The question in my blog’s title might lead to a binary answer: no or yes. The question becomes more difficult once you ask for the definitions of alien and/or life. The Wuhan coronavirus, like all viruses, does not meet our biological criteria for life (my 2015 blog). Astrobiologists Hoyle and Wickramasinghe claim that certain pandemics may be caused by extraterrestrial viruses.
A less digital approach on the existence of alien life is a risk classification along the lines of knowns and unknowns. An example of known knowns – or knowledge – are the videos released by the U.S. Navy of their encounters with unidentified flying objects (eg, CNN, WaPo). Still, these videos were inadequate for disqualifying the Fermi paradox (my 2016 blog).
Beliefs are an example of known unknowns: we know that we do not know. There is a widespread belief amongst certain individuals that aliens exist and are being kept at Area 51 at an US Air Force Base in Nevada. The history of the earliest sci-fi stories is highly debated: either Sumerian (c. 2100 BC) or between 17th and 19th century.
Sometimes our intuition wonders if something is alien. An example of these unknown knowns is the octopus, which “has 3 hearts, 8 limbs, 9 brains, has blue (copper rather than iron-based) blood and is also (very) smart” (my 2017 blog). Viruses are another example: we know viruses exist but do not know how and where they originate (eg, my 2015 blog, my 2015 blog).
The remaining category is the hardest one: unknown unknowns. In other words: we do not know what we do not know. Often our imagination or fantasy fills in the blanks (eg, little green men). An illustration of this category is a 2018 Aeon article: Proof of life: how would we recognise an alien if we saw one? Also see my 2018 blog.
The creation narrative on Sumerian clay tablets gives a clear Yes to the question of this blog. There is a tenth planet in our solar system that shows up every 3,600 years. The people from that planet X visited our planet by using starships. These people mined for African gold on our planet in order to protect their home planet from radiation.
After thousands of years, there was a rebellion. These people solved the rebellion by creating a new hybrid and fertile race of gold mine workers from their genes and from domestic human genes. This Sumerian narrative (video) could explain the enigma how anatomically modern humans “suddenly” evolved into behaviourally modern humans around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.
DNA research of January 2020 indicates that all African races also carry Neanderthal DNA. The AI used in this research also found traces of DNA of an ancient African ‘ghost’ population (eg, ArsTechnica, Harvard, Live Science, NYT, Phys, Quanta).
Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft (1977) by The Carpenters
artists, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
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