Slashdot Mirror
The Starchild Project Claims to Have Alien Skull
kid_wonder writes "Nothing better to do on a lazy fall weekened? Well, go take a look at the Alien-Human hybrid skull found over 70 years ago. Be sure to take a grain of salt along. Read their report Oh, by the way. In the next week or so DNA tests are coming back, enjoy the hype while you can!" Hey! What can I say? There's not much on TV tonight, so check it out. And if you're an extraterrestrial reading Slashdot for the first time, welcome aboard. ;-P
I was thinking plaster cast and some paint...
The one I heard was that a bunch of south americans liked pointy cone shaped heads - they worshipped mountains, so people started wrapping their heads to get them mountain shaped or something.
;).
But the skull in the pics does look like it could be progeria. Definitely not mountain shaped
They did put a picture of the skull on their web page you moron. www.starchild.com very bottom!!
It's obviously a fake, if it were a REAL alien skull then Micheal Jackson woud own it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Interesting.. sounds like some kiddies hooked on past x-files episodes. Particularly the hybrid part. It need not be a hoax when an alient looks like humans. There is a possibility that we evolved from them, ie they seeded life on earth, or just human life, or that they evolved from us. Maybe some distant past, we had better technology. Some disaster threatens to wipe us out, so we sent our a small group of humans out into space, with the technology to terraform and create their own society. Now they come back to see if we survived. The difference in features could be that we evolved and adapted, surviving the apocalypse. But of course, we have been seeing way too many humanoid shaped aliens these days.
They are obviously time travelers. They have evolved to the point where they look like that, or have genetically engeneered themselves that way. Then they come back in time and do stuff. That's really the only way I see that they look almost exactly like our species, and that they are able to crossbreed with us. Quite obvious, really. ;)
Love how he ties alien skulls in with Open Source Software [grin].
Dont mark me down for offtopic, I'm not in the mood to lose Karma.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
In fact the greatest leaps in history have been made by people who dared combat the stagnant dogmas of society.
Your statement above is most likely correct, but it has nothing to do with the authors of the text on the starchild web-site, or Erich von Däniken either for that matter--Yes I read several of his books in my teens, along with books by Zecharia Sitchin etc. Used to really like reading the stuff, and think wouldn't it be wonderful if it was true... IMHO this pinpoints the whole phenomenon quite neatly. What we are are dealing with here is not people combatting stagnant dogmas, but wishful thinkers, and dreamers that fit evidence to their theories. These guys would serve mankind much better by using their creativity to write SF.
For those interested, here are some notes on von Däniken.
By the way, your notion on evolution is quite correct, but science does not work according to evolution. OK, social theories, might to some extent work according to the Hegelian thesis+antithesis->synthesis paradigm (which relates somewhat to crossover in genetics), but physics, chemistry, biology etc, work to a much larger degree by testing theories against the real world by conducting experiments, and studying evidence (such as this skull). New ideas are always nice, but they bear little relevance if they neglect large bodies of evidence, or rely on heresay, falsified "evidence" etc as is often the case for "radical thinkers" such as von Däniken. Such new ideas are better classified as fantasies (or science fiction), and should be labelled as such.
Your description of being open minded annoys me as well, open minded for me means to be open to new ideas. This is not the same as respecting everything you are told. If I tell you the sun is blue, you can still be open minded if you don't respect my claim. The majority of complaints about the alien head theory that I've read here were rejecting the claims on sound basis.
Just think, how much of older science was blatantly wrong, or "creative". How do we look at older science today. How do you think future humans will look at OUR science?
Yeah, who knows. But many old theories are actually used today, even though they are partly erroneous. For instance classical mechanics are taught to much more people than the more correct quantum mechanics. Other theories, such as the epicycle theory in astronomy, are used to show us how predjudice (such as the notion that the Earth is the centre of the universe) might lead us wrong. I hope, and assume that this is how our science will be used, and looked upon in the future.
JMP FFFF:0000 Jump to BIOS Reset.
;-)
Sad, I still have the opcodes memorized.
While the article discussed genetic disorders as a cause of deformation, it did not explore other avenues of deformation: False Hellebore
l kaloids/cyclops.html
(Veratrum viride), when eaten by pregnant sheep causes the baby to be born with only one eye socket with both eyes in it! I was unable
to find documentation on the web, but I read this (and saw a picture) doing research for a project of mine (don't ask:).
here's a picture:
http://www.abc.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/a
From: "Quonsar The Magnificent"
To:
Subject: Alien Spell Check
Sir/Madam/Elohim:
I arrived at your web site www.rael.org feeling intrigued and curious. However, within the first 3 minutes I encountered evidence that your writer is either a moron or a victim of invasive alien probes which have severely affected his intellectual capacity.
"reep", "questionning" and "functionning" left me to "reap" the harvest of "questioning" whether your language skills are "functioning".
You should address this immediately. Nothing says "dumbshit alien loony site" to a visitor faster than having your site look like it was written and proofread by a dumbshit alien loony.
Quonsar The Magnificent
Planet Meepzorp
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
No, a transliteration of '23' would be 'twenty three.' You mean a transposition. Fnord.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
test test
I find it amazing how this guy seems to accept the existence of aliens enough that he classifies them into colors. Alien Racism?
On a more serious note though, it is rather interesting that most of this report assumes the existence of aliens and discounts evidence of congenital defects and such, based on such flimsy evidence. Many times through this article he refers to Gray Aliens, only once did I notice that he stated "What a Gray alien might look like" instead of "similarity to gray aliens". Just my $0.02.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Just a point - I generally don't take fictional movies as much proof of anything.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
That leave at least .1% to be real right?
.1% are not proven to be false. They are not, however, proven to be true, either. That is an example of "converse error," which is the argument:
.1% (or any percentage) of UFO sightings are real begs the question, since you are attempting to argue that aliens exist. Assuming that UFOs are real implicitly assumes that aliens exist, and therefore invalidates such an argument. I could just as easily say that aliens do not exist, therefore no UFO sightings are real. (Now that I think about it, this would not beg the question, because while UFOs are dependent on aliens, the existance of aliens does not depend on UFOs.)
Absolutely not. If this were in any way true the matter would be settled. The 99.9% you claim are false are the ones that are clearly and provably false. The other
1) if P then Q;
2) Q;
3) therefore P.
It should be clear that this is not valid.
This is also not a matter of probability. To assume that
As a closing note, I would like to mention that I do not specifically discount all possibility of extra-terrestrial life, I just reject this argument. I remain open-minded, if skeptical.
You neglect the possibility that the initial biological molecules on Earth did not develop here (through spontaneous biogenesis), but rather were "dropped" whether by debris or intelligent life. Unlikely, yes, but possible.
Convergent evolution is also possible, as many examples on earth show us (I can't think of any offhand, but I'm sure a search on Google will find it pretty quick).
---
END OF LINE
DAMN, that was good...
Well, I'm a physicist, but I guess I missed the memo that faster-than-light "warp" travel is a solved problem. What are you talking about?
I mean, I have to clean up constantly over these damn Aliens. Hmm... no one can help me huh?
My sister do that all the time... :]
Frankly considering the problem that the skull is real or a hoax I can come only to two conclusions:
:).
Real: It's a human. A 100% human being with a serious genetic defect. Even a fast look to it shows that it cannot be alien. If anyone has a small knowledge on paleontologic evolution then he may guess what I'm talking about.
Hoax: Probably the skull does not even exist. The supposed morphology of the skull highly reminds a rather common image manipulation. So it's just another child's play.
Frankly I don't know on how to choose either conclusions. In one way such skull deformation seems to happen. A similar skull seems to exist on Kunts Kamera (St. Peterburg, Russia).
On the other way they look quite funny on their writings. At least I know they I already violated their copyright by reading their site
Really I can't understand one thing. Why most people think that aliens should have BIG skulls and small faces? Frankly get a small walk at night. Look a little bit over that blackness over there. And think that, in this Universe, every hour several civilizations are born while others die. Hard to believe? Then count how many galaxies are in the Universe...
Well about extraterrestrials reading slashdot for the first time... Well we have been here for quite a long time. In fact we have been ALWAYS here... So what's the problem?
All Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!
Don't take any rubber nickles!
thank you for your 30 page disseration.
The way I see it, belief in UFOs is just a new type of religion. Of course, it has it's share of miracles. By miracles, I mean events which support a belief system, but are unrepeatable and difficult to prove. Clearly this kind of thing doesn't fit too well with the scientific method. I think that it is pretty safe to assume that the UFO/alien miracles share a common source with miracles from all other religions: human nature. Or maybe the alien sightings are real and every other unexplained report of a supernatural occurence was actually caused by aliens. Of course this argument works equally well for any religion.
oh please, my eyeballs are like the rest of my body, they don't get any.
Oh, really? That's quite an incredible idea, considering that several races of Islanders were completely seperate from the rest of humanity for a _lot_ longer than the Mexican ruling "race" could possibly have been.
And all of these races still look human/can breed with humans/etc.....(and have the same skulls..)
I also think that the idea of another, more advanced, race on Earth might be a bit far fetched...did they live on Atlantis????
Nevertheless, show me some independent evidence, and I'll reconsider....
-Shane Stephens
We made that so called hybrid to fool Fox Mulder into thinking all those evil government plots were really alien plots.
-----
IIRC diffirent highly segregated groups in society evolving along diffirent paths has occured before. In India it's possible to find genetic diffirences between diffirent castes, since members of diffirent castes did not intermarry. Royal hemophelia is a European example of a similar thing - a mutation in one member of the ruling class propagates throughout all the royal families, because they only marry themselves.
All I know is that I was working at JPL in Building 310 on the fourth floor when a report hit the press that JPL was "hiding UFOs in order to investigate their advanced technologies, including propulsion and computer systems in building 310."
