Last week Jaime Maussan the Mexican UFOlogist revealed under oath at the Mexican Congress two boxes containing little Aliens. The unboxing event went viral across the World and once again stoked the ‘We Are Not Alone’ debate.
What is lesser known is that Jaime Maussan has a history of perpetrating alien related hoaxes since 2015. This is his fourth attempt after 2015/16 & 17 attempts were proven hoaxes. The jury is still out on the current one due to ongoing investigations.
In October 1869 workers digging a well in Cardiff, New York uncovered a giant petrified man, who came to be known as the Cardiff Giant. At 10 feet and 4 inches in height and 2990 pounds in weight he was indeed a giant. As news spread across the state visitors turned up in droves and paid 50 cents each to view the giant petrified man in awe. Could this be the missing link? Actually, no! It turned out to be an elaborate hoax conceived and executed by tobacconist George Hull over the previous year. Hull spent a total of $2600 ( in 1868 Dollars ) on the giant stone statue aged with various acids and buried. In the end he made at least $23,000 on the stone statue, a return on investment of approx 9 : 1 for a one year investment. George Hull should have been a stock market player.
An even longer lasting hoax is the Piltdown Man, a paleontological fraud that lasted between 1912 and 1953 when it was definitely proven to be a fraud. The identity of the hoaxers behind this find has never been established but it is suspected that Charles Dawson a British Amatuer Archeologist was behind this fraud. Whether Dawson acted alone is uncertain, but his hunger for acclaim may have driven him to risk his reputation and misdirect the course of anthropology for decades. Turns out Dawson too had a string of hoaxes beginning 1889 until the Piltdown man discovery. The alleged missing link hoax was still very much on at the time of his death in 1916.
Jaime Maussan’s 2017 discovery of the alien corpses in Peru (and presented in 2023), close to the Nazca Lines rings similar to the Cardiff Giant & The Piltdown man.
The question of ‘ We are not alone? ‘ very much persists.
Ancient Engineering
Erich Von Daniken in his eye opening book ‘ Chariots of the Gods’ espouses the theory that primitive Man had contact with extraterrestrials over several millennia. He speaks of multiple marvels across the ancient world where there is a clear divergence between the capabilities of man and the relics left behind. Moreover the same themes come up across the World be it pyramids or flying machines or illustrations / depictions of men wearing what appear to be space helmets.
Across the world we have massive stone structures constructed, individual stones weighing in their hundreds of tons have not only been moved for hundreds of miles over land but cut and placed with extreme precision, even more mysterious the cut marks on the stone look highly machined, one possible only with present day technology.
The devastated ruins of Puma Punku, Bolivia are a great place to start. The stone ruins officially date back to AD 526 but unofficially go back 17,000 years have highly machined cuts and drill holes. The largest of the stones at Puma Punku is over 25 feet long , 17 feet wide and and three and half feet thick, the weight 131 tons. Several theories exist on how the stones were moved into place, the use of llama skins and ramps is one such theory. The precision in placing the stones brings up even more questions than answers. The stones used are andesite, diorite and granite all with a hardness quotient of over 6, the hardest stone being diamond at 10.
The dimensions of Puma Punku are 549 feet by 383 with projections of 66 feet extending to the North and South of the rectangular mound. To top the exquisite stone cutting and drilling, there is a precise stone interlocking mechanism ( much like a giant lego )that has tolerances of less than one millimetre, this certainly pushes forth the thought of an other worldly hand.
The combination discoveries of large quantities of liquid mercury and mica at Teotihuacan begins an entire fresh line of thought and investigations. Both have no ornamental purposes ( although mercury can look like an ornamental river ). Mica is used as an insulator ( what was generating the heat at Teotihuacan?). These discoveriesd give rise to the theory Teotihuacan might have had electricity!
Any narrative on ancient engineering marvels would be incomplete without a quick mention of the Pyramid of Giza, Egypt. This highly documented structure is widely considered the most mathematically precise structure in the World. Christopher Dunn in his book Giza Power explains how the great pyramid of Giza generated power using dilute hydrochloric acid and hydrated zinc. Traces of both these elements have been found in the subterranean chambers Dunn points out to.
