1.0 Preamble
Hi there!
This is a webpage about UFOs ... a humongously-large area of study that we shall collectively referred to
as the UFO Mystery.
1.1 Why UFOs?
Why UFOs, you ask?
That's an excellent question ... After all, this kind of sensationalism is
something I had resolved to avoid from the start, when I had decided to
construct a website to examine the Mysteries of the World. Then, I realized it was inevitable ... given not only the nature of Mysteries ... but also due to the fact that because the topic of UFOs has been sensationalised too much already, it would therefore be educational to examine the topic of UFOs as an example
of where such sensationalisations may take us afar from the truth.
In this webpage, I will start off by recalling what brought on this inclusion
of UFOs as a direct result of building a website with pages and pages about
various Mysteries and Mysteries-related topics, where each page is based on a keyword — resulting in a website based on the concept of the KFCP ... No! not Kentucky Fried Chicken Plate ... but "Keyword-Focused Content Page" ...The idea is simple enough: keywords are crucial.
- Click here to read those details about how this UFO webpage (and the rest of this
website) came about, and how our brainstorming process within the Site Build It! (SBI!) led to a list of keywords, including UFO-related keywords.
1.2 Questions about UFOs
Some of the questions that should be asked
vis-a-vis the
UFO Mystery — we just consider it
collectively,
and use the singular noun, 'Mystery' — include the following:
- What exactly is a UFO?
- Are we kidding ourselves with the UFO issue?
- Is there a cover-up?
- Why are we no nearer to a resolution?
Now, I know that, in the humdrum and mundane world of everyday living and work
life, these questions about UFOs may appear to be unimportant, and you may want
to say "Get a Life!" ... but hey!
Wait one cotton-picking minute!
Let's see what one very intelligent person has to say ... here's the quote:
Quote from Einstein
"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true
science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered
religion."
Now, if you wanna disagree with good old (and dead) Einy, be my guest!
But the real issue ... the real question is ...
"Have you lost your sense of wonder?"
Sorry! Don't mean to come on that strong about it!
But, you know? ...
Take a break ...
Now, let's see what there is to see ...
Let's get cracking, shall we?
2.0 "UFO Haiti"
Before we look at the above and other questions about the
UFO Mystery, we should note that, unless we have physical evidence that we could examine
under laboratory conditions, all we are going to be investigating are
reports about UFOs and UFO sightings ... and these reports are essentially anecdoctal
evidence, which is not only unsatisfactory (e.g., because not repeatable and
not "falsifiable" in the usual way of "hypothesis testing"), but can be easily
faked. And some of these reports comprise not only verbal or written text, but
also audio, photographic and video "evidence". (It should also be noted that
"evidence" does not necessarily equate to "proof".)
Of course, video evidence is the most exciting and compelling aspect of these
UFO sighting reports. But videos can be mostly easily faked ...
3.0 Debunking UFOs
But Nicolas' "UFO Haiti" video and similar video pranks and hoaxes aside, what's
the truth about UFOs? Fascination over the UFO Mystery continues and the debates and controversies don't seem to want to go away
anytime soon ...
Here is one view from Dr. Michael Shermer, a professional skeptic associated with the Skeptics Society as its Executive
Director, and who, for his trouble, gets to be called a
"debunker" — which he says is "kind of a negative term, but
let's face it, there's a lot of 'bunk!'".
If you want to hear a brief introduction about Dr. Shermer, please click the
audio player below:
Anyway, Dr. Shermer is adamant that most, if not all, of the reported UFO
sightings are not real — especially if the UFOs have anything
to do with the so-called 'Crop Circles' (which is, of course, a most silly and
pointless aberration of people who really need to 'get a life').
Below is an excerpt of a flash video entitled "Why People Believe Strange Things".
In the video excerpt, Dr. Shermer tells us about how those who work with
Science (and Skepticism) would view UFOs and the silly 'Crop Circles'
phenomenon.