Funny; building 310 was not a hanger but a 4 story office building on the JPL campus. But did anyone tell the UFO folks that? Yep--but it was part of the coverup and conspiracy.
Ah, well; feel free to ignore me as I'm obviously sent by the Government Conspiracy in order to plant Disinformation!
I wonder at times, why people are so quick to dismiss out of hand without the slightest degree of investigation into the validity of these people's claims.. what if Volta was so quick to listen to the people laughing at his experiments?
True - lots of these UFO/alien things are likely hoaxes, misconceptions or outright lies. But they should be given at least the benefit of the scientific method, and if they can't be explained, they should be marked as such.
Even the US government's "Blue Book" studies found some really interesting cases that they couldn't explain away, but these were outright ignored.
Lots of people believe in life in the universe, but people have a hard time believing that it could come here. Hell, our own physisists have demonstrated it's only an engineering problem to "warp" through space - one hell of an engineering problem, but possible nothingless. What would that be to a civilization just 1000 more years advanced than us?
I recommmend reading anything by Stanton T. Friedman, who presents excellent balenced analsyses of documents and paper trails produced by US government organizations - and comes up with some compelling possibilities.
Give science a chance, eh.
Kudos..
..don't panic
that the cable companies are *always* the first to know about the alien invasions?
# whois starchildproject.com
Domain Name: STARCHILDPROJECT.COM
Administrative Contact:
Bean, Mark (MB20520) cyber-x@LVCM.COM
702.658.5810
# whois lvcm.com
Registrant:
Prime Cable - Las Vegas (LVCM-DOM)
121 South Martin L. King Boulevard
Las Vegas, NV 89106
US
*kicks her crappy modem*
Despite the long load time, this page is really informative. Some of these skull deformities are just as severe as what could have caused the "alien" skull, but are most definitely human.
Why not try and track down the rest of the skeleton? If it had been found, and it was non-human, we probably would have heard of it by now. If it hasn't been found, then can't we figure out where the caves are and search them? And, of course, if the rest has been found, and it's completely human, then it's obviously either a human skull or a hoax.
This is, of course, assuming that the story of how the skulls were found is true, which, quite honestly, I'd say is doubtful, given the scientific processes by which the "scientists" arrived at the conclusion that the skull is at least partially non-human.
But a DNA test will help determine whether it's human, or another hominid...
Nice reflections shiny skull. Can one say raytrace.
ought to have his head examined :-)
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
They aren't aliens. They are what humans will elvolve into. Most of 'em are just boring historians checking out the past with thier time machines. (What the hell it makes as much sense as most of this UFO BS)
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Well, this may not be the first post, but I'm posting from mozilla 5 (milestone 10), I'm amazed it hasn't crashed on me yet (although I can't see what I'm typing...) Anyway, I think the alien skull is actualy a 70 year old super computer that the NSA used to make a bewulf cluster ot of in 1920. Its all a part of Echelon p33r the N$A...
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Um, I don't think anyone suggested time travel. Someone did suggest that some human civilisation might have risen to an advanced state in the _past_. They could have left the planet (although, they might have just moved out of sight, perhaps beneath the oceans) and genetically manipulated themselves. Not very likely, but certainly within the realm of possibility. Why they would bother with abducting people and so forth is beyond me. Still, the general attitude usally attributed to aliens, i.e. viewing humans as little more than animals, seems pretty consistent with human beings own attitudes towards their distant ancestors.
So if you consider the orginal statement that myths such as changelings are based on deformed humans, you're now saying that the changeling myth is based on humans who were grossly and horribly disfigured to look like... humans? ARGHH!!
My objection stands that even if DNA is a universal genetic code, there are problems.
Panspermia is an interesting hypothesis, and the process of testing it will reveal a lot about life and how it works. With an appropriate combination of raw materials and the right conditions, it's possible to make DNA and RNA. Whether those raw materials were present and whether those conditions held is an open question. If it holds true, then DNA could have developed on any planet moderately like earth.
But if that's true, a lot has happened in 3.5 billion years. To suggest that the particular skeleton common to all terrestrial vertebrates would evolve on other planets is unlikely, but if there is some advantage to that body plan, perhaps it would have happened by convergent evolution. But to suggest that the particular sutures in the skull are that adaptive is stretching it, and to suggest that the dominant "vertebrates" on other planets have 46 chromosomes is nigh impossible. The variation in chromosome numbers within mammals is huge, and is non-trivial within some genera.
So I argue that even if the greys are really DNA based, the chances of them having a genetic structure even close to humans is close enough to 0 that I'll ignore it.
I reject the time travel hypothesis as a massive violation of Occam's razor. I'm no physicist, but I've taken it as given that time travel was impossible, or at least impossible to survive. If I'm wrong, fine. But no need to invoke time travelling people from the future when perfectly good genetic defects will do.
I neglected to post a reference for my claim that humans and chimps can't hybridize, and I think I found what I was thinking of. I saw it in a Lary Gonick cartoon in some magazine way back when, but I think this reference is the original.
Sunny Luke and Ram S Verma, "Human (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) share similar ancestral centromeric alpha satellite DNA sequences but other fractions of heterochromatin differ considerably," American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 96(1). 1995. 63-71.
In particular, the abstract notes "Furthermore, cross-hybridization experiments using chromosomes of gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) suggest that the alphoid repeats of human and great apes are highly conserved, implying that these repeat families were present in their common ancestor. Nevertheless, the orangutan's chromosome 9 did not cross-hybridize with human probe."
So not Pan troglodytes, but close.
Yes, it was used in that box-office bomb, 'House II', as a plot device. ;)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Piltdown Man
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
the razor only works inside the current consensus. Plus, there's a fatal flaw in that idea: when used against theory, it requires judgement, and all it really can say is high probability/low probability. That judgement, obviously, may not be ready to accept the data.
/. readers accept it at some level. Superstrings are as far as normal reality as can be, yet you could replace the theory with one that has "large interstellar clowns holding balloons" and everyone would crack up, though it has the same relationship to everyday reality as superstrings.
For example, it really doesn't matter at all if the sun revolves around the earth or vice-versa. The latter just makes the calculations simpler, and gives you a useful model. This is a useful theory, which may as well be fact.
Classical physics is a useful theory, which may as well be fact until a certain scale is reached.
However, this theory (classical physics) and all other theories below it are only models, which are accurate to a degree (or not, depending).
Chaos theory, as reported by various popular books, shows that reality/systems can sometimes work in counterintuitive ways. Some things observed directly violate the razor principle, because they are -far- from the simplest explanation. Some of their models seem to be accurate.
So what?
So...just because something seems farfetched doesn't mean it's not accurate. Superstring theory is incredibly complex, yet
They mention both DNA tests and carbon dating.
Carbon dating, AFAIK, is remotely accurate only when you're talking at least on the order of thousands of years ago.
DNA, on the other hand, is not necessarily intact for that period of time, unless it's protected from exposure... at least that's the impression I've got.
So how old do they think it is?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Yes, but even between these two extremely similar branches of the evolutionary tree (if I remember first year biology correctly), there are big differences - for instance, part of a reptile's jaw bone became our middle-ear bones (malleus, stapes, incus???). So there you go!
... web page ... themselves admit the striking similarities between the human skull and the starchild skull. They discuss in detail the fact that many blood vessels and nerves follow the same path. They mention that the same bones are present. The tone suggests that the similarities FAR outweigh the differences.
As to the rest of your comment, I agree with you wholeheartedly!
The perpetrators of this
There can only be two potential conclusions based on this -
1) the starchild skull evolved on Earth. The likelyhood of a skull that evolved on a completely different planet (presumably with a completely different evolutionary tree) having such striking similarities with a human skull is extremely small!
2) the starchild skull isn't actually a real skull (ie it's a hoax of some kind). Considering that there's no independant testimonies claiming to have seen the skull, I would suggest that this is a significant possibility!
-Shane Stephens
Some human bodies have had deformed bones caused by disease. Isn't it quite possible this THING could just be a deformed human skull? It could very well be a hoax as well.
-PovRayMan
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
The 'changeling' story shows up quite frequently in myths and legend. The story usually involves a mother who gives birth to a deformed child, and insisting that the child could not possibly be hers, asserts that someone has stolen her baby and exchanged it for the deformed one.
Sometimes this story is extended to the family trying to get their child back from whoever they claim stole it. This probably derives from the fact that many severe genetic defects are autosomal dominant, and thus have a 50% chance of not passing the defect on to the next generation. Without an understanding of the underlying genetics, it is easy to see why ancient people who saw a deformed parent with a normal child might assume that the parent stole the child. In fact, Williams-Beuren "Elfin" syndrome shows exactly this type of inheritance, and is likely the source of the popular "elves steal babies" myth.
Another example is brain volume, which in a normal human is around 1400 cubic centimeters (cc). The Starchild's brain volume, contained inside a cranium the size of a smallish human's, is 1600 cc. How can this be possible?
% 20Stephen%20Jay/002-1147117-2205804
sort of reads like the essay Stephen J Gould wrote about debunking experiements earlier this century wrt race, intellegence and brain capacity.
Can 't remember which essay it was from. Instead check out his bibliography at amazon,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/Author=Gould%2C
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
actually, the most fun stuff is via a couple of jumps to the page of pye, where he whacks evolutionary theory. fun reading for those who aren't wedded to the canon, annoying for those who are.
if anything, his theories make the world a more interesting place, since there are only two canons in the area, and 2 cannons a war does not make (sorry).
If aliens on earth have evaded detection
(except by late-night radio talk show hosts
and their ilk) it must be because they value
their privacy.
I think we should respect that, and leave them alone.
If the *want* attention, a physics textbook
would convince me fast.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
F0 0F C7 C8
My point exactly.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
Check out the slashdot archives. There was an article this summer that reduced the amount of negative matter required to build a so-called "warp bubble" from the size of a neutron star to approximately one gram. Of course, how to produce this and implement the theory is an exercize for the reader...