Discoveries and theories such as these only serve to reinforce the question of what was their (the pyramids) purpose?
The Nazca Lines of Peru, geoglyphs carved into the desert floor date back to between 500 BC and 500 AD. They are negative images created in the desert floor where shallow incisions (upto 12 inches depth)were made and pebbles and rocks removed. The geoglyphs include the eagle, the hummingbird, the spider,the monkey, the sizes of these glyphs vary from just a few feet to over a 1000 feet in length. Once the size of a glyph exceeds a couple of hundred feet they have a clear perspective only from the air! Von Daniken hypotheses these glyphs were always meant as markers for air travelers. There are over a 1000 glyphs in the desert. One of the more curious glyphs on a hillside near the end of one the runways is the famous Nazca Astronaut. There are several ancient runways, the longest over 30km long, some of the lines have been created on levelled mountain peaks (the relocated rubble is completely missing) to create table tops and criss cross very much like the runways of a modern airport with various geoglyphs representing airport terminals! The theories circulating have to do with the local Indians beseeching the heavens for water. Spiders , birds and plants are water symbols and the lines head towards where the water comes from.
World War II offers an interesting insight into the lines. Right after WW2 saw the birth of cargo cults on many islands in the South Pacific such as Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Guinea and Solomon Islands. During the war as part of the pacific theatre American troops arrived on planes, the big, noisy, flying beasts as they constructed airfields across the primitive islands to act as both bases and launch pad for attacks on Japanese convoys. The troops arrived with a cargo of all kinds of tinned food from corned beef to peaches and other canned goodies. The Islanders who until then had always hunted or gathered their food were taken in by the food and believed the machines to be ‘ The Chariots of the Gods ‘.
Once the war ended and the Americans returned home, the islanders constructed aeroplanes of wood and created shallow carved runways beseeching the Americans to return.
The most startling connection made by Von Daniken is the inscription on the sarcophagus of Lord Pakal who ruled the Mayan City of Palenque for almost 70 years upto 683 A.D.
The lid is twelve feet long and seven feet wide by nine inches thick. The stone weighs over seven tons. On the lid is a carving of Lord Pakal in what appears to be a spaceship. Pakal has a mask hooked onto his nose and hands appear to be at the controls of the craft and his left foot appears to be on a pedal. Behind Pakal is what looks like a rocket engine. Coming off the base of this craft is what look like flames that can only come off a rocket. The sarcophagus has given rise to the Mayan Astronaut theory.
UFO Conspiracy Theorist Bob Lazar and his allegations, the United States had nine flying saucers in their possession has fueled UFOlogists for over thirty years. Bob further claims he was recruited to work at facility S-4 near Area 51 facility at Groom Lake to help reverse engineer the propulsion system of the flying saucers. His claims of the facility being adjacent to Papoose Lake have been debunked by critics who point out holes in his entire education history.
This did not stop Bob from describing the propulsion system he worked on. Bob alleges the saucers had an antimatter reactor and used a stable form of a chemical element with an atomic number of 115. He said the craft appeared to bend gravity and light to travel invisibly. The element later called Moscovium was finally synthesised in 2003 and proved to be so unstable it barely lasted a few milliseconds. The properties of this element are unknown other than the fact it is very radioactive, due to its instability.
Such allegations only fuel conspiracy theories about the Roswell Incident of 1947. Officially it was a weather balloon that crashed, but conspiracy theorists insist a flying saucer crashed there and alien bodies were recovered. Roswell, New Mexico now has built a lucrative economy based on the UFO/Aliens theme!
Both the Pentagon and NASA have conducted multiple studies on UAP ( Unidentified Aerial Phenomena ) over decades and claim they have nothing to show for it, although conspiracy theorists insist this is part of a cover up.
Scriptures from almost all religions allude to crafts and Vimanas. Dr Alexandre Petrovick Kazantsev the noted and controversial Soviet UFOlogist actually pictured a vimana from descriptions in Sanskrit from the Mahabharata.
