It's blurry...been "enhanced" but science will accept the image as being evidence...we aint talking UFOs

Well, I notice that standards are being maintained.  Not a single comment on any of the posts despite some of them attracting thousands of views -and it goes without saying that some of those people are taking items (including my original comments) and posting them as their own.

I get fed up posting free content (I have books you can buy to support the ongoing work) but I'm sat here waiting for the grim reaper so have some time to waste.

A proto black hole in our solar system could be what people have mistaken for Planet 9 (before Pluto's demotion, Planet X). You check the comments on 'news' sites like Yahoo! and you see some of the biggest pile of garbage and lobotomised hysteria it is possible to find in one place.  On this blog, intended to foster discussion or questions....nothing.

As it stands I do not think that the proto black hole theory is anything but that. Astronomy calls for lots -an incredible amount at times- theorising on things that "might be" if another theory is correct. Over 4000 exo planets have been discussed and we have all the nice "artists impressions" of these that astronomers and scientists use in lectures.  Most will say "This is Exo planet AABB.  Now we have never seen what it looks like.  This is just an artist impression."  In which case you really should not be using imaginary paintings but the actual image (IF you have one) of AABB -which as best is a tiny dot.

Astronomers and scientists used that famous "artists impression/concept" of what Oumuamua looked like.  And then they screech at the public and news services "That is NOT what it looked like!" and give us another artist impression of "what Oumuamua might look like".  Because no one ever saw it.

"Ifs"/"Buts"/"Might"/"If the theory is correct then it might explain" are every day astronomical scientific words.

this is a typical image released with the discovery of an exo planet.

Here are actual photographs/images of exo planets

The exoplanet HIP 65426b has recently been discovered using the SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument)

There is some controversy over whether the planet seen in this image exists. Read here for more.]

How do we know these are exo planets?  We have to take the word of scientists that their calculations are correct and truthful....oh and "We peer review" which in itself can lead to nasty arguments and people being outraged that their pet theories are being shoved to one side.

On the 10th April, 2019, NASA released the first image of a black hole.  Apparently a lot of reporters were underwhelmed!

In a historic feat by @EHTelescope & @NSF, a black hole image has been captured for the 1st time. Several of our missions observed the same black hole using different light wavelengths and collected data to understand the black hole's environment. Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2Uwj1PF

https://
Hmm. Here is the problem: grainy images of objects millions of light years away accompanied by unproven theories -we will never visit these planets- are taken as fact.  However many "observers" may be involved where is the proof?  It's an image.  Often an enhanced or "touched up"/altered image and we have to take astronomers' word of what is shown?  Yet they will argue on points and even challenge each other but it comes down to this: you HAVE to accept their word.

Think of the astronomers in the past humiliated, laughed at and who had -at best- careers ruined because they proposed that the Moon and Mars might have some type of water or ice -that it might not be simply confined to Earth. Those who had the same treatment over claims about Mars. Or how about those who observed and wrote for decades on there being a large planet beyond Pluto...look how many minor planets we have found so far.  Don't forget that 20 new moons were only recently discovered in the solar system.

Now look at it this way (let's be Devil's Advocate): a couple driving along a lonely road observe a strange light moving around the night sky.  The said object lands just ahead of them.  It ;later transpires, though they do not want to believe this themselves, that they were taken aboard what we would call a UFOB -a constructed non terrestrial craft. At the same time a local air force base detects a UFO on its radar and there are interceptors sent to check.  Miles from the couple (who are unseen due to distance) witnesses in a car see a UFO that eventually takes off.  They may or may not see or hear the interceptors.  The air force is contacted after the couple report the UFO to investigators and it is found that an "unknown" was tracked.  Checking reports made on that day the people who saw the object from a distance are found to have reported it.  Everything matches./

For astronomers and scientists that is not evidence. Only blurry, enhanced images from light years away count.

Why?

There are possibilities.

1. Scientists and astronomers will think they will be called failures because aliens are visiting Earth occasionally and they didn't know or

2. The possibility of real live aliens coming to Earth actually terrifies these people for various reasons.  If you are an ass-head like Dr Brian ("I'm a celebrity") Cox then you believe that all intelligent life in what even he graciously concedes is a vast universe, is dead.  We (humans) are it.

3  Astronomers and scientist will quote "the vast distances involved in space travel" which they then authoratively claim "Would make it impossible for aliens to visit the Earth"  Well, this is what we used to call "utter nonsense" or "talking out of your ass".

Firstly, these people have never contacted an advanced alien civilisation  let alone studied the type of space craft or technology they used.  Judging everything by human technological standards is so pointless.  Just as they may very well not use radio signals they may be centuries ahead of us in technology -had humans not killed off scientists with "outlandish theories" and warred with each other for centuries think where we might be today -technology is developing and increasing and I remember what it was like in the 1960s when you  were either well enough for a private landline telephone or had to visit the local phone box -and join the queue!  Today you can call anywhere in the work from your sofa.  Not to mention tweets and instagram or Face Book and even cook a meal in minutes instead of 30 minutes to an hour after preparation.

It takes one Elon Musk to have a team that decides "A" simply does not work and shrug and decide to try "D" instead and...a new way to travel in sp[ace is developed and from there others will jump in and add to the development.

When I was a young we were promised homes on the Moon by the 21st century.  Greed, war and corruption led to all of that stopping but what if the Apollo missions had continued?  I never even imagined that one man who lead a team that put a red sports car with astronaut dummy into space.

Distances and propulsion methods are things that we can guess at what might be developed but there is no human being on this planet who has any idea of what type of propulsion system or travel method any alien life might use.

