Do I give astronomers and scientists a hard time over their attitudes towards UFOs? Perhaps, but then again I get accused of playing Ping-Pong with Ufologists testicles, too.
In a perfect world we would all be cooperating and the idiots would not get a look in. I want to find the facts. Human lives are too short and I would at least like to see evidence as to what "UFOs" are and if there have really been extra terrestrial encounters in the past. What I think is different from knowing.
But without the money-men you can only do so much.
Associate Professor of Physics, University at Albany, State University of New York
Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.
As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, “You have absolutely no idea what is out there!” The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.
Cover of the October 1957 issue of pulp science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This was a special edition devoted to ‘flying saucers,’ which became a national obsession after airline pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted a saucer-shaped flying objects in 1947.
I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.
With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there’s plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.
The Fermi paradox
The nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi was famous for posing thought provoking questions. In 1950, at Los Alamos National Laboratory after discussing UFOs over lunch, Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” He estimated there were about 300 billion stars in the galaxy, many of them billions of years older than the sun, with a large percentage of them likely to host habitable planets. Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Depending on the assumptions, one should expect anywhere from tens to tens of thousands of civilizations.
With the rocket-based technologies that we have developed for space travel, it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like ours to colonize our Milky Way galaxy. Since this should have happened several times already in the history of our galaxy, one should wonder where is the evidence of these civilizations? This discrepancy between the expectation that there should be evidence of alien civilizations or visitations and the presumption that no visitations have been observed has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.
This photograph was taken in Wallonia, Belgium.J.S. Henrardi
Carl Sagan correctly summarized the situation by saying that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered upand classifiedinformation aboutsuch encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study.
UFOs, taboo for professional scientists
When it comes to science, the scientific method requires hypotheses to be testable so that inferences can be verified. UFO encounters are neither controllable nor repeatable, which makes their study extremely challenging. But the real problem, in my view, is that the UFO topic is taboo.
While the general public has been fascinated with UFOs for decades, our governments, scientists and media, have essentially declared that of all the UFO sightings are a result of weather phenomenon or human actions. None are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft. And no aliens have visited Earth. Essentially, we are told that the topic is nonsense. UFOs are off-limits to serious scientific study and rational discussion, which unfortunately leaves the topic in the domain of fringe and pseudoscientists, many of whom litter the field with conspiracy theories and wild speculation.
I think UFO skepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy. A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out. In the end, the skeptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted. The fact is that many of these encounters – still a very small percentage of the total – defy conventional explanation.
The media amplifies the skepticism by publishing information about UFOs when it is exciting, but always with a mocking or whimsical tone and reassuring the public that it can’t possibly be true. But there are credible witnesses and encounters.
Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?
I am often asked by friends and colleagues, “Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?” The fact is that they do. In 1977, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space science and astrophysics at Stanford University, mailed 2,611 questionnaires about UFO sightings to members of the American Astronomical Society. He received 1,356 responses from which 62 astronomers – 4.6 percent – reported witnessing or recording inexplicable aerial phenomena. This rate is similar to the approximately 5 percent of UFO sightings that are never explained.
As expected, Sturrock found that astronomers who witnessed UFOs were more likely to be night sky observers. Over 80 percent of Sturrock’s respondents were willing to study the UFO phenomenon if there was a way to do so. More than half of them felt that the topic deserves to be studied versus 20 percent who felt that it should not. The survey also revealed that younger scientists were more likely to support the study of UFOs.
UFOs have been observed through telescopes. I know of one telescope sighting by an experienced amateur astronomer in which he observed an object shaped like a guitar pick moving through the telescope’s field of view. Further sightings are documented in the book “Wonders in the Sky,” in which the authors compile numerous observations of unexplained aerial phenomena made by astronomers and published in scientific journals throughout the 1700s and 1800s.
Evidence from government and military officers
Some of the most convincing observations have come from government officials. In 1997, the Chilean government formed the organization Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos, or CEFAA, to study UFOs. Last year, CEFAA released footage of a UFO taken with a helicopter-mounted Wescam infrared camera.