While not "solved" - the theory looks sound, and (I believe) has been peer reviewed.
For your viewing pleasure:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/05/27/1215204.shtm l
The body of evidence on UFO's is really compelling when you start researching. And I don't mean the psycho abductees - although, who's to say they're lying - but claims from on duty police and military officials, and not just joe blows on the street.
The roswell case is the most facinating - and from what I've read - most notibly Stanton Friedman's book "Crash at Corona", and might I add, this is a nuclear physisist with some very impressive credentials, including research for the US Governement - has some excellent points and analysis based on governement paperwork, and is presented in a manner that leaves it up to you to decide what went down.
Very little isn't possible with sufficiently advanced technology. We're just beginning to understand the universe, and people sometimes forget just how _mind numbingly_ huge the universe is. I'm reminded of the torture in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where you get shown how insignifigant you are.. :) The infinity vortex or something.. but I digress.
Kudos...
..don't panic
" thrived until its death "
... since this evidence is so new "
" series of photographs taken in 1975
Sorry the whole thing reminds me of that bizarre Celestine Prophecy craze of a few years ago. I mean Starchild? Forbidden Places? Aztec Temples?
Llyod Pye's site has a plug for his book, some of his arguments seem annoyingly compelling although all his principles are unsubstantiated. (or unsubstantiable).
Anyway, desperate to refute something I came across the story of the planet Nibiru. Nibiru has an elliptic orbit of period 3500 years during which it is somewhere between Mars and Alpha Centauri. As with comets this planet would spend less than 1 year in the inner solar system. Apparantly the beings of this planet came to earth to mine gold to " repair their atmosphere. "
My question is, on a planet where nitrogen would exist as snow 99% of the time, who cares about atmospheres? Huh? Huh?
To contribute against the Starchild project, please send a donation to
G.P.O. Box 123456
Brisbane, Qld
:wq
An alien-human hybrid is certainly unlikely but not because of the reason you've given.
;o)
The "primordial soup" experiments proposed independently by Oparin and Haldane 70 years ago and conducted over the last 50 years by Miller, Ponnamperuma and many others did prove one thing. Just about any aqueous mixture of dissolved gases including Carbon and Nitrogen, energized by just about any energy source including heat, UV light or electrical discharge, will result in the chemicals that are employed as the building blocks of biochemistry on this planet.
Amino acids, sugars, lipids, purines and pyrimidines have all been synthesized under a wide range of conditions including those currently thought to have prevailed on this planet around the time the first life forms appeared.
When such a mixture is allowed to react for a longer period of time, peptides, polysaccharides, phospholipids, nucleotides and even nucleosides are formed. Under hospitable conditions which allow the concentration of the reactants, such as in the presence of the correct catalysts (quite prosaic substances such as clay will do) these have been encouraged in the lab to form short proteins, complex sugars, and even short ribonucleic and deoxyribonucleic acid chains.
It's quite possible that other simple organic molecules could be used to build persistent metabolising structures - and implement a genetic code thus enabling reproduction - but don't forget it took a very long time for the first lief to evolve. There would have been ample opportunity for other chemical systems to establish themselves. The fact that RNA and DNA alone have inherited the Earth with no known exceptions tends to suggest that it is by far the most efficient method. If there were any organisms based on another system they have perished without leaving any descendants. Presumably they were eaten by, or out-reproduced by, their nucleic acid counterparts.
Of course it's possible that on other planets the general nucleic acid structure may be the same but that different bases may be employed. However the same argument applies. What was to stop these alternative genetic alphabets appearing here? They probably did appear alongside the familiar one, but couldn't compete.
In any case the genetic alphabet on Earth is bigger than most people realise. Most high-school students know that the DNA code is written with the bases Guanine, Adenine, cytosine and Thymine, and RNA is written in the same code except that Thymine is replaced by Uracil (the other difference is that in DNA each moeity of the sugar phosphate backbone is missing an oxygen atom). This is, however, an oversimplification. There are other purines and pyrimidines present in the RNA and DNA found in living terrestrial organisms. Mostly these are formed by the addition of some small radical (eg by methylation). Any variations must be quite small because nucleic acid's stability is due entirely to the geometry of the molecule. If one of these bases is replaced by something else too different even in one small spot then the two strands of the helix will unravel spontaneously. It's been proposed that the variations that do exist are precisely for this purpose, eg. methylating a specific base in order to unwind the helix at that location, thus exposing a particular gene to polymerase and thereby "switching on" that gene.
To sum up: given that these chemicals are spontaneously produced under a wide range of simple conditions, even on laboratory timescales, and that no other analogous systems have survived on Earth over geological timescales, it's a good bet that if life evolves on other planets with a chemistry anywhere near similar to Earth's, it will employ RNA or DNA or something almost identical.
Of course, there's a world of difference even between a squid and a whale from the same planet. And eukaryotic chromosomes contain more than just DNA; the familiar blobby "X" shapes you see on photomicrographs are formed as the DNA helix winds in a very complex way around scaffold proteins called histones, and although DNA polymerases from any source ought to work, the enzymes and cell structures supporting mitotic and meiotic division are particular to the chromosomal structure itself.
Thus, on a chromosomal level, cellular reproductive machinery has a much larger number of elements than the genetic code, and a much less regular structure. Earth eukaryotes are far far less likely to be similar to their extraterrestrial analogues on this level. Certainly any differences would make even a single hybrid cell unviable (it wouldn't be able to undergo division).
Even if this weren't so, and an alien species had evolved a perfectly human-compatible chromosome structure, there is the matter of the precise number and size of the chromosomes. If they didn't match up exactly a hybrid might still be created artificially. But even then, the resulting organism would have two completely independent sets of metabolic pathways present. The opportunities for these complex biochemical systems to interfere with each other would be numerous to say the least. It's highly likely that a significant proportion of these interactions would be deleterious.
So, even though aliens are likely to have DNA, there will be no alien-terrestrial hybrids. Sorry Mr Spock (and Mr Worf), but you can't exist.
PS. I apologise for the length of this posting but there's been a lot of groundless speculation and it seemed a good idea to inject some relevant information into the debate. Congratulations to the few who had the patience to read this far. I bet those of you who did are all biochem geeks anyway
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Actually, it's Paget's disease rather than Piaget's. I must have read the same article and the fact that I haven't been able to remember the name of the condition has been bugging me for years. Thanks a lot for reminding me.
"But what about Squids / Octopi / Starfish / other non bilaterally symmetric creatures? "
;-)
;-)
They aren't?? hmm.. that just depends on how you cut them I guess..
For a Squid, cut him down from the middle the tail, down through the body, leave 6 tentacles on each side, cutting right though that little protruding thingy ( OK Im no marine biologist ) ta da you have 2 symmetric sides
Same deal with Octopi. just leave 4 tentacles.
And ok, now, what says you can't just cut one of those 5 legs of a starfish in half, when you cut it, and ta da, 2 even sides..
Sorry just think about your examples a little better
I did say that I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be little more than a deformity, didn't I? I thought so.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Not that I'm compelled to believe any of the UFO stuff -- nothing's made me really think about it being possible, yet -- but there is a major flaw in your argument. Specifically, the implication that, given all other stages of development were equal, technological development would go at the same pace as it did on Earth. It's entirely conceivable that a sentient people were first born a thousand years after us, but hit the high technology jackpot three thousand years before us. Even further, one of the fundamental aspects of your (I would hope) troll is your determination of so-called "alien technology" being only a few hundred years ahead of us. I fail to see how technological advancement can be gauged from what little "eyewitness" reports have told. And, further, how to gauge the technological advancement of a separate, alien species which, though it would have to evolve in a very similar setting as the setting in which we evolved, is ultimately a different environment that has been historically populated by different people. It's impossible, based upon all of the variables for someone to state that this IS or ISN'T possible.
Which is also the fundamental reason for "UFOlogy" not being taken seriously from a scientific standpoint. What aspects of it are not sensationalism, are not provable or disprovable by scientific means. It's one part untestable, two parts sensationalist propaganda. The latter parts take the first part as a given, and trumpet it as proof of some sort. Well, I can't, by science alone, prove that someone won't give you four hundred and fifty billion dollars exactly 6 seconds after you've read this. But what does that mean? Certainly not that it's going to happen. Just that there exists some chance of it, which, in my estimation, is so close to zero, it may as well be zero. And until there exists some truly compelling evidence that makes me believe otherwise, I will continue to dismiss that possibility.
This "alien/human hybrid" skull is certainly not the evidence that will make me start believing in "visitors." A cursory examination tells me its the skull of a tragically, and seriously deformed human being. If the DNA tests show something spetacular, then we can talk about it being an alien.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
You can date wood samples, accurately to the year and the season, by counting the rings. By overlaying the rings from different samples from different trees (different trees in the same area face the same varations in climate, which shows up in the ring patters). These records often go back several tousands of years. If the skull is older than that, it surely is an interesting find, but not for reasons of extraterrestrial origin.
:-)
By including other organic samples from the finding site, like (fossil) pollen, pupae etc, that are often only found a few weeks in a year, You CAN sometimes date an ancient organic sample accurately to within a few weeks.
This is not the only method of determining the C12/14 ratio in a given period, but just one example I could think of without getting my books.
There is no need to 'estimate' the half-life of carbon-14. Radioactive decay can be measured extremely accurately, and stays constant over time. The margin of error in measuring the C-14 content is in the chemical analysis, not in the method. By increasing the size of the sample, the accuracy can be improved a lot. The usfulness of this ends, when you've ground up and analysed the entire skull
-----
didn't you mean every 18 months profit doubles? or is it profit * speed * size = constant?