The distance response is silly talk at best. and the other response of "We would detect them in our solar system" is shot down in flaming dust -our Near Earth Object detection system missed four large asteroid close passes....we more or less accidentally detected Oumuamua and we've found 20 new moons (they did not "just appear there") and there may be more, we have found minor planets beyond Pluto and there could be more including the giant (possibly) Planet 9.  When asked why they have not detected all of these before the answer is always the same -the size of the solar system, orbits and so on. So even a battle ship sized interstellar craft could 'sneak through'

4. There is the arrogance that, as in science fiction movies, scientists would be the first to be contacted but why any advanced civilisation should want to contact backward scientists is open to conjecture. Aliens would be detected or contact us via signals yet when there are unusual signals they are immediately described as (just check online when it comes to SETI) "Anything but aliens".  True space is very noisy.  The AOP Bureau's Franklyn A. Davin-Wilson dealt not only with Near Earth Objects but also "Signals from space".  "The music of the spheres" as an expression should have added to it "The music of the spheres, nebula, quasars and intergalactic space".  Scientists and astronomers could simply state: "Everything must be ruled out before jumping to the conclusion of alien signals" but they do not.  "It's never ever aliens" is the line you hear over and over again: it ios totally unscientific to rule something out completely because you do not want it to be.

Fear and unscientific.

This is shown in even recent responses to questions about alien life and UFOs where "Little Green Men" is used in the subject response title.  That displays a very retarded attitude since "LGM" was the favoured phrase to ridicule reports in the 1950's and 1960's -every time you see it used you know that you are not dealing with a scientist who can be trusted to undo his own zipper when he goes to the lavatory let alone discuss UFO reports. It also shows that dogma is at play: Scientist A's professor was ridiculed when he mentioned flying saucer reports and so he ridiculed anyone who mentioned UFOs. It is a closed mind and bullying combined and astronomers and scientists are such sensitive little things that they cannot think for themselves and, worst of all, they might be made into a joke or lose out on those free junkets.  Better to say nothing and just look like a moron.

I did write that I was playing Devil's Advocate and I do know that there are scientists and astronomers with an interest in UFOs -which all scientists should have but tend to shy away from speaking or discussing the topic.

Could you imagine an Elon Musk financed UFO study and investigation group rather than one by that fella hands out dozens of anti disclosure contracts and tells no one anything  (you know who I mean)? We are staring out thousands of light years into deep space and paying our own solar system not as much attention as it needs

Two interesting articles:
Life found on Mars in the 1970's
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1189746/Alien-news-NASA-space-Mars-mission-1970s-scientists-Viking-lander-1-Gilbert-Levin

Looking for sub-surface life on mars
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1189948/NASA-news-Alien-ufo-Mars-update-latest-mission-space-extra-terrestrial

There is an argument that says we ought to spend far more investigating our own solar system and sending out signalling probes that move around it.  I agree.

But while astronomers and scientists accept grainy/blurry images from deep space and roll the D&D dice to decide which exo planet might or might not have life (and we'll never know either way) but refuse to seriously look at UFOB or alleged CE3K (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) cases they are not really looking for extraterrestrial life.

French UFO Abductions: Far Too Few?

French UFO Abductions: Far Too Few? was a short talk by Ron Westrum and is both interesting and annoying at the same time.

Annoying in that Westrum looks at abduction reports with his main sources of knowledge being, it seems, Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs -the non peer reviewed work of both men has fallen into disrepute and considering this -remember that I supported Hopkins from his early work and Jacobs- that is a big problem.

The other big problem is that Westrum chose France. Now logically Close Encounters of the Third Kind do not work like that: there is no real border when it comes to UFOBs (alleged constructed craft) and one audience member does try to ask "Why just France?" because you are dealing with one country on the Western European continent and Westrum points out how small the population of France is compared to that of the United States -hence the odd playing with numbers.

We get the casual racism expected in ufology and which seems to stump Westrum for a response. Such as why don't the French report aliens -"Maybe they're English (the aliens)!" and why not as many abductions as in the US? "Maybe it's the garlic!"

sigh

Back in the late 1980's -updated in the early 1990's- I produced a chunky paper titled Close Encounters of the Third Kind in France and I believe there were over 200 reports listed and in the last few years I have stumbled upon reports not listed at the time. There have been some interesting French TV documentaries on UFOs and for the most part not sensationalist or jokey. There seems to be evidence of missing time in some cases and in others of "Ruth Syndrome" (as outlined in detail in UFO Contact?) That book also included some early French CE3K cases and Contact: Encounters With Extraterrestrial Entities? looks at the fact that France has official UFO investigators team and looked at other French cases. In Unidentified - Identified France was referred to again -as was Belgium its closest neighbour. What I found disappointing was that Westrum seemed to not have much knowledge on France and CE3K/abduction cases there.

My books have tried to show that these reports are not just from the United States where there is a far bigger publicity machine. Reports just as detailed and interesting.

"Why France?" indeed since there are detailed reports from Germany -pages 80-130 of Contact look at reports from Germany of CE3Ks and alleged abductions -some having never been published in English before.

The question is not "Why are aliens not abducting thousands of French people?" but "Why do ufologists in the United States claim there are 200-400 alien abduction cases per month?"

If you go onto You Tube you will see that figure quoted. But Jacobs and Hopkins claimed that hundreds of millions of people around the world have been abducted and that figure is pure hog-wash. Two men carrying out non peer reviewed work made that claim based on guessing and adding to guessing and not on anything evidence based. I believe Westrum's talk and reference to chatting with Jacobs on the subject proves this.

