You know how a geosynchronous orbiting satellite orbits the earth once for every rotation on earth’s axis?
A one-day orbit?
A two-day orbit seems to correspond to select archeological sites around the world.
Ancient Aliens?
Modern numero-scamologists?
Oof, that’s just…
So okay, any circular orbit with a period of two days will have a ground track that’s a great circle. Any inclination you’d like, I think, based mostly on my Kerbal-based intuition about orbital mechanics. You can make different shapes by adding eccentricity. There’s nothing really remarkable about this, it’s a basic function of how orbits work.
So this guy then draws a great circle that passes through Giza, Machu Picchu & Nazca, Easter Island, Angkor Wat, Mohenjo Daro, Ur, and Petra. And he suggests that these sites share some similarities with regards to megalithic construction. Then, after noting a few characteristics of the orbit which would have this ground track that he kind of slyly suggests would be conducive to observation from space, flatly declares that he’s not talking about ancient aliens, no no. And finally he pulls out a variant of the Graham Hancock ancient globe-spanning civilization during the last ice age hypothesis.
Where even to begin.
First, the great circle thing. Given how huge numbers of ancient sites are clustered in Egypt/Mesopotamia/Indus Valley, you’re always going to be able to plot a great circle that picks up a bunch of them. The only remotely curious thing about his fancy orbit is that if you find an inclination that picks up both Machu Picchu and Gaza, that it happens to pass over Easter Island. Honestly if he’d learned a little more about orbital mechanics I think he could have added some eccentricity to his orbit and passed over a more impressive list. It’s still dumb for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it’s really fucking high, way past geostationary orbit which is already 35k km up. If you’re an actual ancient alien and want to observe these curious hairless apes with a penchant for stacking rocks on top of each other, you’d do much better to come into low earth orbit on a moderate inclination, and you’d pass a few hundred km above every major location of human civilization rather than just a few of them.
Then his similarities in stone working, and the “we don’t know how they could possibly have done it” bullshit is just, well, bullshit. Add in that his list of sites date to wildly different time periods (pyramids c. 2500-3000BCE, Machu Picchu c. 1500CE, Easter Island c. 1100-1600CE, Angkor Wat c. 1100CE, Petra founded c. 400BCE though most of its famous bits are somewhat later, Ur founded in the mists of time but the big construction around 2000BCE), and virtually none are early enough to tie in properly to the Hancockian cockamamie (for that you need places like Gobekli Tepe, which you can’t put on your great circle if you want Gaza and Machu Picchu), and TEDx should be embarrassed to have posted that to their Youtube channel.
Gah. Can’t believe I actually watched that.
My thought, and this certainly isn’t unique, as it comes up in lots of sci/fi:
They don’t want water, they want a planet with liquid water in an oxygen rich atmosphere. The way to get oxygen in the atmosphere (and keep it) is through photosynthesis, or a similar biological reaction. So the aliens arrive expecting life,
An oxygen planet is a valuable enough asset that a bit of multicellular life is not a deterrent.
I do like the idea of aliens acting more like colonial powers. That gives them a reason to interact (and exploit) the native population. If all they cared about was our uranium or something, just blow up the planet and sort through the pieces.
The question is why an oxygenated planet is actually valuable. I understand that planetary colonization is a staple of sci-fi, but I’m raising the question of its practicality versus purposely built habitats in space. Once you’ve established a baseline of manufacturing and life support in space, the question arises of whether or not it’s worth risking contact even with alien microbes (let alone species with anything ranging from pointy sticks to nukes) unless there’s a resource on the planet that’s just not available in space.
In my opinion, planetfall scenarios make the most sense when set against a failure scenario of a ship or habitat–something that caused remaining onboard to become unsustainable and reaching resources in space to fix the problem impossible or excessively risky. “Nav system’s fried, Cap’n. We can’t count on finding anything smaller than a planet with the instruments that are still working”, for example.
Obviously, that’s not conducive to most classic space opera, but there are plenty of good stories to be told that way. (And it just means you have to think a little harder to justify your space opera, which is not something I feel sci-fi should shy away from.)
Obviously this is all just fiction without any real alien examples. My guess is that the oxygen atmosphere makes the planet like home. The aliens are oxygen breathers and generally compatible with our environment, so they would like the big planet to live on. Not all spacers are Belters. Some would probably prefer to live on a planet similar to where they evolved.
If you can presuppose the technology level necessary to build large space habitats (not to mention interstellar travel), things like augmented immune systems, universal vaccines, and hunter killer nano-bots may not be much of a problem either.
I think that makes lots of sense for an exploration type scenario. I think conquest (as opposed to extermination) or colonialism will require landing on the planet.
Landing makes much less sense for anaerobic aliens. I can see that for a first contact or initial conquest, but even imperialistic anaerobic aliens would probably find it easier to run things from comfy methane filled space stations, or whatever.
Life-bearing, oxygenated planets are probably very rare. If so, each example should be protected and nurtured, rather than conquered and inhabited by aliens, who probably have a different biochemistry, different food crops, different microbiota inside their gut (assuming they have a gut) and so on. An alien race landing on Earth and colonising it would almost certainly cause ecological chaos here, far worse than the chaos caused by the European impact on the ecology of Australia, for instance. Even if the aliens are immune to Earth microbes, there is no reason to expect humans and their food crops would be immune to alien microbes.
In short, colonising Earth or even just setting up a few alien hotels here could cause dramatic damage to Earth life. If that is their intention it may be an extremely dangerous prospect.
I seldom use it myself, sir. It promotes rust.
Ok it is now october. David Grusch came forward back in June. Have any of you started to realize aliens are real and apparently the US government is really hiding alien technology and the truth about human alien agreements. This is not a movie. Is anyone paying attention?
No.
.
.
Show us the evidence that Grusch has that convinces you.
I could make a coherent argument that Matt Gaetz is a lizard person.
Other than that, no, there are no aliens and IMO you are sadly misled, mistaken, or deluded in believing otherwise. You do you though.
No, I need more evidence than “someone says so”
Let me guess: David Grusch has an incredible story: He knows a guy who absolutely swears that a guy working in a black site saw an alien body.
Or maybe he has a photo that’s slightly less blurry than some other photos?
Frankly, that is one of the many reasons that I noticed in the past on why assuming that there are aliens visiting us is poppy cock.
One should ask oneself: why is that the “overwhelming” evidence of the past did not translate to things like trade with the aliens, exchange of ideas in the open, ending wars on earth like “The Day the Earth Stood Still (1950s)” style, etc.
Really, there is little difference on what I noticed before in the 70s and other decades since. Big “revelations” that in the end lead to nothing. Except, as noticed before, there are ‘revelations’ that lead many people to forget about the real costs and expense that society experiences by keeping up the gross levels of military power that some nations on earth maintain.
Perhaps David Grusch stumbled into a Dopefest and got confused.
A little late to this party, but I actually enjoyed the TED talk. It made me question pretty much every point made, in a way that I have not thought about since reading Erich von Däniken as a 13 year old.
So kind of good memories of early scepticism. It is good to know I am still a cynic.