Isn't a troll a special kind of flamebait intended to expose posters who are dumb enough to respond? Something like 'It is common knowledge that heavy objects fall faster than light objects'
If this is a troll, then it's a moderator troll.
A cursory examination tells me its the skull of a tragically, and seriously deformed human being."
Exactly.
I have seen dozens of skulls like this in med school textbooks. C'mon people- put your thinking caps on.
One more thing- as I get back to the /. homepage, I see this stupid ass piece associated with the visage of Einstein. PT Barnum or Rupert Murdoch would be more appropriate.
What? It looks as if you disagree with something I agree with? You troll!
Sorry, but anyone who sights the Fox "Alien Autopsy" hoax (which even FOX admitted was a hoax lasty year) as support for their position has pretty much blown their credibility. More info on which can be found at: http://www.fxsupply.com/features/autopsy.html - Lawrence Person
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I'm a med student who is believe it or not, just completing a study of the (human) skull. Granted, I don't know many pathological cases, but this skull does seem to have everything our's do. It could be just hydrocephalus in a child. And they're taking money for this?!
Well, since I wear contacts, I guess I'm protected from Alien STD's.
and don't forget it you non humarn you!
Wouldn't we first have to check to see how prevelant life is in the Universe before taking this as conclusive? What if we explored a large portion of the Universe and found that only this star system and a few near-by ones had life. And all of those life forms had DNA? Then we'd have to be suspicious of cross contamination.
If only the supreme being had left us some sort of message. Like that (rather dumb) episode of ST:TNG.
Umh, first thing I thought about is, has anyone ever seen that PBS special (don't know what it's called...might have been Discovery Channel...) Anyhow, it's old. It was about the evolution of Dinosaurs...and it had a composite (supposedly a model of what creature they might have evloved into. Now, as I say, it was an obvious composite of a human and dinosaur, but this could be one possibility.
:)
The other possibility is that the skull is that of an extinct species (maybe even part of our own evolution).
Then of course, the most plausable explanation I am lead to belive is that it is really just some odd human deformity that belongs at Ripley's
It's probably some ancient person who drank too much beer and got some weird Dna defect as a a result.
www.rael.org claims to be the worlds largest UFO religion... (granted a small following). This is religion embracing science and technology and makes alot of good points... but this is the really weird part.... they believe that a UFO race geneticly enginered humans. Stateing that humans are not reaching a time when we will be able to create out own life from DNA. It's really wacked but an interesting read.. check it out!
This story was heard recently on the Art Bell radio show...his main objective is to GET MONEY,in his case advertisers to stay on the air.Is it a co-incidence that the only help they ask for is to SEND MONEY at the end of the article?they are not asking for additional researchers,or contributions of anything but money.The whole thing amounts to a sales pitch,to get you to send money to help with the identification of the alien skull..and,as evidenced by the pictures,is it a co-incidence that the mandibular area is missing as well as the lower jaw?
There are other, less stable radioactive isotopes to use for dating...
And they believe specficly that life on earth was geneticly enginered by a UFO race. Take a look at this site... you may find it outragious but you may also shit your pants! :) www.rael.org
(forgot my password *doh!*) There is one way to prove extraterrestrial origin. All terrestrial animals have at least a 5% similarity of DNA. If this skull has 0%, it's a likely guess it's not from Earth. Of course there are many other theories out there. It could be a malformed human. It could be a new primate species It could be an Alien (but without signourney weaver, who cares?) It could be a human from the future sent back to breed with modern humans in an attempt to correct the genetic flaws that our scientists have introduced into our system (quite likely, considering how many bugs Windows has) It could be Jimmy Hoffa! It could be any of these things. Downix, the idiot who forgot his password and is to lasy to go look it up for one measly post
Ok all you alien-loving, X-Files watching, star gazing, conspiracy theorising folk out there, time to settle this once and for all! =)
Hmm, lemme see here... life on other planets. Ok, sure, I'll give you that one. I mean, look at the odds - a universe this big with only us in it? That's about as absurd as M$ innovating something (sorry, had to throw that one in). But ah, those very same odds sorta make the possibility of us running into aliens drop to null.
Let me explain. All the aliens we hear about on TV and from all those wackos out there seem to be just a little ways ahead of us technologically. Oh no, not so far as we couldn't eventually understand them, only far enough as to be several hundred years ahead of us. Does anyone see the problem with this? I should hope so! Lets say there are two planets out there with life on them. By some bizarre circumstance it turns out that sentience isn't an evolutionary fluke, and it also turns out that all advanced life-forms look REALLY human-like. No, really, it's in the fundamental structure of the universe. Everyone has to look like us. Or maybe we look like them. Or maybe we all came from one species that went around screwing small furry animals or something. Life is Star Trek. But I digress. Let's say human-like societies evolve on both of these planets. Now, here's one for ya: what is the chance that similar societies evolve on BOTH of these planets within a FEW HUNDRED YEARS OF EACH OTHER??? That's right: ZERO!!! The entire universe didn't appear all at once, ya know. Planets are dying and being born AS WE SPEAK. Lets say there's some planet out there and little micro-organisms are starting to evolve on it. By they time we get to that planet, it maybe could evolve some monkeys, who knows. Or maybe it'll still be full of goo. The point is, the chance of the timing of any two planets being SO SIMILAR as to have them both yield sentient beings within a few hundred years of each other is next to NONE. Again, that's assuming that sentience is a NATURAL by-product of evolution, something which we have NO proof of. Last time I checked, the dinosaurs didn't evolve any walkin-talking lizard people. And they were here for HOW LONG??? (Although there is a Voyager episode that begs to differ, from what I recall. Did anyone else want to rip their hair out when they were "evolving" that dinosaur in the holodeck??? "Computer, what will this lizard look like in 10,000 years?" Up pops a picture of a guy in a dinosaur costume. Voyager SUCKS! UGH!!!) And in case you didn't notice, if it wasn't for that big 'ol rock hittin' the Earth, WE AS A SPECIES WOULDN'T BE HERE!!! Hmm, funny that. Maybe the dinosaurs on the alien planet got wiped out at the same time. Because you KNOW they had to have dinosaurs... ALL planets go through their "dinosaur phase," it's common knowledge. No, really.
Ok, I think I'm done, just one final point. Does anyone else remember the episode of Babylon 5 where (pardon my horrid spelling, my apologies to the B5 fans out there) G'Kar tried to tell whoever it was that we don't really have the capacity to comprehend aliens way ahead of us technologically? It went something like this: two ants on a tree/bush/whatever. One ant walks onto a flower, and then a human/alien picks the flower, smells it, and puts it back (something like that). Then the first ant asks the one who was on the flower "What was that?!?!" (the way that phrase was said was really cool...) How can the ant possibly explain it? IT CAN'T! Why do I retell this story here? Simple: if there ARE aliens out there, they are either WAY ahead of us or WAY behind us in regards to technology. If they're way behind us, they ain't gonna be visitin' any time soon. If they're way ahead of us, the chances of us being important to them are about the same as a particular ant colony being important to us: NONE. For all we know, they could blow Earth out of the stars tomorrow to make room for their new Intergalactic T1 Line. And if we ever DID run into them, what the heck makes you think we would or even could possibly understand them? What makes you think they'd look similar to us in any way? Think about it people.
So ya wanna know why claims made by people like this are dismissed so easily? Well that's why. One of the various reasons, anyway. Sorry to shatter the illusions of any alien worshipers or X-Files nuts out there. If you want an interesting read on the whole topic, go get yourself a copy of "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke - do everyone a favor fill your brain with something USEFUL for once. Remember: the more open a person's mind is, the more convenient a place it is for someone else to put their TRASH! Have a nice day!
Xhornet the Ur-Blissful
(Go ahead and flame me, I dare ya!)
[Could someone please moderate this up so the people with short attention spans and slow connections get a chance to read it?]
... Citizens of the Universe, Recording Angels. We have returned to claim the Pyramids. Partying on the Mothership. I am the Mothership Connection.
The Truth is Out There!
"Unfortunaty when the mothership does land, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins will be the only ones aboard."
Can't get my password,
Bigz
An extra-terrestrial origin of life is not entirely implausible (although the way they espouse it is). If life evolved first on Mars or elsewhere, bacteria might have hitched a ride to Earth on a meteorite. If we ever find life on Mars this will be one of the more interesting questions to try to answer. Of course it could have happened the other way or not at all.
That is not to say that intelligent manipulation of life on earth is impossible, just that we have no good evidence of it. It is somewhat interesting to imagine acts of God documented in the Bible in terms of alien manipulation into human affairs, particularily the Old Testament. Burning bush, Jacob's ladder etc. In some ways it is more appealing than a spiritual view, since it doesn't require the violation of any laws of physics. But it is obviously less spiritually satisfying, or terrifying, or unnecessary explanation, depending on tyour point of view.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
There have been serveral "indian" tribes in the world that changed the shape of the human head(starting at birth), because they thought it looked better.
It's not wierder than the people that stretches the necks, because they think it looks better.
Or the people in china that wraps the feet of the female children to keep the them small as the bodies grow.
All of these things might seam freaking wierd and cruel, but who are we to say so...
"Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." - Karl Marx
No! Darth Vader was a Nubian! But in the end he had to bow down to that white supremacist Luke Skywalker.
Snoochy boochies to you all,
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
i guess you fell for it..
This thing is claimed to be a human-alien hybrid, right? So that means that more than 99% of the DNA is going to match anyway even if it is genuine - if that much of the DNA is readable.
:v)
Vik
I suppose there would be a problem if it still have some juicy brains in it...
Dennet and Hofstadter have put together another book: Mind's I. it is a lot of various stories (some works of art, some thought experiments etc.) with comments, all dealing with consciousness.
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
"what if DNA is some sort of universal structure that exists in all living things, including aliens?"