Declassified document describing a sighting of a UFO in December 1977, in Bahia, a state in northern Brazil.Arquivo Nacional Collection
The countries of Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008. The French Committee for In-Depth Studies, or COMETA, was an unofficial UFO study group comprised of high-ranking scientists and military officials that studied UFOs in the late 1990s. They released the COMETA Report, which summarized their findings. They concluded that 5 percent of the encounters were reliable yet inexplicable: The best hypothesis available was that the observed craft were extraterrestrial. They also accused the United States of covering up evidence of UFOs. Iran has been concerned about spherical UFOs observed near nuclear power facilities that they call “CIA drones” which reportedly are about 30 feet in diameter, can achieve speeds up to Mach 10, and can leave the atmosphere. Such speeds are on par with the fastest experimental aircraft, but unthinkable for a sphere without lift surfaces or an obvious propulsion mechanism.
In December 2017, The New York Times broke a story about the classified Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a $22 million program run by the former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and aimed at studying UFOs. Elizondo resigned from running the program protesting extreme secrecy and the lack of funding and support. Following his resignation Elizondo, along with several others from the defense and intelligence community, were recruited by the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which was recently founded by Tom DeLonge to study UFOs and interstellar travel. In conjunction with the launch of the academy, the Pentagon declassified and released three videos of UFO encounters taken with forward looking infrared cameras mounted on F-18 fighter jets. While there is much excitement about such disclosures, I am reminded of a quote from Retired Army Colonel John Alexander: “Disclosure has happened. … I’ve got stacks of generals, including Soviet generals, who’ve come out and said UFOs are real. My point is, how many times do senior officials need to come forward and say that this is real?”
A topic worthy of serious study
There is a great deal of evidence that a small percentage of these UFO sightings are unidentified structured craft exhibiting flight capabilities beyond any known human technology. While there is no single case for which there exists evidence that would stand up to scientific rigor, there are cases with simultaneous observations by multiple reliable witnesses, along with radar returns and photographic evidence revealing patterns of activity that are compelling.
Declassified information from covert studies is interesting, but not scientifically helpful. This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent. Moreover, this would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe.
Arecibo Message explained: How researchers sent the first
interstellar radio message
Chelsea Ritschel
The Independent
November 16 2018 marks 44 years since researchers sent
humankind’s first interstellar radio message – an achievement Google is celebrating
with a Google Doodle.
The Arecibo Message, sent from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974, is a three-minute message of exactly
1,679 binary digits – which, if arranged in a specific way, can explain basic
information about humanity and earth to extraterrestrial beings.
Scientists sent the message via frequency modulated radio
waves to a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away to demonstrate the power of
the Arecibo
radio telescope, which was the largest and most powerful in the world at the
time.
“It was a strictly symbolic event, to show that we could do
it,” CornellUniversity professor of astronomy Donald
Campbell recalled of the momentous event.
The event moved some present to tears as researchers
contemplated their own existence and knowledge of planets and solar systems.
The hope is that, in many thousands of years, it may reach
another living being.
The actual message was devised by a team of researchers from
CornellUniversity led by astronomer and
astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake.
When received, the message could be arranged in a grid 73
rows by 23 columns to form a pictograph that represents facts about
mathematics, human DNA, planet earth, and humans.
From top down, the seven-part message can show the numbers
one to 10, atomic numbers of elements including hydrogen and oxygen, the
formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA, a graphic of the
DNA double helix structure, a figure of a human and the population of earth at
the time, a graph of the solar system, and a graph of the telescope.
Since the Arecibo
message was sent, the message has travelled just 259 trillion miles – a
fraction of its journey to its intended destination, which will take roughly
25,000 years to complete.
25,000 years for the message to reach its destination. If it
reaches an intelligent life form -if- there is the 25,000 year wait for a
returned message. Now, personally, I think sending a message to show off is
pointless. I certainly do not care when
it gets to its final destination. I won’t
be alive and I think it is fair to say that no one alive today will be!
Will Earth still be here in 50,000 years? Humanity? And those are the two minor
questions because the main one is will any civilization exist in the area the
signal is heading? Rather like the
Voyagers (I and II) their journeys will take thousands upon thousands of years
if they are not destroyed in some collision and, again, this was showing
off. Planetary information from both was
fantastic so why not just set them to randomly float around the solar
system. I know there are a lot of
problems because of age and so on but surely someone must have thought it
better to keep roaming our system than become a piece of space litter?
