The article by The Telegraph reporter Sarah Knapton carries the following headline and story https://uk.yahoo.com/news/prepare-alien-encounter-now-too-214309862.html (images added)
Prepare for alien encounter now before it's too late, warn scientists
photo:NASA
Aliens could get in touch tomorrow and we
must know what to say to them, scientists have warned, as they
launched a new research hub to prepare humanity for first contact.
The University of St
Andrews has joined forces with the UK SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Network to establish
protocols and procedures if aliens are found.
The team warn that
although there are measures in place for dealing with threats posed
by asteroid impacts, there is no agreed response if a radio signal
were picked up from another intelligent lifeform.
The Seti
Post-Detection Hub will bring together experts from around the
world to decide how to decipher methods, enact space law and
anticipate societal impacts.
Dr John
Elliott, honorary research fellow in the School of Computer Science
at St Andrews and coordinator of the Hub, said: “Will we ever get a
message from ET? We don’t know. We also don’t know when this is
going to happen.
“But we do
know that we cannot afford to be ill prepared – scientifically,
socially, and politically rudderless – for an event that could
turn into reality as early as tomorrow and which we cannot
afford to mismanage.
“We need to
coordinate our expert knowledge not only for assessing the evidence
but also for considering the human social response, as our
understanding progresses and what we know and what we don’t know is
communicated. And the time to do this is now.”
Truth is out
there
Protocols need
updating
The potential
for problems in communicating with alien life was explored in the
fourth instalment of the Star Trek film franchise, The Voyage Home.
In depicts an
alien probe sending out a message that inadvertently plays havoc with
human technology with the crisis only resolved when Kirk and his crew
realise it is trying to communicate with the planet's whales.
Many
scientists now think that intelligent life elsewhere in the universe
is a real possibility, and Nasa recently launched an eight-month
inquiry to investigate hundreds of unexplained UFO sightings.
The
investigation into "unidentified aerial phenomena" is being
led by Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, of Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate,
and is due to report back next summer.
Last year, the Pentagon's
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force released a report into 144
UFO incidents between 2004 and 2021, many of which were spotted by
military pilots.
Although
investigators concluded that there was no evidence the objects had
come from outer space, or a foreign adversary, they said that most
could not be explained.
(c)2022 T. Hooper-Scharf
Currently, the
only existing agreed "contact" protocols for encountering
alien life were drawn up by the SETI community itself in
1989, and have not been revised since 2010. But they focus entirely
on scientific conduct.
The Royal
Society held a Scientific Discussion Meeting on "The detection
of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and
society" in 2010 but there has been no global agreement on how
to handle contact.
Learning how
to decipher an alien language or method of communication is likely to
be one of the major hurdles that experts will need to consider.
In a recent
BBC documentary First Contact: An Alien Encounter, scientists
admitted it may never be possible to understand what aliens are
trying to tell us.
Dr Alexander
Rehding, professor of music at Harvard University, said humans had
still not learned how to translate animal communication.
“Whales are
a really good study, and they are in some ways the closest thing that
we have to aliens here on Earth,” he said.
“Whales are
highly intelligent, and their environment is entirely different from
ours. The patterns that we hear are purely patterns that we recognise
as music, repeated patterns.
“It is a
form of vocalising but we don't really know what it's for. Is it
music, is it a language? What does it mean? It can give us a sense of
how difficult the task at hand is.”
Dr Elliott
admitted that deciphering an alien language would be tricky without
some kind of extraterrestrial Rosetta Stone.
“Nevertheless,
much can be gleaned, without this. Language for intelligent species
has a structured system that is multi-layered and has internal
structure," he said.
“By
identifying any patterns within the signal and calculating how these
patterns interact, we will then be able to know if it passes this
initial surface structure test for displaying evidence of being
language-like.
“If so, we
will then be able to move on to identifying internal structures
displayed by all known intelligent species. Once this is done, we can
then move onto deeper levels of ‘syntax’ to ultimately where it
‘meets’ semantics.”
William
Borucki, a former Nasa space scientist, added: “When I look at how
Hollywood portrays contact, one of the things that I think is unreal,
is that people that can readily communicate and have similar
ambitions, similar responses.
