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FROM ADAM TO OMEGA
An Anatomy of UFO Phenomena
By A. R. Roberts
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 A. R. Roberts
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-0504-5
Chapter One
DO EXTRATERRESTRIALS REALLY EXIST?
Extraterrestrial life has always been a rather philosophical issue and not high on the list of priorities for scientific study. However, since the UFO issue revolves around possible alien visitors, it is essential to determine if they could exist, and if so, whether they could visit our world. There are people who claim to have witnessed aliens disembarking from a landed UFO and collecting plant and soil samples; there are people who claim to have seen alien bodies from UFO crash sites; and even others who claim they were abducted by aliens. Their stories are compelling, and many of the witnesses appear credible, yet no one has ever been able to present one shred of evidence to support his claims. So are these people hallucinating? Are they mentally unstable? Did they fabricate the stories simply to gain publicity for themselves? Any serious investigator will always consider these questions. But the most important question is whether any of them are telling the truth.
Millions of people have photographed and videotaped what they believe were UFOs in the sky. Most show indistinct points of light or blurred images and are of little or no value. Nevertheless, there is a small percentage in which state-of-the-art analyzing technology was able to rule out conventional aircraft, balloons, flocks of birds, and so forth. So in these cases at least, investigators were able to determine what they are not but not what they are, so there is still no proof that they are extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, the universe is a big place, and who really knows what is out there?
It is almost impossible for one to conceive the size of the universe. However, once you understand how vast it really is, you almost have to consider the possibility that there is other life somewhere out there. The age of the universe is still under debate but is currently believed to be somewhere around 12 to 15 billion years old. Our sun is just one star in a galaxy we call the Milky Way, which, according to various estimates, contains anywhere from 100 billion to 250 billion stars. We know there are at least 100 billion galaxies, which means there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand making up all the beaches on Earth. And that is a fact. What are the odds that some of these stars might host planets with intelligent life?
Our solar system is only about 4.5 billion years old. Considering the size and the age of the universe, how can one not consider the possibility, or even the probability, that life evolved elsewhere millions or even billions of years before it did on Earth? Because of the vast distances between stars, scientists question whether travel between them is even possible: utilizing current technology, it would take us thousands of years to reach the nearest one. For this reason, many mainstream scientists believe interstellar travel is impractical. Their argument involves Einstein's theory of relativity—the laws pertaining to the speed of light. Light travels through space at 186,000 miles per second, and technologically, it is an impossible speed to attain because it would take more energy than the entire universe contains to propel a spaceship to that velocity. Even if we could reach light speed, the laws of physics pertaining to time and space dictate that the faster you move through space, the slower the passage of time. In other words, if the trip took twenty-five years traveling at light speed, the voyagers would have aged only twenty-five years, while back on Earth, hundreds of years would have elapsed. This means they would return to find their loved ones long deceased. Such an expedition would be of no benefit to any people alive on Earth when it departed because they would never live long enough to see its return.
Thus is the argument some scientists have proposed for why UFOs cannot be of extraterrestrial origin. They are saying that since interstellar travel is impossible or impractical for us, it is also impossible or impractical for anyone else who may exist out there, implying that any other intelligent life in the universe is restricted by the same limitations we face. However, in order to make such a claim, one would assume they would have to be well informed on the scientific and technological capabilities of such civilizations. Unless the government really is covering up something big, I fail to see how they can even propose such an idea. For all they know, any number of ET races could have long ago developed the technology to bend the fabric of the space-time continuum and visit Earth as routinely as we visit other countries.
As for our own limitations, are we to believe we have reached the pinnacle of scientific discovery, that there is nothing left to learn ... nothing left to achieve? How do we know there isn't a completely new dimension of technology waiting to be discovered tomorrow, which will allow us to overcome the challenge of faster-than-light travel?
Almost everything was considered impossible at one time or another. People once said that if man were meant to fly, he would have been born with wings. But on December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright proved them wrong. Then it was thought impossible to fly faster than the speed of sound, until October 14, 1947, when Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager, flying the Bell X-1 aircraft, broke the sound barrier. After this, it was thought impossible for man to go to the moon. And the naysayers were again proven wrong when on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin climbed down out of their Apollo 11 lunar lander and walked on the surface of the moon. Now that we have met and overcome these challenges, we are told it is impossible to travel faster than light. Since we were able to conquer yesterday's "impossibilities," I see no reason not to believe that interstellar travel is also a challenge we will eventually overcome. In fact, we may have already taken the first step. In 2000, the Sunday Times in the United Kingdom published an article about how particle physicists in the United States demonstrated that light pulses can be accelerated up to three hundred times their normal velocity of 186,000 miles per second. This would seem to suggest that nothing is truly impossible.
