We were recently contacted by a student from Fortuna High School who asked us if we could help him out with some answers for a paper he was doing. We thought that he had some interesting questions and decided that we would ask the readers of Alieneight to help him out. It would be very enlightening to know your thoughts/opinions so we encourage you to contribute in the comment section below.

Here is the message we received:

Hello my name is Brandon Fowler I am a student at Fortuna High. I am doing a research project on Aliens and UFO's and I have to talk to a specialist or someone who knows their stuff about aliens. I have a few questions and I was wondering if you could answer them:

1. what made you believe in Aliens
2. do you believe that Aliens abduct people from earth?
3. do you think that your government has made contact with Aliens and that is why they visit earth so much?
4. what is your description of how aliens look like?
5. do you think an alien can take the form of a human?
6. do you think the reason our world has developed so well is because we have had alien help?
7. do you think aliens are here to help us or here to destroy us?
8. do you think they want to take over our planet or help save it?

If you could answer these questions it would be such great help. Thank you for your help.
sincerely,
Brandon Fowler.

The one thing I wanted most out of all the cool gadgets on Star Trek was my very own transporter. What could be better than being able to be where ever you wished in just a few seconds? Well, it’s not quite there yet, but a team of scientists have managed to teleport data nearly 100 miles thanks to a version they are experimenting with.

The team of physicists set a brand new record for transporting info through the air using quantum teleportation from Canary Island to Tenerife Island, which is 89 miles away. The accomplishment is 10 miles more than they were able to send it in previous experiments.

The team used what is called quantum entanglement, which is when the state of matter instead of the matter itself is transported from one location to the next. They sent it using micro-sized packets of light called photons was used to send the data between two telescopes positioned on the two islands.

Star Trek’s transporter machine was also supposed to be based on quantum entanglement, do this experiment is a mini-step towards that possibility. Still, so far it’s only been used on the most basic forms of matter and the scientists all agree that a different method than they have tried so far would have to be used for transporting inanimate objects, let alone people or animals.

Robert Ursin of the University of Vienna said that this latest experiment shows that the current experiment in quantum entanglement shows that it has great possibilities as a way to send sensitive data through satellites that use quantum cryptography, because it could send out a security code that was unhackable.

Ursin said their goal was to try the procedure in space. He added that in the future if could possibly be
used to transport information, but that for now we aren’t able to send actual matter using today’s technology.

Quantum entanglement was described by the famous Albert Einstein as a "spooky action at a distance." It works by two photons being made using a method where they act like a single photon even if they are far apart. When they act like that, they are behaving like a transporter machine because if you change one, it causes the other to change accordingly. A third photo is how the information is passed along, and it is transported from the first photo in the transmitting station to the second one in the receiver position.

In the process, the third photon becomes entangled with the transmitting photon and so carries its quantum information to the receiving photon, which interacts with the third photon in such a way that it becomes identical to it - hence the information is successfully transmitted.

I guess I won’t be packing for a quick trip to Europe or elsewhere for awhile, but it shows that yet another of the fantastic and futuristic gadgets on Star Trek are set to become a reality.

Remember Dr. McCoy on Star Trek’s trusty medical tricorder? Scientists in Britain evidently watched a lot of Star Trek when they were younger, as they have come up with a gadget similar to the famous science fiction show’s medical tricorder that can really detect disease.

The CliniHub, as it is called, is a handheld gadget that can tell in minutes if a patient has breast cancer, or a number of other diseases. Samples of a patient’s blood, saliva or urine are placed into ports on the device and are tested.
British doctors are already using it in clinical trials to detect breast cancer and have discovered that it detects it at a much faster rate than they had previously been able to do, thus it is already saving lives.

Chemicals inside the ports cause a reaction in the test samples, which then change in color to show if there is disease present or not. This is somewhat similar to the way pregnancy tests now show if a woman is pregnant or not. The results of the test then show up on an LED screen and can be read by the doctor.

CliniHub is being made by Cambridge Consultants along with XenBio Fluidics, in California. A spokesperson for Cambridge Consultants said that he is certain the device will be helping to diagnose disease in our future and says the gadget will be developed to recognize more diseases and have more applications in time.

The CliniHub is about the size of a netbook and will be priced less than $100, making it very affordable for future doctors to carry around, much like are good Dr. McCoy on Star Trek. Right now it can detect breasts cancer, MRSA and a third disease which was not listed. Developers say it will soon be able to tell if a patient has up to 20 diseases that are common in GP surgeries.

Plans are underway too for a home device that would allow for testing for simple diseases such as strep throat. The person could swab someone’s throat and put it into the machine and tell if they had an infection or not. Perhaps it will be as common as the thermometer is now in our homes.

More clinical tests of the device have already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

In October 2000, Sharon Rowlands took footage of what she believed to be a UFO. Hearing what she described as an eerie noise from outside the house, one evening, Mrs Rowlands took her camera and aimed it towards the sky. She captured what she described as “a giant disc with a bite taken out of the bottom” hovering in the sky about two miles away.