The fact is all the ancient civilizations that created these marvels of engineering have vanished leaving almost no documentation behind. The divergence between the known ability of primitive man and the engineering ability required to build on the scale they have only raises more questions than answers.
In the absence of proof such as clear images / videos / documents available to the general public only theories abound.
The Rise of the Telescopes
Mankind has always been fascinated by the vastness of the sky. The unobstructed view of this vastness has only spurred curiosity. During the day we have this shiny orb so bright we cannot look at it directly. We have what wisps of cotton against a blue background by day that can also turn angry and dark unleashing the wrath of typhoons and hurricanes. By night we have the same vastness turn black and filled with twinkling lights. Some of them appeared to be closer to each other than others.
Mankind was in awe and scared of this vastness and had Gods named after the Sun, Moon and pretty much every type of phenomena that made its appearance. There needed to be a logical approach to this vastness. Enter the Telescope.
The inventor of the Telescope is unknown, and the earliest record of the Telescope is a patent request from 1608 in the Netherlands by Middleburg spectacle maker Hans Lipperhey for a refracting telescope.. Word of this instrument quickly spread across Europe.Galileo Galilei the pioneering Italian Astronomer made one for himself in 1609 and the name Telescope came into existence in 1611 coined by Greek astronomer Giovanni Demisiani.
Progress of the Telescope has only furthered our understanding of the objects we observe in the sky.
The first thing that Galileo turned his telescope on was the Moon in 1609. He quickly deduced the marks we observe on the celestial body with our naked eyes were actually mountains and craters on the surface. He attempted to estimate the heights of the mountains. This excitement of observing the planets through the telescope got him to next turn his sights on Jupiter.
He noticed three fixed stars in a single line around the gas giant, all very small and totally invisible to the naked eye. They appeared fixed but actually were not and then one of them disappeared! This immediately drew him to conclude they were in fact orbiting Jupiter. A planet having smaller planets circling around it was not well received by the astronomy community of the time and raised plenty of debate.
Galileo’s next observation would pitch him directly into the face of controversy. He observed that Venus exhibited a full set of phases similar to that of the Moon and thus observed it must be orbiting the Sun! The heliocentric model of the Solar System developed by Nicholas Copernicus in the 1500s was however the lesser accepted version of the Universe to the geocentric one. The geocentric model stipulated the Earth was at the centre of the Universe as the stars rose and dipped and changed positions in the sky.
Thus progressed astronomy with further observation of the celestial bodies closest to Earth.
Astronomers knew there was more to be discovered. Telescopes got bigger and bigger but were still Earthbound and stationed at the tops of peaks where atmospheric interference was less, Earthbound nonetheless.
The 1990 launch of the Space Telescope Hubble promised to herald a new era in Mankind’s understanding of the Cosmos. What promised to be the dawn of a new era however turned into a sci-fi space thriller. Due to a manufacturing error the main mirror on the telescope had a focus issue and to solve this NASA astronauts had to get Hubble a pair of glasses to fix the blurry images. In December 1993 Space Shuttle Endeavour went up the 340 miles into space, captured Hubble and got the issue fixed. Hubble over the years had twenty three EVAs ( Spacewalks ) to keep upgraded and keep delivering quality images that have revolutionised our understanding of the Universe.
The 2021 launch of the James Webb Telescope has taken this understanding to a whole new level. The Telescope positioned at Lagrange Point 2 ( L2 beyond the Moon in a straight line with both the Earth and Sun ) is the spot where the gravitational pull of both Earth and Sun is at equilibrium. This allows the object to hover in an elliptical orbit around the spot. European Space Agency’s Gaia and Euclid Telescopes also occupy spots around L2.
These telescopes are peering into the past. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. Hubble can see a billion years into the past. The James Webb Telescope can peer over three billion years into the past, just about the time the first stars were forming.
The James Webb Telescope in its short time in space has created a stir with amazing 70mm technicolor images of our Universe. It has discovered exoplanets ( a planet outside our solar system ), has uncovered stars in previously dark areas of the sky and the latest discovery of methane and carbon dioxide on an exoplanet could point to extraterrestrial life!
In the future as technology improves we should be able to peer almost upto the Big Bang. Right now the progression of telescopes is helping mankind plug knowledge gaps that improve our understanding of the expanse.