In 1916, Barnard's Star was discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard. In 1963, astronomer Peter van de Kamp detected irregularities in the star's movement, suggesting a Jupiter-size planet may be in orbit around it. Lacking the technology available today, his discovery remained in dispute. Astronomers have since discovered that Barnard's Star is really a runaway red dwarf star that will pass by our solar system at a distance of about four light-years in the year 11,800. So it wasn't until 1992 that the first discovery of an extrasolar planet was actually confirmed. Since then, over five hundred other planets have been confirmed orbiting other stars in our galaxy. As new technologies are being applied, they are discovering stars with multiple planets, the number of which is constantly growing—and the search has only just begun.
So the odds favoring the existence of planets capable of supporting life are increasing every day, along with the probability that other intelligent life has evolved. Suddenly, we find it not so inconceivable that others from another world could have visited Earth in the distant past ... and may still be doing so today. And if they interacted with ancient man, it is entirely possible that they influenced much of our early history.
Something else to consider is that time (at least to some extraterrestrials) could be very different from how we understand it. We perceive time in a linear fashion—with a past, a present, and a future—and we measure its passage with clocks and calendars. Our day is based on the twenty-four-hour cycle of the earth's rotation, and our year is based on the 365 days it takes to make one complete orbit around the sun. However, in comparison to our standards, it is possible that to an extraterrestrial, a day may equal months, years, or even centuries. The concept of a thousand years being as one day is even mentioned in the Bible (2 Peter 3:8 and Psalms 90:4). We tend to judge everything based on our own concepts and standards, but how do we know that an extraterrestrial civilization would measure things the same way? We don't! There is no law that says everything in the universe is, or has to be, restricted to our limitations.
Of course, none of this is proof of extraterrestrial existence or that they have visited Earth. I have simply expressed an opinion based on a logical assessment of established information. However, to claim that interstellar travel is impossible for an extraterrestrial civilization only because it is currently impossible for us is simply an unscientific assumption that reflects a narrow-minded perspective.
Chapter Two
THE QUESTION OF ORIGIN
Two of the biggest mysteries man has yet to explain are his own origin and UFOs. As for origin, the Bible claims that divine creation was responsible for man, while science suggests he evolved, possibly from the ape. So far, no tangible evidence exists to support either creation or evolution. They are both part of a debate that will undoubtedly continue for generations to come. There is, however, a mountain of credible evidence supporting the existence of UFOs.
One factor inhibiting our ability to comprehend the UFO issue is the intimidation of religious doctrine. For centuries, religion has dictated what we are allowed to believe. This is exemplified by what happened to Galileo in the seventeenth century, when the accepted belief was that the sun and stars revolved around the earth—that the earth was the center of the universe. When Galileo invented the first astronomical telescope in 1609, he saw the heavens as no man before him ever did, and he soon confirmed what Copernicus had already proposed, that the earth revolved around the sun, thus diminishing its status as the center of the universe.
This was in total contradiction to what the church believed. At the time, the church was a powerful influence in government matters and when Galileo published his findings, he was labeled a heretic and subjected to religious persecution. In 1633, he was summoned to Rome for an inquisition and sentenced to life imprisonment for suspicion of heresy. To avoid imprisonment, he was forced to recant all of his work, and only then did the church commute his sentence to house arrest. Thus organized religion set the paradigm by which established beliefs are protected—even if they are wrong. Although Galileo was right, the narrow-minded perspective of religious authorities prevented them from even giving him the benefit of the doubt. Simply put, they had been brainwashed into accepting their inaccurate beliefs as the absolute truth, and no one dare question them. And the same prejudicial attitude still prevails three centuries later: any scientist today who challenges established beliefs risks not only the scorn of his peers; it also puts the security of his job in jeopardy. He, too, becomes a victim of what I call the "Galileo Syndrome."
