© J.E. Sigdell (Slovenia)

Questions and Answers about Extraterrestrials

 

How many planets are there in the space?

Official astronomy – and not such sources as esoteric ones or UFO freaks – to day estimate that there are in space in the order of 1024 stars (suns). A 1 with 24 zeroes! A quadrillion! 1000000000000000000000000! Of these, our galaxy has hundreds of thousands of billions (in US English).

     (What billions? Here are confusions! In US English 1000 millions or 109 are called a billion, but most other languages call this a milliard – a term also used in British English. So in most languages this would be called hundreds of billions = hundreds of thousands of milliards.)

     It is also estimated that there are many trillions (in most languages, in US English millions of billions) of planets in the universe – in our galaxy at least tens, if not hundreds, of millions.

     Official astronomy to day knows 454 exoplanets (this number was stated May 24, 2010). Exoplanets are such which have already been discovered encircling other suns. They obviously are only a minuscule fraction of all planets in space.)

 

Is there life on other planets?

A scientist (Cyril Ponnamperuma of NASA) estimated in the 80es that there could be 600 millions of planets with some kind of biological life. At that time, the number of suns was estimated to of the order of 1020. To-day’s estimate is ten thousand times higher. Therefore, there could be 6000 billions (US billions – or 6000 milliards…) of planets with life.

     But what kind of life could that be? Probably in a vast majority “primitive” life – plants, simple forms of animals and the like. But it would crudely contradict any logic and all astronomical statistics to claim that there would be no other planets with civilizations than our Earth! I would be right out naïve… It cannot be otherwise than that out there are a whole lot of civilizations, in our galaxy maybe thousands.

     It would also be naïve and as an Earth human arrogantly self-overestimating to want to claim that, of all these, we would be the most developed. According to the principles of logic it can only be that out there are some civilizations out there that are more advanced than we are – just a few maybe even much more advanced.

     We, furthermore, limit ourselves a lot when we assume that extraterrestrials would have to be like us: that they would have a biology based on a carbon and oxygen metabolism. It is certainly imaginable that there biology could also be based on, e.g., silicon, or that they, maybe, would need to breathe methane. In the case of hypothetical silicon based life forms: maybe no atmosphere at all.

 

Would extraterrestrials know about us?

We (officially…) know nothing about them, but would they know that we exist? If we assume that there also are extraterrestrials, who in development and knowledge are more advanced than we are, they will also be more advanced in methods to research space. It would then be improbable that there is no extraterrestrial civilization that knows nothing about our existence, i.e., that we would be totally incognito in the universe. And if they can, would they also want to visit us?

     We Earth humans always strove to visit even the most distant corners of our world. For what purpose? In the first place in the interest of profit, hoping to extend our dominions and acquire wealth and possessions; and to exploit people where we found them. When our science later became more developed, it also was done in order to know more about them and foreign countries. To day we also research our solar system by means of satellites and space probes, we have visited the Moon, plan journeys to Mars and already dream about visiting other planets. Would extraterrestrials be different in that sense? If they have a higher level of science, they would, of course, also have a scientific interest. They would want to visit us, at least for observing us.

 

Can extraterrestrials come here?

Many like to argument that other inhabited planets are so many light years away that their inhabitants couldn’t possibly come here. Yet our physics to day assumes that there could be ways to overcome such enormous distances in a time period of years or at least decades. However, one is still far from realizing such principles. Science fiction talks about “worm holes” and that is not merely fantasy, but such principles are even assumed to be possible in official physics. In particle physics, it is considered as possible that certain elementary particles could move faster than the light. These are called “tachyons”. Even though their existence isn’t definitely proven, there is much evidence for it.

     Science has big problems in admitting that it doesn’t yet know everything. One likes to think that we would already know all laws of nature and all principles of physics, and doesn’t like to hear that there will most probably be unexpected discoveries lying in front of us that will revolutionize our physical world concept. Someone (and I don’t know who) once said: “A physicist may have only one eye and it may also be color blind, since he only has to read and evaluate the output of measuring instruments in order to build his theories upon it.” This statement is, admittedly, a bit nasty but there is something to it in respect to a world concept that has become inflexible in the mind of many, who admit no alternatives. They know it so much better! One may feel their fear that they might have to change their favorite views (which they so cleverly know to substantiate) and even to loose respect from their colleagues (cf. here and here at the little red star). Assuming that there are extraterrestrials who are more advanced then we are, they would certainly know much that we don’t – or they wouldn’t be more advanced…

     Is our world three-dimensional? In mathematical physics, many an equation doesn’t fit well without introducing something that at least mathematically has the “character” of further dimensions than the three we know, for example similar to what is called “degrees of freedom” (a concept known, a.o., from partial differential equations). Many physicists consider that our universe could be multidimensional. It could have – just as an example – maybe 6 or 9 dimensions or even more. The thing is only that we Earth humans are actually crippled in our perception! Our sensory organs can only grasp three dimensions. When someone, therefore, wants to conclude that there couldn’t be more, he falls in the same trap as a blind-born person who denies that there are colors, or a deaf-born person who considers music to be nonsense – again naïve.

