According to a Roper poll conducted two decades ago, nearly four million Americans suspect they've been abducted by space aliens. The experience is not always pleasant, as the aliens refuse to subscribe to the Geneva Conventions. Their victims are frequently laid out on tables and treated to unauthorized and unsavory medical procedures.
It sounds like there's a lot of alien probing going on, and any comprehensive health plan should probably cover it.
But there's a different kind of alien probe to consider, and it's of a type that might actually exist. Namely, space probes -- hi-tech hardware -- that have been placed somewhere in our solar system by extraterrestrial beings keen to monitor our planet. Canadian astronomer Alan Tough has frequently proposed this idea as the type of project that might be tempting to a truly advanced society. After all, if they long ago detected the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, they might conclude that our world -- clearly carpeted with life -- is worth watching.
Now two post-graduate students at Penn State have published a paper considering whether we'd even notice a spy in the sky, observing Earth from orbit and reporting back to someone (or something) many light-years away.
Obviously, if the probe were large enough - say tens of miles in size -- we would notice. That's a heft comparable to some of the smaller moons of Jupiter, and we'd have found it by now. But it's safe to assume that any aliens able to sequester a probe in our solar system could cram equipment such as cameras, radio receivers, and spectroscopes into a far smaller package. Our own Pioneer and Voyager probes are roughly the size (and vintage) of a Volkswagen Beetle. Yet even with this modest bulk, they've collected a lavish amount of useful information and sent it back to their builders.
So a practical alien probe might fit in your living room. And at that scale, according to the Penn State postdocs, Jacob Haqq-Misra and Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, it could easily remain cryptic.
This shouldn't surprise you. Imagine the solar system as a football stadium, with the Sun on the 50-yard line, and Neptune (the farthest planet, as determined by astronomical vote) in the last row of seats in the end zone. At this scale the Earth is no larger than a pencil point, but a space probe as big as a bus would be the size of an atom! There's simply no hope of finding something that small with our current telescopes unless the probe is outfitted with a noisy radio transmitter (aimed our way) or a set of vulgar, flashing lights.
But maybe the aliens have deployed their instruments much closer, where they would be easier to discover. Perhaps something aesthetically austere, like a slab monolith. If they've placed hardware like that on the moon, we could easily have overlooked it until now. However, as the Penn State authors point out, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will soon have charted everything larger than a suitcase on the Moon's surface. Eventually, you can expect similarly detailed mapping of Mars. If there are monoliths sticking out of the dirt, we should see them.
However, a probe needn't be on the surface of any world. In fact, it would work better in orbit, with no worries about the long-term effects of weather (on worlds that have it) and with continuous access to sunlight for power.
Alas, and as noted, it's probably hopeless -- at least in the foreseeable future -- to do a thorough reconnaissance of our solar system. Nonetheless, there are certain places, such as the Lagrange points between the Earth and Moon, where a detailed search for not-made-on-Earth hardware could be undertaken. The Lagrange points are five positions in space -- all relatively nearby -- where all the gravitational and centrifugal forces sum to zero. While most are unstable, Lagrange points 4 and 5 are OK for long-term parking. They're prime locations for probes of our planet.
Some examinations of Lagrange 4 and 5 in the Earth-Moon system have already been made, but these experiments weren't sensitive enough to find anything smaller than your average three-bedroom home. A concerted effort could do better. And frankly, it sounds like an interesting thing to do.
Bottom line? There's no evidence we're being watched, but hidden surveillance can't be ruled out either. You should be familiar with this situation: It's like shopping at your local convenience store.
Seth Shostak: They're Not Meat
I do not know if current from-space exploration has been capable of detecting the magnetic anomaly that in fiction was discovered by explorers on the moon.
The director projected the color mapping on the earth's surface onto the moon as an experiment. And realized that the only reason all photos of the moon surface is black and white is because color photos make it easy to distinguish, literally hundreds of artificial structures on the moon's surface. Also, the released photographs are intentionally low resolution. Low-res, coupled with b/w makes detecting the blurred out structures difficult, since color boundaries of the blurred objects are not distinguishable.
http://moonrising-themovie.com (it's also on youtube)
There is proof galore of image tampering, from the crude smudge style of decades ago and now the computer programs that obscure any patterns that indicate civilization structure..but they are not perfect and sometimes miss inexplicable evidence. When you consider all of the scores of " anomalies" about the moon and review the available film and testimonies it is beyond denial that the moon is not a dead rock with nothing to see.
The black ops cabal has many reasons for continuing to insult our intelligence with their denials, and are so brazen in their power that what we think doesn't matter..what a shame.
So when after the fact they excuse unexplained UFOs with nonsensical 'theories' and while their own scientific consultants (Hyneck) come out to defend the reality of UFOs- the public can be permitted some latitude in crying foul.
Seth is also one of the scientists that over time is softening his stance on the UFO phenomena, although not overtly - he doesn't want his funding cut.
I fully expect him to come out at some point and acknowledge the full extent of the cover-up- since UFO sightings continue, and we are approaching the capacity to have some rally powerful optics in the next decade.
They can't hide forever, and neither can the scientific community.
I am much more worried that we will ignore the fact that the cosmos is full of the raw material we will need to feed our energy consumption. And in our fury to cut government programs, the space program has already been a major target. They failed to fund SETI, right Seth? And though it would be stupid to ignore the long term thinking required to solve huge looming problems, I fear we will do exactly that. And if we are under alien observation, I wonder if they are as puzzled by our societal behavior as am I?
It's significant to note that no other civilization smart enough to plant such a probe has either bothered to declare war on us, consume us, or otherwise contact us! Perhaps we are just an interesting stop on an interstellar tourist gig or target of curiosity for larger domains who visit on occasion and pass by us through time. Maybe a cosmic guardian of sorts.
My question is, what would we first want to say to "them," and what would our message be and by whom? What would we want them to know about us, or would we chose to be left alone?
Too bad Carl Sagan couldn't have been the one to greet them...when that time of "first contact" comes!
Oh really? What do you think the obesity epidemic is about, huh? They are fattening us up. They are carnivorous.
If it's going to be so cunningly imaginative that it can do crazy things with gravity, the chances that we'd be able to find it are remote.
There are also many examples of " flying humanoids" which are strange as hell...one case involved a policeman on duty being attacked by such an entity...Shostak is way behind the curve on evidence...have him as Jaime Maussaun for some video proof...if he wants an eye opener.
By the way Seth, what do you have to say about Norman Bergrun's evidence of stupendous craft in the rings of Saturn? His book has the proof, and he is NASA trained and very reputable.