Have Aliens Been Monitoring Us From The Beginning Of Time? | Unveiled
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VOICE OVER: Peter DeGiglio
WRITTEN BY: Dylan Musselman
Have aliens ALWAYS been watching us? Join us... to find out more!
In this video, Unveiled takes a closer look at the various theories that aliens could be watching us. Every day, for all our lives, could it be that we've been monitored? And, if so, why would they do that..? What's potentially so interesting about the human race??
In this video, Unveiled takes a closer look at the various theories that aliens could be watching us. Every day, for all our lives, could it be that we've been monitored? And, if so, why would they do that..? What's potentially so interesting about the human race??
Have Aliens Been Monitoring Us from the Beginning of Time?
While there has been something of a rush on them since the mid-twentieth century, UFO sightings aren’t a recent phenomenon. There are claims throughout history of strange, flying objects in the sky… with some interpretations of even prehistoric cave paintings suggesting that they seemingly show UFO candidates, from tens of thousands of years ago. Naturally, there’s a lot of room for both speculation and skepticism here… but, still, the idea that ancient humans might’ve been spotting UFOs much as we do, leads to another big question. How far back do the claims really go?
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; have aliens been monitoring us from the beginning of time?
First things first; if there really are aliens hiding out somewhere in the universe and spying on us from a distance, without ever making contact… then it would at least solve some important, much-debated problems. Like the Fermi Paradox for instance, which famously asks why it is that we’ve yet to make contact with alien life despite the overwhelming odds that it exists. When it comes down to it, as Enrico Fermi himself is said to have asked, where are they all? There are a number of possible answers to the question. Maybe there just so happens to be zero aliens alive at the exact time that we are… or, maybe faster-than-light travel doesn’t exist and (although aliens do exist) they’re too far away in space to ever visit us… or perhaps there are (and were) whole other civilizations but, such is the way of the universe, they either have already met (or will inevitably meet) their demise before making contact within anyone else. Failing all of that, however, there’s one other possibility that many ufologists believe: that aliens know we’re here, but they don’t want us to know that they’re here. They’re hiding from us, but they’re watching us, too… and UFO sightings (the really good ones) are instances when the veil slips, and the truth is revealed. And, if that were true, then it’s really quite easy to imagine that they might’ve have been around since at least the emergence of modern humans on Earth… seeing as we’ve been here for but a blink of an eye, in cosmological terms.
The next question, then, would be why? Why watch us without making themselves known? Well, let’s consider a scenario where we, humans, have just discovered a planet filled with alien life forms about as intelligent as the great apes or even ancient hominins... what would we do? There’s some reason to think that we wouldn’t make contact with them, either. Just descending down upon them could well trigger a crisis, what with language barriers to negotiate, alien atmospheres to survive in, and the possibility of cross-contamination to avoid. If an alien presence were to have discovered Earth, then, at any point in its 4.5-billion-year history, it could be keeping its distance out of caution.
But it’s also extremely unlikely that, if the roles were reversed, we would just leave the newly discovered planet alone. The amount of money, research, and knowledge that we’d have spent to find it would be too great… and the amount of money, research, and knowledge we could gain by just watching the alien creatures on it could be astronomical, too. The curiosity would be hard to contain, so one direction we could take would be to leave cameras or probes orbiting the planet. Unobtrusive machines of some kind, so as not to influence how this alternative version of intelligent life develops. And from this point of view, the Zoo Hypothesis, the broad idea that aliens are observing us from afar like zoo animals, maybe doesn’t seem so strange. And perhaps neither does the suggestion that passing aliens might’ve left something behind to watch us with.
Enter the Bracewell Probe, a hypothetical spacecraft hypothetically created by aliens to orbit around unsuspecting planets. The proposed probes are named after the astronomer and engineer Ronald Bracewell who first imagined their existence in the 1960s. From his point of view, SETI (or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) wasn’t efficient back then. It focused on the sending out of radio waves… and then just hoping to hear something back. But instead, Bracewell thought we should be sending out orbital machines to other planets and using them to both search for signs of alien life, and begin communications if (or when) we found them.
There are several potential benefits to the approach. It enables long-distance monitoring, it would allow us to pass clearer signals to other planets, it lessens the danger of contaminating another world, and lessens the danger of revealing our own position in the universe too soon. A Bracewell probe isn’t a simple device to build, however. It requires interstellar technology and advanced artificial intelligence capable of initiating contact with an alien species (if needed). Thanks to the incredible rate of modern tech development, it’s perhaps not impossible for us to envisage building one… but, still, we humans have much work to do before we have Bracewell probes for ourselves. Especially ones capable of visiting planets and objects outside of the solar system.
Another, more specialized (although still hypothetical) option, then, would be a Von Neumann Probe… a particular class of space probe suggested by the mid-twentieth century physicist, John von Neumann. Von Neumann probes are an imagined version of a self-replicating spacecraft that can gather materials from space and build clones of itself. And, if an advanced enough civilization were to create one of these, then there’s really nowhere that would be off limits to them. Theoretically, they’d need only send out one probe from their home planet, and watch it duplicate across the stars. Equally, from our point of view, if Von Neumann probes were possible, then (even more so than with Bracewell probes) it suddenly seems not unlikely that one might’ve reached Earth by now. And it’s perhaps little wonder that conspiracy theories abound, the most famous example of which is the Black Knight Satellite… a probable piece of space junk floating above Earth, but an object that’s claimed (by some) to be a sinister alien device that’s been watching over us for some 13,000 years. For more on the Black Knight, take a look at our other recent video!
But perhaps all of this is all a little too close to home. After all, if there really was an alien artifact watching us, then it wouldn’t necessarily need to be in near-earth orbit all the time. A 2019 paper titled “Looking for Lurkers” by the physicist James Benford, for example, brought the problem up to date with contemporary study. Benford called on SETI and other organizations to search for alien intelligence in what are known as co-orbital objects; objects - including asteroids - in the solar system that we know routinely head towards Earth. With Benford suggesting that some of them, in particular, are “little studied”. Could these be the ideal candidates for hiding something like a probe? Rather than positioning one close to the planet you’re watching and risking that it’s eventually found?
But, finally, in the event that aliens really are watching us - from near or far - then we have another problem on the horizon: if we were to discover a probe, then will we have automatically alerted the aliens controlling it to the fact that we know about them? And could that be bad news? In that scenario, we’d certainly be vulnerable. Having watched us since potentially the beginning of time, the aliens would know everything there is to know about humanity. They’ll have seen us transform from primitive beings to interplanetary travelers, and they’ll know all our capabilities and shortcomings. They’d understand us better than perhaps even we, ourselves, do.
On the other hand, ‘since the beginning of time’ is a long time… and so, there’s the chance that whatever alien force had sent the probe to us originally will’ve long since died out. Ravaged by war or natural disaster on their own planet (or in their own galaxy) and leaving their furthest flung tech to orbit other worlds like ours as a relic. If we were to rumble an alien mission on Earth, then that might be the safest outcome for us. Otherwise, we’re sitting ducks, hoping against hope that our surveyors have mercy.
Far enough into the future, is there any chance that the tables could turn on this question and humanity could be the one spying on other civilizations? We do already have plans - both state-funded and private - to develop genuinely interstellar probes bound for at least the closest star system to us, Alpha Centauri. But still, most of all our searching for alien life at the moment is done via tech that’s either on Earth, or much closer to us. We’re still, for the most part, sending out radio waves… and then just hoping to hear something back.
To do so ourselves remains a dream for SETI enthusiasts everywhere, then, but in the meantime… that’s how aliens may have been monitoring us since the beginning of time.
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