     One theory trying to explain gravity in modern physics is that the three-dimensional space would bend in the vicinity of heavy masses. So to where would it then bend? It could only be into a further dimension! Into a fourth one. (That some want to explain this with so called Riemann surfaces is something I would call evasion and an intellectual trick in order to still keep things in the Procrustes’ bed of known dimensions. Riemann surfaces are a very abstract mathematical idea in a coordinate system with complex numbers; mathematically highly interesting, but in our context actually more fantastic than the assumption of further dimensions.) “The fourth dimension in this space was sometimes interpreted as time, but this is no longer done in modern physics.” (Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_dimension.)

     We have to consider the possibility that there are further dimensions than “our” three, however hard this is to imagine. But this is merely the same difficulty that the blind-born person has when he tries to imagine colors. (Below is an appendix about space dimensions.)

     Under this assumption, there are further theoretical possibilities for overcoming light-years of distance: short-cuts through other space dimensions! And it could well be that there are extraterrestrials who have multidimensional perception and consciousness! What is hard to imagine for us could then to them be a “child’s game”. Why should they not already long be able to do what we are not yet able to?

 

Who rejects all that is said about extraterrestrials, therefore, is sitting in an unsteady and leaky boat of ignorance, even if he is in a rather big company of naïves who have blinkers he himself doesn’t realize are there, and in which boat everyone wants to row in another direction. In 2013, Russian officials admitted that they have contact with extraterrestrials.

 

Maybe they have already been (or still are) here?

That those who manage to travel in space (assuming that they exist) have visited us will under these circumstances be quite probable. In any case in order to observe us; maybe even for taking contact. Many claim that such things actually happened in very ancient times and that these visitors were regarded as gods by the Earth humans. A book title like Were the gods astronauts? is regrettably misleading and raises the protest that if it were so, the message would be atheistic, like: “There is no god, there only were astronauts…”. That is a misunderstanding! This is in no way a denial of a creator God and a more appropriate title would be: Were astronauts regarded as gods? And that they obviously were, even though they were no gods… We know this on our Earth. In some cases indigenous people in the third world regrettably regarded the Europeans as gods when they came with very big ships, armors and horses (things never before been seen in Latin America). Unfortunately, this made it much easier to carry out genocides and rob the people.

     Regression experiences from Atlantis (even though many a “knowall” wants to doubt its existence and then will also reject regressions, about which he knows nothing and is ignorant) indicate that the humans there had a kind of “development aid” from benevolent extraterrestrials, who withdrew disappointedly when they saw that the knowledge was abused. There are indications that also Egyptians and Incas and others had such contacts. Our official science, of course, rejects such hypotheses categorically. *They cannot do otherwise… because if a scientist would regard such a thing as possible, he would soon become ridiculed by his colleagues, who would enjoy making use of such “grist to their mills” for intrigues in the competition (and one would hardly let him have a higher academic degree or a professorship).  One thus cautiously avoids admitting in public what some of them may admit very privately… There is a certain “business interest” involved in the “skeptic’s syndrome”…

     There are also indications that not very benevolent extraterrestrials still to day have a substantial but highly secret influence on our Earth, which started millennia ago – at that time openly and visible to Earth humans, to day invisible through secret control of, a.o., politics. One form of means for such influence could then be secret organizations like the Illuminates and the Zionism, where only very few at the very top of the pyramid know what is going on, but the big mass of “common” members are kept in the dark and know nothing about it. It is of a strategic value to such organizations that most people don’t want to believe in it, since this makes their secret activity so much easier… and this is why allegations about it are quickly branded as “conspiracy theories” and ridiculed.

(One organization much talked about is the “Bilderbergers”, who will rather be a peripheral organization below the top of the pyramid, or it would otherwise have been highly secret.)

 

Are extraterrestrials better than we are?

Unfortunately, a high level of technological development doesn’t guarantee a high degree of moral development. On our Earth, we to day and in the historical past have any number of examples that especially societies with a high level of military development are and were morally backward. There even seems to be a kind of negative correlation here: the higher the military development, the less the moral… and the higher the moral, the more peaceful the society is.

     It may well be like that in the universe, too. Regrettably there indications that there are technologically highly developed but morally retarded civilizations out there, but also morally highly developed, who because of that fight no wars.