And what if DNA is just something incidentally developed here on Earth. Nothing says that all life MUST use DNA. DNA just describes a bunch of enzymes. We could be just one of the myriad ways life could be constructed. Remember, "life" is little more than automated reproduction. Biological viruses only barely skirt the definition of life (not sure why). If, for example, we find some strange gaseous phenomenon out in space which develops and replicates itself, then it would not be invalid to call it "life". Let's not limit the way we think about life to the way biological creatures are constructed on earth.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
the razor only works inside the current consensus.
No, that is not the case. There is nothing to stop one from applying such a principle to any theory, whether it is accepted by concensus or not.
Plus, there's a fatal flaw in that idea: when used against theory, it requires judgement, andOccum's razor is always applied to theory - that's the whole point!!
For example, it really doesn't matter at all if the sun revolves around the earth or vice-versa. The latter just makes the calculationsYes, it does matter, because (even classically) you get the wrong answer if you assume anything other than the correct viewpoint : that the two body system orbits around its centre of gravity!
Classical physics is a useful theory, which may as well be fact until a certain scale is reached.You are confusing theory and fact. No theory is ever "fact" - that's the whole point of occums razor - you can have two theory's with exactly the same predictive power (ie: in the sense that you use the term they are both "fact") yet they may rely on different assumptions (philosopical or otherwise). In this case, you take the minimal theory which fits the facts.
So...just because something seems farfetched doesn't mean it's not accurate. Superstring theory is incredibly complex, yetHuh? I'm a particle physicist, and as a /. reader, I'd like to know why you think I accept superstring theory *at any level*.
as normal reality as can be, yet you could replace the theory with one that has "large interstellar clowns holding balloons" and
I know the silliness was intentional, but this is a perfect example of what Occam's razor is about. Take the simple explaination - it's almost always right. And despite the implication that string theory is very esoteric - which I admit, it is! - the fundamental point about real science is that it is based on robust, and simple foundations. All the great ideas in the history of science seem so obvious afterwards because of their elegence and simplicity. UFOs, and aliens, and ftl fail Occam's so spectacularly that most scientists choose to ignore these debates.
- A password forgetting A.C.
If you want to find explanations of biblical events by alien visitation I suggest you read Zecharia Sitchin's Earth Chronicles.
Biologists are finding every day, more and more organisms living in environments we had no clue things could live in before. If we find just one speck, just one microbe, just one bacteria, anywhere that blows the whole thing open. If we find just one thing, it will be inevitable that extraterrestrial life either has evolved intelligence before, is intelligent now, or will be intelligent in the future. Io is a big sphere of ice, but observations show cracks which could possibly be formed by thawed underwater. If this is so, this would be a perfect candidate for life. Venus has a surface temperature over the boiling point of water. Life could still exist on it.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
What has been done to the skull before the pics? They look too shinny, and I'd bet that they are just ray-traced pics!
I thought I read somewhere that the crystal skulls turned out to be a hoax. They were apparently made using modern carving techniques.
Sorry I don't have any links handy.
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
A teenage girl, sneaks out of the house, goes cave exploring all on her own, and finds a hybrid human/alien skull. Hmmmm. Now, how did she hide this little gem. I can't even go home once a year without my mother going "Are you still smoking young man, I should make you eat those cigarettes..." Now, imagine what my mom would say if she suspected me with a alien/human hybrid skull hidden under my bed...Hmmmm
All I can say about this is that it sounds like another Fox special. Hopefully they'll find somebody better than Johnathan Frakes to host this turkey...
And "Star Child Foundation"?? Is that any relation to Starman?
No, I do not mean the song by David Bowie. I speak of a far more dangerous man....
~Jason "Intelligent life out there" Maggard
P.S. First Post!!
Well, that's a rather flammable post.
/traceable/ objects on radar which make precise >90 degree turns at over Mach 3...that is not usual...weather balloons also don't do that. With the history of government cover-ups, etc., it is not hard to believe that governments know more than they are telling the public (search for MAJIC, MAJESTIC, Blue Book). Something is uncanny...if it's not aliens, then it's something else equally weird.
;)
In fact there is a wealth of documentation on governments' and military responses to strange phenomenon. It might not be aliens per say...but it's weird sh*t for sure. E.g. funky
And remember, MS is not the only one who knows how to use FUD. Big brother has been doing it for decades
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Bah... I was hoping for a nice picture to print out and use as a halloween mask next year.
We must investigate every such claim as if it's a hoax, but still keep an open mind because even if only 1 out of every 100,000 claims is legitimate, that's something that we must not allow ignorance to prevent us from discovering.
I've seen UFOs, I've known abductees (or at least people who believe that they're abductees), I don't know what is real and what isn't but I DO know that anything is possible.
If we were to encounter earth as as was 100 years ago, those people would be amazed at how advanced we are. Just as we are now amazed at the advancement of civilizations which could be 1000 years more advanced than we are.
In the past 100 years, we've learned to fly, we've learned to leave the ocnfines of our planet, we've learned to harness the power of the atom, we've learned that it's possible to bend time and space, 1oo years from now what will be possible? 1000 years?
These skulls look like a case of down's syndrome or neurofibromatosis(sp?), BUT anything is possible, no?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
They could, at the very least, have put a picture of the skull on their webpage...
Sheeesh...
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
http://skepdic.com/crystalskull.html
Marko Karppinen
It seems to me that these creatures, whatever they may be, are a bit too humanoid to come from some distant planet/star/galaxy/whatever. Another thing, why would an alien culture leave only two embassadors with only one culture on our planet, alone and without the ability to contact their own people? And why would another alien culture come all the way to our planet to kill the two other beings and then just leave?
Any culture advanced enough to reach Earth would spend a bit more time on it, and we would most likely still be in contact with them. Even the most barbaric of cultures would spend a bit more time at least studying a sentient culture they came in contact with. Sentient beings like us and these two supposed alien cultures are too few and far between.
Crunchy Peanut Butter. Deformed Skull... Coincidence?
"...no need to invoke time travelling people from the future when perfectly good genetic defects will do"
Can I quote this?
"First post"...
For 18.95 you too can have your own set of alien skull bongo drums... Yes these rare collectibles will wow your friends and baffle the scientists. Each set is made from 4, count em 4 genuine alien skulls, bound with genuine alien sinew.. but wait there's more... order now and you'll recieve a bucket of crunchy peanutbutter and Don Cherry's latest Rock em Sockem video.. What more do you need for a quiet night at home? Order now! --The rule of steel-- No just another snake god.. Gevir
Sure it was on purpose :o) and why were you moderated down?????
Sigged!
*sigh*
.1% chance for any given report to be true, then the chances are 99.8% that one or more of them are true in a year (given 6000 sightings). It doesn't take a 30 page dissertation to work it out.
This is classic "wooly thinking". First of all, where do you get this 99.9% figure? I say that 100% of all UFO sightings are fakes, crocks, and misidentified. And until a UFO comes down in the middle of Times Square, squashes a couple of SUVs, and purple haired maidens with six breasts emerge and asked to be taken to our leader, you can't prove that I am not correct.
I find it amazing that people can be so far separated from common sense and the principle of Occam's Razor that they can't see through crap like this. We have an anectdotal story about some young anonymous Mexican girl recovering a skull, at some unspecified location and time in the past. We have assertions (but curiously no pictures) that the skull shows bizarre deformities. We have assertions from that it has been viewed by a number of "experts", who of course couldn't "risk the ridicule of their scientific peers".
Uh huh.
Okay, so far it isn't so bad. But what really gets me is the fanciful leap into explanations. It "must" be a Gray, or a Gray-human hybrid. Uh huh. Why? Are their other possibilities. Say, well, FRAUD for one? Given that no proof that Grays exist, isn't it just a teensy bit premature to assign a skeleton to their particular family tree? Then we get into this crap about DNA testing. As several other posters noted, there is little reason to believe that DNA has any particular magical properties that make it the only way (or the most likely way, or even a way that has occurred more than once) for life to develop in the universe. Since no copy of Gray DNA has ever been recovered, it seems hard to know how DNA testing would ever result in an appropriate classification.
This is bunkery of the highest order. It tries to take on the trappings of science, but it is just a particularly odd form of creationism, with all its attendant perils.
By the way, if there is a
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
Sex with eyeballs? Are you related to those weird humanoids that appeared in Aeon Flux?
As also stated earlier,
/. out of ... mercy? or is it just that same emotion that makes people stop on the side of the road to watch car crashes?
this means that either way the results come in, we will have made history. It will just
be a matter of how much history.
Perhaps the history of pages that were so stupid they managed to make it onto
Can your IM do this?
Reading the call for donations to pay for the DNA testing at the end of that article, you have to know this is a scam.
I can't help but thinking what I would do if I found such a skull. I think the first thing I would do is contact that rich "friend of the family" to pay for the testing... why solicit the general public?
Please.
Yeah I know, impregnating a chimp is nigh on impossible. Just how are you supposed to get the chimp to stay put long enough anyway?
I read the first few lines, then skipped to the end. Anyone else notice that they are basically just asking for money to "fund further tests" which are obvious crap. Carbon dating doesnt work on under 1000's of years (to the best of my knowledge, anyway!)
Did I mention that I am testing my own... err... alien femur ? I cant quite a afford the er... carbon spectral thermograph tests, so please send money to my account:
Commonwealth Bank Of Australia, acc 06440410011297
Come on, people, cant we recognise obvious scams ?
how long has the earth been around? for billions of years. how long has Homo sapiens been around? for only a few million years. how long ago did we enter the industrial era? only about a hundred years ago. how long ago did we first get into space? about half a century ago.
