In comparison to ancient stone-age cultures, we consider our modern culture an advanced civilization. In actuality, all that has really advanced is technology and information; our silly and superstitious emotional selves have not changed a bit, as so amply evidenced by “Reality TV.” An accurate definition of an advanced civilization, then, is one which has developed and implemented increasingly sophisticated technologies.
In comparison to our modern culture, our conceptions of a more highly advanced civilization include imaginings of superior creatures from alien worlds like planet Krypton, with technologies that vastly outstrip our own. These imaginings include faster-than-light space craft and communications, multidimensional and temporal technology that allows time travel, evolutionary advances enabling ESP, thought transfer and mind control, the ability to manifest in many different physical forms and shapes, and other such extraordinary abilities.
Granted, our current understanding of the scientific physical laws of the universe may yet be in their relative infancy, but nonetheless are the most advanced in human history. With our knowledge and technology we have plumbed the depths of atomic and quantum physics, engineered genetics, reduced computer memory to the tiniest molecular nano-scale, sent robotic satellites to the far reaches of the solar system, and created Silly Putty. These accomplishments make it easier for us to imagine the capabilities of civilizations more advanced than our own; after all, we believe in progress!
This begs the following question: If an advanced alien civilization wished to visit the inhabitants of planet earth, would they use a flying vehicle to do so? The star nearest to our solar system is over 4 light years away, the time it takes light traveling at 182,000 miles per second for four years: five trillion miles, plus. Attaining light speed using propulsion of any sort would take so long as to make the process prohibitively time-consuming, as would coming to a halt. If, perhaps, an advanced civilization had advanced to the point of teleportation, then no space craft would be needed, and that raises the question as why they would need flying vehicles at all. And if no flying “saucers” are needed, why then do some people report they’ve seen them?
I actually like the idea of life on other planets. Within our modest galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars there are certainly well over hundreds of billions of planets, and many surely harbor forms of life. Assuming our dark fantasies about people filling alien bellies are wrong, it would be truly fascinating to encounter life from another galaxy. But, again, the distances between stars are far too great for solid living creatures like us to travel physically. Based upon our understanding of physics, no physical object could survive flying through a black hole, and worm holes are pure conjecture at this point. All but three of the twenty-six dimensions currently contemplated by physicists are far too small for solid objects of any kind, and time travel poses unsolvable paradoxes, like what happens if you accidentally kill your own great-great-grandfather while visiting the past.
There certainly are strange lights and sounds in the sky for which we have no explanation. Reports of abductions and close encounters have not produced hard or convincing evidence. This leaves us with only our suspicions and fantasies, and they are as various as our fertile and vivid imaginations will allow.
