Triskadecamus, you’re no fun.
We’d get sued for making them fat.
May I just ask why it’s arrogance to think it’s the only planet with life as we know it or imagine from Star Trek?
You know, this is kind of like saying that people who knew the moon landing was a possibility would not be excited when it actually happened. Or rather, it’s even worse than that. If aliens exist, I find it unfathomable that there would not be a whole heck of a lot of stuff to learn.
“So, it turns out aliens exist.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“…?!”
“Yes?”
“Well aren’t you at least going to ask what they’re like?”
“Nah, it fits in well with my worldview.”
As far as I’m concerned, any aliens advanced enough to visit us are WELCOME to annex us to their Galactic Empire! I think it’s a safe bet that, as members of the Galactic Empire, we’d be required to unite under an enlightened, democratic, secular, one world government. Poverty, illiteracy, and abridgements of civil rights would be things of the past. Bush & Co would be HISTORY!
For such a result, I’ll be GLAD to report to the dilithium mines AND convert to Reformed Great Pupaism. And Australia? They’re WELCOME to ANY island or continent they want, if they’ll give us some working anti-gravity generators, establish peace on earth, and start selling tickets for galactic grand tours.
Um, did I mention how big the universe is?
And imagining is from Star Trek dosn’t figure into the equation. Intelligent life could consist of, heck, epiqhytic squd beings.
Archernar, if you’ve ever read and Hindu religious scripture… well, there’s a lot of stuff about the gods and their vehicles and weapons that coud easily be interpreded as ET life and highly advanced technology (I don’t have all my old literature around anymore, but I’m sure you could do a 'net search… some of it makes for very freaky reading.) So, if it were conclusively proven that ET’s did vist this planet, I doubt that very many Hindus would be surprised. The ones who were would say, “Oh, is that what that passage in the Vedas was talking about?”
I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be of major importance, just that their minds wouldn’t be completely blown by it.
Heh, most of the posts about the illogic of aliens tend to rely upon a large bit of assumption as to the aliens motivation. “Aliens couldn’t visit us because they wouldn’t just leave after building something as cool as the pyramids.”
Also, the “thousands of years” remark shows a bit of ignorance of what we DO know or we claim to know about ancient Egypt. In that the architecture of the pyramids at Giza other than being a 3 dimensional shape representing a square base with triangular walls culminating at a single point at the apex, is COMPLETELY different from any other pyramids existing upon the planet. It is much more understandable how the other pyramids were built as their stones are MUCH MUCH MUCH smaller than the pyramids at Giza. We focus so much upon the pyramids at Giza because they represent a technological feat, not represented by any other pyramid on the planet.
The truth is that the pyramids at Giza are such a marvel that we have no idea whatsoever how they were built, whereas logical speculation on the other pyramids holds water. Basically moving a 20 ton stone 300 feet up in the air, is a lot more impressive than moving a 500 lb stone 150 feet up into the air.
[hijack]
Yes Hindu cosmology would be a lot more friendly to this idea. My friend who is Hindu was telling me about how rivers in India around the Himalayas where Shiva is supposed to live make the shape of the symbol. I forget what it’s actually called, we lovingly refer to it as an Ohmstika here, as some people in our local scene have incorporated it into fascist iconography, and well, it’s an Ohm Sticker. [/hijack]
And as I said in the other thread, we have no clue as to the actual age of the Pyramids at Giza.
Erek
People today find it hard to believe ancient folks build the pyramids by themselves only because they can’t conceive of night-life without Must-See TV. 
I lost my train of thought before…
So the pyramids at Giza could be a template that was never matched over thousands of years of pyramid building. Though aliens could have possibly built them in a matter of hours or minutes, or…thousands of years. ;p
Erek
Now, you know that for the safety of America we must take out the Goa’uld regime and their WMD.
Untrue, we have a VERY good idea of the age of the Pyramids at Giza. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold.html
I read an interesting article many years ago where the author suggested the Pyramids were stones, which were poured like concrete. The crux of the theory was that the stone “grain” was different from the rock of the surrounding area. According to the article, it was possible to recreate the composition using materials in the area.
With that in mind I surfed the net and got the following:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf054/sf054a02.htm
Hope this doesn’t totally muck up the discussion but there may be some historical records to back it up. It would certainly explain the tight fit of the “stones”.
Interesting to note the same source as a rebuttal in a later issue:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf120/sf120p01.htm
The chemists on the board might take a shot at geopolymers in the context of the discussion.
Sorry, but if it were demonstrated conclusively that aliens of some description did build the pyramids that would concern me greatly.
Despite what Hazel said, an intelligent race that has the technology to travel across interstellar space need not be the epitome of utopian enloightenment;
coming from a planet with a completely different evolutionary history to ours they would almost certainly have a completely different psychology to ourselves.
The fact that such presumed aliens have performed irrational acts like throwing up pyramids in a bronze age culture * while the people of that culture continued to die of parasitical diseases, silicosis and malnutrition* tends to point to an utterly inhuman mindset.
If you are going to break the Prime Directive you may as well introduce healthcare rather than constructing public buildings.
These are not aliens that I would like to meet.
If it were substantially true that ancient monuments were constructed by (or with the assistance of) extraterrestrials, potentially the biggest effect on modern society would be for us to rediscover whatever technology they had that enabled them not to lose things - they came here, constructed all this stuff, without dropping a single Zarqj Wrench into the jungle undergrowth and without losing a single Qpovx Fastener in the desert sand.
It would change the world if we had such expertise.
What if the aliens did not just built the pyramids, but they also made contact to the locals? Unfortunately, the people living at that time died from a natural cause (desaster) - where we come back to the Atlantis/Leamuria theory.
Ah c’mon, they also flatten wheat quite well. Not to mention the anal probing.
I read an argument that the Egyptians had some kind of fast stone cutting technology because on some of the blocks they can see where the angle of the cut was noticably off, and after a few inches it is corrected.
The problem with this is if they were cutting the blocks with bronze-toothed handsaws and using fairly precise methods of ensuring a straight cut, it seems odd that they would cut in the wrong direction for so long before noticing it. The mistakes needed a saw that cut several inches a minute, and though we’ve had that capability for a couple of hundred years it is beyond the technology of the ancient Egyptians.
The guy who wrote this also came up with a design for a clay-jar battery powered electrical saw that would have been possible with the materials at hand, though I think electrical motors would not be so quickly forgotten.
And the 1920 style death rays …