“But when I
think about intelligent life, and the variety of it on Earth, we've
got dogs, we've got apes, we've got octopi that have their
intelligence in their arms, not in their head.
“We can't
talk to most of the creatures on Earth in an intelligent way. How are
we going to talk to intelligent civilisations? I'm not sure we'll
ever understand.”
***************************************************
Here again we see that the news item is taking its lead from the UAP
Task Force and, of course, that has become hip and trendy to refer to
in items online, TV and elsewhere. But let's not go into Elizondo and
the "false disclosure" here.
What we are seeing
is astronomers and others, who should have been looking into UFO
reports from the very outset running around like headless chickens.
Science allowed itself to throw aside scientific principles and
reasoning because they were being told what the do
by the intelligence community and anti-UFO debunkers who were
profiting from a in the employ of the intelligence community. Those
who even dared look into reports were bullied, blacklisted and pushed
out of their jobs and this led some to eventual suicide.
Look at the
astrophysicist and celebrity loving Neil
deGrasse Tyson who dismisses UFO reports by not even looking at any
details. He is on the record -in print and in online interviews
(such as on You Tube) stating that he is not going to spoend any of
his valuable professional time looking at UFOs. That immediately
negates his worth as a scientist. Imagine all the scientific
discoveries made NOT being made because "I am not going to spend
any of my valuable time on this" prevailed. He loves the
publicity and money that brings and that's where it stops.
The
fact that Neil deGrasse
Tyson is looked upon by many
as the
scientist to go to his opinion is worthless because he will not look
at the subject and there are many astronomers who take that lead and
brush off the idea of UFOs being worth anything but a laugh.
Had
science and in particular astronomers and those involved in SETI
actually studied the available reports from, say, 1950 onward then
they would have come across the Close Encounters of the Third Kind
cases. But, oh “silly little green men stories -beneath us!” The
fact that these intellectually stunted people keep repeating “little
green men” ad infinitum
shows how derelict their scientific capacity is.
Unfortunately,
Hopkins, Jacobs, Mack and the other High Priests of Abduction made a
mockery of real research on the subject for thirty plus years and
this was encouraged by social club Ufology with its money-making
aims. Science can take a lot of the blame but Ufology has a sizeable
chunk on its back.
Let’s
ignore the Contactee reports. Look at the CE3K reports and those tell
us a lot about how alleged aliens communicate. We have to remember
that there is no 100% solid proof of alien encounters just very
strong anecdotal evidence; the type of evidence which has (if you
follow the news) just seen three people in the UK and U. S.
convicted in criminal courts. The
problem is that science (not all scientists as I know that there have
been a few open-minded on the UFO subject well before the UAP craze)
will not look into a case it cannot dismiss.
1) three people out
for a drive at night are chased by an oval shaped UFO
2) all three report
an abduction experience
3) all three suffer
physiological (burns/radiation sickness) and psychological problems
(post traumatic stress)
4) at the same time
as the trio were being chased and independent observer saw a car
being chased by a bright object on the same road
5) that same evening
there are UFO reports from the area.
6) a UFO was
detected by local radar
Each of these points
would need to be investigated and dismissed -radar would need to be
proven faulty, the independent observations would all need to be
proven to be hallucinations or misidentifications and it would need
to be explained how three percipients got a dose of radiation
poisoning and burns on a short road trip along a quiet road and why
all three were medically judged to be suffering from psychological
trauma. “They saw Venus” is just not going to work here.
What these people
are currently looking for are jobs that pay well on committees so
they can sit back and pontificate on how we can communicate with
aliens. Prestige job, free lunches and not really do much.
I probably have more
credentials regarding studying alien (alleged) life and
communications than anyone at SETI!
There
is a real and genuine fear amongst people on SETI and astronomers
that we will be contacted by aliens. Or may have been studied by
such. As I pointed out in UFO
Contact?
the
invention of the
radio
was the work of many great minds over the course of several decades
during the 19th century, although
the first transmission was made in 1895.
Since that time radio, TV
and other radio signals (not SETI) ave
travelled out in a 200 light year diameter from Earth. Check my posts
on our nearest solar systems to see how many are covered in that 200
ly diameter.