The video clip is a recording of Dr. Shermer's lecture delivered at the 2006
TED Conference, held in Monterey, California. (TED = Technology, Entertainment,
Design)
"Why People Believe Strange Things"
TED 2006 Conference @ Monterey, California
(TED = Technology, Entertainment, Design)
4.0 What's a UFO, Anyway?
Okay!
Enough of all these preamble remarks and 'techie' twaddles or fiddlings ...
Let's explore the topic proper ...
What's that first question about UFOs? Oh yeah,
"What exactly is a UFO?"Well ... The quick and simple answer is that a UFO is anything's that flying
around and which is quite unidentified or unexplained so far! That's what the
acronym
UFO stands for, right?
I mean ... how profound an answer do we need? A UFO is unidentified and it's
flying, period!
Perhaps, it is the fact that UFOs are unidentified
and flying that makes them intriguing! Of course, it is not necessarily the case
that a UFO must have anything to do with ETs (extraterrestrials) and the
'greys' (aliens).
 |  |  |
 | Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH)The rise of the extraterrestrial hypothesis [ETH] of UFOs ... is characterized
by: a central role for the media, a schizophrenic attitude by the U.S. Air Force, and (with two outstanding exceptions) the lack of substantial scientific
participation.
While much of the media — with their usual mixed motives of
truth and profit — continually pushed the extraterrestrial
hypothesis on a receptive public, and while the Air Force was understandably
preoccupied with national security aspects of the issue, scientists in many
ways abdicated their role as critical analyzers of an unexplained phenomenon. In part this was due to the reluctance of scientists to engage in a
controversial issue that would do nothing to advance their careers and might do
their reputation great harm. In part the fleeting nature of the phenomenon and the resulting lack of hard
data precluded easy scientific analysis, at least by the way of the normal
scientific methodology. And perhaps most significant, the concept of extraterrestrial intelligence
[ETI] — the favored explanation for UFOs among the media and
the public — was not yet a part of the collective scientific
consciousness, as it certainly would be in later years. For all these reasons, the UFO controversy ... assumes the surrealistic
character of mostly nonscientific individuals and organizations thrashing about
in the midst of a potentially significant phenomenon, resulting in sporadic
reaction rather than systematic study. And yet, for all that, it is unique in eliciting public and scientific
attitudes toward extraterrestrial life that otherwise would never have been
expressed. — Adapted from Steven J. Dick's
Life on Other Worlds:
The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998) |  |
 |  |  |
The interpretation of UFOs varies over the centuries. There had been UFO
sightings in Antiquity, and strange aerial phenomena have also been observed
even earlier than that age. But it is unlikely that those UFOs were interpreted
as alien spacecraft at the time! Most likely, the explanation then would tend
towards the mystical and supernatural, including God, gods, angels, the Devil
and assorted demons, witches and wizards, the occult, and the like. People were
more primitive then, right?
Right!
Nowadays, of course, the interpretation of UFOs by the popular imagination is
influenced by our knowledge and experience with high technology (such as autos,
TVs, computers, iPhones, iPods, and similar stuff), as well as with the idea of
space travel. We also realize that we live in a really vast, perhaps infinite, Universe that consists of planets, stars and galaxies, and
groups and clusters and superclusters of galaxies, and that there is a
possibility of extraterrestrial (ET) life and even ET intelligence 'out there'.
Intelligent, sentient and hopefully sapien ETs is what SETI, or the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is about.
