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Meeting aliens will be nothing like Star Trek—fact


Christopher O'Brien

Back in the Saddle Aginn
Staff member
Meeting aliens will be nothing like Star Trek—fact
May 8th, 2013 by Mike Lee, The Conversation in Other Sciences / Other

The latest Star Trek movie, opening tomorrow, raises an eternal question: why are the Klingons (or Cylons or Daleks) always at roughly our technological level?

For any sense of drama, interplanetary protagonists have to be evenly matched. Usually, the aliens have technology that is sufficiently superior to humans to promise them victory – yet not infinitely superior, thus permitting nail-biting battle scenes and humanity's eventual triumph against (almost) insurmountable odds.

But the technological progress of life on Earth – as deduced from palaeontology, archaeology and modern history – indicates this cliché makes no sense.

Should we meet aliens, they will almost certainly either be at the bacterial level, or so advanced that they would see us as bacteria. Either way, it would not be a very exciting encounter, at least by Hollywood standards.

The fossil and archaeological record emphasises the jerkiness of technological progress on Earth. Life has existed on earth for more than 3.5 billion (3500 million) years, but was at the microbial level for 85% of this time.

Tools were only invented in the past couple of million years, by a select few species (such as humans, chimps and Caledonian crows).

Technology – complex tools – is unique to humans and only appeared in the past few thousand years. But when technology finally appeared after aeons, innovation accelerated exponentially.

I quantified this exponential growth by consulting a detailed timeline of modern inventions: a list of game-changing technological breakthroughs that transformed society, such as the printing press, antibiotics, the car, the aeroplane, TV and the internet (any such list has inherent subjectivity, so you might want to find your own).

I plotted the cumulative amount of technology available to humanity through time based on this list: so, for instance, the earliest piece of technology on the list (the abacus) appeared around 2400BC, so humanity's (and Earth's) technological "score" finally moves up to 1 at that time, after being stuck at 0 since the origin of life.

The resultant graph of technological progress shows innovation proceeds rather slowly until about 1400AD, and then really takes off.

Between 1400 and 1600, there were 12 revolutionary innovations, which exceeded the number of such innovations in the entirety of human existence (and thus Earth's existence) up to that point.

Between 1600 and 1800, there were 21 such inventions; and between 1800 and 2000 there were 75. The accelerating growth of technology, which has doubled every 200 years since 1400. [SNIP] Technology is growing exponentially, and since 1400 has doubled every 200 years (analogous to a computing phenomenon known as Moore's law, applied across all technology).

The next double-century (2000-2200) therefore promises no fewer than 150 breakthrough innovations on par with the steam engine, antibiotics and the aeroplane. No wonder technophobes moan "stop the world, I want go get off".

This exponential growth is no surprise. Innovation is a positive feedback process. Every invention sets in train further innovations, which can further drive elaboration of the original invention.

Think of inventions that improve communication (eg writing, print, telephone, radio, TV, internet). Better communication means ideas circulate much more rapidly, interact and synergise, resulting in further innovation, which in turn quickly yields even further improvements to communication.

Every invention relies on, and sets the groundwork for, other innovations, though some links are not immediately obvious.

The technology to build tall buildings has existed for many thousands of years, as evidenced by the massive temples and columns of the ancient world. Yet the first skyscraper – the first inhabited tall building – only appeared Chicago as late as the 1880s.

It was built shortly after the invention of the lift and the powered industrial water pump.

This is logical: a skyscraper would not be very popular if there were no lifts, and the toilets were on the ground floor. So an efficient water pump, as much as the lift, made possible the skyscraper. And of course, as those buildings got ever taller, the pressure to improve pumps increased.

Once life on any planet – such as Earth – hits upon technology, the rate of change will rapidly and continuously accelerate, and society will spend less and less time at any particular technological level.

Humans spent more than two million years at roughly the same stone-age level: transplant a palaeolithic caveman 100,000 years into his past or future, and he probably wouldn't notice any change.

But imagine the angst that would result if you put a teenager 50 years into her past, or yourself 50 years into the future. Things are now changing faster than ever, and the pace of progress will only increase.

Our current technological level will probably span about 100 years, from 1950 to 2050: daily life before and after this period will be qualitatively different.