The
SETI people are supposing that aliens advanced enough to visit Earth
are so dumb that they never thought to themselves “I wonder how
Earth people communicate?” However, Science (collectively) is not
that bright. Back in the 1960s Carl Sagan stated that one or two
visits might be likely, however, “due to the vastness of space”
regular visits are very unlikely. In
fact
Sagan once argued that there was a “statistical likelihood that
Earth was visited by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization at
least once during historical times.”
deGrasse Tyson had a
huge man-crush on Sagan
https://blankonblank.org/interviews/carl-sagan-extraterrestrials-religion-aliens-life-planets-mars-galaxies-stars/
so it’s a pity he loves the celebrity more than science. Then
again, maybe he never read Sagan’s work.
The one problem that
astronomers and SETI keep throwing up is “the vast distances of
space that rule out interplanetary travel”. Firstly, I do not
think that there is any evidence that there is intelligent life that
has originated on any other planet than Earth. What they actually
mean is “inter-solar system” travel at best. The idea that the
Milky Way has no other life in it therefore we have to concentrate on
galaxies far, far away is Prof. Dumb and Dumber in charge. Again,
possibly fear that advanced civilisations may be nearby.
Someone/thing sits back in the Andromeda galaxy and points at the
Milky Way: “Let’s not bother with our own galaxy, we’re in it
-let’s travel to that one!” Dumb and Dumber thinking again.
Officially,
even if Science accepted UFO cases, no one has officially
met aliens. We can only go by the reports and once the natural
phenomenon is excluded to leave us with only
clearly seen and described constructed objects that we know are not
“from around here” then
we can say “If they ain’t from around here then they come from
somewhere else!” Going by the reports that the debunkers have
failed to explain away we would find that there are clues as to
possible power sources as well as how far advanced these visitors
are. I, and this is just my opinion, do not believe that they have
travelled from the Andromeda galaxy or any galaxy that Ufologists
have promoted: they think stating a galaxy name is like stating “that
planet over there”.
For any confused
Ufologists out there:
Solar
System: a
sun
together with a
group of celestial bodies (planets,
asteroids etc) that
are held by its attraction and revolve around it. Aka:
planetary system.
Galaxy:
a
system of millions or billions of stars, together with gas and dust,
held together by gravitational attraction.
Now,
our sun (Sol) belongs
to a galaxy called the Milky Way. Astronomers estimate there are
about 100
thousand million stars
in the Milky Way alone. Then
comes the bigger scientific estimate for the Milky Way galaxy: how
many (possible) planets are in it?
Our
Sun hosts eight planets (until it is discovered Planet 10 is
excluded), so planets might be more numerous depending on
circumstance and causality; however, in our galaxy, the Milky Way,
there are estimated to be at the least around
100 billion
planets. If,
say, you exclude 99% of that estimate you are still left with 1
billion planets. There are
59,722 stars visible with a telescope within 100 light-years of our
solar system.
This
is why I fail to understand why SETI does not concentrate on nearer
systems. We cannot, after all, now hide our transmissions or the fact
that we are here. We cannot hide the fact that we are so consumed by
political wrangling and love of war that we spend multi billions of
$/£ each year on these and have been so backward in supporting space
flight that apart from probes humans have failed to get to its
nearest neighbour, our Moon, since December 1972 with Apollo 17. That
is 50 years -we were told that by now we would have lunar bases and
manned flights to Mars would have taken place instead a few rich
people have taken up private (financial) spaceflight. We are not the
brightest in the galaxy.
An
advanced civilisation might be far less interested in politics (a
purely Terran concept) and may not even have had any conflict in its
past. The idea that the (self
grandised)
‘experts’
keep pushing is that there are probably no alien civilisations
because, “like us”, these civilisations “can only last so far
before destroying themselves in war”. These experts (X=The Unknown
while “spurt” is a drip under pressure) can only think in
terrestrial terms and that in itself shows that they are
scientifically redundant. When one of these persons refers to UFO
reports as “crap” well, says a great deal more about that person
than UFO reports. After all, they got a piece of paper from a
university so they know better than anyone else. Physicist Brian Cox
and deGrasse Tyson are perfect examples. Their intellectual thinking
appears far below that of such people as Michio Kaku, the
American theoretical
physicist, futurist,
and popularizer
of science (science
communicator).