Reportedly, Sharon Rowlands was offered, £20,000 ($32,000) for the footage by a Hollywood producer and NASA representatives had even asked to examine the video because they believed that they had caught sight of a similar UFO, when on a space shuttle mission.

The story and occurrence caused a massive amount of exposure to the village of Bonsall where the sighting took place. A wave of reporters came and went, as a fascination with the incident built up. Mrs Rowland herself used a still image from the video and talked about the money she had been offered for it over the internet, which created a worldwide interest.

Despite many videos that carried the name, the actual footage of the incident was never released. Sharon Rowlands was contacted by Robert Kiviat, who is a Hollywood producer and he did tell her that he would offer her the money, but as Mrs Rowlands later found out this was all a lie. Robert Kiviat went on to tell Mrs Rowlands that she was going to be offered the money for an exclusive interview that was to be broadcasted on a UFO TV show, which was never made. He also told her that NASA wanted to examine the tape which, Mrs Rowland found out, was another lie.

The story became engulfed in the myth and the ridicule that so often accompanies these sightings. Had Robert Kiviat lived up to his word and been an honest man, the whole case might have produced hard evidence of a UFO encounter. As it was, the infamous footage remains a mystery and the credibility of Mrs Rowlands is shattered.

However, the fact does remain that the footage was filmed and while the myth might have killed off the credibility, the footage itself is evidence of at least something. We may never know whether what Mrs Rowlands filmed was anything more than military aircraft or some sort of weather affect, but what does remain is that myth and fact have to be so clearly segmented when you discuss UFO/Aliens and that lies and greed will continue to plague some of the sightings, we have to take away only what we can prove.

The more one researches the potential for extraterrestrial encounters between aliens and humans, the greater the probability that such encounters have been happening for a very long time. In our modern age of technology, we have the advantage of cameras, video, and instant communications to spread the word about strange and mysterious objects in our sky. While skeptics try to claim that UFO's and extraterrestrials are only a byproduct of our technological society, there are indications from the ancient past that UFO's and aliens were real and were here even before we developed a written language or more than primitive cultures. Even before language there was art, and it is through art that our distant ancestors handed down depictions of strange things which are still mysterious, but hauntingly familiar, to what we still see today.

The first recorded images of alien beings can be found in ancient cave paintings and petroglyphs from various places around the world. The first example dates to a period between 12-14,000 years ago and comes from Toro Muerto, in Peru. The images depict humanoid beings with some type of "halo" or other head covering. From it radiate lines that could be representative of either extensions of the object or light. It is very interesting to compare these images to another cave painting dated from about 10,000 years ago that was found in Val Camonica, Italy. These two humanoid figures also wear similar objects around their heads and also have the lines radiating outward. There was no travel between these two places on opposite sides of the planet 10-14,000 years ago, at least not by humans.

Around 5,000 or so years ago Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia had developed a culture that still affects and models our modern way of thinking. They credited this culture and knowledge to their "gods" alien beings that had come down from the sky to create and nurture them as they grew as a species.

Dating back to this same general time period are petroglyphs found outside Kimberley, Australia that also depict humanoid creatures with huge eyes and lines sometimes still radiating from their heads. Of note in this image is the clothing worn by the images. Compare it to some of the costume of the figures carved into the rock of Sego Canyon, Utah also about 5,000 years ago.

According to legends passed down from thousands of years ago by the indigenous tribes of the American Southwest, The 1947 UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico was hardly the first spacecraft to have a mishap in the desert. The legend says that two objects collided in the sky and one crash landed in what is now known as Death Valley. Another craft later descended and "men" from that craft helped fix the one that had crashed before they both took off back into the sky. It is interesting to note that the millenniums-old pictures the native Americans carved into the rock depict objects that can still be seen to often confound modern man and occasionally show up on You-Tube.

With such ancient evidence lurking all around the planet and through many ages of humanity, it is not hard to believe that these supposedly extraterrestrial beings have been coming to Earth and interacting with humans for a very long time. They may not even be that far away. Even discounting the idea of Nibiru, there are a number of planets in our solar system. From the multitude of reports of UFO's rising out of the oceans, they may have permanent colonies on our planet. Even if their origins were from another planet around another star, they could well have been here so long that they and many of their generations could have been born (or hatched, or cloned) right here. However "alien" they may be, from these ancient UFO reports we can conjecture, they might be just as much Earthlings as we humans are.

Dr. Sitchin, at fist glance, is an unlikely seeming candidate to be included in the ranks of alien investigators. He did not seek out witnesses to UFO sightings or probe the night skies with binoculars. First and foremost he was a scholar of ancient languages and stories. His particular forte was Sumerian, Akkadian, and the ancient Mesopotamian iconography. He was one of only a handful of scholars who could read and translate the cuneiform writing of the Sumerian clay tablets archeologists had only begun to discover. The tales he read fascinated him with their similarity to many more current texts and legends, myths and religions.

Dr. Sitchin's translations were considered high academic achievement. He did not begin to gather controversy around him until he began to write about his interpretation of these ancient texts; interpretations that flew in the face of accepted academic beliefs in the origins of our species and our place in evolution.