Thus, the most popular picture of UFOs today is that they are some form of
spacecraft being flown by aliens. This has been encouraged and reinforced by
authors of UFOs and ETs books.
| | |
| The UFO — and the Extraterrestrial Intelligence implied
whenever someone says unidentified flying object — is one of the greatest mysteries of modern times. Elusive,
shape-shifting, always just beyond our reach or comprehension, the UFO
represents a horizon of possibility that threatens to affect everything we
think we know about ourselves, the Earth, the Cosmos, even the Spirit. Anyone who's looked long and hard at the topic knows what I'm talking
about — since they'll have progressed beyond the tabloid
nonsense peddled by the media or the kneejerk dismissals of most scientists and
academics who haven't really bothered to examine the data. They'll know that the UFO phenomenon is profound and unsettling. Why? Because it shows a great power, largely hidden from us. Because it implies a superior and alien intelligence. And because it defies our attempts at understanding it, often
behaving as if it were simply toying with us or deceiving us, both as to its reasons for being here, as well as to its motives for doing
what it does. — From "Preface By Michael Miley" (adapted)
(Contributing Editor, UFO Magazine)
in clinical hypnotherapist Dr. Virginia Bennett's book UFOs | |
| | |
One early author of UFO books was Morris Ketchum Jessup (1900-1959), who wrote that 1955 classic book, The Case for the UFO. In the book and the accompanying publicity tour, Jessup speculated that UFOs
were exploratory spacecraft.
It is not easy (some say "impossible") to find MK Jessup's classic book today,
as only a small number was ever printed before his suicide four years later in
1959.
The UFOMystic website writes that Jessup "was found dead in his car on April 20, 1959, a
hose running from the tailpipe to one of the windows. Most sober writers and
friends of Jessup accepted that he had killed himself, but the paranoid wing of
the UFO crowd still maintain that he was silenced by shadowy operatives".
(www.ufomystic.com/wake-up-down-there/ufo-parnoia-jessup/)
MIBs, anyone? (Men in Black, duh!)
Anyway, I did manage to find a website called 'The Cassiopaea Experiment' (www.cassiopaea.org/cass/jessup.htm), which had extracts of Jessup's book.
(The homepage states that "Cassiopaea.org and Cassiopaea.com and Quantum
Future.net are the websites founded by Theoretical Physicist Arkadiusz Jadczyk and his wife, amateur historian and writer, Laura Knight-Jadczyk.")
There is also an "Annotated" version of MK Jessup's book that was published by
the then "Varo Corporation", which did research for the military and was
definitely very friendly or connected with the Office of Naval Research, or
ONR, in Washington, D.C. It was the ONR who originally contacted Jessup in the
spring of 1957, because they had received by mail, a copy of Jessup's book that
had been heavily highlighted and "annotated" by person or persons unknown.
Click here to read more about Morris Jessup's book The Case for the UFO (1955) and some extracts of what he wrote about the UFOs that we found relevant or interesting.
Anyway, here is a URL for a PDF copy of the Varo Edition of the mysterious
"annotated" Jessup book:
www.americanantigravity.com/documents/Jessup_Case_for_the_UFO_Annotated.pdf
Based on handwriting analysis of earlier mail that Jessup had received prior to
being contacted by the ONR, it appeared that the "annotated" version of MK
Jessup's book contained highlighted text and annotations by a certain "Carlos
Allende" (aka "Carl M. Allen"?), the sailor responsible as the originator of
the
Philadelphia Experiment story. (We will present the Phily matter on another webpage!)
According to respected UFO researcher, or UFOlogist, Jerome Clark, who wrote and edited The UFO Encyclopedia: the Phenomenon from the Beginning (Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998; Visible Ink, 2005), it was MK Jessup who "linked
ancient monuments with prehistoric superscience" years before similar claims
were made by Erich von Däniken in Chariots of the Gods?. Clark also wrote that in ufological circles, Jessup was evidently regarded as
"probably the most original extraterrestrial hypothesiser of the 1950s".
Here is one thing that is also evident ... It is quite clear that Kenneth Arnold's description of his 1947 UFO sighting, and the subsequent publicity that had
resulted in UFOs being popularly referred to as "flying saucers" — even though many other UFO sightings point to different UFO
shapes, and some UFOs were just 'lights in the sky' — had
contributed to the public's mind of UFOs being flying saucers flown by aliens!
Thus, it is not surprising that authors like MK Jessup (in his 1955 book
and subsequent 3 books) would theorize about alien spacecraft flying in the
skies of our planet Earth.