He is a professor of theoretical
physics in
the City
College of New York and CUNY
Graduate Center.
Kaku is the author of several books about physics and
related topics and has made frequent appearances on radio,
television, and film. He is also a regular contributor to his own
blog, as well as other popular media outlets. For his efforts to
bridge science and science fiction, he is a 2021 Sir
Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Awardee.
A
scientist who thinks in other words.
We also look at
planets based on our knowledge of Earth and how life developed here.
Up until a decade or so ago if anyone suggested that there was water
throughout our own solar system they would have been shouted down.
Now we know that it isa fairly “common”. Exo-planets have been
detected that seem to have water on them. The problem is that
astronomers speculate so much and digital art images are pushed out
every time that people imagine the planets have been observed and
studied and these are images based on those observations. Also, when
you announce observing a gas giant and put forward the usual
scientific poo-poo about it no one asks questions. A few questions
are asked when that gas giant...is lost (maybe someone struck a match
a little too close to it?).
Science
bases everything on our knowledge of Earth (while still arguing about
other planetary bodies and aspects of Earth itself) and our
technology. You know, the technology that can spend multi billions
on new stealth military aircraft but has to buy space on a ‘taxi’
to get its own crews to the International Space station (I am looking
at you, America). Had the military budget for two years (including
black ops budgets) been pushed into the space program itself think
what might have been achieved? Basing
everything on Us and Earth is not a good idea but for some it’s
easier.
We have seen (if we
accept the reports) that UFOBs (constructed objects) are far superior
to anything we have on Earth. These entities did not neglect science
and their space program or whatever project(s) they had; they got to
work. We need to check for clues in the reports of landings and
airborne objects.
“We’ve not
proved scientifically that telepathy exists! It’s all woo-woo!”
Well, there is anecdotal evidence but, as with Ufologists being
ignorant of scientific developments, so those involved in science do
not keep up with or show interest in fields that bring them,
personally, anything. Again it is this self grandisement where no one
knows anything other than them.
Ufology
has
similar in the Believer and Debunker camps and
followers will accept anything fed to them. Its all about money and
celebrity. Even aftyer having their work exposed there are still
those promoting Hopkins, Jacobs and Mack. What they reveal about
“alien communication” can be considered pure fantasy right down
to alleged alien symbols. So we, again, have to look at how
percipients/observers describe behaviour and communication with
“aliens”.
M.
Masse at Valensole allegedly communicated with two entities and was
invited into their craft. He declined and that was it. A conversation
followed that he took to his grave but he did not believe the Hill
case as there was no attempt to abduct him. There are other landing
reports where people are invited aboard a landed craft but decline
-nothing. There are cases where an over enthusiastic witness attempts
to run toward a landed object -he is waved
back
just as we might wave someone back from danger and on the occasion
when the warning is not heeded either the object takes off or “fires”
a warning beam in front of the person.
If Sagan was correct
and there was an alien visitation in the past then it is possible
that race either pops back over every so often or (unless an
isolationist race) their knowledge is shared with other races. All
conjecture but it would make sense. That weapons (hand held) fail to
work or the holder is paralysed to a degree shows that there is some
knowledge of humans and terrestrial weapons -think of all of those
broadcasts.
Are they a threat?
Well, to our world-view, possibly. Though it seems more people are
willing to accept alien life now than before. Looking at the
technology reported (it is the best that we can do) then there is no
doubt that if the intent was hostile Earth would have been taken over
in a day. We have to think that the greatest enemy is our own fear
and the utter stupidity displayed by the ”experts” and their daft
statements.
When
it comes down to it the SETI people and hangers-on have to consider
the fact that any aliens coming here would be aware of our language
and what we do -the idea of a priest vaporized
as he approaches a landed UFO with his hands raised and white flag in
one hand...a bit daft. Logically
it makes no sense especially if they have viewed our TV and seen what
a white flag and hands in the air means.
Go
back to the UFO reports and study them. Far more will be learnt from
them than any over indulgent lunch and three hours of pontification.
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