:)
there are probably millions of planets out there that have the potential of developing life. and even substracting all the Mars and Venus-like planets where life exists for a very short time and then becomes completely extinct, you're probably still left with a few million where long-term life comes into being. and there you have the potential for intelligent life forms.
compare the age of the earth and the age of mankind. in all probability, any intelligent life forms that are out there at this moment are millions, if not billions of years ahaid of us. sure, science now can't find a way to travel faster than light, but our science is only a few hundred years old. add a few million years, and I'm sure you can find a way
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Actually, I remember hearing an anthropology prof state something along the lines of it being unknown whether a chimp and human could successfully mate, but perhaps possible because we're so closely related. I don't think anyone's tried though. I'd like to hear of any evidence one way or another.
;-P
Define "successful mating."
Also:
1. Humans and chimps have different numbers of chromosomes.
2. There are some significant differences between human and chimp pelvises, which would make a Caesarean absolutely necessary.
3. Humans and chimps have rather differently shaped pink bits.
4. Doesn't it seem rather likely that it's already been tried at least a few times? (In human history.)
MCSEs are the stunted children of an overbearing parent; they should be pitied, not hated.
I have to question this argument because our knowledge of DNA is sketchy at best. Yes, we know how it works, and what it does, but the Human Genome Project still hasn't documented *everything*. I may be talking out of my ass,
(genetics isn't one of my strong suits) and I'm not saying that Grey/Human DNA mixes are posible, but I'm not willing to dismiss the posibility outright.
Species on this planet that can interbreed are very closely related. Typically, they will have diverged in the last few million years. For us to be able to interbreed with aliens means that they evolved here are aren't alien at all. Unfortunately there's no evidence of a previous technologically advanced civilization on this planet.
Regarding the possibility of chimp/human hybrids mentioned earlier. I believe that chimps and humans have different numbers of chromosomes. That would likely make it impossible for them to interbreed. It's not how similar our DNA are, it's that it's organized differently.
It's just amazing how much junk science surrounds UFOlogy.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I think I need a smoke.
Come on. Hand sticking out of the dirt wrapped around an arm of the human (now a 45 year old man)? The plot thickens....hmm. Only way to save the world is to bury this alien and then lay on top of him so he can't get away. Arghh, he's reaching up. I'll just lay here till I die if I have to. Bye cruel world. ohahhh.....
... Citizens of the Universe, Recording Angels. We have returned to claim the Pyramids. Partying on the Mothership. I am the Mothership Connection.
The Truth is Out There!
"Unfortunaty when the mothership does land, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins will be the only ones aboard."
For the record,
Bigz
I can't verify your claims with the amount of data you have; that's understandable, because you don't always have a way to produce proof and even if you did, you might not have it with you when this crash occurs. I can't reproduce your results; that's understandable, because this is not a regular event that you observed, and it's impossible to exactly replicate the circumstances under which it happened.
So there's not much science to be done. You can't use the scientific method to prove that the crash happened, and I can't use the scientific method to prove that it didn't. So why waste time over it?
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
With most of the fixed costs of the DNA testing being covered by a group of benefactors, we are left with funding the remainder of the so-called "peripheral" testing. This will consist of the Carbon 14 dating to age the Starchild; the neutron spectroscopy to determine the chemistry and makeup of its bone; an endocranial study to determine the kind of brain it had; and perhaps the most eagerly awaited by everyone, a full facial reconstruction done as a clay model by a qualified forensic sculptor.
These costs could run as high as $10,000 if we get a Rolls-Royce reconstruction done (using a $3,000 acrylic stereolithographic copy as the core), but we will go with what we have when the time comes to pay for it. What we get will be dictated by what we can afford, so anyone who might care to help us over the last few hurdles can do so in either of the following ways. Looks like its just a cheap way to get some $$, I could do somthing similar, I'd bet. They don't even have any pics!
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
They are here
Sigged!
caves were a big part of south american mythology ever since the pre-classics. they were considered the entrance into the underworld and from where people emerged. also cranial deformation was not uncommon in mesoamerica, as well as other parts of the world for that matter. many artifacts have been found showing cranial deformation in the region, many anthropologists believe that the native people of the area found the deformation to be a sign of beauty. this was often a feature of the upperclass.
The point? The cranium looked mostly like the picture on www.starchildproject.com, except for the fact that the eye balls' orbit looked different, but it makes sense to assume that the disease could evolve as shown on the website.
What fascinates me the most about conspiracy theorist is the fact that there's ALWAYS simpler, less far fetched, less absurd ways to explain the 'weird' events, but they always choose the craziest explanation. An ET ... yeah right.
Check the main page
:)
http://www.starchildproject.com/
Whether they're authentic or not is an entirely different issue
That's the name of the anomaly I'm talking about. Also it could just be hydrocephaly, a common anomaly (poet Baudelaire suffered from it) where liquid accumulates inside the skull from early childood, causing the skull (soft at birth) to grow. It's now cured by ... drilling a hole!
Why is it that only masters of flakiness like Lloyd Pye and Stan Friedman ever come across UFO artifacts and all sorts of proof fit for the Fox network??
Probably because when most people find some interesting crap they don't cry "UFO" without thinking which suddenly propels them into the well-paying hype machine.
Their theory is based on little more than modern UFO lore mixed in with a kind of Scientologist cosmology. I'm sure whatever results they get back with quickly be assimilated into a new UFO theory, cause, hey its real! Nothing like pseudo-science to keep you from disappointment.
"Unfortunaty when the mothership does land, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins will be the only ones aboard."
All in all I'd say that the article was well written, and didn't really have that Erik Von Danikken (sp?) "we'll come up with any explanation regardless of how unreallistic to explain our theory", since they are willing to admit it might be a human deformity.
Wasn't there one option missing within their explanation of what the DNA results might return? They said the DNA testing will either reveal that the skull is "entirely human", or "not entirely human". Doesn't the option exist that the DNA might reveal it's not human at all? (however unlikely that may seem?)
Or would the DNA experts pass unidentifiable DNA off as corrupted human DNA that seems to be untestable?
I am a man of science but must admit that these things interest me greatly. And since I do suspect there is other intelligent life in the universe it is only a matter of time before we discover sufficiently compelling evidence to demonstrate this.
"For everything there is a first time."
And although that good fortune was not in the Mets corner in the NLCS, it someday will be in our search for extra-terrestrial life. I only hope that I am alive to witness it.
Ignore Alien Orders
This comment was not intended to be an insult to those who believe in this.
:-)
In case the humor is lost on you, I was reffering to them examining the human/alien/hoax/not_alien_just_bashed in/insert_favorite_adjective_here head. So the joke was that they were examining the person/alien/etc.'s head when they should have been examining their own
This does not fall under my definition of a "troll". I don't believe this report -- but I respect the beliefs of people who do.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
There are problems with this kind of inquiry: (1) if it's a deformity there's no way to convince believers of that; (2) if it's really an "alien" or "hybrid" (cough cough, ahem) then they aren't proceeding as scientists would (calling it the "Starchild Project" and otherwise stating their bias toward it being alien; (3) we have no way of finding other anthropological evidence to back up any claim of this kind; and (4) we have too many absolute believers and also too many absolute skeptics--we need some moderates who will look for whatever the truth might be. We have many more questions than answers here.
But still. I admit that more than occasionally I get the feeling that we are just pawns in a larger game, or that we are lab monkeys in some massive lab. Doesn't anyone else think that, too?
One extreme alternative is that there is another line of primates as represented by this skull who are kind of a more advanced human being. I found it disappointing that the web site only compares the skull to cro-magnons (modern humans), and not other primates.
I am not a lawyer.
That's what I am waiting for next to appear at this site... But in all seriousness, this looks like an oppertunity for a "close shave" by Occum's razor, and start with the more obvious explanations; a natural (or post birth) deformity or a hoax....
(And if you want some more humor(?), look at Jizmak's history/karma. :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
I've been reading /. for quite some time, since waaay before it was cool. To hear those stuffy Mxsptlars, you'd think they invented /. Galactic sheep dung is what they are, the lot of them...
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Can you point to any solid information to support your statement?
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
You will terminate this discussion immediately or suffer the consequences, feeble human.
I wish I could recall the guy's name who ran this experiment, but I can't. This was quite a while back though. Asimov wrote up a good brief on it if I recall correctly ...
... here's the part i seem to remember but am not sure sbout ... among them were some lower to medium level DNA building blocks.
...
Anyway, some people jammed a bunch of inorganic junk into a tube and let it cook for a while. (they were trying to simulate primordial "soup") Nothing significant came out of it so they added a device that made electric arcs. They were suddenly creating all sorts of interesting compounds and
Seems as if those types of compounds form so easily that DNA could be a bit more universal than you suggest.
food for thought anyway. If I weren't so darn lazy I would go look it up on the web I guess
dv
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Well, at least I believe there is no malice in this "project".
I took the time to read the biographies of the people behind this project
Mark Bean and Lloyd Pye.
They seem to be people genuinely interested in this kind of stuff. I particuarly appreciated this page where Mr. Pye describes some discrepancies between micro-and-macroevolution. Very interesting reading.
Let me say that I don't really believe that humans are descending from aliens, but I do find some problems with Darwin's theory, too.
And I do believe the universe has many other intelligent creatures (well, if we count ourself intelligent creatures).
Sigged!
He said not much's on tonight, but I disagree.
There's a contest of D.C. celebrities on C-SPAN, to see which one is funniest. Pretty good so far, lots of Monica jokes, lots of people making fools of selves. Senator Lieberman will be on in a few... [he's sadly one of the pro-censorship guys on Capitol Hill]
Boo!
Please moderate me to a +5 so that I may have sex with as many Slashdotters as possible.
Did anyone else notice that the plates on the "alien" skull were in the same orientation to the human skull? If it were an alien, I would expect to see differences in the alignment/count of the joints.
Jason PollockParliament told us all about this years ago. The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein as well as Starchild were sent to recover the secret of the Funk from the Pyramids, against the wishes of Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk. We may now become One Nation Under A Groove!