Jessup had also theorized that the UFOs may be using some form of
'anti-gravity'.
5.0 Close Encounters of the Biblical Kind?
An interesting twist to this UFO Mystery is that, with our modern perspective
about space travel, UFOs have even been suggested for the 'happenings' (events)
in Biblical times. For example, a 1710 painting by
Aert de Gelder, which was named
"The Baptism of Christ", has UFO proponents saying that the painting depicts a UFO. If you had been
alive back in Jesus' time or even in the early 18th century, it is unlikely you
would think "UFO". It would have been more than likely that you would have been
thinking of angels, or God the Holy Spirit, etc. ... But ETs and spacecrafts
— those would not have been anywhere near your mental horizon.
5.1 Pillars of God?
And remember the events described in the
Exodus in the Old Testament? (Or in the "Hebrew Bible" — same
difference, as my son used to like to say! He's much older now, so he no longer
speaks like a teenager).
You know? That bit about the "pillar of cloud by day" and "pillar of fire by night" following and guiding the Hebrews across the desert and the Red Sea?
"What's that all about?", you might be asking.
Well, to the faithful, of course, those were manifestations of the God of the
Hebrews (aka Israelites). God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel. God Jehovah, aka Yahweh, Himself (Yahveh, if you've got German leanings) — or maybe (not 'revealed'
specifically!) it was Jesus, aka Yahshua (where "Yahshua", or "Yahushua", is Hebrew/Aramaic for "Yahweh saves!" or
"Yahweh is salvation!").
Here are the relevant verses, not only from Exodus, but also from several other
books of the Old Testament ...
| | |
| Exodus 13:21-22 By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide
them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light,
so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day
nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.  "Exodus & Pillar of Cloud" "Exodus & Pillar of Fire"Exodus 14:24 During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the
pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion.  "Exodus & Pillar of Fire"Numbers 14:14 And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have
already heard that you, O LORD, are with these people and that you, O LORD,
have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go
before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Deuteronomy 1:33 Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch
your tents in, in fire by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a
cloud by day. Nehemiah 9:12 By day you led them with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a
pillar of fire to give them light on the way they were to take. Nehemiah 9:19 Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the
desert. By day the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path,
nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. (NIV - New International Version)
| |
| | |
5.2 Chariots of the Gods?
But, listen!
When I was much younger, I read Erich von Däniken's book, Chariots of the Gods? (1970), which we already mentioned earlier on (in section "4. What's a UFO, Anyway?", above ... about Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the God?) ...
And von Däniken, of course, said that those pillars of cloud and fire were UFOs
operating in Biblical times!
That's great imagination, if Däniken's claim is false.
But if it's true, it would throw a whole new light on the
Bible — and the Christian faith ...
5.3 Science & UFO-ET Visitations
—Chariots of the Gods?
5.3.1 Two Options
Usually, there are two ways to treat any ancient document, such as the Bible:
either you 'believed' in the material as a matter of your 'faith' or you don't.
5.3.2 Option #1
If you adopt the first option, that's OK; nothing wrong with it. After all, it's
a personal decision which you have a right to do (and you may then have to
respect other people's right to their own 'faith', but we won't go into that!).
Basically, the first option is a matter of your 'faith' and also probably a
part of your overall 'belief system' or
'world view' or
'paradigm' ... call it what you will, it's yours!
But note this: it probably means also the end of the discussion or conversation
or chain of enquiry. In other words, you would not then be examining the
Bible — or any ancient document — as just
(another) ancient document that may contain information and records and
observations about potential ancient-time (Biblical-time) UFO sightings and
alien encounters, and other occurrences (e.g., astronomical events, such as
supernovae, eclipses, planetary conjunctions).
5.3.3 Option #2
What if you should choose the second option? Well, if you choose
not to believe in the Bible (or any other ancient document) as anything other than
just another ancient document to be studied scientifically and scholarly (even
theologically?), then you probably can then proceed further along your
exploration and investigation of the phenomenon or Mystery, in this case, the
UFO Mystery.
