We Are Not Alone Essay, Research Paper

We Are Not Alone

Outline

Thesis: We once believed that Earth is the only planet in the Universe

that supports life. Today there is overwhelming evidence that

not only suggests, but supports the very real possibility that we

may share the Universe with other intelligent beings.

I. Things in the Sky

A. The First Documented Sighting

B. The Fever Spreads

1. Pilot Encounters

2. The Lights in the Sky

II. Dents in the Earth

III. Unexplained Phenomenon

A. The Writing on the Wall

B. Geodes

IV. What About Religion?

A. The Christian Bible

B. The Ancient Greeks

C. The American Indian

V. Conclusion

On June 24th, 1947 while searching for the remains of a downed Marine

C-46 transport, lost somewhere in the Mount Ranier area, a young Idahoan

businessman named Kenneth Arnold spotted something that would change his life

forever. Just north of his position flying at an altitude of 9,500 feet and an

unprecedented airspeed of 1,700 mph he spotted nine circular aircraft flying in

formation. According to his estimate the aircraft were approximately the size

of a DC-4 airliner ( Jackson 4).

This account was the first sighting to ever receive a great deal of

media attention. This sighting gave birth to the phrase “flying Saucer” coined

by a reporter named Bill Begrette. Although not the first UFO sighting in

history, Kenneth Arnolds account is considered to be the first documented UFO

sighting.

The following day Mr. Arnold discovered that in addition to his

sighting there were several others in the Mount Ranier area that same day

(Jackson 6).

When most of think of UFO sightings we picture an unemployed, half-

crazed, alcoholic hick living in a trailer park in the middle small town USA.

Often times this description, although a little exaggerated, seems to fit fairly

well. In the past when the average person spotted a UFO they were quickly

discounted as a kook or con-artist in search of either attention or monetary

reward. It wasn’t until more reputable figures in our society began to come

forward that we that we started looking at this issue a little more seriously.

An article written 1957, entitled ” Strange lights over Grenada” written by

Aime’ Michel describes just such an account:

At 10:35 p.m. on September the 4th, 1957 Cpt Ferreira ordered his

wing to abandon a planned exercise and execute a 50 degree turn to port.

Ferreira was attempting to get a closer look at what he described as brilliant,

pulsating light hanging low over the horizon. When the turn was completed he

noticed that the object had turned too. It was still directly over his left.

There was absolutely no doubt that the orange light was shadowing the F-84s.

For another 10 minutes, it followed the jets without changing direction or

appearance. The pilots watched as four small yellow discs broke away from the

large red object and took up a formation on either side of it. All at once the

large luminous disc shot vertically upward while the smaller discs shot

straight towards the F-84s. In an instant the flat disc sped overhead in a

hazy blur and vanished. When Cpt Ferriera was questioned by Portuguese Air

Force Investigators he was quoted as saying: “Please don’t come out with

the old explanation that we were being chased by the planet Venus,

weather balloons, or freak atmospheric conditions. What we saw up there was

real and intelligently controlled. And it scared the hell out of us. (32)

This is only one of literally hundreds of pilot accounts that have been

documented and cross verified by other sources. To date the Portuguese

Government has taken no official position as to what the luminous discs were.

The United States has had more than it’s fair share of unexplained

aerial objects. In February of 1960 the N.A.A.D.S. (North American Air Defense

System) spotted a satellite of unknown origin orbiting the Earth. They knew

that it wasn’t a Soviet satellite because it was orbiting perpendicular to

trajectory produced by a Soviet launch. It also had a mass estimated at 15

metric tons, no evidence of booster rockets and traveled at speed three times

faster than any known satellite. The satellite orbited for two weeks and

disappeared without a trace. Before its disappearance, the object which

appeared to give off a red glow, was photographed over New York several times

(Jackson 19).

Lights in the sky aren’t the only evidence that suggests we may have

cosmic company. In the book “A History of UFO Crashes”, the author Kevin D.

Randal gives detailed accounts of numerous UFO crashes in history. Perhaps the

most famous of these crashes occurred on July 4th, 1947 in Roswell New Mexico.