As for why French percipients might not report abductions perhaps it is because abductions are very rare rather than ten every hour? Also, many alleged abductees in the United States are alone at the time and there are tell-tale signs as to why they may be experiencing what they report. Rather like "UFO Waves" that are actually more amalgams of all types of phenomena than extraterrestrial craft it seems the whole "abduction phenomenon" is vastly exaggerated and not as common as we are led to believe.

Westrum seems to accept that these cases are real in some sense and if he believes and trusts the work of Hopkins and Jacobs he is not getting the real picture. That comes from years of research.

Trying for a statistical analysis of something often misreported and represented by hoaxes, psychological events or reports fabricated by ufologists (for which there is ample evidence) is pointless. Looking at why most seemingly genuine reports do not conform to "the Greys" or the scenarios established by certain ufologists?

"We have no idea so let's do a statistical analysis of something we have no real information on" is not a good idea.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooperscharf/ufo-contact/paperback/product-23719040.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/unidentified-identified/paperback/product-23799953.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/contact-encounters-with-extra-terrestrial-entities/paperback/product-23926690.html

French UFO Abductions: Far Too Few? | Ron Westrum

Could Alien Probes Be Hiding Around Quasi Moons of Earth - New Study

Aliens -What Can We Expect

Exobiologists, who have remember never actually studied alien life first hand, look for so called "Goldilocks" or habitable zones around stars. Although they may be able  to decode certain emissions from a far distant world all the "artist impression of what --- might look like" images and speculation is just that.

Scientists are looking for planets that "could evolve or develop life similar to that on Earth". It is all guessing and to some a search of this type seems "the most likely way of discovering alien life"...but all the references and so on are then to micro organisms -bacteria, algae and so on. Which we will never discover beyond our solar system because we have yet to actually travel to or find such things in our own system.

What good is it to anyone to declare that a planet some 100 light years away "might" (triple underlined emphasis) "be suitable to support basic life forms"?

Rather like the CETI and SETI (Communications with Extra Terrestrial Intelligences and Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligences) everything is based on what we know or think we know about our Earth. We think life will develop like the amoeba then slightly higher life forms until a human type race develops. 

I recall once giving a talk and pointing out that had the dinosaurs not died out, had they remained the dominant life form, then they would have over millions of years developed to be the actual "highest life form" and humans be extinct or whatever. Two astronomers decided I had gone too far and told me that I was promulgating fantasies and had no credibility.  A few years later there were several television science documentaries that used scientific data to speculate on this same subject. The possibilities are still discussed today by many in the scientific community.

Above: how dinosaurs MIGHT have developed?  Credit -unknown: if known please let me know (c)the copyright owner

Well there are prejudices.  Ask some palaeontologists whether dinosaurs could have developed into a humanoid or semi-humanoid dominant species and some will positively screech at you that such a suggestion is an insult to the dinosaurs. There are some who suggest pteradons might still be flying around but that after 65,000,000 years evolution would change the dinosaurs -far, far too far for them.  Evolution only works, apparently, if you are using it for your pet theory. Take the Loch Ness Monster for instance: even as a 12 year old I could not understand why naturalist Sir Peter Scott and others were seriously suggesting that a plesiosaur of some type was in the Loch.  After 65 million years would it not have changed?

Well crocodiles, snakes, bees,Sea stars, horse shoe crabs, sharks -and others were around at the time of the dinosaurs -evolution can be a touchy subject in arguments.

Some have asked why the billions of dollars worth of deep space telescopes are not turned to study planets in our own solar system. These pieces of equipment produce great images but are designed and built for deep space viewing not near space and you might wonder, with asteroids whizzing past Earth, more money was not spent on near space telescopes and detectors?  We have had to rely on space probes to gather data and even then some argue about what finds indicate.

I well remember the actor Vladek Sheybal's character in the 1970s TV series UFO arguing that more money was being spent on imaging deep space while the microscopic world on Earth had no real funding. My own interest came at Secondary School (Greenway Boys Secondary Modern, Southmead, Bristol) in the early 1970s when I was allowed to help Mr Soper the Science teacher set up tesats for the next day and also get use of the microscope. A few years later, as a regular visitor to the newspaper section of Bristol Central Library, I read in an 1800's newspaper about Andrew Crosse (17th June 1784 – 6th July 1855) "The Thunder and Lightning Man" and his 'creation of life' -the Acarus.

 Above: Andrew Cross
Below: Acarus crossii

In more recent decades scientists have begun to probe the microscopic world more and with video recording as well as still photography we find a whole 'universe' of living creatures on Earth -with many yet to be discovered.

In fact we might say that every human is their own solar system supporting life and life supporting it. According to Greg Foot from BritLab in the video Disgusting Things That Live On Your Body “In a rather gross way, you are practically a walking petri dish, a home for more bugs and bacteria than you’d care think about.”

"Consider the skin on your face. As smooth and peachy as it may look, every square centimetre houses around one or two “demodex spiders”. They mostly lie low, but once you’re asleep they crawl across your face to mate and lay eggs in your pores. Don’t feel too disgusted, though – in return for their food and lodging, these spiders clean away some of the harmful bacteria that might cause a dangerous infection.

"Away from the face, humans can host three different types of lice, each of which has evolved to the unique environments of the scalp, pubic regions and the rest of our bodies. As the video explains, studying these bugs has helped scientists to work out when our ancestors started to cover their modesty with animal skins – after millions of years of walking around butt naked.