A more recent example is what happened to Virginia Steen-McIntyre. In 1966, archaeologists excavating a site in Hueyatlaco, Mexico, unearthed a collection of stone tools and leaf-shaped spear points, and McIntyre was part of the United States Geological Survey team sent to date the items. She said they used the radiometric date procedure that determines actual age, and that two procedures were implemented: one using uranium atoms and the other using tiny zircon crystals. At first, she suspected the site might be about 20,000 years old, but to her astonishment, all tests dated the artifacts at 250,000 years.
McIntyre admits that she was naive, unaware of the controversy she had created, and had no idea of how it was about to impact her career. Thinking she might be on to something big, she refused to deviate from the facts that had been established. Consequently, the dig was closed down; she lost her teaching job at an American university and has been unable to work in her profession ever since. She was blackballed for refusing to cave in to mainstream ideology.
There seems to be an unwritten law in the scientific community to bury any evidence that conflicts with mainstream beliefs, such as that which suggests intelligent man was around long before scientists are willing to admit. Excellent documentation of this is presented in Forbidden Archaeology, a book written by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson. There are over eight hundred pages documenting man's presence as well as artifacts that are hundreds of thousands and even millions of years old.
It seems prehistoric man left many clues that things other than birds were flying around in his skies. All over the world, petroglyphs on rocks and in caves depict what look like many UFOs being reported today, and they appear in many medieval paintings as well. Written references can be found in ancient writings from Mesopotamia, China, India, Mexico, and South America, not to mention the Bible. They are simply too numerous to ignore, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize the technological implications. So if these ancient artists and writers were depicting flying craft, then it would appear that UFOs have been around for many thousands of years. If so, then how far back in time do they really go? Were they around at the dawn of humanity? Could they even be responsible for man's existence? Though the idea may sound crazy, it is not inconceivable.
As near as can be determined, man, as he is today, has been traced back about 50,000 years to the period when the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man faded from the scene. The Cro-Magnon allegedly resembled modern man in many ways, and some theorize that he may have been a more evolved descendant of the Neanderthal; supposedly, he was more intelligent and more human in appearance. Until recently, it was thought that the Cro-Magnon came after the Neanderthal. Now there is evidence that they coexisted in some regions before the Neanderthal finally exited the picture. Since this was about the time modern man allegedly emerged, the sequence would seem to support evolution.
Creationists acclimated to the mystical beliefs associated with religion believe human life began only 6,000 years ago, with Adam and Eve. However, 6,000 years seems hardly a sufficient amount of time for so many diversified species of man to have evolved, at least from a common origin such as Adam and Eve. When you consider the variety of races that exist among the human species, each with individual physical characteristics such as height, facial features, skin color, hair color, and those both with and without facial hair, one has to wonder where they did come from. Variety prevails in every species of life on Earth, and it is the result of millions of years of evolution. Logically, we might expect that millions of years would have also produced distinctive differences among Homo sapiens. If, as the Bible claims, modern man only arrived on the scene 6,000 years ago, it seems an insufficient amount of time for such distinct diversity to have evolved—even 60,000 years would not seem long enough.
The evolution theory suggests that man may have evolved from the ape somewhere along the way—but when? Evolution constitutes a gradual process of change, not change and continuance. If apes evolved into man, then there should be no more apes around. Separately, man and ape can be traced back millions of years; however, there is no evidence that ape evolved into man, leaving what scientists refer to as the missing link. So until such evidence is discovered to support their theories, it seems that man just suddenly appeared on the scene from out of nowhere. If true, could it explain the missing link?.
Most DNA is contained in the nucleus of the human cell, and we inherit half from our mother and half from our father. However, a small portion called mitochondrial DNA exists outside the nucleus and contains elements only contributed by the female, and it can be used to trace a person's lineage far back in time. According to author Mark Eastman, research was conducted at the University of California in Berkeley using mitochondrial DNA samples of 147 individuals from different parts of the world, and the results were surprising. The tests indicated that they all descended from the same female ancestor, which they dubbed the mitochondrial Eve. This would seem to imply that everyone alive on Earth today, descended from the same female ancestor.
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Excerpted from FROM ADAM TO OMEGA by A. R. Roberts Copyright © 2011 by A. R. Roberts. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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