It the texts the Sumerians wrote of their "gods" as beings who originally came down from the sky. Travelling from their home planet, Nibiru, these extraterrestrials colonized and lived on this planet long before humans even existed. As a colony sent to mine mineral resources from the planet, these beings, the Annunaki, eventually grew tired of toiling so menially themselves and demanded their leaders find a better solution. According to the writings of the Sumerians, we humans were the result of that demand. Using advanced genetic knowledge, the scientists of the Annunaki blended their own DNA with an indigenous primate species to create the first humans to work the mines for their alien masters.

Within a series of twelve books, Dr. Sitchin presented his evidence, garnered from both literature and architecture to demonstrate the validity of his theories that the Sumerians were not writing fantasy but chronicling the knowledge and events that took place in their lives under the auspices of their extraterrestrial overlords. From the, as yet, unduplicable technology that raised monolithic structures around the world to complex and inexplicable "out of place artifacts in relation to time and space" (OOPARTS), to astronomical tables containing information a primitive, non-technological civilization could not have known about; the Annunaki seem to have left a huge legacy to their human creations.

Since releasing his interpretations of the texts he translated, Dr. Sitchin's work has created an entirely new and very popular aspect to the UFO-extraterrestrial mythos. In looking at the wider picture, there is a great amount of circumstantial evidence that there may be a great deal of possible truth to these theories and interpretations. Dr. Sitchin's work has disturbed the entire academic belief system, so much so that it is becoming fashionable to debunk or ridicule all his work even on the basis of a very few points where misinterpretation may have occurred. It is so important for academia to discredit Dr. Sitchin that even on his Wikipedia page there is far more information about scholars and pseudo scholars and their efforts to debunk his work that there is information about the man himself.

Where there is smoke, there is usually a fire. From the sheer numbers of academics attempting to debunk Dr. Sitchin's theories it would seem that he struck a nerve with his challenge to their "official" story of humanity's origins and their failure to acknowledge any of the multitude of facts and artifacts that do not fit their version. Even as science is discovering more about the solar system that the ancient Sumerians seemed to have already known, it is worth reading through the rather dry text of Dr. Sitchin's books. If any of this information about the Annunaki that came from ancient Sumeria is true then we may soon be facing a reunion with an alien race that could well have valid reasons for considering our planet, if not our entire species, as their own property.

Humans have been using the Earth for a trash can for as long as we’ve been on it, but it’s now come to the attention of many that we are also polluting the space lanes around our world.

Did you know that since the Russians first shot the Sputnik satellite into space that we’ve littered up the orbit of our planet with more than a ton of man-made items? Some estimated put it at more than 600,000 piece of assorted space trash that is larger than a centimeter and no one seems to be keeping track of even 10 percent of it.

There’s everything from tiny pieces of shuttle skin that peels off when it comes back into orbit to the lunar modules left on the moon during the Apollo moon missions. Plus, military missions like the Chinese satellite that was blown up by missiles in 2007 was said to have created a huge debris cloud of as many as 300,000 more tiny little pieces of space junk. Sure, they are small, but even these could cause damage to existing orbiting satellites or future space missions.

So, we know we have this huge blot on our own backyard, so how do we clean it up?

One way might be through a giant space net, sort of like a huge fish net to scoop up all the trash and litter floating around the Earth. It’s not science fiction. A Japanese company is looking into deploying a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency satellite that would then release a net made of micro-thin, three layers of metal threads made by Nitto Seimo Co, which makes fishing nets. It would form around the trash like a fish net forms around a school of fish in the ocean, draw it back towards the Earth, and then it and the trash would burn up in the planet’s atmosphere.

Neat, clean and efficient.

The idea of a net is because that would catch the smallest pieces of the space debris, which floats around out there and could make holes in legitimate satellites, spacecraft or other expensive gear that we need to remain in space and working.

What’s utterly amazing is that there are so many people that don’t think there is a problem. Especially since billions and billions of dollars worth of valuable gear has to navigate around the debris clouds every day. Plus, it’s blocking valuable real estate that future satellites will need to orbit in.

Another similar net idea is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA), an agency of the United States Department of Defense. They are developing a space garbage collecting vehicle that would be armed with 200 special nets to collect the space trash.

Called, the Electrodynamic Debris Eliminator, or EDDE, it was created by Star Inc. It would fly in low Earth orbit and pick up trash as it traveled. It’s estimated it could pick up more than 2,000 piece of debris in seven years. That’s only a drop I the bucket, but it at least would be a start. The debris could be then burned up during re-entry, recycled or thrown into the ocean (not a good idea!). Star says they could do a first test run of the EDDE as soon as 2013.

All in all the main issue in getting rid of all this mounting space trash is likely money. Cleaning it all up will be very expensive for sure. However, something needs to be done and the sooner the better.

Let’s hope that either Japan’s giant space net or the EDDE bunch of smaller nets can work together to make Earth’s backyard of space a cleaner place.

Besides, do we really want the aliens out there turning their noses up at the Earth and saying all we do is litter and make a mess? What kind of bad example is that for the rest of the universe?