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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
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
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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.
"First post"...
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.
They are here
Sigged!
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."
Sure, a lot of great minds have been laughed at, but out of all thepeople that have been laughed at, greatness must be .000000001%.
The hunt for UFOs is the modern version of the hunt for the elixir of life or turning lead to gold.
Obligatory: Newton was an alchemist. Not that thats why we remember him.
What I find hard to believe is the concept of an alien/human hybrid.
Even granting that aliens are visiting earth and abducting people, how are they impregnating anyone? I mean, assuming what we know about the origins of life on earth is fairly true, there's no reason to think that ETs would have DNA. And if they did, why would it be compatible with human DNA? Chimps, our nearest relative based on genetic and morphological analyses, could not produce a hybrid with humans, so why would aliens be able to?
Other questions are, would an alien have a skeleton like a human's? While one could argue that the development of DNA as a genetic material could be widespread, it is harder to argue that the particular skeletal arrangement of modern vertebrates would have developed on a different planet, down to the details of how the skull sutures form. And if the aliens don't have that structure, why do their hybrids?
There are a couple of parts to the scientific method. One is that one ought not to just reject things you disagree with, but should offer evidence. OTOH, that evidence can be from theory, and that leads you to another important part of science: Occam's razor. If it is necessary that we discard all that we know about life on earth to explain a skull, then people are going to expect the evidence supporting the hybrid origin of the skull to be very strong.
So what I'm saying is that the evidence available suggests that this child had some congenital defect that produced a very strange skull morphology. Without an alien to give a paternity test to, it'll be pretty hard to get evidence that will make anyone willing to toss a lot of sound theory out.
People might rightly point out that many true theories were dismissed like this, but I would remind you that a lot more wrong ones were rejected this way.
The most obvious answer is that people dismiss it because the proponents jump to irrational and illogical conclusions based on only minimal or nonexistant evidence.
reading through the page, what struck me most was how quickly they were assosciating anything about the skull with "eyewitness accounts" of what a "gray" looks like. Given only a verbal account of what a human head looks like, i have no doubt this skull would fit within acceptable parameters, as well.
They brush off suggestions that it is simply malformed but entirely human because the doctors they've consulted disagree on the cause of deformity. So what? You can get mutually exclusive diagnosis for even the most common ailments for a patient that can actually talk to doctors and subject themselves to tests.
Suggesting that multiple diagnosis from only a single sekeletal section necessarily invalidates them all is nothing short of self-delusional.
Furthermore, there are many statements about why it couldn't be a given ailment that are simply wrong. Most extreme genetic disorders or other genetic ailmnents are fairly rare, and thus they have very little basis for saying that this skull doesn't fit them. Having done studies on Progeria, I personally thought the skull looked pretty much like most of the photos I've seen of progeric heads. For them to say it COULDN'T be progeria because it's "too symmetrical" is ridiculous and completely unbased on any scientific rationale.
Finally, I couldn't do anything but laugh at their "forensic rendering". There are a lot of groundless assumptions being made in it, and i suggest that if they gave the skull to a qualified forensic artist without telling them "we think its an alien skull!" it would look pretty normal, although obviously a little top-heavy (a lot like someone with progeria).
I especially liked the pointed ears, considering there was no ear cartilage or other physical structure to indicate what shape they should be other than normal human rounded...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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Well, just a few updates on this particular experiment...
...first of all, on an "origin of life on earth" basis, the experiment was subsequently shown to have simulated the wrong starting conditions...and stimulating the RIGHT starting conditions didn't produce the molecules.
Second of all, the concentration of the molecules was w..a..a..y too low to do anything useful or interesting - basically the breakdown rate was too high to increase the concentration to anything even marginally useful.
However, neither of these facts have all that much to do with the topic at hand - and here's possibly some supporting evidence for what you're saying:
In a recent SciAm article, scientists discussed the possibility of the building blocks for life on earth coming from (wait for it...) Comets! And other space "junk"! Many of the comments were in support of this sort of scenario.
So there you go.
However, when it comes to this "alien", my alarm bells start ringing A LOT! Here's why:
* they're asking for money
* they're making the basic (and in my opinion STUPID) assumption that aliens must look like humans (more on this further down)
* they won't list anyone else who's actually seen the skull
* there are no independent witnesses who have come forward and claimed that they've seen the skull
* HOW on earth did a teenage girl get two skulls (which by all accounts must have been fairly fragile) out of Mexico without alerting the authorities...or her parents??????
All right... the most important point, I think, is that these people have decided that aliens must look (basically) like humans. Why?
Even on earth, bilateral symmetry was chosen essentially by accident - one of the huge explosions of life-forms (pre-Cambrian, I think, but could be wrong) had trilateral symmetry and other even wierder (to us) things popping up. It happened that, ON EARTH, bilateral symmetry was best, AT THAT POINT IN TIME. But what about Squids / Octopi / Starfish / other non bilaterally symmetric creatures? Or what about the majority of quadrapeds / other significantly different-looking creatures to us? I'll guarantee that if any of these creatures developed significant intelligence (I mean significant enough to develop space travel), they would NOT LOOK LIKE HUMANS!
And that's just on earth. On one planet, the form of the first race of creatures to develop rudimentary space-travel was decided by chance alone from a very large number of possibilities.
Why on EARTH (hehe) would aliens look similar? And I noted further down that this skull had a lot of the SAME bones (but deformed), the SAME foramens for blood vessels and nerves, the SAME muscular attachment points, etc etc etc - WHY WOULD ALIENS HAVE THE SAME BODILY STRUCTURE AS HUMANS WHEN THE TWO DEVELOPED COMPLETELY INDEPENDANTLY???????
I mean, take even two moderately different earthly creatures like reptiles and mammals and look at the differences in skull make-up!!!!!!
Well, that's my little piece of rant.
-Shane Stephens
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
Any credible scientist in the world base their experimental findings on reproducability. No new knowledge is accepted by the scientific community unless it can be repeated by other, unrelated and unbiased scientists. For example, the supposed "discovery" of cold fusion could not be reproduced and so we don't have any Back to the Future-style power generators. Most people believe in life in the universe, but most of those same people acknowledge that: a) The distances between civilizations is so vast the chances of two ever meeting are very small, b) Many factors (from the over-quoted Drake Equation) need to come together for contact to take place (i.e. civilizations need to exist in the same time window, civilizations need to survive post-technological age "adolescence" and not destroy themselves, etc.) The probablilities involved are very slim, c) If life exists on many worlds and Earth isn't special in having the conditions necessary for life, Earth isn't special in attracting civilizations either. Why travel light-years to come to our planet with such a lowly, unevolved society such as our own?
Just because Stanton Frieman is a nuclear physicist does not mean he represents the world's scientific community. Most of us would vehemently disagree with his claims. You insult scientific objectivity and the scientific community in general by believing his work.
We can all hope for claims such as that of "Starchildren" to be true, but the fact remains they haven't been reproduced and the scientific community has not jumped on the "aliens bandwagon" since we don't see anything to be concerned about. Keep on dreaming, but please remain objective and critical of any such claims. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
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