Scott recently posted an article about Alien origin robots visiting the Earth and you can Read It Here.

I posted a comment in response to that article, and while that is little enough reason for an article of my own, when combined with an item I recently found it becomes food for thought.

Many people who have reported “Close Encounters” have reported mechanical seeming beings. presumed to be robots. That of course presumes that alien life might not have found a way to become hybridized with their machines. We are working on the same technology ourselves in the form of bionic limbs, vision enhancing brain implants, even as simple as bluetooth ear pieces for our cell phones. We are becoming “Borg” by choice however you look at it. And of course electronic intelligences solve the issues of long term space travel not needing food, or decaying biological bodies that require sleep, or ones that can sleep for extended periods by simply placing themselves in a waiting state just like your laptop, Ipad or cell phone does to conserve power.

And these alien visitors will of course arrive seeking out those we put in power with a famous phrase “Take us to your leader.” Or maybe not. These ideas are guided by a human perspective influenced by mainstream entertainment. These ideas do not project aliens as being anything more than us with slightly better technology and limits their intelligence to little more than our own quite possibly because we need them to be basically us as that is less threatening. And without abandoning the idea that aliens are basically like us we can still project far better than this.

As to my comment in Scott’s article, I suggested that nano-technology is a likely means of alien visitation. Nano-tech (and Scott, please feel free to correct me on anything here as our staff nano expert) is microscopic, potentially even down to atomic size with sufficiently advanced technology. Unless we were making a concerted effort to look for it would we find it? A single small unmanned craft could orbit the Earth creating nanites and depositing them across the entire planet. Those tiny robots could permeate our bodies, and our environment and transmit information back to the parent craft and we suppose the home world without our knowledge.

Humanity is working on this technology, according to some we already have it

The US Government has been accused of using robotic insects as spies. Now I am not saying that is true, I have neither investigated it or felt particularly concerned about it as we are each pretty much willingly more vulnerable to information that is floating on the internet about us than what a bug might see. But if we can do it, so can a more scientifically advanced species.

Is it likely? If aliens have travelled this far they have not done so on chemically driven craft. We are only just beginning to delve into forms of propulsion beyond controlled chemical explosions, and imagining others that are beyond our current technology. We can only make an educated guess at the stresses a craft would undergo on such a trip, but creating materials for construction of ships to survive the journey, protect the pilots be they living or machine or some combination of the two, and hopefully make it home again might well require manipulating those materials beyond the atomic level. But what would seem to be key to these technologies is a deep understanding of quantum physics. Quantum physics is also at the heart of developing nano-technology be it molecular or smaller robots, or super light, super strong, even self repairing materials for space craft hulls. It is almost fated to be the case that the arrival of visitors, if it ever happens, comes as a result of this knowledge, so it is easy to assume if they are smart enough to use the technology to get here, then they are smart enough to use it to their advantage once they do.

What inspired me to write this article was an article on Open Minds.TV titled: Will Twitter cause chaos with news of ET contact? about how tweeting the news of proof of alien visitation could well trigger a “War Of the Worlds” scenario. Well, that got me thinking and I posted this to their discussion board:

Henry Paterson
September 15, 2012

Why not assume they will have the capacity to contact us via Tweet? It is an easy, low impact means of spreading the word of arrival. Why do we always assume that visitors will show up and look immediately for a government to contact when there are so many governments, and most of them at odds with each other. Take it to the people.

with a few of my typos errors corrected

But even that response is short sighted. If aliens know we are here, they are listening to us. We are broadcasting a veritable homing beacon of signals out to space 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365.25 days a year. And how much of that broadcasting is geared toward teaching our many languages? I have never seen Sesame Street in Russian, or Afrikaans, or Urdu, but I am willing to bet they each have their own version. How long would it take an intelligent species to tap into this source of information learn our languages, then decypher our technology to the point that they can access the internet or cell phone signals and start tweeting us? They could even have their own Facebook page, and why wouldn’t they?

Now, those tweets do not need to be “We Are Here” they could be simple conversations that you should have no reason to suspect. Why the whole idea of “textese” using 2 for to, or too, using 4 for…well for, using letters for words c for see, you get the drift, it could all be coming from aliens and would we know?

Okay, I don’t really believe that part. Only humans are dumb enough to do that, but my point is that we typically see alien arrival as a thunderclap of spectacle, amazing revelations of visitation or personal aggrandizement through being chosen as the messiah of alien visitation when it is so easy for them contact all of us any time they like via tweet or effectively “listen in” to the signal each of us could be broadcasting through our nano-infection.

It reminds me of a cartoon that I am pretty sure appeared in Omni Magazine (though I could be mistaken) of two UPC Codes each with a corner bent up revealing hundreds of little alien legs and the captions was something like: “The invasion is nearly complete.” I couldn’t find it for you, but you get the idea.

If you happen to know the source of the cartoon, better yet, know where I can find the image, please let me know at:

[email protected]

To read more about Nano technolgy check out Nanotechnology Basics