Question

NASA has denied the existence of Aliens, and NASA claims that there is no proof that the aliens have ever visited the earth, my question will be regarding the egyptian pyramids, do you seriously think that people living thousands of yours BC have build the great pyramids? One more question is how does NASA explain the "face" and the "pyramids" found at Cydonia, in planet MARS.

Unfortunately, quite a few people have fallen for these alien-pseudoscience claims, so I will briefly answer your questions, even though they are not directly related to astrobiology. (1) NASA does not deny the existence of aliens. Most astrobiologists anticipate billions of inhabited planets, including many that are the home to intelligent creatures. We just know we have not yet found any direct evidence of life, even microbes, on another planet. But absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. (2) Historians and architects understand how the Egyptian pyramids were built. They were a great accomplishment, the only one of the original Seven Wonders of the World that still stand. No one who who studies them scientifically suggests they were built by aliens. Remember, the ancient Egyptians were just as smart as we are, and Egypt had the excess food productivity to allow construction of many such labor-intensive monuments in the Nile Valley over a period two thousand years. (3) There is no face on Mars, just a mesa that when viewed under the right lighting at low resolution looks like a face. In recent high resolution photos by Mars orbiters, it is revealed as just another eroded mesa. I have discussed these claims in detail in earlier posts (use the search engine), and most recently in the “UFO issue” of Skeptical Inquirer published last month. With so many fascinating things in science being discovered every week, it is a shame that you have apparently fallen for these fairly tales. Believe me, the real world is much more interesting!

David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
March 13, 2009