"By far the most numerous inhabitants are the microbial colonies inside the body itself – there are 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells. Most are crucial for us to break down food into the nutrients we need to survive; these immigrants pay back just as much as we give them".

Now I know what the Reader is going to ask: "What has this got to do with what aliens might look like?" The thing is that we have this human prejudice that any intelligent life out in space must have developed like us.  Why?

Above: Tardigrade in 3D Diane Nelson and National Parks Service
What if alien life developed similarly, but obviously larger, to the tardigrades, known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets? They are a phylum of water-dwelling eight-legged segmented micro-animals and were first described by the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773 - who called them little water bears. They  range from 0.05 millimeters to 1.2 mm (0.002 to 0.05 inches) long, but they usually don't get any bigger than 1 mm (0.04 inches) long.

LiveScience ( https://www.livescience.com/57985-tardigrade-facts.html  ) reported that:

"Research has found that tardigrades can withstand environments as cold as minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 Celsius) or highs of more than 300 degrees F (148.9 C), according to Smithsonian magazine. They can also survive radiation, boiling liquids, massive amounts of pressure of up to six times the pressure of the deepest part of the ocean and even the vacuum of space without any protection. A 2008 study published in the journal Current Biology found that some species of tardigrade could survive 10 days at low Earth orbit while being exposed to a space vacuum and radiation.

"In fact, water bears could survive after humanity is long gone, researchers found. Scientists from Harvard and Oxford universities looked at the probabilities of certain astronomical events — Earth-pummeling asteroids, nearby supernova blasts and gamma-ray bursts, to name a few — over the next billions of years. Then, they looked at how likely it would be for those events to wipe out Earth's hardiest species. And while such catastrophic events would likely wipe out humans, the researchers found little tardigrades would survive most of them, they reported in a study published online July 14, 2017, in the journal Scientific Reports.

"To our surprise, we found that although nearby supernovas or large asteroid impacts would be catastrophic for people, tardigrades could be unaffected," David Sloan, a co-author of the new study and researcher at Oxford, said in a statement. "Therefore, it seems that life, once it gets going, is hard to wipe out entirely. Huge numbers of species, or even entire genera may become extinct, but life as a whole will go on." 

So imagine long-lived Tardigrade type species with developed intelligence and evolving into a dominant life form that develops space travel. Not much they get exposed to in space or on other planets is going to be very life threatening.

If we look at the known microscopic life on Earth we find so many differing types and to many the images of these are mind-blowing.  Hollywood movie makers wanting suitable aliens need not ask someone to "imagine" a creature -they need only to flip through microscopic images online. A good place to start would be this site: https://listverse.com/2017/02/22/10-shockingly-intricate-microscopic-organisms/

Above: Radiolarians
Below: (it IS organic!) the Enterobacteria Phage T4

Any species, to survive, needs two things.  The first is to be the Apex creature on their planet with no superior predators.  Secondly, if the conditions are perfect for them then evolution (that some times dirty word) should step in. Why not an intelligent gastropod such as a slug, snail or whelk?  Even some aquatic or amphibean- a cold-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that comprises the frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, and caecilians. These are distinguished by having an aquatic gill-breathing larval stage followed (typically) by a terrestrial lung-breathing adult stage.

It may be that certain life forms develop a higher  intelligence but have weaker bodies and they may develop ways of encasing their bodies in a natural or manufactured body shell -perhaps not revealing any of the original body form.  Cases may be developed for certain tasks or to assume a similarity to the dominant life form on another planet that the species is studying.

Taking it further, there could be life forms that have none of their original form but are intelligences encased in robot like bodies or even assume a "colony form" comprising anywhere from 5, 10 or even 50 individuals.

Rather than "thinking outside the box" it is more a case that we need to "think away from the humanoid of Earth".

Exobiology is based on what we know of Earth and life here.  It is a good basis to start from but rather like theoretical physics it needs to go beyond "Earth-like" and ask how life on planets not like ours could develop because until we actually get to openly "meet and greet" genuine alien life we have no references.

Unless UFO percipients have encountered such entities?

Big Question: ....

Are We All REALLY About To Panic?

Before we start a pet peeve. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has an acronym -a name used by combining the first letter of each word.  NASA -in capitals and not as Google, internet bloggers and even online journalists write it "Nasa".

Now in this press piece we have NASAs Dr Green quoted though, as I can tell you from vast experience, what you read and see/hear via the media can be condensed from a 30 minutes long interview to...1 minute.

I tend to disagree with Dr Green's reported thoughts on this matter of discovering extraterrestrial life (see previous post).  I believe that what he is referring to are bacteria and microbiological organisms. Microscopic life rather than talking, walking alien intelligences. To see what Imean I suggest you go to You Tube and search for the channel Journey to the Microcosmos everything there is real. Exists. We normally never ever get to see these things.

I have yet to see panic-stricken crowds running through the streets or seeking sanctuary in churches and screaming: "The shape-shifting Euglenoids are here -save us!!"

For many decades we have heard theories of diseases from space and even evolution from space -life on Earth "might" have started as a result of a meteor from Mars hitting Earth -Diseases From Space and Evolution from Space by Professor Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe are two books I would recommend.

When the Apollo astronauts returned to Earth they were held (initially) in decontamination units "in case". Did everyone run around and panic at that point? No. Some might have been worried but that was it. Remember Michael Crichton's book (later made into a movie) The Andromeda Strain ? Best seller and did NOT create mass panic everywhere.

Orson Welles' radio broadcast in the 1930s of his version of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells did create some panic in the United States but that was a far more scientifically innocent time: remember that Clyde Tombaugh had only announced the discovery of Planet X on the 13th March, 1930 and leading up to the Welles broadcast there were reports of signals from Mars and much more -as detailed in UFO Contact?