 

God and extraterrestrials

All religions teach that there was in the beginning a divine creation (even though the Buddhism has its own standpoint here). A creator god has created the whole universe. And if there are a large number of populated planets in it, he will, of course, also have created those who live there! Our god is also their god and theirs is our. If we assume that there are extraterrestrial civilizations, this certainly doesn’t contradict a creation by a creator god. That some argue that belief in extraterrestrials would lead to an atheistic view is, therefore, wrong and it will rather have a tactic motivation: the existence of extraterrestrials would most probably require a revision of religious dogmas. That is something that many don’t want, since it would endanger the power of Churches and other religious institution, to which power is more important than truth. Since it is, however, probably merely a matter of time until their existence can no more be denied, one has to somehow arrange with that, and for that preparations are already being done. This time, they won’t let themselves be caught napping by facts becoming undeniable, to only afterwards have to arrange themselves with them, as it happened in times past, when one finally had to admit that the Earth is round and orbits around the sun (and not the sun around it) – and that after executions as heretics of those who represented such ideas (for which the Church apparently still hasn’t apologized…).
     A quote from the New Testament may be given here: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” Could this refer to humans in other worlds than on our Earth?

 

The Catholic Church and extraterrestrials

Monsignore Corrado Balducci, a theologist close to the pope, has in recent times repeatedly expressed the view in Italian TV that contacts with extraterrestrials are real phenomena. He stresses that extraterrestrials are not demonic entities, that experiences of encounters with them are not psychopathic disorders and that these are not cases of influence by negative entities (without physical bodies). On the contrary, such phenomena have to be investigated further. Pater Malachi Martin stresses that the Vatican will face a major “update situation” as concerns its doctrine, when (as he puts it) governments will officially admit having contacts with extraterrestrials.

(http://www.ufodigest.com/balducci.html and http://www.weirdload.com/vat-ufo1.html)

     Pater José Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, wrote in the Vatican daily newspaper that God can have created humans also in other parts of the universe. This belief wouldn’t contradict a belief in God. He admits that the Church made mistakes, for example when it in 1600 let Giordano Bruno die at the stake for his alleged “heresies”. One of these “heresies” was his opinion that there could be many worlds with extraterrestrial life.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7399661.stm and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/06/AR2009110601899.html)

 

I suppose that the Vatican knows more about these things than it publicly admits…

 

The Lutheran Church and extraterrestrials

The Lutheran theologist Ted Peters stated in 2003 that the possibility of extraterrestrial life raises questions that are in no way new for Christian theology and would in no way threaten the Christian dogma. He also remarked that medieval theology at various occasions considered the question: “What if God has created many worlds?” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotheology)

 

Who are the Anunnaki?

The Anunnaki (singular: Anunnaku) are human beings mentioned in the Sumerian and other ancient clay plates, there described as “gods”. One of these texts is Enûma Elish and it contains a creation story. The divine creator pair Apsû (prime God) and Tiâmat (prime Goddess) created a number of “gods” (better: “divinities”) and among them were some, who turned away from the prime creators to have it their own way. Their leader is Anu and they are, therefore, called Anunnaki. It is told that they killed the prime creators, first Apsû and then in a dramatic fight their prime mother Tiâmat, in which the Anunnaku Marduk could finally kill her. Then the Anunnaki ruled over the part of the creation they had thus conquered. Since it is obviously impossible to kill prime creator Gods, this will mean that they violently separated themselves from them in order to live in a separate part (the three-dimensional world?) as if the prime creators would no more exist. This is, in a way, a variation on the theme “fallen angels”.

     In these and other clay plates, the creation of man is also described. Zecharia Sitchin, who has written 10 books on the subject, interprets the texts as reports about extraterrestrials, who came to the Earth to take minerals from here. Clearly (see above) our *official science, for psychological reasons, is not yet able to see it the same way, because if a scientist would do that, he would set himself quite well into the nettles… I have reviewed these texts (mainly in English translations) in university libraries and could myself confirm that no contradiction to Sitchins interpretation is found in them, but the “contradiction” can only be seen as emotional and psychological according to the predominant control of opinions. I do, however, see certain things differently than Sitchin does. I write about that in my book.

     According to the clay plate texts, the Anunnaki had their own workers who toiled in the mines. They revolted against the hard work and one decided to make a worker. For that purpose genetic experiments were carried out with forms of life on the Earth and Anunnaki genes. In the beginning, they were not very successful. (The texts don’t, of course, mention genes literally, since those who wrote them didn’t know the concept, but mention the important role the blood of the “gods” played in the process and that in a way that to day makes us think of the genes in the blood.)  At the end they had success and there workers one wanted to have were there. They had black hairs on their heads and were, therefore, also called “blackheads”. The tiresome work was then given to these slaves. A regression experience from that time can be read here. At a later time, the Anunnaki withdrew from their physical presence on Earth and left these “workers” to themselves. They reproduced and spread over the planet. Even though the Anunnaki were no more physically here, they all since kept up an invisible influence on our humanity and controlled and retarded our development  so that it shouldn’t proceed too fast (in their opinion). The so called deluge had a very strong retarding effect. This secret influence on our humanity is apparently still going on.