Above: Pioneer 10 launched in 1972
Below: The plaque carried by Pioneer 10
I really do not care that in 40, 60 or 100,000 years an
alien space ship may find one of our probes.
To them it may well send a cheery message of “there was intelligent life” out in space.
Again, I personally do not think any advanced alien
civilisation would be using radio signals or sending out probes to say “Hello.
We’re dead now –sorry you missed us!”
The Andromeda galaxy has an estimated (it may be raised in
number at some point) 1 trillion stars. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia
space craft is 3D scanning space and has made somke excellent discoveries. It
has created a 3D map of 1.7 billion
stars in the Milky Way. Read this item if you are interested: https://www.space.com/40406-gaia-release-color-milky-way-map.html
The European Space Agency released a new map of nearly 1.7
billion stars from the Gaia spacecraft, giving the best-ever view of the Milky
Way and neighboring galaxies in color.
Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC
Here is a little fact: As of the 1st November,
2018, there have been 3,874 confirmed planets in 2,892 systems, with 638
systems having more than one planet. If you want more information on how these
are detected and distances from Earth then there is a very good Wikipedia entry
here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet
We should all know about the “Goldilocks Zone” where we
would expect to find habitable or Earth-like planets. So here is another little
fact for you: in November of 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space
mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of
Sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way, 11 billion of which may be
orbiting Sun-like stars.
Remember that we only recently discovered “Ghost Galaxies”
and that there are suns that travel between galaxies –when it comes to knowing
about our solar system and the universe our knowledge is of perhaps about 0.5%.
We should be sending radio signals and messages shorter
distances and, considering objects the size of Oumuamua are only discovered by
chance, we need to make sure any signals are broadcast throughout our solar
system.
Science also needs to get involved in the subject of UFOs
but only in the sense of looking at the data and assessing reports –unexplained
does not mean “alien” but it would offer us a basic data base to build on and
study. The unwillingness to do this is
unscientific and, I believe, cowardly. Hopefully it is just through closed
minds rather than fear that their highly paid jobs might be at stake.
That those involved with SETI will not become involved is,
to a degree, and we have to be honest, it is understandable. Hopkins, Jacobs et al have made it so that the subject has become farcical. “Millions”
of people abducted year in and year out to create a race of alien half-wits.
But we need to concentrate on those reports both old and new
that have largely been left untainted and there are many.
*We are not talking about hundreds of flying saucer crashes
and many hundreds of dead aliens
*We are not even looking at extra terrestrials visiting
Earth over the centuries as there is no evidence of this except that presented
by the bunko crew.
*We are certainly not talking about “many millions” of alien
abductees.
*We are not talking hundreds or thousands of extra
terrestrial space craft being sighted each year.
What we are talking about is far less, rarer activity and,
being honest again, re-assessing all of the old reports has left me realising
that there is evidence there –even if
only anecdotal. 100% evidence is not possible since if landing traces,
radiation and other physical evidence is ignored by sceptical ufologists and
debunkers (the same thing) or simply waved off as being unexplainable and
therefore “not evidence” I doubt that anything would convinced a closed and
frightened mind.
By definition, and I find this almost laughable, doing the
work I am it is safe to say I am far more involved in SETI than most of those
working within SETI!
We really need to get our act together and forget what might
happen in 50,000 years!
Okay, it is hard to locate alien life signs in space. Big universe and we might not be looking in the right places.
Let's face it; we are hit-or-miss with SETI. Outraged astronomers scream out in pompous anger at that statement. My response: You never even saw the galaxy next door.
I am being rather sarcastic and unfair there. But it was fun to write!
I mentioned previously that the CE3K/AE file for the United States was completely out of proportion to any other file. Looking at European reports combined the total number still does not exceed those from the United States.
Here I am photographed risking a wrist fracture holding the old United States file.