The Space Probes
Mankind’s ambition to be Interstellar has pushed us to launch a series of probes into deep space. The earliest Pioneer 10 from 1972, entered interstellar space in 1983 followed by Pioneer 11 exited the solar system in the 1990s. These were followed by Voyager 1 and 2 entering interstellar space in 2012 and 18 respectively. The New Horizons space probe is currently in the Kuiper Belt and continuing to send fresh data back.
These probes are hundreds of thousands of years away from the closest celestial bodies outside the solar system and contain mankind’s attempts to communicate with extraterrestrials should they encounter any. For the immediate infinity they are coasting quietly through the expanse.
These probes launched Mankind into the Interstellar Age.
The Theory of Everything
Prof Stephen Hawking the person who directly made the concepts of the Universe available to the layman says that blackholes at the centre of all galaxies ( the Milky Way has a black hole four million times the size of the Sun ) all end in a singularity (super dense matter where the theory of relativity fails), however there are certain particles that escape the inescapable gravity and these particles create the effect of the event horizon photographed for the first time in 2019 using the event horizon telescope ( a network of telescopes across the World ). Understanding the insides of blackholes practically remains one of our biggest challenges.
Time travel can be possible, but for that we need to forget Euclidean geometry the way we know it. While we think and understand three dimensions, there is already a fourth dimension, it is time itself. Hawking believes there are upto eleven dimensions (he refers to the movie Interstellar here to help us picture how these dimensions would look) most of these dimensions might be so tiny, we neither know of them nor acknowledge them. But for true time travel to happen we need engines capable of travelling faster than the speed of light (escape velocity of Earth is 11 km/s and that of the Sun is 617 km/s, light travels at 300,000 km/s), and we need engines that can travel faster than light! Furthermore we also need the ability to bend gravity and light to open up wormholes (we do not know if they exist at the moment). So yes it’s a fantasy right now, but might be possible in the future.
Prof Hawking believed alien life forms do exist in our Universe. The odds that we are alone are stacked against us. He however felt Earth might not have contact for several decades or centuries to come, and even if we do find alien beings we should shun contact to avoid the Christopher Columbus effect on both Earth and an Alien planet.
The Pale Blue Dot is an image of Earth taken by Voyager 1 on February, 14th 1990 taken from a distance of 6 billion kilometres. The size of earth in that image is one pixel. Astronomer Carl Sagan in his ode to that image sums up the size of the solar system as Voyager 1 was just exiting the Solar Syatem on its Interstellar journey.
Mankind has always been interstellar by nature.
The Future
The crewed missions of the late 60s and 70s set the tone for Man to be a space traveller. However these missions, while fantastic in their achievement, lacked a broader vision and the World saw a lull for almost thirty years until the ISS once again kick started a more back to basics version of our understanding of extended travel and stays in space.
People like Elon Musk have fueled at personal expense mankind’s push to be multi planetary. Organisations such as SpaceX , NASA, European Space Agency and ISRO are conducting path breaking research on our understanding of the Moon, Mars , Sun and other planets of our solar system, in addition to creating fresh ideas and methods of rocketry.
Astounding progress in fields of robotics and Artificial Intelligence act as accelerators to the greater vision of mankind being an interstellar species.
Visionary authors like Issac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke had already painted a vision of the future over sixty years ago, we are only today achieving the first baby steps in creating this vision.
Using Schrödinger’s cat analogy , aliens both exist and don’t exist at the same time, and only once we definitively open the ET Box will mankind know for sure.
Credits:
NASA
Erich Von Daniken
Christopher Dunn
Bob Lazar
Stephen Hawking
Carl Sagan
Wikipedia
CharGPT
Washington Post
ET
manirayaprolu 
The worst that the “antiUFO skeptics” can do is don´t follow their own scientific method that states: 1) Observe a phenomena 2) Suggest an explanation 2) Check ALL THE EVIDENCE before jumping to any conclusion. All “antiUFO skeptics” start their “reasoning”, with “I suppose/ I believe…” without exterminating thoroughly all the evidence…