UFO Files: Would we even know Aliens were here?

The famed physicist Michio Kaku has described the four levels of civilization we expect to find in the galaxy. These were originally classified as Type I, II, and III civilizations denoting the level of control the civilization possessed. 

Starting at the beginning, a type I civilization has control over its planet. But this is not the type of control we have. On earth we have the internet, airplanes, limited space travel and electric power. We've harnessed the energy in fossil fuels and are tentatively tapping direct energy of the sun. We can send radio signals across the galaxy and have landed men on the moon. 

But despite these advancements, earth is nowhere near a Type I civilization. A Type I civilization is one that's in complete control over its planet-the weather, earthquakes you name it. Such a civilization would be capable of building cities at the bottom of the ocean or on the moon. Earth is nowhere near this level of sophistication yet. We are developing fast, but we're still totally at the whim of nature. We can mitigate a large earthquake, but we can't prevent one. We can explore the bottom of the ocean, but we couldn't build a city down there. The issue is the amount of energy that a civilization can control. A Type I civilization would be able to control quite a bit more energy than earth currently does-on a factor of billions. In fact a civilization like ours with moderate space exploration, airplanes and radio is classified as a Type 0 civilization.

Beyond Type I civilizations, there are Type II civilizations, which can control their entire solar system, and Type III civilizations, which control a galaxy. A Type III civilization would be as far above a Type II civilization as a Type I civilization is above us. The amount of energy at their disposal would be staggering.

To borrow a quote from Kaku's website, which originally came from Carl Sagan in his book Cosmos:

“What does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is a few hundred years old… an advanced civilization millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bush baby or a macaque.”

This is a really powerful statement. So what does it mean, for spacefaring civilizations that may have crossed the galaxy, or even come from another galaxy, to visit and explore earth?

It may be that we would be completely unable to detect their presence. That doesn't mean we wouldn't experience them at all. Let's think about humans vs. ants. If you go exploring an ant hill, by and large the ants aren't going to be paying attention to you, or even aware you're there unless they happen to crawl on you or your in the way of their path. But maybe, being interested in studying ant behavior, you pick one up and start toying with the ant. The ant might have a vague awareness that its been taken from its normal location. It might even realize at some level its being "probed" or threatened. But the nature of that threat is totally out of the realm of its possible experience. 

This may be what advanced alien civilizations are doing to us today. Now we are much more conscious than an ant, and have discovered and to a certain extent mastered science (that isn't to say there isn't a whole lot more to learn). Our conscious minds allow us to catch small glimpses of aliens and UFO's. Maybe a sighting here and there. A brief glimpse by an airplane pilot. Something that doesn't make sense to an astronaut. Or vague, dreamlike recollections of alien abductees that fill their nightmares. 

If a civilization was truly a million years more advanced than we are, we honestly can't even begin to understand it. There is really no way for us to describe what it might be capable of. We can try and use the laws of physics to bound what they might do, but that's all guesswork. If scientific research were to continue for another million years, while certain "facts" like the second law of thermodynamics would hold true, we can't begin to guess what new discoveries would be made. 

It's reasonable to assume aliens that could travel the galaxy would in fact be that much more advanced than we are. They would have a much older civilization, have technologies which to loosely quote Arthur C. Clarke would be indistinguishable from magic, and they would have so much power we could do nothing to resist them. Our survival would be at their whim. Aliens that advanced would be able to completely cloak their presence from other conscious beings not that advanced, would be able to abduct anyone they chose, and when we were aware of them, would appear strange, dreamlike and powerful. If they decided to do so, they could destroy the entire planet the way you could squash an ant. 

So far they haven't done that. So lets be hopeful that any aliens that are aware of earth are of a more benign nature, even if we can't understand their scientific curiosities or behavior.