The problem comes when you go through the cases one-by-one. Most of the modern online accounts are said to have "been investigated by (insert name)". However, if you go back to the original sources you read these 'investigators" stating that "according to news reports" and "looking over the news accounts".
They never 'investigated' any case -everything was investigated by press cuttings. This was and still is the preferred method of ufologists. I have mentioned before how ufologists, deciding to look at a case 20 or so years after the event, have criticized journalists for not thoroughly investigating a case or leaving out details. Yes, you see, journalists are there to fill news columns and I have yet to meet any that have accurately reported on a case: journalists are not there to investigate UFO reports -that, supposedly, is what the ufologists are supposed to do.
Even when ufologists do get involved a report is rarely investigated. The ufologist(s) get what they want and move on.
For instance: the 2nd November, 1973, UFO encounter of Lyndia Morel, near to Goffstown, New Hampshire. It is often referred to online and in print and there are references to "abduction" and "missing time! Walter Webb, of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) and Betty Hill (the Betty Hill) looked into the case and their final report ends with Morel pulling into a driveway of a house (fearing she was going to be abducted) and alerting the household -the occupiers contacted the police and an officer duly arrived on the scene. Everyone, including the cop, saw the UFO. Well, not if you read the actual report because it is made quite clear that the object they were observing was the planet Mars.
That is where the story ends. Seriously, no abduction indicated. No missing time. Case concluded.
And that seems to have been the end of this "thoroughly investigated UFO abduction". My question has to be "What happened?" No follow-ups or attempts to see whether Morel later recalled something had happened?
This was an 'investigated' case and there are many more like this. There are far more that were never investigated before and after because the report involved "little green men" -Lorenzens were only really interested in abduction reports (as outlined in UFO Contact?) and what they could get out of those cases, not necessarily for science!
There are many hundreds of reports that just would not pass scrutiny. This feeds into the hands of debunkers and "sceptical ufologists" (debunkers).
Below, the US file with each little tab denoting a report.
There is absolutely no way that I intend to include post 1980s "alien abductions" -again, my thoughts on this are covered in UFO Contact? but the major problem is that the work of noted "abduction researchers" such a John Carpenter, Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs have now had their work discredited and each aspect of the "Grey Alien Abduction Agenda" has been negated from missing foetus to alien implants.
I do not rule out the possibility of one off alien abduction events (again, see UFO Contact?) but I think that we need to look at the reports pre Hopkins/Jacobs.
As of yesterday (12th November), I have divided the USA file into two separate volumes: Volume 1:1900 -1969 and Volume 2: 1970 on.
I have asked ufologists in the United States whether they would be willing to look into old reports -UFO cold cases? So far I have had 100% negative responses.
The 1966 Kathy Reeves/Reeves Farm events -even the Centre for UFO Studies only had a reference to an article in the Flying Saucer Review (emailed from Dr Mark Rodheiger 5th November, 2018). This case has been so badly reported on by John Keel, Loren Coleman and many others who today practice copy and paste 'research'.
I come across these reports and, to be honest, I do not think that I have enough years left to investigate all of them -that should be the task of American ufologists but they are not interested. There are four cases I hope to follow up on but the workload shows why this really doew need funding!
So when you read all of those cases online PLEASE do your own research and try to get to the truth and do not accept what ufologists tell you at face value.
I must admit that I am very disappointed. On the 29th October I announced that the first issue of the AOP Journal was available. Since that time there have been several thousand views of the announcement.
And sales have totalled....zero Now as it seems that no one wants to buy any of the books I have written -three sold since 2010- I thought that a 52 pages publication that was non-sensationalist and offered facts for £6 would be seen as a bargain.
The total lack of interest has made me decide that the amount of work involved in a regular, quarterly is not worth it. It takes a lot of time and energy and a hell of a lot of work to produce a 52 pager so to continue a publication that has attracted no interest is pointless. It does mean that I have now also shelved the Special Issues dealing with specific cases or subjects.
The first issue will be online store until it or I am gone. NO -there will be no freebies and certainly no free download version.
Technical and scientific based journal looking at what has become known as "UFOs" -including natural phenomena some not yet scientifically understood. This is NOT a sensationalist publication but will contain fully referenced articles and reports to help promote further serious study.
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