The crash at Roswell was witnessed from afar by over a hundred people. Until

just recently, no one who was involved in the recovery operation was talking,

but thanks to continued pressure from UFO enthusiast our government has begun

to declassify much of its UFO related material. Perhaps more startling are

than the government documents are the accounts given by local police and

members of the recovery team. According to one unnamed witness, a member of

the Roswell recovery team:

The crash site was littered with pieces of aircraft. Something

about the size of a fighter plane had crashed, the metal was

unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I picked up a piece the

size of a car fender with one hand, it couldn’t have more than

a quarter of a pound and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t

even get it to bend. (10)

In my opinion the most fascinating piece of evidence to come out of the

Roswell crash is the alien autopsy film. Apparently there was more than bits

and pieces of spaceship recovered at Roswell. There is an Air Force video

account of an autopsy being performed on a life form that doesn’t share the

common characteristics of organ development found in life forms on this planet.

The film is silent and labeled “Autopsy, Roswell, July 1947″ (Randal 17).

As difficult as the Roswell evidence is to explain or discount it pales

in comparison to the physical evidence left by our ancestors. An Illustration

taken from a Nuremburg Broadsheet Tells how men and women “saw a very frightful

spectacle”. At sunrise April 14th, 1561 “globes, crosses and tubes began to

fight one another”, the event continued for about an hour. Afterward they fell

to ground in flames, minutes later a “black, spear like object appeared”. In a

Basal Broadsheet dated August 7th, 1566 large black and white globes are seen

over Dasel, Switzerland. Both events occurred in a time period when there

should have nothing more than birds and bees filling our skies. They each

considered to be Divine warnings at the time (Gould 95-96).

Ancient physical evidence isn’t limited to newspaper illustration and

sketches on cave wall. Perhaps the most astounding and unexplainable pieces of

physical evidence are a pair of geodes. Both are believed to be approximately

1,800 years old and when carefully examined were identified as electrical cells.

One of the cells which was discovered in Iraq was tested and produced 2 volts

of electricity. The other, which was discovered by a pair of Arizona rock

hounds, was damaged when the sedimentary encrustation was being removed and

therefore couldn’t be tested (Montgomery 221).

Since the dawn of time man has told stories of heavenly and demonic

beings coming to rule, teach, torment, seduce and provide salvation. Every

culture has myths of ancient gods who strode through the heavens. The American

Indians had the cachinas who taught them to farm and saved them from numerous

cataclysms. Greece had Zeus who threw lightning bolts from his finger tips and

Apollo crossed the sky in his golden chariot. The Christians have Ecclesiastes

who encountered the “ant people” and rode through the skies with them from

Babylon to Israel. Across the entire globe we find drawings on cave walls that

resemble men in space suits and objects that greatly resemble flying saucers.

The sacred artwork of the Hopi Indian when is without a doubt a representation

of the waves produced by modern day oscilloscopes (Montgomery 225-237). The

Hopis are also native to the area where one of the electrical cells were found.

It could be that these things are no more than mere coincidence, but I doubt it.

Man in his arrogance is reluctant to believe that we may share Gods vast,

glorious universe with other beings of intelligence. We sometimes fail to

realize that if the Earth were a day old, the race of man would only have been

here for 13 minutes. If you couple that with the fact that there are Black

Holes and White Dwarfs millions of years older than our sun, it increases the

improbability that we are the only ones out here. In the preceding text I have

produced a limited sampling of the volumes of evidence available. I will close

this paper on a quote from Ecclesiastes I:9 “there is no new thing under the

sun”, and that includes intelligent life.

Works Cited

Ecclesiastes. Holy Bible. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1976.

Gould, Robert. Oddities. New York: Bell PC, 1965.

Jackson, Robert. UFO’s: Sightings of Strange Phenomena in the Skies.

New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 1995

Michel, Aime’. “Strange lights over Grenada.” Fate Magazine. Aug. 1957.

29-32

Montgomery, Ruth. Aliens Among Us. New York: G.P Putnum’s Sons, 1985

Randle, Kevin. A History of UFO Crashes. Avon Books,1995