Perception of time - why we have had no visible Extraterrestrial contact?

As humans, we perceive time as a set thing. We've been bought up to believe in a 24 hour day, 7 day week and 365 day year. Apart from a leap year, these things do not change.

Our lifetimes are dependent on our health and the millions of other factors (country of birth, where you live, your lifestyle, socially, your career, family, and millions of other factors that roll into it).

Imagine a life form not from Earth. Something that you have not seen before. You would imagine the old myth of a bug eyed Alien, right? Or something very tall, or very short. Something that resembles a "being". Something that your mind can create, from imagination.

Why does it have to be that way? Why can't it be something you don't know - something that is completely different to anything that you could fathom?

What if it were a solid object, but had artificial intelligence built in? Kind of like a computer, but that is "alive". It could fly itself anywhere it wanted and ran off of an energy we can not perceive. Something that is completely non-dependent on anything.

Something that would not experience time, distance, or any of those constraints we as humans feel and experience every day. It could have been "alive" (built) by something like the Matrix - the octopus-like beings that were created by AI.

Maybe there is life so far away from here, it takes that long to get to us. Maybe our universe, or Earth is artificially slowed down by time, or we're in a bubble that time floats by slower? There are all sorts of theories on the Moon being metal underneath and a artificially-created object.

What if that were true? The moon has it's dark side, and cannot be seen. Does this not seem artificially placed to you?

Saturn has it's rings, and pictures have shown an Earth-sized object in the rings - how can this be explained?

The truth is, we will most likely never know the truth. Right down to time and how we experience it, it is all relative to again, something you have been taught. What if you could live forever? Would you choose this?

Would you want to be emotional and live for the social interaction, love, fun... or life forever and experience nothing. No emotion, no fun, no hurt, no love?