A few years back I attended a symposium in Toronto on the subject of ETs and UFO's. The leading experts in this field made presentations. I went thinking that they would be presenting all the most convincing evidence on the subject, but there was none of that. There is such an overwhelming amount of evidence that it has become a given, a 'moot point'. The big questions these days have to do with 'disclosure' - when will governments around the world give us access to the secret info? When will we get to see the X-files? When will we have official contact?
For me the most interesting speaker was Paul Hellyer, a long-time Canadian politician who served as Defence Minister in Lester B. Pearson's cabinet and as Trudeau's Minister of Transport. He was Senior Minister in the Cabinet, a position similar to the current position of Deputy Prime Minister. He reported that there was indeed a great deal of such classified info in the Canadian vaults and shared his opinion that various governments around the world have had numerous interactions with ET groups. I was impressed that a man of his stature with nothing to gain would stick his neck out after such a distinguished career, opening himself to public derision. (If you Google his name you'll find much info.)
Over the next few months this newsletter will deal with various aspects of this topic. Here is an excerpt from my book, 'Why Is Life':
Whenever there is serious talk about extra terrestrial life forms (ETs) or non-physical entities, it is often greeted with rolling eyes and a scoffing tone. Even those who do believe in such things tend to keep it to themselves to avoid derision. This is starting to change, however and recent polls have found that over 50% of the American population, including many notable scientists, astronauts, etc., feel that there is intelligent life on other planets. Many feel that it is far more logical, given the number of stars in the universe, that we are not alone, nor are we the most advanced life form in the universe.
Terrance Dickinson, an astronomer who writes for the Toronto Star points out that, according to current scientific estimations based on the work of astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, there are about ten billion, trillion stars in the universe. This is a number too large to comprehend. If each star was represented by a grain of sand and that sand was loaded into haulage cars on a freight train, how many cars would it take to contain ten billion trillion grains of sand? If you were standing at the side of the track watching the train go by at the rate of one car per second, how long would you be there? The answer is - three and a half years! Imagine that! It would take three point five years to watch the passing of a train big enough to haul that amount of sand. That is a heck of a lot of sand - an incomprehensible number of stars.
Back in the mid-twentieth century, Hubble (after whom the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 was named) had access to the best telescope of his day. He was determined to learn more about the numerous spiral swirls that were faintly observable in the night sky. He found that each swirl was a galaxy like our own Milky Way, containing billions of stars. Those galaxies at the furthest edge of our observational capabilities are moving away from us at speeds that approach the speed of light. Galaxies that are moving away from us at light-speed are unobservable because their light cannot reach us. So there are even more galaxies, even more 'grains of sand' that we cannot observe. The universe is indeed, staggeringly large. Two thirds of its star systems are older than ours. Surely there must be life in a great many places.
This is what the great scientist and educator, Carl Sagan had to say about it; "It seems the height of human arrogance to imagine that this planet is the only inhabited world." In their book, 'Intelligent Life in the Universe', Sagan and co-author, I.S.Shlovski say that there could be as many as 50,000 to 1 million civilizations in the universe more advanced than ours.
There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that life on this planet has been greatly influenced by life on other planets. Some factions of science believe that life first happened on Earth due to a chance electro-chemical reaction, occurring under conditions that just happened to be conducive to life. Some people, including scientists, believe that life could not have developed by 'accident', and that perhaps it arrived in germ form on an asteroid, or was seeded by intelligent life-forms. Some astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin, have publicly stated that they believe in extraterrestrial life. Astronaut Gordon Cooper is convinced that they visited Earth in the past. Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the DNA double helix, believes that the highly complex DNA constituting the primitive life forms of 3 billion years ago, could not have developed here in so short a time. He says that science should seriously consider the possibility that, "a primitive form of life was deliberately planted on Earth by a technologically advanced society on another planet".
Some people believe that extra terrestrials (ETs) have played a huge role in human evolution, affecting us in ways ranging from the manipulation of our genes to the teaching of computer technology. Back in 1968, Erich Von Däniken published his book, 'Chariots of the Gods', which asked the question, "Is God an astronaut?" Although it was widely read and made the author a millionaire, it was totally scoffed at and dismissed by the academic establishment. He had traveled the globe, digging out ancient artifacts from many diverse sources, which looked suspiciously like spaceships and astronauts. For example, ancient Hebrew statuettes called 'malachim' depict demi-gods or ambassadors that look very similar to modern descriptions of ETs known as the 'Greys'.
While admitting that some of his claims may seem far-fetched and somewhat sensationalistic, I believe that much of Von Däniken's research is fascinating, relevant and at least worthy of further study. In fact, there has been a good deal of subsequent research on the subject, most of which is somewhat more thorough and scholarly. The next segment will take a look at some of the information that has become available, mostly in the past fifty years, which may shed some light on ET activity in our past.
(To access a larger excerpt from 'Why Is Life' on the subject of 'EXTRA TERRESTRIAL SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET', click here: book excerpt )
