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00:00Whistleblowers in Congress, drones all over New Jersey, non-human biologics reportedly retrieved over a decades-long secret program conducted by the U.S. government.
00:12The stories and allegations are mounting up regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP, and the ongoing search for alien life.
00:21For many scientists, this is all hardly new news.
00:25Avi Loeb was one of the first to cry, aliens on Earth.
00:29While many others have insisted that extraterrestrial life is as old as ancient times.
00:36UFO and UAP sightings are in the news now more than ever before, thanks to the emergence of reliable footage from within militaries and governments worldwide.
00:47As a result, the conversation on alien life across all corners of society is changing.
00:52We're still left with far more questions than answers, though.
00:55To date, according to the official line, no alien has actually been discovered.
01:00For all the UFO visuals, no true ET specimen has ever been revealed to the public.
01:05But still, in the event that aliens have been to Earth in some capacity, one of the more pressing follow-up questions is, for how long have they been here?
01:14Throughout recent history, we've seen how certain people and groups have linked certain famous monuments with alien explanations.
01:21With Machu Picchu, the Pyramids, and Stonehenge among the most iconic structures spoken about.
01:26Or the Nazca Lines, theorised by some as an ancient means of communication between us and the aliens above.
01:33Taken at face value, these suggestions then lead us to consider that, as some of these monuments are many thousands of years old, there must also have been aliens here for multi-millennia, too.
01:44More often than not, the ancient alien ideas are fraught with problems, however, and have more recently been shown to often harbour prejudiced views.
01:52The counter-claim being that modern-world Western theorists are all too quick to write off ancient non-Western achievements as being impossible without alien input.
02:02From a purely scientific point of view, the alternate histories-to-famous-buildings line of argument is almost always simply not enough, either.
02:10A great deal more proof is required to prove a claim as grand as aliens.
02:15More broadly, this is known as the Sagan Standard, after the US physicist Carl Sagan who said, quote,
02:21Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
02:25And debates over the Stonehenge stone placement, or the true function of Egyptian tombs, haven't yet been able to provide extraordinary or irrefutable enough evidence to prove aliens on Earth.
02:36Nevertheless, there are various scientists who have begun to question whether or not aliens on Earth really is so far-fetched.
02:43The futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has increasingly spoken at length about how UFOs really could be alien life, and has continually urged his peers to keep an open mind.
02:55Paul Hellyer, an engineer and a former defence minister of Canada, claims as many as 80 different species of alien may have been on Earth before.
03:03But perhaps the most serious and dedicated voice in this field is that of the renowned astrophysicist Avi Loeb.
03:10Loeb's position really began to take hold with the observation of a strange object that passed by Earth in 2017.
03:17Caught by a telescope in Hawaii, what we now know as the Oumuamua object exhibited a strange speed, an odd shape, and it didn't act like any other comet, asteroid, or known cosmic object.
03:30What intrigued scientists even more was that, at the time, this was considered the first genuinely interstellar object ever to be seen in our solar system.
03:39It exhibited such strange behaviour that Loeb, former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, claimed it wasn't any kind of rock or natural formation, and was actually a piece of alien-built technology.
03:52In Loeb's opinion, expressed in a number of interviews since the emergence of Oumuamua, this possibility is just as, if not more likely, as any other possibility for its origin.
04:03And so, when three years later in 2020 another strange object flew by exhibiting similar characteristics, for example, and when that object was then identified as a rocket booster from a former space mission
04:14– i.e. a definitely artificial thing – the Loeb line gathered more momentum. Oumuamua, by comparison, definitely isn't or wasn't human-made, so what did make it? So, the theory goes.
04:26According to Loeb, quote, Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth's vicinity by an alien civilization, end quote.
04:35He thought that the unusual, flat nature of the object meant that it could be a type of solar sail, designed to produce propulsion by using the sun's energy as a push.
04:43No matter that other scientists have put forward alternative, more conservative ideas – such as it instead being just a chunk of hydrogen ice, nitrogen ice, or an unusually broken fragment off of another object in space – Loeb has remained steadfast in his view.
04:58In Loeb's estimation, Oumuamua being an alien solar sail explains all of its quirks far more convincingly than any other theory.
05:06Based on his ideas, Loeb has since written a still-controversial book called Extraterrestrial – The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.
05:15Ultimately, though, Loeb's ideas encompass more than just life beyond Earth.
05:19If Oumuamua is a probe sent intentionally by an alien civilization, then it could just as well open the door for the prospect of alien life having visited even closer to this planet before.
05:30With various other theories claiming that ET life has either breached our atmosphere before now, or even made it to Earth's surface.
05:36Again, Avi Loeb places himself at the forefront of this line of inquiry.
05:40In another recent video, we took a closer look at Loeb's separate claim that a piece of alien tech might have crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2014.
05:49The mainstream idea is that some kind of meteor had flashed across the skies of Papua New Guinea at the time, before speeding into the water.
05:57But Loeb ardently challenged this notion, insisting instead that it could have been an alien machine.
06:03Again, for Loeb, the aliens-are-here conclusion is really just as likely as any other answer as to what was going on there.
06:10On the one hand, it's perhaps unsurprising that many scientists have been quick to write off Loeb's various claims, because crying alien technology is still seen as quite radical.
06:21But, on the other hand, most astronomers would likely agree that alien life most likely does exist somewhere in the cosmos.
06:29So, why is it so difficult to imagine that it could be here?
06:32Of course, one reason is because the scale and distance of the universe is so incomprehensibly massive that the odds of aliens on our doorstep do appear to be fairly low.
06:43But still, perhaps not impossible.
06:45And, as such, the expectation that aliens, if they are out there, would be trapped on their home planets just as we are, also feels increasingly out of touch.
06:54To the likes of Loeb, Michio Kaku, and others, it assumes that an alien force should be anything like us.
07:01But, in reality, they could be thousands or millions of years more advanced than us.
07:06To them, the vast distances and challenges of space might then be easily traversable and solvable.
07:12And, in truth, no one can totally write that possibility off, because we don't know what kinds of technology might be feasible for a group with potentially so much more of a history than we have.
07:23Because of this, Avi Loeb has taken steps to investigate future objects like Oumuamua in more depth.
07:29Called the Galileo Project, Loeb hopes to build a network of telescopes around the Earth to specifically watch different parts of the sky and to try to catch detailed images of strange objects and occurrences.
07:41By the time it was discovered, back in 2017, scientists had precious little time to study Oumuamua before it sped away from the sun, out of the solar system, and out of sight forevermore.
07:52But the plan with the Galileo Project is to maximize our study of future incidents like this, to gain a far better understanding.
08:00For now, it's worth remembering that Oumuamua alone doesn't necessarily mean that aliens are on Earth.
08:07Even if it is a piece of extraterrestrial handiwork, then a quick lap around the sun might still be the closest it'll ever come to this planet.
08:15Like passing an island on a cruise liner, any hypothetical pilot aboard Oumuamua, or any hypothetical civilization receiving signals back from it,
08:24might simply be left wondering what might be happening here, without ever truly getting to know us.
08:29But, regardless, the appearance of it, plus the Pacific meteor of 2014, plus various other UFO sightings, bizarre radio signals, and seeming space anomalies,
08:40have all contributed to a growing feeling of confidence, or perhaps concern, that actually, we really aren't alone.
08:46That we really could become the first generation to discover alien life. And that's why scientists think aliens have already visited Earth.
08:54What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.
08:58Check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.