Archaeologists of the future, and palaeontologists from the very distant future, will look upon this period as a unique period in human (and Earth) history, and perhaps label it the "palaeodigital age": the age when life first made crude digital tools (such as plastic watches, Pac-Man machines and iPads).

If evolution on alien worlds proceeds even vaguely like that on Earth, then extraterrestrial life, too, will be stuck at zero technology for eons.

When technology finally appears, it will hurtle forwards with increasing momentum so that life spends short (and increasingly shorter) intervals at any particular technological level.

Even a slight time displacement on this steep learning curve translates to monumental differences in technological capability. For instance, the end of the age of sail was separated from the beginning of the space age by less than a century.

And human societies, which all shared similar tools until some left Africa perhaps 60,000 years ago, diverged sharply in technological advancement very rapidly, resulting in grossly unequal encounters during the Age of Exploration.

There is therefore effectively zero chance of meeting an alien society at the fleeting moment that it happens to occupy a similar point on the technological learning curve as humanity.

REST OF ARTICLE HERE:
 
To extrapolate, does this mean that because we can actually recognize a technology flying about in our atmosphere that appears to be not too distant from our own technological timeline, looking the way we might expect it to, then the chance of such a coincidence is just impossible? And then because we have seen these "airships" for so long and in all manner of shapes and sizes we should question the impossibility of this reality and settle on the notion that someone/something else is very bent on creating the illusion of another technological species operating in our atmosphere? Because that's just a lot more creepy than the ETH and it should really make everyone in ufology much more suspicious than they are.

Of course the other option is that what lies beyond the paleodigital revolution is a marked incline in the curve of technological advance that will be so dramatic that the next twenty years alone will create a reality virtually unrecognizeable from where we're currently at.

Still, so many visitors, looking like they're from so many places...looks to me like someone's messing with us and our paradigms.

Speaking of which, it would be great to get Hansen and someone else versed in the territory, like Bishop, to talk about why it is historically that so many UFO figures and organizations have all these ties to the three letter agencies. "Who is playing who in all of this?" would be an interesting show topic. Just to add a little more suspicion and paradigm shifting to the mix.
 
Makes you wonder- if the purpose behind these vehicles is to specifically help advance human technology. Airships to disk- seems we have struggled with implementing anything similar to what has been witnessed/described as saucer propulsion. I am still unsure of the triangle craft being that of human tech. or a combination of both human and other.
 
And if you factor in such leaps as from native biological to transbiological, then its not just the technology but also the very state of being that will be in a status of profound non parity
 
The idea has become prevalent that whoever or whatever it is that’s behind the UFO phenomenon is presenting us with UFOs that appear to be just somewhat beyond our current state of technology. I think the idea is based largely on the airship reports of the 1890s, 50 years before the Kenneth Arnold sighting. I am not one who discounts the idea that the witness is a factor in the scheme of a UFO sighting. But in looking at the last 68 years of the phenomenon, I fail to see a pattern showing that the look and behavior of UFOs is being driven by the current state of our technology.

As a reference, here is how Dr. John Alexander describes the concept in his book:
“It is striking to note how the reports have changed over time….This observation points to the conclusion that many of the physical craft that are seen tend to be in advance of current technology, but not beyond the understanding of human consciousness. In other words, they are a few years, or possibly decades, ahead of extant capability, but not the ultra-intelligent leaps that are often attributed to them.”

There are many sightings which have occurred over the last 68 years that give me difficulty with this concept. Here are three of the first that just happened to come to mind.

The first are the events that took place in the early morning hours on Oct 24, 1968 at the SAC Minot AFB in North Dakota. After more than 90 minutes of sightings by numerous witnesses on the ground, a UFO was being tracked by both airborne and ground based radar as it paced a B52 about 3 miles off its left wing. Based on the size of the radar paint, the radar navigator estimated the size of the object to be about 5 to 6 times the size of a refueling tanker. At this time the aircraft and UFO were traveling at about 20,000 feet, in a cloud and haze layer which prevented the crew from observing the object visually. The two were moving at roughly 300-400 mph. As it was being tracked the object then, in a period less than the 3 second sweep of the radar, shifted from 3 miles off the aircraft’s wing to 1 mile. This meant that within that 3 second period the UFO traveled at a minimum of over 3000 mph, before immediately reverting back to the 300-400 mph pacing speed. After studying the radarscope images, the Wing intelligence officer estimated that the UFO traveled at a minimal average speed of 3900 mph. (By the way, at the same instant the object moved in, two independent radios on board the B52 failed. They did not resume transmissions until the object moved away.)

