million years, say—with none having arrived during historical times. However, it is also possible that a few survey teams have arrived recently enough in human history for their presence to have been noted by our ancestors, or even for human history to have been affected by the contact.
The Soviet astrophysicist I. S. Shklovskii and I discussed this possibility in our book,
Intelligent Life in the Universe
, in 1966. We examined a range of artifacts, legends and folklore from many cultures and concluded that not one of these cases provided even moderately convincing evidence for extraterrestrial contact. There are always more plausible alternative explanations based on known human abilities and behavior. Among the cases discussed were a number later accepted by Erich von Däniken and other uncritical writers as valid evidence for extraterrestrial contact: Sumerian legends and astronomical cylinder seals; the Biblical stories of the Slavonic Enoch and of Sodom and Gomorrah; the Tassili frescoes in North Africa; the machined metal cube allegedly found in ancient geological sediments and said to be displayed in a museum in Austria; and so on. Over the years I have continued to look as deeply as I am able into such stories and have found very few that require more than passing attention.
In the long litany of “ancient astronaut” pop archaeology, the cases of apparent interest have perfectly reasonable alternative explanations, or have been misreported, or are simple prevarications, hoaxes and distortions. This description applies to arguments about the Piri Reis map, the Easter Island monoliths, the heroic drawings on the plains of Nazca, and various artifacts from Mexico, Uzbekistan and China.
And yet, it would be so easy for an advanced extraterrestrial civilization to leave a completely unambiguous calling card of their visit. For example, many nuclear physicists believe that there is an “island of stability” of atomic nuclei, near a hypothetical superheavy atom with about 114 protons and about 184 neutrons. All chemical elements heavier than uranium (with 238 protons and neutrons in its nucleus) spontaneously decayin cosmically short periods of time. But there is reason to think that the binding between protons and neutrons is such that stable elements would be produced if nuclei having about 114 protons and 184 neutrons could be constructed. Such a construction is just beyond our present technology, and clearly beyond the technology of our ancestors. A metal artifact containing such elements would be unambiguous evidence of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization in our past. Or consider the element technetium, whose most stable form has 99 protons and neutrons. Half of it radioactively decays to other elements in about 200,000 years, half of the remainder is gone in another 200,000 years, and so on. As a result, any technetium formed by stars with the other elements billions of years ago must all be gone by now. Thus, terrestrial technetium can only be of artificial origin, as its very name indicates. A technetium artifact could have only one meaning. Similarly, there are common elements on Earth that are immiscible; for example, aluminum and lead. If you melt them together, the lead, being considerably heavier, sinks to the bottom. The aluminum floats to the top. However, in the zero g conditions of spaceflight there is no gravity in the melt to pull the heavier lead down, and exotic alloys such as AL/Pb can be produced. One of the objectives of NASA’s early Shuttle missions will be to test out such alloying techniques. Any message written on an aluminum/lead alloy and retrieved from an ancient civilization would certainly commend itself to our attention today.
It is also possible that the content rather than the material of the message would clearly point to a science or technology beyond the abilities of our ancestors: for example, a vector calculus rendition of Maxwell’s equations (with or without
The Soviet astrophysicist I. S. Shklovskii and I discussed this possibility in our book,
Intelligent Life in the Universe
, in 1966. We examined a range of artifacts, legends and folklore from many cultures and concluded that not one of these cases provided even moderately convincing evidence for extraterrestrial contact. There are always more plausible alternative explanations based on known human abilities and behavior. Among the cases discussed were a number later accepted by Erich von Däniken and other uncritical writers as valid evidence for extraterrestrial contact: Sumerian legends and astronomical cylinder seals; the Biblical stories of the Slavonic Enoch and of Sodom and Gomorrah; the Tassili frescoes in North Africa; the machined metal cube allegedly found in ancient geological sediments and said to be displayed in a museum in Austria; and so on. Over the years I have continued to look as deeply as I am able into such stories and have found very few that require more than passing attention.
In the long litany of “ancient astronaut” pop archaeology, the cases of apparent interest have perfectly reasonable alternative explanations, or have been misreported, or are simple prevarications, hoaxes and distortions. This description applies to arguments about the Piri Reis map, the Easter Island monoliths, the heroic drawings on the plains of Nazca, and various artifacts from Mexico, Uzbekistan and China.
And yet, it would be so easy for an advanced extraterrestrial civilization to leave a completely unambiguous calling card of their visit. For example, many nuclear physicists believe that there is an “island of stability” of atomic nuclei, near a hypothetical superheavy atom with about 114 protons and about 184 neutrons. All chemical elements heavier than uranium (with 238 protons and neutrons in its nucleus) spontaneously decayin cosmically short periods of time. But there is reason to think that the binding between protons and neutrons is such that stable elements would be produced if nuclei having about 114 protons and 184 neutrons could be constructed. Such a construction is just beyond our present technology, and clearly beyond the technology of our ancestors. A metal artifact containing such elements would be unambiguous evidence of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization in our past. Or consider the element technetium, whose most stable form has 99 protons and neutrons. Half of it radioactively decays to other elements in about 200,000 years, half of the remainder is gone in another 200,000 years, and so on. As a result, any technetium formed by stars with the other elements billions of years ago must all be gone by now. Thus, terrestrial technetium can only be of artificial origin, as its very name indicates. A technetium artifact could have only one meaning. Similarly, there are common elements on Earth that are immiscible; for example, aluminum and lead. If you melt them together, the lead, being considerably heavier, sinks to the bottom. The aluminum floats to the top. However, in the zero g conditions of spaceflight there is no gravity in the melt to pull the heavier lead down, and exotic alloys such as AL/Pb can be produced. One of the objectives of NASA’s early Shuttle missions will be to test out such alloying techniques. Any message written on an aluminum/lead alloy and retrieved from an ancient civilization would certainly commend itself to our attention today.
It is also possible that the content rather than the material of the message would clearly point to a science or technology beyond the abilities of our ancestors: for example, a vector calculus rendition of Maxwell’s equations (with or without
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