When you’re done worrying that a future version of ChatGPT might gain superhuman intelligence and wipe humans off the face of the planet, I’ll draw your attention to a scenario that predates the dawn of AI and could be even scarier: an alien species might decide we’re in the way. It’s a scenario we’ve seen play out in plenty of sci-fi movies. We’re never on friendly terms with the potential invaders, as that’s a film nobody would watch. Instead, we fight back however we can.
What if, in real life, aliens do things a bit differently? What if they’re already living among us, masquerading as humans? Yes, some sci-fi films and TV shows have similar plots. But this isn’t a sci-fi story. It’s an actual hypothesis from Harvard scientists that aims to explain all the UFO sightings we keep seeing in the news.
Published in Philosophy and Cosmology, and available in ResearchGate (via Futurism), the paper is titled The cryptoterrestrial hypothesis: A case for scientific openness to a concealed earthly explanation for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
The researchers contemplate the idea that another civilization may be hiding on Earth, and it might be superior to humans. These aliens could be living among us disguised as humans.
The Harvard scientists have various scenarios that would explain the existence of this species on our planet, and some of them are just as predictable as you might expect. The alien species might not be from outer space at all. They might be the descendants of an ancient human civilization that was more advanced than humans.
The second idea involves an intelligent species having evolved independently from humans a long time ago, possibly starting from “intelligent dinosaurs.” I guess that could always explain what killed the dumber ones. Maybe it wasn’t an asteroid strike after all.
A third theory proposes a species that came here from another planet or a different time period. The latter might involve a different version of humans.
The last one will sound even crazier than the dinosaurs, but anything goes in this type of hypothesis exercise. The Harvard scientists say the superior species might actually be magical rather than technologically advanced. From our point of view, they’d be akin to angels.
These crypto terrestrials might be living somewhere on or under the Earth, which would explain all the UFOs, or “Unidentified Anomalous Phemonemona” (UAP), happening around potential entry/exit points like volcanoes.
Another possibility is that this species lives among us, disguised as humans or some other species we’re more familiar with. The aliens might take primate or reptile forms, which we certainly wouldn’t pay attention to.
Why go through all the trouble to come up with these hypotheses rather than writing some sort of sci-fi book or movie that could yield some form of success rather than potential criticism from fellow researchers? Well, the researchers know these are far-fetched ideas. But they also think we should examine such explanations to try to explain and understand all the UFO/UAP events that keep making the news.
Despite Congress and NASA’s increased willingness to discuss these events publicly, we’re nowhere near getting any meaningful explanations about alien life on Earth. That’s what brought about these wild hypotheses about advanced civilizations living among us.
“We entertain them here because some aspects of UAP are strange enough that they seem to call for unconventional explanations,” the researchers say. “It may be exceedingly improbable, but hopefully this paper has shown it should nevertheless be kept on the table as we seek to understand the ongoing empirical mystery of UAP.”
