2008 Woodie Awards
History replete with allusions to extraterrestrial life
Creel O'Neil
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: OpEd Page
So this article is going to be very different than most of the others that you'll find here in The Miami Student. Being in the Op-Ed section, I'm going to espouse my opinion on something that most people don't think about very often and can sometimes be very taboo. How often do you look into the sky? How often do you wonder about the universe around you? More importantly, how often do you think about your own existence in that universe?
Our galaxy alone is home to billions of stars. With that many stars floating around we're looking at the potential for billions of planetary bodies. In fact the last estimate I read from NASA suggested there could be between 50 and 60 million Earth-like bodies in our galaxy alone. It has always bothered me that people think we're alone in this galaxy, let alone the entire expanse of the universe. We're an extremely young species, in a very young solar system, in a medium sized galaxy. The possibility that species which have existed for thousands or millions, if not billions, of years longer than we have is definitely there. If you look at a picture taken from the Hubble telescope of the galaxies outside our own, you will notice that the sky is filled with less noticeable farther away galaxies. In fact, every smudge, dot, mark and spot in the picture is an entire galaxy. Each one of those contains billions of stars, if not more, and the possibility for an unbelievable number of planetary bodies.
Even those pictures, the most beautiful of which can ever be witnessed by human eyes in today's world, didn't really get me thinking about the possibility of life outside of our solar system. It was a friend who brought an interesting point and a few life changing pictures and documents to my attention. He brought me pictures of cave drawings made by humans, well before the dawn of civilization, showing all sorts of depictions. The strangest of all of these happened to be, and I kid you not, drawings of people with bubbles around their heads standing near, or coming out of disk shaped objects. Some of these beings had big, strange eyes and appeared to be wearing some kind of suit, just as we picture the travelers from beyond to be today. The next thing he showed me were translated texts from Alexander the Great's journal wherein he described two encounters with what he called two flying and flaming silver shields. The first instance, the objects followed his army for days, harassing them as they marched on the warpath. In the second encounter, the objects hung in the air as Alexander's army attempted to siege a city. He continued on to say that the objects released a beam of light onto the wall, making in crumble and allowing Alexander's forces to enter the city. The strange thing to note about this event, even though no archeological evidence can be found at the ruins of the city today, is that the people within the city recorded the same events.
Our galaxy alone is home to billions of stars. With that many stars floating around we're looking at the potential for billions of planetary bodies. In fact the last estimate I read from NASA suggested there could be between 50 and 60 million Earth-like bodies in our galaxy alone. It has always bothered me that people think we're alone in this galaxy, let alone the entire expanse of the universe. We're an extremely young species, in a very young solar system, in a medium sized galaxy. The possibility that species which have existed for thousands or millions, if not billions, of years longer than we have is definitely there. If you look at a picture taken from the Hubble telescope of the galaxies outside our own, you will notice that the sky is filled with less noticeable farther away galaxies. In fact, every smudge, dot, mark and spot in the picture is an entire galaxy. Each one of those contains billions of stars, if not more, and the possibility for an unbelievable number of planetary bodies.
Even those pictures, the most beautiful of which can ever be witnessed by human eyes in today's world, didn't really get me thinking about the possibility of life outside of our solar system. It was a friend who brought an interesting point and a few life changing pictures and documents to my attention. He brought me pictures of cave drawings made by humans, well before the dawn of civilization, showing all sorts of depictions. The strangest of all of these happened to be, and I kid you not, drawings of people with bubbles around their heads standing near, or coming out of disk shaped objects. Some of these beings had big, strange eyes and appeared to be wearing some kind of suit, just as we picture the travelers from beyond to be today. The next thing he showed me were translated texts from Alexander the Great's journal wherein he described two encounters with what he called two flying and flaming silver shields. The first instance, the objects followed his army for days, harassing them as they marched on the warpath. In the second encounter, the objects hung in the air as Alexander's army attempted to siege a city. He continued on to say that the objects released a beam of light onto the wall, making in crumble and allowing Alexander's forces to enter the city. The strange thing to note about this event, even though no archeological evidence can be found at the ruins of the city today, is that the people within the city recorded the same events.
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