Are aliens in the ocean? The answer may surprise you — or it won’t, since the chances of this sunken sea evidence being tied to extraterrestrials are slim to none. Still, it’s worth taking a deeper dive to discover exactly what’s down there and consider potential alien alternatives.
Water, Water Everywhere
Despite accounting for more than 70% of our planet’s surface, 80% of our oceans are “unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
So, it’s no surprise that scientists are constantly coming across new ocean oddities. Consider work from Brazilian ichthyologist Luiz Rocha, whose work in the “twilight zone” (depths between 200 and 500 feet deep where the light is dim and the temperature is cold) has uncovered more than 30 new species. There’s also the recently discovered “water world,” properly called TOI-1452b, a planet that could feature a giant, global liquid ocean. Researchers plan to take a closer look at this watery wonder using the James Webb Space Telescope.
Put simply? No matter where we look, there’s water. And if it’s so important to us, maybe it’s critical for alien life. And maybe, just maybe, they’ve been here all along.
Hole-y Moley!
Let’s get down to it.
First on our list of possible alien evidence is the discovery of a circular seafloor hill 352 miles off the coast of Lima. The hill is 4.2 miles in diameter and, based on images taken from Google Earth, appears to be out of place with the rest of the rough ocean floor topography. Its seemingly perfect circle shape has led to speculation that a crashed alien ship is hiding underneath, but chances are slim.
Why? First, the sighting came from a website that regularly claims natural phenomena are proof positive of alien existence. Second, the picture was generated using Google Earth, which itself uses multiple data sources stitched together to create ocean-floor images. As a result, visual artifacts are common.
Next up are the holes discovered by a remotely operated vehicle along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is part of the world’s largest mountain range. During a dive on July 23, 2022, the vehicle found “tracks” of holes on the sea floor. The holes appear at repeating distances and are surrounded by small mounds of sediment, suggesting that someone — or something — is responsible for their creation. This isn’t the first hole happening, either. In 2004, a team from the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service found similar sets of holes and sediment while exploring the ocean floor. The likely explanation? “Lebensspuren,” which is German for “life traces” and suggests that the holes may be the work of living marine organisms.
Not surprisingly, some alien enthusiasts have taken the repetitive nature of the pattern and ascribed it to alien life. While that’s not beyond the realm of possibility, it does seem a bit strange that aliens would focus their time and effort on making small ocean-floor holes for humans to find. Other explanations include some type of natural phenomena, or even human excavation and research efforts that may have distributed deep-sea sediment.
Trawling for Tech
Along with aliens that have existed undetected for centuries on the sea floor, there’s also speculation that alien technology may have crash-landed in our oceans. That’s what Professor Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests. He’s focused on a meteor that hit Earth’s atmosphere in 2014 and then exploded into fragments that rained down over the Pacific Ocean. Loeb contends that object CNEOS 2014-01-08 was moving at 40 kilometers per second and was “moving much too fast to be bound to the sun.” As a result, he says it predates Oumuamua, detected in 2017, as the first interstellar object passing through our solar system.
Loeb now has his sights set on exploring the ocean floor to see if he can find traces of this object and determine if they might actually be alien technology. Not surprisingly, the plan was met with skepticism. Why? First, there’s the fact that it’s exceedingly difficult to take accurate measurements of head-on speed before meteors crash into the atmosphere, meaning the object in question may not be interstellar. Second, any debris remaining after the impact would be extremely small — a few grams or less — and there’s no way to pinpoint a specific search area. In other words, this really is a needle in a haystack – or drop in the ocean – situation.
Are there aliens in the ocean? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean we should stop looking. If nothing else, there’s an opportunity for even more exciting sea-floor surprises.
Are you interested in science and innovation? We are too. Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery.