5.3.4 Option #3 (!?)
Actually, there is a third option, although it is a fine or even a dicey one,
if I may use that word ('dicey') without you thinking that 'dicey' necessarily
relates to 'dodgy'!
This third option means that you still have your 'faith' in the Bible as a
source of Divine Revelation, but you are willing to concede that certain
passages in the Bible,
for whatever reasons and motivations, may contain information and records and observations that can be studied to
move us along the enquiry chain, including this exploration of possible "Close
Encounters" with UFOs and ETs during Biblical or Ancient times.
This third option is the one I choose to take!
I
think it is the one that many may also have taken! (But I have no data, sorry!)
Anyway, Option #3 doesn't negate my 'faith' as a Charismatic Christian,
although it may 'angrify' (to cause to have anger) some Christians if they
learn about it. But, believe me when I say that the Bible teaches us not to be
men-pleasers but to be God-pleasers, so I don't worry at all what
any other Christian think of my adopting the third option (I just pray that God's
not too upset!).
Anyway, I don't wish to judge anyone (especially another Christian), because
Jesus taught us "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (Matthew 7:1). So if any
other Christian wants to judge me, let him or her be prepared to answer, at the
Great White Throne Judgment Day (Revelation 21:11-15), why they choose to
disobey Jesus who is the Christ and who commanded:
"Judge not, that ye be not judged."One more thing: The reason why I did not choose the second option is because
that's usually the option chosen by the atheists and agnostics and so on
(including
non-believers). I am not an atheist, nor am I an agnostic, and I am clearly not a
non-believer, since I have already stated in this website that I am a
Charismatic Christian. So I embrace Option 3, as explained above.
But whether option 2 or 3, the question of the possibility that our Planet
Earth may have been visited by 'ancient astronauts' can be addressed, and we
can move forward along our enquiry, exploration, investigation, discovery ...
5.4 Dr. Sagan's Intelligent Life in the Universe
It is clear to me that many scientists — such as the late
Dr. Carl Sagan (1934-1996), who is an avowed athesist, and who, by profession, was an
astronomer as well as an exobiologist — have addressed this
question of possible alien visitation in Earth's past ages.
Dr. Sagan collaborated with the world-famous Russian astronomer
Iosif Samuilovich Shklovskii (1916-1985) to translate, annotate, extend, revise and re-publish a book that
originally was written by Shklovskii and published, in Russian, in 1962, as
Universe, Life, Intelligence by the USSR Academy of Sciences Publisher. The new Shklovskii-Sagan book was
named
Intelligent Life in the Universe and was first published in 1966 (which, you noticed, was two years earlier
than Erich von Däniken's 1968 book,
Chariots of the Gods?). One of the latest reissues of the Shklovskii-Sagan book was published in
1998 by the Emerson-Adams Press.
In that book, Shklovskii and his American counterpart Dr. Sagan, wrote that:
Actually, to be fair to Erich von Däniken, he also did asked questions that are
similar to questions that scientists also asked. For example, the title of von
Däniken's Chapter 1 is "Are there intelligent Beings in the Cosmos?", which is
a fair question to ask, and is actually the basis for the SETI (or Search for
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) effort. But ... cough! ... the tone of jeering at "traditional archaeology" doesn't help von
Däniken's cause!
In any case, we have no clear-cut physical evidence of any UFO visitations during the Earth's past. They left no physical
remains, as far as we know. So such visitations remains within the realm of
speculation and plausible theorizing. In other words, UFO & ET visitations
remain a possibility; but, as I always maintain:
We shouldn't attribute any unexplained ancient mystery to visitations by UFOs
and ETs, just because we now understand about space travel and similar
technological wonders.
Especially, we should not jump to such wild conclusions and theorizing that
visitations by members of some super-technological 'Alien Nation' are meant for
'seeding' our planet (however you want to interpret that — use
your imagination!), nor should we speculate that these aliens, benign or
otherwise, are still maintaining a guardianship 'watch' (or, horrors! 'animal husbandry' watch)
over our civilization!
