this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Aliens have not been discovered in South America after all. The doll-like figures, photos of which went viral online last year, are just that โ€“ dolls, according to scientists.

The controversial artifacts were seized by Peruvian customs agents in October and intended for "a Mexican citizen," the Associated Press reported.

Mexican journalist and self-described "UFOlogist" Jaime Maussan brought similar unidentified fraudulent objects in front of the Mexican congress last September, claiming that they had been recovered near Peru's ancient Nazca Lines and dated over 700 years old.

...

"They are not extraterrestrials, they are not intraterrestrials, they are not a new species, they are not hybrids, they are none of those things that this group of pseudo-scientists who for six years have been presenting with these elements," Estrada said.

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[โ€“] PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

You're mixing up the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation.

Assuming you meant the Drake equation, more than half of the variables we have absolutely no statistical basis to decide on a fraction. Obviously they are non-zero, but they could be extremely improbable. We only have one example of intelligent life developing radio communications. Any estimate of a statistical likelihood of that using Earth as an example is meaningless without other examples.

Some pessimistic estimates give solutions as small 9.1 x 10^-13 which indicates we would be alone.

The Fermi Paradox riffs on the optimistic answer to Drake's Equation. If other intelligent life is a certainty, why haven't we found them yet?