Since 1930 we had the "Foo fighters" seen during World War 2 and then, 1947/1948 the "ghost rockets" -yes, some people got panicky but in one case there had been a war on and in the latter there was the threat of Soviet expansion and the possibility that the USSR had gotten hold of German super weapon scientists.

Since the advent of TV news spreads to a wider audience and if this is added to what people read and see in the cinemas then no one today, other than some isolated tribes, should be unaware of the term extraterrestrial -or "ET"- and since the 1980s TV screens and cinema has exploded with alien storylines or programmes looking at UFOs and alien abductions.  These TV programmes are now daily viewing -last night (28th September) I checked a TV guide (since I have no TV) and on four UK TV channels there were UFO and alien abduction programmes including the 100 Best UFOs Recorded on Video, Lost UFO Encounters and so on.

The Creationists tend to not like the idea of alien life as it smashes their xenophobic outlook on Earth and the universe. Fear of something foreign or unknown is always prezsent. I have deliberately asked people I've met in the last week what they thought about the claim alien contact was possible in the next few years.  Responses included:

"Well, so long as they aren't Daleks we ought to be alright"

"I think everyone has guessed that for a l;ong time -there've been all those UFO sightings for years"

No real panic. One person said "It'd be like when isolated tribes meet westerners for the first time -bit scary but take it as it comes"  (in other words don't jump to conclusions of hostile intent)

One person did respond with "So long as it stops them probing people!"

There are always people who are going to be scared.  That is human nature. But 2019 is far different to 1938.  Today we have a couple generations raised on the idea that there might very well be intelligent life out there and according to polls millions believe in UFO/al;ien reality.

According to Vox online article by Sean Illing from 4th June, 2019 titled The new American religion of UFOs
Belief in aliens is like faith in religion — and may come to replace it.https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/4/18632778/ufo-aliens-american-cosmic-diana-pasulka


"It’s a great time to believe in aliens.

"Last week, the New York Times published a viral article about reports of UFOs off the East Coast in 2014 and 2015. It included an interview with five Navy pilots who witnessed, and in some cases recorded, mysterious flying objects with “no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes” that appeared to “reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.”

"No one is quite sure what they saw, but the sightings are striking. And they’re part of a growing fascination with the possibility of intelligent alien life.

"According to Diana Pasulka, a professor at the University of North Carolina and author of the new book American Cosmic, belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials is becoming a kind of religion — and it isn’t nearly as fringe as you might think.

"More than half of American adults and over 60 percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This tracks pretty closely with belief in God, and if Pasulka is right, that’s not an accident.

"Her book isn’t so much about the truth of UFOs or aliens as it is about what the appeal of belief in those things says about our culture and the shifting roles of religion and technology in it. On the surface, it’s a book about the popularity of belief in aliens, but it’s really a deep look at how myths and religions are created in the first place and how human beings deal with unexplainable experiences."

There follows a lightly edited interview with Pasulka.

It seems that, if the quotes from Dr Green are accurate, that he is a little out of touch with 2019 and the views many hold.
Look at those who claim to have encountered entities from a landed craft (I cover every criteria of explanation and if they fail I have to go with what is claimed but even then there are criteria for WHY I need to feel they are telling the truth (again -see my book) and their reactions which can vary and despite after effects, they have to adopt the attitude of "It happened. Now get on with the rest of my life".

I dismiss the "Grey Abduction Phenomenon" but it has done one thing: it has made millions believe in extraterrestrial visitors....no panic in the streets of London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin....

 Enceladus credit NASA

The following BBC  -or is that Bbc- online item explains things more clearly even if standards have dropped so low that its writers no longer know how to write an acronym
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190926-what-life-might-be-like-in-the-alien-oceans :

By Mico Tatalovic
27 September 2019

Recent discoveries have led astrobiologists to think that moons are the most promising places for alien life to exist in our Solar System. And now several major space missions are being planned over the next decade to search for hints of life there.

Unlike our neighbouring planets, some of the moons have plenty of liquid water. Jupiter’s moon, Europa, for example, is thought to contain more liquid water than all of Earth's oceans combined. This water – and any life in it – is protected from space radiation and asteroid impacts by a thick layer of kilometers-deep surface ice.

The discovery of plumes of water shooting up from Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Europa have suggested they could have warm interiors that can support liquid oceans, heated not by the Sun, but by an internal dynamo powered by radioactive decay in their cores or by tidal heating generated by the gravitational attraction of the planets that they orbit.

There is now evidence for water oceans on several moons, including Europa, Enceladus, Callisto and Ganymede. One study published this June estimates that the Enceladus ocean is around one billion years old. Others have suggested it may be billions of years old – plenty of time for life to evolve.

These oceans are thought to be salty, containing sodium chloride, like Earth’s oceans, which is another boost for the prospects of Earth-like life.

Also, there is likely to be an interface between the liquid water and the rocky mantle below the oceans – key ingredients for interesting chemistry that scientists think led to the origins of life on Earth. Nasa’s Cassini mission, for example, detected molecules in Enceladus’ water plumes that hint at the existence of hydrothermal vents on the moon’s ocean floor.

Similar vents exist in the deep oceans of the Earth, where magma meets salt water and provides heat, chemicals and a substrate helpful for the complex chemistry some scientists think was needed for life to first evolve on our planet. Deep below the surface of Earth’s ocean, there is practically no sunlight, as would be the case for oceans of Jupiter and Saturn’s moons. But that doesn’t mean there is no life. Indeed, on Earth, such vents are teeming with life.

