Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe perhaps we should start a bit closer to home and look to our own solar system. Apart from Planet Earth, we have no absolute proof positive to date that any simple life (i.e. – microbes), exists within the confines of our solar system. But what of intelligent life?
Over the years, there have been some speculations that our solar system plays host to advanced intelligent extraterrestrial beings.
The Moon (Luna): The Hollow and Inhabited Moon Theory: Once upon a time, not all that long ago in fact, there really wasn’t a satisfactory scientific explanation for the natural origin of our satellite, Luna. All the three major theories had fatal flaws. And thus, the possibility that the Moon wasn’t natural at all, but some sort of hollow world, perhaps a UFO base and colony ship, wasn’t all that implausible to some. However, some scientific genius came up with a fourth natural explanation that satisfied all the previous scientific stumbling blocks. Thus, using Ockham’s (or Occam’s) Razor as a guide, me-thinks the hollow Moon theory has proved to be a bit, well, hollow. Pity! However, if UFOs should prove to be space vehicles, the products of alien intelligence, then it logically follows that E.T. will have explored our Moon, maybe even have a base of operations there. That might account for part of the various Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) witnessed over many centuries.
The Moons of Mars: For a brief while there was some serious scientific speculation that the tiny twin Martian satellites, Deimos and Phobos, were, based on their orbital characteristics, hollow, and thus artificial. Well, close-up photography has put that to rest. It was the observations that were out of kilter, not the actual orbits of the Martian moons.
The Face on Mars: An apparently gigantic ‘human’ face was photographed by the Viking Orbiting spacecraft. Alas, however wonderful this would have proved to have been, an obvious alien artefact, it really was just a mirage – a trick of light and shadow as shown by later photographs from other orbiting Mars spacecraft. It proved to be a case of wishful thinking, like the canals of Mars were, and a case of a mountain made unnecessarily out of a molehill.
The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) hasn’t just focused on trying to detect artificial radio transmissions from E.T. There have been searches of the asteroid belt for obvious signs of astro-engineering (like aliens mining the asteroids for the resources they contain). No luck. There’s also been searches made of the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points – those areas of space where an object can ‘hover’ indefinitely in a fixed position relative to both the Earth and the Moon – sort of like being in geostationary orbit. Anyway, searches have been done at those locations for obvious alien relics or ships, but again, no dice.
I can’t quite leave this area without making reference to that way far out sub-genre of UFO buffs from the 1950s (their heyday) – the contactees. The contactees claimed to have had personal contact with and messages from angelic-like extraterrestrial beings, often called by the contactees our ‘space brothers’ who have come to Earth in their ‘flying saucers’.
The contactees were often bucketed as total loonies back then (in the 50’s) by the mainstream, even mainstream people interested in extraterrestrial life and UFOs. That’s no less so today if someone is still foolish enough to mention them. But a question remains on the grounds of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ - and none of the contactees were ever convicted and imprisoned for outright fraud. But did the contactees (collectively) invent these angelic-like extraterrestrial beings with the intent of fraud; or to have some fun and hoax the public and pull the wool over their unsuspecting eyes; or perhaps they just, collectively, had some serious mental issues, say delusions of sorts. Or, perhaps the contactees were relating the truth as they thought they had experienced it, when perhaps the angelic-like extraterrestrial beings were being less than 100% honest with them.
In any event, the contactees spun the tale that these angelic-like ‘space brothers’ came from the other planets and bodies in our solar system (some we haven’t even discovered yet). Our Moon, Venus, Saturn, etc. were all home to these advanced extraterrestrials. The contactees rode in the ‘space brothers’ ‘flying saucers’ and visited their planetary homes, however preposterous that seemed back even then. Although then again, you have that angelic-like ancient Near Eastern goddess Inanna or Inana (Ishtar) identified with the celestial planet Venus, so who knows where the ‘gods’ have actually set up camp! Venus might be pure fire-and-brimstone hell to us, but then too we, using our technology, can survive in environments previously lethal to us – say under the sea or on the Antarctic icecap.
Just because there’s no obvious evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in our solar system now doesn’t mean there wasn’t in the past, or of course they could be here now, hiding in plain sight – those pesky UFO events!
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