     It is actually not a proper expression to say that they “created” workers. They didn’t create forms of life out of lifeless matter or mere energy. The only manipulated existing life forms genetically and merely modified them instead of creating new life. Therefore, they are no “creator gods”, even though they like to claim themselves as such.

     This doesn’t mean that there were no humans on this Earth before that, but they were in that case also genetically modified, or they lived in other parts of the world where they were not subject to anunnakian influence in a more or less degenerative way. But most of all, the majority of them will have been eradicated in the so called deluge.

     The Anunnaki live on a planet Nîbiru that like a comet moves in a long-stretched elliptic orbit with a period of revolution amounting to 3600 years. This means that it during well more than 3000 years is so far away from the sun that it will be dark and extremely cold there. How can they survive that? Since they will be multidimensional beings, they will know how, but it is hard to imagine for us. It appears that they in these long time periods are hibernating (in their three-dimensional shapes) and then act in dimensions we cannot perceive (cf. here, p. 43).

 

The Anunnaki and the Bible

Ethnologists and language scientists evaluating the clay-plate texts quite generally have the opinion that the creation story in Enûma Elish is the origin of the biblical creation story (the first to suggest this was the assyrologist Eberhard Schrader [1836-1908], followed by others up to the renowned scientist Alexander Heidel and others to day), as if the biblical version would be a hebrewified shorter version of the former. It goes without saying that Christian and Rabbinic theologist defend themselves by all means against such a view… They deny any higher truth than their own and any older history than the biblical. And yet the correspondences are evident. But Enûma Elish begins earlier, with a cosmic history that was before the earth-related biblical history, as if an earlier chapter then the text in Genesis 1 would be lost or left out. This becomes clear already with the first verse Gen 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The Hebrew text is Bere’shiyt bara’ ’Elohim ’et ha shamayim ve-’et ha ’aretz. As is explained in detail here, this can more correctly be translated as “The First One [the prime creator] created the gods, the heavens [the cosmic worlds] and the Earth.” This also explains the puzzling plurals that occur repeatedly in Gen 1 (see here).
     There are many correspondences between the clay plate texts and the Bible, a.o. the deluge story and the story about the “sons of god” (literally: “the sons of the gods”), who came down to the Earth and procreated children with the daughters of man, so that they bore “great persons” – which were later destroyed by the deluge. This way, Anunnaki genes came into humanity in an uncontrolled manner and those thus born were more developed than the Earth humans, and that is why they should be destroyed. I discuss these things in my book.

     Another suggestion that many will want to defend themselves against is this: The Bible mentions anakim (Josh 11:21, Num 13:33, Deut 9:2). Much indicates that here the Anunnaki are meant, or their off-spring from unions with humans, and that “Anakim” is the Hebrew correspondence to the Sumerian “Anunnaki”.

 

So how about our God?

The one who in our Christian tradition and its rabbinic origins is considered as God – how does he fit in all this? And what about those who other peoples consider or did consider to be their God? That is a delicate question! It stirs up many emotions and subjective reactions. A discussion of this question is found here.

 

An appendix about space dimensions

A point has no dimension.

A line has one dimension.

A plane has two, describable in x- and y-coordinates.

The three-dimensional space: x-, y- and z-coordinates.

The four-dimensional space accordingly: x-, y,-, z- and (let’s say) w-coordinates.

    “Impossible”, we object! There can be no w-axis that is orthogonal to all the three others. This can be dealt with mathematically, but never visualized. Or do we here hit the limits of our three-dimensional consciousness? Could it be that it is unimaginable only for our three-dimensional thinking? A hypothetical (as an example) five-dimensional being would see things very differently! He could easily visualize that and even a further (let’s call it) v-axis that stands at right angles to all the other four… since, after all, he lives in such dimensions! It would be a bit hard for him to understand how limited we are, but for us it is a koan.

     Another thought-stimulating story is found in the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott. It tells about the inhabitants in a two-dimensional world and how hard it is for them to understand a third dimension, and still more deal with the encounter with a three-dimensional being. It is just like that for us when considering more than three dimensions!

 

A possible solution of the koan?

Maybe our way to try to grasp it by means of coordinate systems is actually limiting our view? The dimension of a space is informally defined as the minimum of coordinates required to specify a point in that space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension). It might be that Cartesian coordinates are only valid up to three dimensions, and that from there on a point in space is specified in another way, even though we don’t (yet) know how. The hypothetical five-dimensional being would know it… Our idea of multidimensional coordinate systems may in that case be superseded by another concept.

 

Here is an interesting discussion of the four-dimensional space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-dimensional_space.