Some 20 years ago Natural History of an Alien, a BBC documentary, suggested that entire ecosystems could also be based around deep-sea thermal vents on Europa. A team of scientists suggested that bacteria would form the base of the food chain, using chemosynthesis to extract energy from the vents, and building tall tubes of deposits rising many miles above the ocean floor.

Other creatures, such as fish-like grazers would pierce those tubes to suck in large amounts of bacteria to feed on. They would be territorial, defending their grazing patches against rivals. And, in turn, they would be preyed upon by shark-like animals, streamlined for speed, using echolocation to detect their prey.

This is much more advanced than what most scientists expect to find there.

Even on Earth, for some 90% of our planet’s history, the only life that existed here was microbial, says Andrew Knoll, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. So, if there is life in space, chances are it’s going to be microbial, Knoll says, and in places like Europa or Enceladus it would have to rely entirely on chemosynthesis for energy, so could probably only support a small biomass.

But such an ecosystem might still be possible, says Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomy professor and director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, a centre supporting multi-disciplinary research to discover whether life is abundant in the universe. Just because Europa’s ocean is cold and lacking in energy, doesn’t necessarily rule out complex ecosystems of a smaller size evolving there.

“Speculating is fun,” Sasselov says. “My gut feeling is that there is a lot of evolutionary innovation space possible there where you can have something which is small and yet predatory and is a multicellular organism rather than just a single cell.”

Another moon we’re planning to visit presents a whole different puzzle.

Saturn’s moon, Titan, is the only world beyond Earth known to have stable bodies of liquid on its surface. When the Huygens probe from the Cassini mission landed there in 2005, it sent back pictures of an Earth-like landscape: river beds and seas.

But rather than water, the clouds, rain and seas of Titan are made up of liquid methane and ethane, components of natural gas on Earth. Any water that does exist there is solidified into rocks and mountains because its surface temperature is around -180C (-292F).

This means that, while its landscape might look familiar, the actual conditions are totally alien. If there is life, it would rely on methane, not water, and would be exotic – life as we don’t know it. True aliens.

It is possible and plausible that life exists on Titan, but with a “completely different, independent biochemistry”, says Sasselov, whose long-term goal is to figure out if there is an alternative biochemistry and how to create it in the lab.

Life on Earth depends on cell membranes made of phospholipids: molecular chains with phosphorus-oxygen heads and carbon-chain tails that bind to each other to form a flexible membrane in water.

Methane-based life would need an alternative way to form cells.

A Cornell University team led by chemical engineer Paulette Clancy showed in 2015 that small molecules made from nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen could build cells fit to survive in Titan’s conditions.

Since then, Nasa researchers have confirmed the presence of vinyl cyanide in Titan’s atmosphere, an organic compound that could provide such cellular membranes. So, at least in theory, cells that could form a very different life in Titan’s vast methane oceans could physically exist there.

“In some respects, what we see here on Earth is a matter of chance,” says Theresa Fisher, astrobiologist at Arizona State University, US. There’s an “enormous amount of potential variety” that we could see in life on other worlds, she says.

"There might emerge a fluorescence of new and very diverse organisms occupying a range of new niches,” adds Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a professor emerita in anthropology at the University of California, Davis. "Assuming any of these creatures evolve to be as social, intelligent and communicative as say cetaceans or elephants, and as manipulative, dexterous and clever as chimpanzees or orangutans, I see no reason why they could not eventually evolve more sophisticated technological and cultural capacities.”

Lauren Sallan, a palaeontologist at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks alien life will be microbial – and there’re only so many ways to be a microbe.

As far as multicellular aliens are concerned, she says, things may get more complicated. “We would recognise that they’re doing the same kind of jobs because everything is focused on either taking in energy or consuming things to get energy,” she says. “But the way that they go about it would be pretty unpredictable.”

“We really don’t know what are the limits of life,” says David Charbonneau, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, who adds that this is why we need to send more probes to examine the moons.

So, it’s good news that there are plans to do just that.

Nasa announced this summer that its Dragonfly mission will launch in 2026 and arrive on Titan in 2034. It will land a drone-like craft to explore dozens of promising locations and look for signs of life.

Nasa is also exploring the possibility of sending an autonomous submarine to study Titan’s largest northern sea, Kraken Mare, which is some 1,000 km (621 miles) wide, with depths estimated at 300m (1,000ft), similar in size to North America’s Great Lakes. This would be the first opportunity to explore a sea on another world, and it could inform the design of future submarines to explore the subsurface waters of Europa and other moons. The mission is still in its conceptual stage, some 20 years away, with scientists and engineers starting to investigate how to even build such a submarine.

Intriguingly, Titan is also thought to have a liquid ocean of water deep beneath its icy outer layer, which would mean that in addition to its exotic surface life based on liquid methane, there could exist more Earth-like life under its surface.

Another possibility for layers of different types of life on a single world is Ganymede, Jupiter’s moon. Some scientists think this moon has several different layers of ocean, separated by different types of ice that form at different depths and pressures. If this is the case, each layer could, in theory, host different lifeforms adapted to local conditions at that depth.

Ganymede is set for a visit by the European Space Agency’s 2022 Juice mission, which will also visit two of Jupiter’s other moons – Callisto and Europa – to study their habitability and look for signatures of life.

Meanwhile, Nasa’s Europa Clipper is planning to orbit Jupiter and fly past Europa multiple times to investigate whether it could harbour conditions suitable for life, with a take-off date of 2023. Nasa is also discussing sending a lander to Europa, as early as 2025.