Anyone find it interesting that even though the lower jaw is totally missing, they have to make the skull almond shaped. It looks from the pictures that the back of the skull is extended but the front is rather normal. I do question the fact that these artifacts could be hidden by this girl and transported back with her. I can see the next Fox special now (or maybe a Spam and Infomercial) "Alien grave robbing for fun and profit".
After all the handling these skulls are supposed to have gone through over the last 70 years, I can't imagine there's been any contamination or biological contamination... DNA testing will probably show that O.J. is innocent in this case too.
As some have already mentioned, this could be a scam since the site says they are looking for funding. It's also interesting that the registrar of starchildproject.com is also the registrar of davesrcspecialties.com which has been temporarily deactivated because he hasn't been paying his bills. Sounds like someone who needs money to me.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.
(Horatio was standing next to Hamlet at the time.)
Also, I'm going WAY out on a limb but hey... why not?
I read a story not too long ago from the BBC newssite about how early bacteria were found to have existed even as far back as the molten stage of earth's history. Could life have formed so fast that it existed so early OR did it get seeded here from somewhere else? These bacteria live in the cooling lava fields close to the vent and at the mid-atlantic rift deep below the sea in environments close to what you'd expect in hell. You know how hardy bacteria can be when they're in a less than savory environment - right? They form cysts and get real hardy! Scientists have found bacteria deep in the earth's crust and so high in the atmosphere that it could nearly be called space... is there some kind of bacterial life that can exist in the void of space? I wouldn't be surprised.
These are all interesting questions - questions that lead to other questions... If all life on earth is related... is it to much to suppose that life, if it exists elsewhere, is not modeled on the same DNA type structure with the same types of proteins etc... etc... etc...
Also, is it too much to assume that if there are technological civilizations elsewhere that they may have the tech to do gene splicing or genetic design. Maybe they helped to modify our own genetic structure the way we breed animals? Maybe they are members of a race of humans that had a civilization prior to some distant ice-age and fled the earth...
Who knows? But it sure gets you to thinkin'
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Maybe human deformity is caused by the aliens. Ever consider that? Perhaps trisomy is a method of communication -- chromosome 21, for example, has demonstrable radio transmission properties. Other genetic disorders could almost certainly be a part of this -- my grandpa's an alcoholic, and my cousin almost never leaves the house. Alien influence? Perhaps.
It's time to ask yourself what you truly believe.
As my gradnfather used to say in cases like that: 'let's see what the DNA test tells us...'
Take a look at a baby during the early stages of development and you will think yourself looking at an alien. Deformity is a likely candidate for this skull - if the skull is even real.
You can speculate all day but the forensic evidence is what will decide it. The features are human enough for me to lean toward deformed human.
I try to keep an open mind though...
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Thisis FUNNY. FUNNY. Not a "First Post" message. Or is someone parsing through these pages with a perl/python script and automoderating down posts with the word "First" in them.
Who's on First?
"Offtopic"
Third Base!
No... that doesn't work. Someone funnify this post.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
They're on the completely wrong track.
The "skull" represents the latest in safety helmets the inhabitants of Mars have designed to protect their fragile brains from the effects of Earth's music. They're planning an attack right now.
It should be an interesting war. I think this time, instead of exposing them to music, we should try network television. This should handily blind them, as well as turn them into slobbering consumers. Once they're all out shopping, all we have to do is saturate-bomb all the Wal-Marts and ShopKos. Problem solved.
nebulo
"We are your friends... " (BOOM)
If I'm not mistaken, the art of dermal reconstruction from lone skulls is very much, well, an art. The procedure is the application of new "skin" material to match established human norms. Forensics specialists get good at this by seeing more of the way flesh is normally distributed over a human face. The practice is possible because people have measured how deep the skin is for humans; no one has done this for alien beings from other planets. For this reason, I can't see how one could objectively reconstruct an unknown face and claim any sort of accuracy.
One could apply the tissue like for a human reconstruction, and then what we'd see is exactly what we imagine when we look at the pictures of the skulls. The head will be bulbous, also tapered (STR). Our brains do much of this work automatically.
--
Hmm.. "Blair Witch Project".. "Starchild Project".. coincidence?
What if those 2 friendly aliens were sent here to prevent the other evil aliens from conqouring us by teaching us and accelerating our evolution any were killed before they could complete it. It plays like an SG1 episode.
You have the US gov working with the evil grays to keep us in the dark and preventing all revolutionary sciences like cold fusion and zero point energy because with unlimited energy we would be a threat to them because of the marvelous devices we could build.
Or it could be galactic simcity...
My god man, drilling holes in his head is not the answer
(from star trek IV)
sorry that was offtopic
Need a Catering Connection
Okay, a few linkies, because after I was done laughing at the whole Cthulhu thing, I did a little searching. Disclaimer: I still think my Cthulhu theory is the correct one.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Heh.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
What I don't understand is how people challenging the scientific establishment are so quick to ignore major inconsistencies in their own work. This is particularily true in para-psychology. Admittedly, all scientific theories have flaws. Many of them even have known flaws. But if you are challenging a known flaw in an established theory, such as the inability of Newtonian gravitation to explain the retrograde motion of Mercury then the theory you espouse which corrects the error must have even fewer flaws, as does General Relativity.
In short, the harder you probe a new theory the more solid it must be, otherwise it deserves laughter. This does not suggest that one shouldn't have an open mind, but it means that a new idea or discovery needs to be exposed in the harshest possible light, not contrived demonstrations.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
but who knows, those inbreeding mountain dwarves have no pride. humphf. stupid doorknob kender
It's possible that the skull was a normal skull from a human or a sub-human primate like a chimp or a slashdot moderator, and was compressed over time into a alien-looking shape. Maybe its a rock that got washed away in a stream and just happens to look like an alien. Maybe its a hoax by aliens to put a fake head on Earth to see what we would do. Maybe there is no skull, they actually downloaded some clip art from a website and whipped out a high-powered cheezy graphics manipuator like... Power Goo and made it look like an alien skull.
My overall theory is that it is the skull of a Pokemon from long ago.
jason
Theyre obviously someone from the future come back to change history or something, once they invent time travel.
To me it looks remarkably like some poor kid whose skull bones fused at an early age.
a niofacial.html
o ver.gif
g
Since you have been deprived, I shall provide you with some links.
http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/paed-neuro/cr
This appears to be great link to discuss all types of deformities, however be prepared for long waits since it requires huge amounts of download time.
Check out this one, found on that page. scary
http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/paed-neuro/cl
I also found a site that apparently sells deformed skulls.
http://bme.freeq.com/skulls/deform.html
Check out the dental work for this guy.. (they claim that the deformation was actually caused.by abnormal amounts of fluids in the cranium, however I'm not sure how thats possible.)
http://bme.freeq.com/skulls/alien/img/ali003.jp
Sigh. These deformities are now making me sad wondering what suffering these people went through. What's shamefull is how people have capitalized on their deformities, however I guess if one can ignore the fact that these people were probably mocked an ridiculed all their life, then one can be just simply amazed.
I was more replying to the note that DNA couldn't/wouldn't occur in other life forms that live in a similar environment. You are of course way way correct on the evolution front ... :-)
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Not only is their an alien readingh /. but he has a karma of 32
That's a simple transliteration of 23 for those keeping score at home.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
This was very interesting, but it is not clear to me how alien skulls would be used for a Beowulf cluster.
Now there was a thespian. He wrote it into his will. Not every actor has the balls to play Yorick!
C-14 dating is only accurate before about 1600 AD, but it's not because the ratio hasn't changed enough. The reason is inherent in the method, which is based on the decay process of a radioactive isotope of carbon (C-14, naturally). The ratio of C-14 to C-12 occurs at the same level worldwide at any given time and is maintained within living organisms. After an organism's death, it ceases to exchange carbon with its environment and thus contains a given level of C-14. This C-14 gradually decays at a constant rate - the half-life is now estimated at 5730 years. Dating is accomplished by measuring the current level of C-14 in a sample in the present and comparing it to the amount it contained at death (known as a percentage of total carbon). Algebra gives us an age.
The problem is that while the decay rate is constant over long periods of time, it's extremely random over shorter spans. So there would be a large error in dates from a sample of, say, George Washington's hair because not enough C-14 has decayed to even out the hills and valleys. Also, there is inherent error assiciated with the process; most current radiocarbon dates have an error of +-80 or 100 years (depending on the measuring process and lab). This gives 67% probability of being within that range; for 95%, one must give an error of +-160 or 200 years. So a date of 1600 AD (+-160 for 95% probability) would be essentially useless. (Yeah, the body died between 1440 and 1760. Aren't you glad you paid thousands for that knowledge?)
Also, in specific response to this comment, old wood samples cannot be dated to within "a few weeks" unless you have extremely accurate records to work with, and then radiocarbon can tell you age to only within a few decades (my book says the most accurate [most expensive] methods can give +-20 years). And we now know that the ratio of C-14 to normal carbon in the atmosphere has varied widely over the past few thousand years. We can give calibrated dates by dating the inner rings of Very Old trees which have been absolutely dated. My book says that anything more than 9000 to 10000 years old cannot be accurately calibrated at this time.
So next time you see a radiocarbon date of 30,000 years ago, remember that it's in radiocarbon years, not calendar years, and the two should not be confused.
Way more than you wanted or needed to know, I'm sure.
No, the obvious answer is that this skull is from a Dero, one of the evil dwarves who live under the hollow earth.
-- $SIGNATURE
-- $SIGNATURE
There is a lot of evidence in the article to suggest a hoax or at least a scam, but after looking at the pictures at their site, I had to say "hmmmm."
