Aliens and Extraterrestrial Lives | Concept
Aliens are conjectural and controversial beings from other worlds away from the earth which is speculated to be advanced and more intelligent than humans. They are also referred to as extraterrestrial beings.
The above definition is, however, contextual; and of course, the first thing that comes to mind when the word “alien” is mentioned in the public. However, the word “alien” is polysemous.
Etymologically, ‘alien’ is derived from the Latin word ‘alienus’ which means ‘foreign, stranger or belonging to someone else’. Therefore, the word ‘alien, has different meanings. For instance, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary also defines an alien as “a person who was born in a different country and is not a citizen of the country in which he or she now lives”, a definition first used in the 14th century. The latter definition is synonymous with a stranger, a foreigner, or a person of another family, race, or nation.
In the scientific perspective, “aliens” is used to refer to any creatures or living things including microscopic organisms, plants, and animals, advanced intelligent beings that do not originate from the earth; or an entity from another planet.
The first use of the word to mean “not of the earth” was in 1920. For this context, the definition of alien shall be limited to the advanced intelligent extraterrestrial beings as defined in the previous paragraph.
Overview
1. Aliens and Human History
The story of aliens or extraterrestrial beings can be traced back to the ancient days inasmuch as human history was recorded. Cultures around the globe have somehow similar views about different beings who have visited our planet both in war and in peace.
Almost every culture on earth has their version of the story of the origin of man connected to either God, gods, or a mystical being that was strange to our planet. Ancient kingdoms and empires around the world such as the Babylonian, Greek, Assyrian, and the Egyptian empires had detailed stories about how certain beings (with supernatural powers) from heaven (outer space) came to the earth to rule over the affairs of men.
The Babylonians, Sumerians, Akkadians, and Assyrians, for instance, believed that their kings were descendants of those who came from another world to rule on earth which they referred to as the Anunnaki. These Anunnaki were believed to be slave species of the Gods sent to earth from planet Nibiru as alien astronauts in search of life-saving gold but ended up creating the first humans as a slave race to mine gold. These repeated stories have also been subjects of arts and literature such as Greek mythology.
2. Archaeological discoveries
Modern-day archaeologists have discovered inscriptions on stones and ancient ruins from some of those ancient kingdoms with images describing how extraterrestrials visited our planet. There had been some ancient record of how beings from other worlds crossbred with humans.
The most popular of such stories is that of the Nephilim mentioned in ancient religious texts like The First Book of Enoch and the Bible in the book of Genesis chapter 6. These books tell similar stories about how alien beings had sexual affairs with humans, giving rise to children who were extreme giants and wild known as Nephilim.
These stories of aliens have reverberated across different cultures that live in remote proximity to each other. How people from cultures who have different languages, beliefs, and lifestyles shared these similar stories remains a mystery.
3. Aliens and human culture
Some African and Asian cultures until this day still hold ritual festivals to commemorate the visitation of those aliens with awareness exercises about their future return.
Until this day, certain ancient wonders like the Egyptian pyramids are believed by many to have been constructed by intelligent beings from other planets. Whether these ancient stories of aliens across these cultures are true or mere myths may remain a subject of debate for ages to come.
4. Aliens and the Modern Human Society
In modern society, the story of aliens has taken a different shape. Instead of having a strong belief in alien existence, the subject has been widely discussed, debated, and termed as speculative even though it is still popular.
There are stories of alien adoptions across the world. People have made claims to have been adopted, experimented upon, and implanted with some kinds of strange microchips by the aliens. Certain mysteries like the disappearances at the Bermuda Triangle have also been attributed to aliens by many.
The most popular trend in the modern alien stories mostly takes place on the media and the entertainment industries. Aliens have been featured in different sci-fi stories and movies.
The Hollywood movies like Alien Siege (2005), Ben 10: Alien Swarm (2007), Beyond Skyline, First Men in the Moon (1964), and 2001: Space Odyssey, among others, portray aliens. In these movies, aliens were portrayed as reptilian beings with bulging eyeballs like drunken toads or as shapeless immortal creatures with the ability to transmute.
