Science in the Mahabharata

I have come across many people who are of the opinion that the Mahabharata is not some sort of a fairy tale based on a few basic facts, but an undistorted history of a bygone era, when human beings had supernatural powers and interacted regularly with the gods. There is another theory that those people were incredibly advanced in technology, the 'gods' were aliens, the vimanas were spaceships, and the divyastras nuclear and biological weapons. While the first speculation cannot be true, the second might have some amount of truth in it. The likes of Daniken or Rael may possibly be too far fetched in their assertion that human civilization is a gift of the extra terrestrials, but it's likely that the ancients had an amount of scientific and technical knowledge that would seem incredible to us.

Unfortunately, whatever they knew has been lost under layers of poetic distortion and exaggeration, through ages of ignorance. A great deal of research needs to be carried out before we may reach at a conclusive theory on the advancements of Ancient Indian Science. Developed as they were in terms of Physiology, Medicines, Mathematics and Astronomy, we do not have enough evidence to conclude that they were equally advanced in terms of technology. On one hand we have descriptions of weapons that are almost identical to nuclear missiles, intricate description of Vimanas, and on the other we have fallacious notions about the solar system and planets.

Was the birth of Duryodhana and his brothers an example of human cloning?

Were the Pandavas born of artificial insemination?

Were there weapons that could obliterate millions in the blink of an eye?

Did the Shalwa King actually attack Dwaraka from a spaceship?

Sad as it seems, we would probably never find answers to these questions. Perhaps we would never be able to uncover the reality of a science that remains hidden behind strata of later additions and modifications made by a less intellectual progeny.