Saturn's moons may be freezing cold, but there is still liquid water under the thick expanses of ice (Credit: Getty Images)
And, there is a private, Nasa-backed plan for a mission to Enceladus to look for life there that could take off in 2025 if it gets the green light later this year.

But to really figure out what life might exist in these alien oceans, we will need to send a submersible, which will be tricky as such a vehicle would have to drill through several kilometres of ice to even reach the ocean. Nasa is funding some conceptual studies on how to do that.

One concept, for a nuclear-powered “tunnelbot” to search for life on Europa, was presented at a 2018 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC, by scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Nasa. Their bot would sample ice and water as it descended, sending information back to the surface through a fibre optic cable.

But, if lifeforms there turn out to be truly alien, we might struggle to detect them. It’s also possible there simply isn’t any life there yet.

In the distant future, though, some five billion years from now, when our Sun runs out of hydrogen fuel and starts expanding into a red giant phase before it eventually dies, it will melt the ice on these moons and turn them into much more Earth-like places. There should be liquid water on their surface and more temperate climates, perhaps opening up the possibility of life evolving there then – or at least harbouring refugees from the scorched Earth.

In the distant future, if we are to survive, we will all have to become migrants and hope these newly habitable worlds welcome us as our own world gets too hot for life.


Titan credit NASA

UP-dated: The Strange Aliens in Jardinopolis, Brazil (2008)

I contacted the Brazilian group directly and asked whether it might be possible to get more information on this report and explained my interest.

Nothing.

So, since 2017 I have been chasing up any possible secondary reporting.  Nothing.

It seems that this report may be a hoax and I was told the group in question had disbanded long before the report was made.

My conclusion: fake report

From Before It's News http://beforeitsnews.com/paranormal/2014/06/strange-aliens-in-the-rains-of-brazil-2470930.html

Location. Jardinopolis, Sao Paolo, Brazil

Date: December 27 2008
Time: 2100

Two local youngsters, Denilson and Rafael were playing in the Sebastian’s Chapel Square when they were surprised to see bright lights moving overhead heading towards a field close to the square. The lights seemed to be rotating around an ellipse form, and were red and blue in color; they suddenly descended and disappeared from sight.

Feeling somewhat frightened the two friends ran to a nearby house where they told their two other friends, Carlos and Cristiano. The boys knew that it hadn’t been an airplane since there wasn’t any noise and the lights seemed to have performed a vertical descent into the field. The now four witnesses approached the field and could now see the lights on the grounds alternating colors from red to blue.

Three of the boys were afraid to approach the field by Cristiano drove his scooter closer and illuminated the area with its headlights, as he did this, Carlos, Denilson and Rafael followed closely behind him. The boys could now see that the lights were suspended in mid-air in a diagonal position and under the lights they could see three or more “crouching” creatures on the field. The creatures were crouching in a horseshoe or U-formation and appear to be “communicating” with each other.

The boys were extremely frightened, since they had never seen anything like that before. The boys were convinced that the creatures were not animals, since their behavior was totally different from that of typical farm animals that abounded in the area. The boys explained that the creatures were well-defined but when they changed their viewing angle they were able to see four and up to five creatures, giving some the creatures the appearance of being “invisible” and only becoming visible when the struck by the light rain that was falling at the time.

When Cristiano shone his scooter headlight directly on the creatures they disappeared. They could only see the creatures when it was dark. In the darkness they still see the contours of their bodies. The boys estimated the creatures to have been about 1.20 meters in height, with large black oval-shaped eyes, lacking noses or ears, they had a round mouth and their color was dark gray. They had hands with fingers but were unable to count how many fingers on each hand. All four youths gave identical description of the creatures.

They observed the creatures for approximately forty minutes and during the time the boys noticed that the creatures appeared to be communicating among themselves. Suddenly they saw a red “laser point” on Carlos’s shirt, Rafael pointed it out to Carlos who became afraid, and he immediately lifted his arms in a way to demonstrate that he was no threat to them and that he was unarmed. At this point the witnesses could see a red beam of light that appeared to be emanating from a cylindrical shaped object on the field, there also appeared to smoke coming from the tip of the object.

Terrified the four witnesses began leaving the area slowly concerned for their safety. The youths estimated that they had stood about 10 meters from the creatures. They arrived home afraid and nervous. Three days later the witnesses visited the site and found that the brush in the area had turned brown in color.

Source: Milton Dino Frank Junior, Presidente do Centro de Ufologia Brasileiro

1970, THE CHARENTE, FRANCE

1970, THE CHARENTE, FRANCE:

There are MANY reports that do not conform to the false Grey standard of ufology. The problem comes with the age of a report.
If someone reports an incident 25-30 years after it was alleged to have taken place we only have their owrd on the matter but if it conforms to Greys reports then some doubt arises.

If the reportee told other members of his/her family and/or kept some kind of written account that can be dated -a diary entry in which ink age can be tested- it helps.

Please note that I have tidied up this statement (from Ufologie.com) to make it more readable and I apologise for the translation quality.

1970, THE CHARENTE, FRANCE:
Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

On May 27th, 2007, a gentlemen sent the following story to me by email:

"I was 20 (then), I am 57 (today). My testimony is thus 37 years old and during all these years I was haunted by what I saw that day.

I was heading home at about 1 a.m. (I live in the country in the Charente) there is a field opposite my house and in this field I saw a landed half sphere which could be clearly distinguished in the darkness.

