Aliens among us

The enigma of life’s origin continues to baffle scientists, as does the question: Are we earthlings the sole inhabitants of this boundless universe? If Jaime Maussan, a self-proclaimed expert on extraterrestrial beings, who recently put two alleged mummified “alien corpses” on display in the Mexican Congress, were to be believed, then “No”.

Most likely, however, as suspected by multiple scientists, the two small human-like bodies with elongated heads and three-fingered hands are nothing more than a hoax and stunt. Mr Maussan asserted the 1000-year-old mummies were retrieved from Cusco in Peru, and that more than 30 per cent of the specimens’ DNA was “unknown”; his similar claims earlier were found to be false.

Days after the bizarre testimony in the Mexican Congress, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) in a probe report on numerous UFO (unidentified flying object) sightings stated there was no evidence that aliens were behind the unexplained phenomena, but did not rule out such a possibility.

Acknowledging that unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) remain one of Earth’s “greatest mysteries”, Nasa officials noted that this is primarily due to a lack of “high quality data”. They advocated for advanced technology and artificial intelligence to investigate UAPs further.

A significant number of UFO sightings and their grainy videos and photographs belongs to the 1940s-1970s period, when the US and the USSR were competing to dominate the space age. But several such sightings were also made before and after the Cold War era.

“We have mountains of videotapes. We now realise that they (UFOs) travelled between Mach 3 and Mach 20. The g-force they experienced when they zigzagged is several 100 times the force of gravity on Earth. Compare that with modern technology, we can barely hit Mach 20 with a hypersonic drone. There is probably no person inside these craft (UFOs)… we think that these are cybernetic — part mechanical, part biological. Who knows for sure?” says Michio Kaku, American theoretical physicist and science writer (South China Morning Post).

So, do these so-called pieces of evidence of “aliens among us” hold water? Conspiracy theorists argue that governments worldwide are concealing evidence of extraterrestrial life on Earth due to fear or a desire to monopolise advanced technology. The first part of the answer lies in the question: Does smart extraterrestrial life exist?

With billions of stars in our galaxy and trillions of galaxies in the universe, it is statistically likely that there is other intelligent life out there. But, so far, we are yet to detect even microbial life beyond Earth.

The Fermi Paradox — named after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi — seeks to answer the question of where the intelligent aliens are. There are many possible explanations for the Fermi paradox, such as intelligent life being rare or unique to the Earth, hidden, or not interested in contacting us.

According to a 2015 study based on data collected by the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes, the 4.5 billion-year-old Earth and all life on it might have been a relatively early bloomer. By extension, logically, we’re not hearing from advanced alien civilisations because the universe hasn’t had the time to spawn many more habitable worlds. But there is another compelling speculation: Are we the aliens on Earth? The panspermia hypothesis suggests seeds of life exist all over the universe and they spread naturally through space.

If we can trace our planet’s history, there is no epoch for which we can argue with certainty that life did not exist, and this gives birth to the speculation that life on Earth had its origin somewhere else, before even the formation of the planet. The universe was around nine billion years old when Earth was formed and primitive lifeforms could have been brought here from other star systems via comets, meteorites, asteroids, planetesimals, or just space dust.

It’s noteworthy that while these arguments contribute to our understanding of the potential for extraterrestrial life, they do not provide definitive proof that aliens are currently residing on Earth.

Also, most attempts to describe life use Earth as a blueprint, and this approach fails to describe why certain things are living and others are lifeless. We are yet to conclude whether viruses are an alternative form of life.

A radical redefinition of life could help us find aliens beyond Earth and among us.

On this planet, living bodies are composed of organic molecules —made of carbon and other elements, such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur. But scientists have often wondered that alien lifeforms might originate from significantly different chemistry and not be carbon-based, but, for example, silicon-based.

As we earthlings on our pale blue dot continue to seek companionship, the question of alien life among us remains unanswered, but not unexplored. It’s time that we looked beyond questionable mummies, grainy UFO videos, and conspiracy theories that extraterrestrials helped build the pyramids in search of that answer.