Most of these stories have boosted the beliefs about a possible alien invasion of our planet in the future or the return of beings who were once among us; while some support the claims that advanced alien machines have been buried beneath the earth's crust or deep in the ocean waiting to invade or take over the earth someday in the future.
Government and organizations like United States National Space Agency (NASA), Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and European Space Agency have invested huge some of the money to investigate for signs of possible life or signals of any intelligent civilization across the universe. One of such projects is The Galileo Project.
According to www.science.com, The Galileo Project has a lot of objectives which include getting high-quality images of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), searching for alien artifacts closer to earth, and knowing if the earth has been visited in its 4.5-billion-year history. Detection of any life form on any planet away from the earth would provide more information about the nature of our universe and the nature of life beyond our planet. Humans, therefore, have taken space exploration projects more seriously in recent years. Man has gone beyond the moon landing to Mars mission and other unmanned spacecraft missions across the universe.
Do aliens exist?
1. Scientific perspective
Even though the term “alien” and reports of alien phenomena like the Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) have become so popular, the is yet no concrete scientific evidence to prove that aliens exist. A great number of people have been so familiar with the alien stories to the point that they believe in the existence of aliens, but at least there is yet no concrete empirical proof. NASA in one of the episodes on their official website www.nasa.gov states, “Extraterrestrial life has never been discovered, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist”.
For one to know how hard it is to refute the existence of aliens, one needs to have a wide knowledge of the universe and the knowledge of human history. There are about 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Our galaxy, The Milky Way Galaxy is just one out of a billion galaxies. Meanwhile, the Milky Way Galaxy hosts about 100 thousand million stars; the sun is just one of the stars in the milky way galaxy.
The Sun is the center of our solar system which according to NASA has eight planets, and countless smaller bodies such as dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets.
Our planet, earth, is just one of the numerous planets in the solar system. This information alone can give one an unimaginable clue of how mysteriously vast our solar system is. Unfortunately, according to the Center for Surf Research, only about 5 percent of the earth’s ocean has been explored, more than 8 percent unmapped and unobserved. This shows how little is the knowledge we have about the universe. This also proves that even though aliens are among or near us, the probability of us detecting them is very negligible. Also, besides the vastness of the universe, it is complex and rich. There is therefore a great possibility that there might be an intelligent life or advanced civilization somewhere far away from where our human senses and current technological tools can detect.
2. Historical perspective
Another factor to suggest that the stories of aliens may not be mere speculation or myth is the fact that it has persisted for ages. Modern scientific discoveries and inventions have countered most of the ancient beliefs and theories like the theory of abiogenesis, geocentrism, flat earth, and others; but the existence of aliens or the fact that such beings visited the earth has not been proven nor disproven. The current scientific race and investment in space exploration and search for intelligent alien creatures by top scientific organizations result from the strong convictions that aliens might exist even when it is not yet proven by science.
3. Religious perspective
Almost all religious organizations, both Christian and Muslims have stories of the existence of God or gods. Some even believe in the return of certain beings or gods, (Christ, Antichrist, Mahdi, Al-Dajjal, Kalkin) during what they refer to as the end of days or the end of the world. This widespread belief and speculation about the possible return of these gods, Christs, and Antichrists have been an age-long discussion. What triggered these expectations cannot be traced but they can be the proofs that the human consciousness is having an awareness that something bigger than man exists somewhere in the universe in somewhat form and intentions man cannot tell.
Conclusion
Subjectively and conclusively, aliens, possibly, exist but they may not be in the form that we think. They may not look like the bulgy-eyed reptilian creatures riding old modeled round saucer-like spaceships, or like red giant octopuses living deep in the ocean around Bermuda to cause ships and aircraft horrors as portrayed by the Hollywood. They may be creatures more beautiful, intelligent and peaceful, or troublesome than us. They may be existing in a certain vibrational energy level that is higher than our sensory detection and scope. They may be existing in faraway galaxies or universes that we know nothing about or living here among us, watching over us and observing our day-to-day movement without our knowledge. We cannot tell if they are here waiting for their time to invade the earth, or if they are in a faraway galaxy visiting us periodically and planning to return someday to fight mankind, but there is a lot of evidence that we are not alone in the universe even without scientific proofs.