At a later point the B52 dropped down in altitude well below the cloud layer. It then had a chance to fly about 1000 feet over the object, giving the crew the opportunity to visually observe it. They estimated the UFO to be about 200 feet wide and several hundred feet long. It was described as consisting of three parts - a large egg shaped section that had the look of molten metal, connected to a metallic looking cylinder, connected to a 200-foot-wide internally illuminated glowing crescent moon shaped section. (During this time, the two radios again failed. They did not resume working until the B52 moved away from the object.)

I do not see in any of this an attempt to present a technology that is a few years or decades in advance of 1968 technology.
(minotb52ufo.com)

The second example occurred in May 1950. Something that often comes to mind when I think of this UFOs shaped by our technology concept is the 1956 feature film “Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers”. This was a theater release docudrama that combined filmed interviews of real witnesses with actors portraying Al Chop and Ed Ruppelt. With one particular exception, most everything in this film seems very dated – the music, the dialog, the style of the film. When I watch this film, the one item that always strikes me as timeless is the encounter with a UFO described by Captain Willis Sperry. On May 29, 1950 Sperry, along with his co-pilot and flight engineer, were piloting an American Airlines DC-6 from Washington D.C. to Nashville. At about 9:30pm they noticed a bright bluish light speeding towards them head on. Fearing a collision, Sperry abruptly turned the plane to the right. Just as it reached the airliner, the UFO came to a relative halt off the plane’s left wing. As it passed in front of the moon, the crew could see the silhouette of a streamlined wingless object with a brilliant bluish light on its nose. As the crew watched, the UFO then took off at a “fantastic” speed towards the rear of the DC-6, circled around and came to a relative stop off the plane’s right wing. After a period, the object reversed direction and sped off at an incredible speed, disappearing in the east in a matter of seconds.

Again, I fail to see in this encounter an attempt to present in the UFO a technology based somewhat in advance of our 1950 technology.

The last example occurred in June of 1953 in Saugerties, NY. It comes from witness interviews in Linda Zimmermann’s DVD and first book on the sightings in the Hudson Valley. At about 1 pm on that sunny clear June afternoon Hank Vanderbeck and his brother (both now retired police officers) were out playing with friends when they noticed a very strange silent object in the sky. They estimated that it was about 1000-1500 feet up. One of the object’s components was a dark brown horizontal cigar shape they estimated to be 300-350 feet long and 50 feet high. Its other features, and its most striking features, were four vertical 100-foot-high rings of bright light spaced along the length of the cigar, unattached and positioned “like hula hoops around it. The first was red, then green, then red, and green.” As word spread through the neighborhood, more and more neighbors came out to look at the object. Eventually someone called the police, who apparently then called Stewart AFB. After about 20 minutes, three fighter jets came flying low into the area. As the jets headed towards the UFO, it began to move. First it moved slowly, then “Zip! It rose up vertically so fast it was just a dot in the sky and then was gone completely!” The next day the Air Force said the jets were just chasing a weather balloon.

Once again, I do not see how this object bears any resemblance to the “futuristic” technology that people were anticipating in 1953.
(nightskyufo.com)

If a pattern such as the look of UFOs being driven by the state of our technology could be demonstrated, I think it would be great. It would be significant and insightful. But for the occasional report where the argument might be made (such as maybe Socorro), I think there are many more which run counter to the concept.

Here is the film I referred to above:
 
The article appears to presuppose that the unknown subjects "aliens" are from other planets, and that the unidentified flying objects are spaceships. If we don't know what they are, how can we assume their level of technology?
 
Why wonder when the answers are readily available from the ET community itself?


That is a minor and inconsequential part of their existence.

Readily available answers? With all due respect, I wouldn't take anyone serious who claims to have answers to this 70 year old mystery. We can't even be certain of an ET source behind the phenom.
Only thing certain is "something is seen, but a person doesn't know what."
 
Readily available answers? With all due respect, I wouldn't take anyone serious who claims to have answers to this 70 year old mystery. We can't even be certain of an ET source behind the phenom.
Only thing certain is "something is seen, but a person doesn't know what."
The mystery has been around a lot longer than 70 years...
 
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