There are many details that don't make sense in context to what I know:
The skull looks strikingly humanoid, especially the 'seams' (not the right word, but whatever) on the back of the skull where the pieces of skull grew together after birth. The mere presence of those 'seams' mean that the 'alien' was born in a mammilian way. Seems like life from another planet should be a little more original...
Humans can't breed with aliens. You don't believe me? Try having impregnating chimp - their genes are 99% identical to ours and it still doesn't work. Unless the 'aliens' engineered a special breed that could procreate with humans there is no way. This is a little stupid though, if they can create a compatible being, why not just clone humans in the lab? Why mess with humans at all if they have genetic (or equivalent) mastery?
While the article discussed genetic disorders as a cause of deformation, it did not explore other avenues of deformation: False Hellebore (Veratrum viride), when eaten by pregnant sheep causes the baby to be born with only one eye socket with both eyes in it! I was unable to find documentation on the web, but I read this (and saw a picture) doing research for a project of mine (don't ask:).
They don't seem to be getting much funding at all. It normally seems that fanatics jump all over this kind of thing. Why then, are they having trouble making money? A: they are really bad at communicating with sponsors OR B: the sponsors back out after getting some information not included in the webpage. It also seems strange that not one of the 'experts' they talked to wanted to have their name used anywhere.
Otherwise, i quite liked the site and the big hi-res pictures.
Hey! I think I just spotted an alien! Oh, wait, it's just my roommate, nevermind.
Pre-Cambrian -- yes. Stephen J. Gould wrote a nice book called "Wonderful Life" about the Pre-Cambrian explosion that presents a litany of amazingly weird fossils containing phylum which are long since extinct. Most probably died off from bad luck, the environment changing on them faster than they could biologically react, in an evolutionary sense, and BAM! -- they're gone; a view of extinction as a biological failure to change through self-replication to meet a new environmental stress -- there's a threshold for all self-replicating systems (no matter what the substrate) where evolution fails because the requisite change required for survival exceeds the time constraints of the organisms replication cycle. For example, an unfortunate volcanic eruption, meteor, or fast weather change -- no way to screw one's way out of that mess -- and it's toast for good. Some weird-ass shit in there; definitely worth a read.
Not that this explains "Little Grey Men" and their -- ahem -- invasive exams. Ouch!
Anyone remember that crystal skull that was found in some weird place like 15 years or more ago? Does anyone know what became of that? It was supposed to be way too old for the craftmenship involved...
Did anyone else notice that the pictures of the 'Gods of Cholua' don't match the 'Starchild'? The 'Gods' have large mandibles, sub-orbital sinuses and deep occiputs?
It seems strange to me that the page maintainers didn't notice these discrepancies. So what if the 'Gods' have enlarged crania? That could easily be explained by hydrocephalism. Besides, third hand accounts of local legends about why those skeletons are on display aren't exactly what I would take as evidence.
The 'Starchild' skull looks fairly compelling to me as evidence of either some _extreme_ deformations or "some other explanation". Being a good scientist, I'll not try to form opinions about why the skull (if it exists) looks the way it does without at least looking at it. If the evidence they gave obout the morphology of the skull is accurate, we're talking some major additions to the knowledge base.
Otherwise, it's just a nice way to spend part of a Saturday evening.
Regards,
Tony
Its funny. 6000+ UFO sightings a year. Science will never say anything is 100% pure. So lets see, 99.9% are fakes, croks, missidentified, etc. That leave at least 1 to be real right? (no, don't go all geek on me and give a 30+ page disseratition on the mathmatical probablilities on the .1% possiblilities of 6000 sightings, I am just making an observation)
Ok, suppose we do advocate the position that the "aliens" are real, or at least existed as another earth species that was more advanced but far less prevelant than humans.
How could we explain the similarity between the "aliens" and humans? Well, it is possible that the "aliens" picked/took interest in primates simply because of their similarity. Furthermore through their interaction, the "aliens" could have made humans more evolved/more similar to themselves.
It could also be true that in Mexico many years back, there was a ruling class that was so highly differentiated from the rest of society that they actually evolved along a slightly different path than the rest of the humans.
Because the Starchild skull shows so much deviation from the human norm, we can confidently expect DNA testing to prove it is one of three things: (1) a pure alien Gray type; (2) a Gray-human hybrid; or (3) the most bizarre human deformity since The Elephant Man.
How are they going to prove it is a pure alien Gray type thru DNA testing unless they already have some pure alien Gray type DNA? It seems to me at best DNA testing can only prove that it is either a bizarre human deformity or something not entirely human. DNA testing can't prove the existence of extraterrestrial origin since we are don't know what exactly extraterrestrial DNA is.
In fact later on in the section Where are We Now?, the authors write:
Without going into details that might draw unwarranted attention to the testing process, both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA testing will soon be getting underway. Results are expected to be in hand by the end of October or early November at the latest. What those results will say is that the DNA of the Starchild is either entirely human, or not entirely human. It will not say the Starchild was a Gray, or even a Gray-human hybrid, because there is nothing in current DNA data banks to establish such a connection. We can logically assume a result of "not entirely human" is evidence of extraterrestrial origin, but we will not be able to prove it.
The confidently expect DNA testing to prove becomes "logically assume" to be "evidence of extraterrestrial origin".
The name of the project, Starchild, and these statements seem to indicate a strong bias to theory of extraterrestrial origin before any real hard evidence was presented to them. The authors also seem to believe that "not enirely human" must mean alien/alien-hybrid. They don't seem to present any other possibilities for "not entirely human". Surely, there are other theories could be found for a "not entirely human" origin other than extraterrestrial origin. Extraterrestrial is the obvious explanation. But the authors don't mention really even the possibility of others. The do mention the Cholula gods. Who's to say that it isn't divine intervention? I certainly can't rule out anything, not on the information that has been presented so far.
Did you mean 'hacker' or 'cracker'?
Do you know the diffrence? I don't think you do.
You guys must have _something_ better to do than post to alien stories on a saturday night...
Okay, maybe not.
If I happen across an alien, I'll make sure to send it to Hermos's house with a sign on it that says: "First Post!"
They say they've got an alien skull. So what? I've got an alien skull, too.
:)
I just wear a big hat.
If we were all the same, all conforming to the established expert opinions, we would be far behind our current step of evolution. In fact the greatest leaps in history have been made by people who dared combat the stagnant dogmas of society. Dared search for another truths about our lives.
Quick evolution/development means you have to allow alot of flaws in the process. For example you need mutation of DNA to create a new unique branch not possible to make by just combining DNA-strings. But in nature, mutations usually represent a weakness, or disability for the individual. You seldom strike lucky, and most often the "good" genetic changes does not pass down to the next generation. However, sudden events or changes could mean a previously _perceived_ flaw, to become an advantage.
Understanding this, it becomes clear that everyone who cries "HOAX!" and ridicules alternative ways of thinking do an disservice to both themselves and others. For how can a closed mind learn things if it doesn't open up to all possibilities. It is just another way of limiting ourselves, and our capabilities.
It goes beyond that too. By judging others negatively, we show disrespect, ignorance and fear. It is completely natural and human, but we need to acknowledge our own feelings more. Learn why we do what we do, and break those mind patterns that are blocking the road ahead. Stop hiding everything under the carpet.
I don't know wether this skull is human or not. I just try to respect the views that everybody has on the matter, while doing a little reflection on my own. This last indisium are just one of many thousands indicating that alien has in fact visited us in the past (as "Gods"). Please, before judging and flaming now, read some books from Erich von Danicken or similar and get some background material. I'm not saying any of it are hard evidences for existance of aliens. What I'm saying is that they strongly indicate it, if you look at them from an open perspective. Science does not have all the answers yet. Many things in the world remains unexplained, or we have too easy and quick solutions for it. Just think, how much of older science was blatantly wrong, or "creative". How do we look at older science today. How do you think future humans will look at OUR science?
You just can't find something without looking for it. The greatest disservice we do to ourselves is ignoring strong clues. And only seeking for solution fitting our _current_ world-view. I bet if someone who didn't wonder got hold of the skull, it would be thrown away as garbage long ago. We should be thankful inquiring minds out there actually works on this on behalf of humanity.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
This has got to be one of the longest trolls I've seen in a while...
Seriously now, who doesn't have some alien skulls. I mean, all those alien-human hybrid bastards are always leaving their damn skulls on my property.
The fact that our genetic material is carbon based is no accident. Any other molecular base would be either too simple in the variety of bonds that it forms or too unreactive to effectively transmit a code and replicate itself (at least under the thermodynamic conditions of Earth). This observation is a little bit skewed, since we only know of life in carbon, but it's still more or less accurate, to the best of our knowledge.
The fact that we use DNA, though, is pretty much a complete accident. There are other carbon-based molecules that forms long helical chains and could effectively transmit a code.
And even if DNA was the only way to transmit a code, the code that we are transmitting is itself a complete accident. The way that base sequences are transcribed into amino acids - the building blocks of the proteins that perform all the heavy lifting in our cells - is based on a completely arbitrary scheme. The 20 amino acids are mapped haphazardly onto the 64 possible codons (there are 4 bases and each codon is composed of 3 bases, thus 4^3 = 64 possible codons). Basically, to use a computer analogy, its like the mapping of a character set onto all the possible combination of zeroes and ones in a byte. If that mapping was at all different (and it certainly would be for life forms evolved independently on other planets), there would be no possibility for breeding and thus no human/alien hybrids. The character set would come out as complete gibberish.
Anyway, my 2^1 cents...
-nathansnider
Having worked as an imagery analyst with applications in medtech, I decided to look at the images.
My observations:
a. Images are not of the same object in 3d space
b. At least two images are computer-generated (probably raytraced) or significantly altered from original state.
c. Residual bg pixels in frontal shot indicate matte patching
In my humble opinion, a hoax designed to grab the superficial observer. Hope you were not fooled.
- dms