was used in the construction of many monuments for thousands of years. The generally accepted theory in academia is that it took roughly 20 years to build a pyramid and in order to do the job they would need 100,000 workers. Another theory says that there were in fact 20,000 skilled workers with a proper management style.
Now, to put things into perspective, a group of Egyptian workers have to build a 480-foot pyramid. The basic building block of this pyramid is stone which has to be cut and dragged from a quarry and these workers have very basic tools like a pickaxe or chisel at best. There is no machinery which exists and the largest stones being carved may weigh up to 80 tons. While most of the stones were smaller and lighter they still had to be carried from a quarry which is 500 miles away. This just seems like an impossible task. Though the dragging of these stones has been given a somewhat logical explanation which says that the stones may have been dragged across wet sand with the help of ropes, that is still extremely labour intensive.
Nevertheless, all the instances stated above does not necessarily mean that the Egyptians had help from aliens as they may have used more sophisticated tools which we are currently unaware of. There is clearly a lot we don’t know about pyramids yet, but there is no doubt that these pyramids were built by extremely clever and hardworking people.
Nazca Lines
The Nazca Lines are a group of more than 800 straight white lines drawn into the surface of the Peruvian desert. They are more than 2000 years old and were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE. These lines make a large number of geometric figures and animal drawings (including spiders, monkeys, and birds) on the surface of the land, some of which are 1200 feet wide, and they are best viewed from the air.
This is one of the most-cited pieces of evidence of extraterrestrial life on Earth as people often point to the fact that humans would have to possess the ability of flight in order to create such a large structure with such a high level of accuracy. Their mysterious purpose, obscure method of creation and their huge size also make it an ideal candidate for proof of aliens on Earth.
However, it turns out that the structure is man-made after all. It has been proved that the Nazca lines are created by removing the upper dusty layer of rocks and revealing the brighter whitish sand underneath. The purpose of making them is still to be ascertained, but research suggests they were likely ceremonial and ritualistic sites. It further turns out that the structure is visible from nearby hills as well, so our ancestors might not have needed to fly to make these peculiar structures.
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is best described as a collection of huge stones arranged in a circle and is located in the countryside of southern England at Wiltshire. Some of these stones weigh as much as 50 tons and have been taken from a quarry miles away from there. The earliest signs of construction date back to more than 5000 years ago. While the exact purpose of Stonehenge isn’t yet known, it is hypothesized that it might be built according to the solstices and eclipses, or may even have been used as a burial ground.
Stonehenge has long been a topic of speculation especially among people who believe it is of extraterrestrial origin. It is easy to understand why people think Stonehenge might have been built by aliens. The stones are massive, and intuitively, it seems like there is no possible way humans could have built this five thousand years ago. The sheer size of the site also makes it seem like it would be an engineering marvel even today, let alone that long ago. Over time, all this has led people to believe that it might have been made by extraterrestrial life who perhaps used it as a landing pad of some sort. However, scientists have shown that it is perfectly possible to build such a structure using the materials and technology that were available five millennia ago, so we might have to wait a little longer to find proof that we aren’t the only intelligent life out there.
Pentagon Videos
In April of 2020, the Pentagon released 3 classified videos which showed “unidentified aerial phenomena” that had been previously released from a private company. The videos show what appear to be unidentified flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving. One voice speculates that it could be a drone. In 2017, one of the pilots who saw one of these objects in 2004 told CNN that it moved in ways he couldn't explain. "As I got close to it ... it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds," said retired US Navy pilot David Fravor. "This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way." Though this simply may just be a drone as the soldier also stated, the video shows that the oblong like projections move at an intensely high speed which may suggest the existence of terrestrial life forms and this is a display of their technology.
Wow! Signal
The Wow! Signal was a narrowband radio signal received by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope on August 15, 1977, which was used at the time to conduct research regarding the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence(SETI). This radio signal came from the direction of the Sagittarius constellation.
When reviewing data recorded by the telescope, Jerry Ehman, an astronomer there, noticed that this signal was unusually strong. He was so surprised by this that he wrote “Wow!” on the side of his observations sheet, which has led this event to become popular as the Wow! Signal. The signal lasted for 72 seconds and is the strongest piece of evidence of extraterrestrial radio transmission we have till date.
Even though the scientists searched for a repetition of the signal multiple times, they failed to detect it again. Ehman subsequently said that they should have been able to find the signal again, and it may just have been a signal originating from Earth and reflecting from space debris. This theory has more or less been rejected after research showed an Earth-born signal was unlikely to be the cause.
In November 2020, amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero, after studying the Gaia database (which has 1.3 billion stars with more being added every day), suggested that life on the exoplanets orbiting a Sun-like star in that region may have been the source of the signal. This may well pave the way for future research into this promising prospect for finding intelligent extraterrestrial life.
The Drake Equation
In 1961, an American astronomer named Frank Drake developed an equation to estimate the number of planets in the galaxy which had intelligent life capable of communicating with us. It depicts the main concepts which we have to consider when thinking about extraterrestrial life capable of intelligent communication. The Drake equation multiplies together seven factors like the formation rate of stars similar to our Sun, the fraction of Earth-like planets and the fraction of those on which life develops.
In 2001, more precise calculations showed that there may be hundreds of thousands of life-bearing planets just in our own galaxy. This has added fuel to the debate that there may be thousands of civilizations like ours. The only problem with the Drake Equation is that the appropriate values of its factors are conjectural, so it might not give an accurate answer. Nevertheless, it is still treated as considerable evidence by those who are desperate to find other life in the universe.
Presence of Water on Mars
Two years ago, planetary scientists reported the discovery of a large saltwater lake under the ice at Mars’s south pole, a finding that was met with excitement and some scepticism. Now, researchers have confirmed the presence of that lake — and found three more.
The discovery, reported on 28 September 2020 in Nature Astronomy, was made using radar data from the European Space Agency’s Mars-orbiting spacecraft, called Mars Express. It follows the detection of a single subsurface lake in the same region in 2018 - this is the first body of liquid water ever detected on the red planet and a possible habitat for life. On the surface of Mars, the low pressure that results from the planet’s lack of a substantial atmosphere makes liquid water impossible. But scientists have long thought that there could be water trapped under Mars’s surface, perhaps a remnant of when the planet once had seas and lakes billions of years ago. If such reservoirs exist, they could be potential habitats for Martian life. On Earth, life is able to survive in subglacial lakes in places such as Antarctica However, the amount of salt present could pose problems. It’s thought that any underground lakes on Mars must have a reasonably high salt content for the water to remain liquid. Although there might be a small amount of heat from the interior of Mars this far beneath the surface, this alone would not be enough to melt the ice into water. Lakes with a salt content that is about 5 times that of sea-water can support life, but as the concentration approaches 20 times that of sea-water, life is no longer present.
The presence of the Martian lakes themselves is also still debated. After the 2018 discovery, researchers raised concerns such as the lack of an adequate heat source to turn the ice into water. And, although the latest finding supports the 2018 observation and involves much more data, not everyone is convinced that the identified regions are liquid water.
Conclusion
These are some of the most elaborate pieces of evidence we currently have of extraterrestrial life, whether it be intelligent, as Stonehenge and the Egyptian Pyramids suggest, or primitive as the water on Mars suggests. While it may take quite some time for us to find conclusive proof of extraterrestrial life, we can occupy ourselves with trying to prove (or disprove) these hypotheses until that fateful day arrives.
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