"I did not pay any attention and I park my car a few meters further on. The orange dome is still in the field on the other side of the road. I opened the gate to get to my home and I then closed it behind me.  I was about to cross the yard that separates me from the house (I was in the dark and I found my way by habit) and it was then that i heard footsteps on the gravel in front of me -they (seem to) run away on all sides but I saw nothing. I was very frightened. I rushed into the barn to switch on the outside light .

"In the yard (I saw) nothing but behind the gate I had closed I could distinguish human shapes(of kids) that looked at me. I felt that something was wrong and my fear increased.

"I went to the house to get a rifle and then I went back to the fence then on to the road. The view between myself and the half sphere was clear  and I saw two little beings come toward me. They stopped at approximately three meters from me. They seemed to talk to me but my fear was such that I raised my rifle. They then turned back and went away slowly.

"I went to wake up my parents but on looking they found nothing. All (entities) had disappeared. The sphere too.

"A brief article in the local newspaper reported a ufo was sighted above Angouleme that night. (The witness believes that) it landed in front of me and that changed my vision of the world"
Witness email, non anonymous, anonymity preserved, to this website (Patrick Gross, Ufologie), on May 27, 2007.

There are problems. The witness assumes that what he saw was the "UFO" sighted over Angouleme -but based on standard reporting that might have been a meteorite or anything else!

No one else witnessed the entities or object. A debunker would simply say "hoax".  However, we are unaware of the psychological state of the witness at the time -was he tired, exhausted or under stress somehow? Almost 50  years after the event, even if spoken to today, make that impossible to know.

The use of a rifle is slightly worrying. That the entities moved away on it being pointed at them could mean that they had encountered weapons in human hands before. Or, if this were an "altered state" event then to his mind the rifle did what it was supposed to -scare off intruders.

The "invisible runners" could indicate an altered state as described by "Ruth Syndrome" (detailed in UFO Contact?). One might wonder why an hemispherical object in the field had not caused alarm rather than not much interest? It is possible that the witness just gave it a casual glance and thought it might be something moved into the field by someone since aliens did not appear to be something he was thinking about. OR it might be the point at which he began to enter an altered state -a waking dream, which are quite vivid and very real to those experiencing them.

But if this was all in his head why a UFO and aliens -today you might expect it as the subject is everywhere from Japan to China to India and so on via the internet, TV and so on. 1970 was not a huge year for press coverage of UFOs -the witness mentions a brief news item AFTER his sighting.

No wish for publicity.  A joke? We just cannot tell which is why we really need to investigate -as thoroughly as we can- any and all reports that we find.

We have probably already lost so much information.

Encounter at Torva

 Although I have been gathering, reading and studying Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3K) and entity cases for over four decades I still find surprises.

John Hanson's Haunted Skies series has turned up a few surprises and mainly because he has either spoken to witnesses and got facts directly from them (correcting what ufologists had written 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand) or they have spoken only to him about their encounter.

One such report came from a Mary Sinton. Details are as follows from the AOP B  Entry:

UK     June 1980   Torva, Cumbria
John Hanson  Haunted Skies vol. 8  p. 103

Mary Sinton, owner of a B&B Farm, told Hanson about an encounter while on a camping holiday:

“I was with my boyfriend, Paul, at the time, and returning back to the campsite in our Hillman Imp car, along the A593, Ambleside to Coniston Road (Grid ref: Long 323, Lat 999/8, No. 7 English Lakes, SE area)  As we turned a bend in the road, close to the campsite, I was astonished to see  nine tall ‘figures’. Stood in a group of trees near the side of the road, caught in the glare of the spotlights fitted to the Hillman Imp I was travelling in.

“I estimated they were at least 7ft tall and identically dressed, wearing silver-white coloured helmets and body armour, carrying what looked like a rod, carried vertically in front of each of them –reminding me of a regiment of soldiers, stood to attention on the parade ground.

“As we drove past, I left it for a few seconds and then shouted out, in great excitement, ‘Did you see them, Paul?’  One look at his face confirmed he had, although, oddly, he had only seen one ‘figure’.  When we arrived at the campsite, we felt very nervous and had trouble sleeping, wondering if anything else was going to happen.

“The next morning, we discussed what had happened and wondered whether we should let the police know but, on reflection, thought they would never believe us”.

Hanson spoke to Paul who confirmed the events given by Sinton. He told Hanson:

“It was the most unusual thing I have ever seen in my life.  It defies explanation”.

Note that no UFO was sighted nor is there any suggestion that Mary or Paul thought "Aliens!" It is interesting that the behaviour of the duo after the sighting is not unusual in that neither could relax after what they had seen and were in fear of something else happening. I have heard the same thing from people who have observed "UFOs" close to -they are naturally nervous that something might happen as they may have seen something they were not supposed to.

Note also that the sighting was in 1980 and there had been similarly reported tall entities in silver outfits that went unpublicised.

There is no suggestion that these were 'ghosts' -I can't think of any reports of 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall ghosts.  There is also the question of why Mary saw several yet Paul saw only one figure.  It is possible that he only glimpsed one and that was enough -again, this is something noted in other shock situations -a person might just focus on one and state he/she saw one person in a criminal robbery yet 2-3 others report up to four gang members.

There is no indication of a time lapse as I called these reports before the term "missing time" became popular.

So what can we infer from this report?  One person we could explain using any number of things. It is impossible to say Mary hallucinated and said nothing but that her hallucination caused Paul to hallucinate. Oh -owls? Not likely -not even luminous ones!

This is a perfect example of a one off sighting -of something "that happened and then you get on with your life":even if the memory sticks with you.

A pity there was no witness drawing of what was seen.

Haunted Skies is a highly recommended series well worth investing in