While books by Erich von Däniken and similarly-minded authors can be 'an
interesting read' (especially on a sleepy Tuesday afternoon!), they are
regarded by the mainstream as part of 'The Fringe'.
Indeed, there appears to be a tendency among the authors of popular books on
UFOs and alien-encounters to interpret events recorded in the Bible and other
ancient texts, in terms of UFOs and alien visitations.
Erich von Däniken is one of the first to do so, but he was not the earliest ...
we have already seen that MK Jessup (1900-1959) wrote that 1955 UFO classic
entitled The Case for the UFO. Jessup followed it with 3 other books, namely UFOs and the Bible (1956), The UFO Annual (also 1956) and The Expanding Case for the UFO (1957). All of Jessup's books predate von Däniken's 1968 Chariots.
In UFOs and the Bible, this is what Jessup had to say about the close encounters of the Biblical
kind:
Another author also had Biblical close encounters in mind when he wrote that
That came from Barry H. Downing, author of a book with a really interesting and audacious title: The Bible and Flying Saucers (Philadelphia, J. P. Lippincott, 1968) — that is, Downing's book was
published at about the same time (or year) as von Däniken's 1968 Chariots. Anyway, Downing's book has the sub-title: An Inquiry into Some Possibilities. In other words, Downing believes in the possibility that the parting of the
Red Sea was accomplished by aliens in a cylinder-shaped UFO ("pillars",
remember?) hovering over the waters of the Red Sea.
For the mainstream, or in this case, the orthodox faith or religion (i.e.,
religious mainstream), all these suggested close encounters of the Biblical
kind are just plain nonsense and even collectively constitutes an attack on
their orthodox faith. For the UFO enthusiasts, the jury is still out!
| | |
| Two ET-UFO HypothesesBy Dr. Carl SaganThere are two hypotheses of this sort that have gained a following in the
popular literature. - The first postulates that the Earth is today being visited by spacecraft
from other worlds — this is the extraterrestrial flying saucer or
unidentified flying object (UFO) hypothesis.
- The second also postulates that the Earth has been visited by such
spacecraft, but in the past, before written history.
First ET-UFO HypothesisThe extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFO origins is a complex subject, powerfully
dependent on the reliability of witnesses. A comprehensive discussion of this
problem has recently been published in UFO's: A Scientific Debate (Carl Sagan
and Thornton Page, editors, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1972), in
which all sides of the subject have been aired. My own view is that there are
no cases that are simultaneously - very reliable (reported independently by a large number of witnesses) and
- very exotic (not explicable in terms of reasonably postulated phenomena —
as
a strange moving light could be a searchlight from a weather airplane or a
military aerial refueling operation).
There are no reliably reported cases of strange machines landing and taking
off, for example. There is another approach to the extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFO origins.
This assessment depends on a large number of factors about which we know
little, and a few about which we know literally nothing. I want to make some
crude numerical estimates of the probability that we are frequently visited by
extraterrestrial beings. Now, there is a range of hypotheses that can be examined in such a way. Let me
give a simple example: Consider the Santa Claus hypothesis, which maintains
that, in a period of eight hours or so on December 24-25 of each year, an
outsized elf visits one-hundred million homes in the United States. This is
an interesting and widely discussed hypothesis. Some strong emotions ride on
it, and it is argued that at least it does no harm. We can do some calculations. Suppose that the elf in question spends one second
per house. This isn't quite the usual picture — "Ho, Ho, Ho," and so on
— but
imagine that he is terribly efficient and very speedy; that would explain why
nobody ever sees him very much — only one second per house, after all.
With a
hundred-million houses, he has to spend three years just filling stockings. I
have assumed he spends no time at all in going from house to house. Even with
relativistic reindeer, the time spent in a hundred-million houses is three
years and not eight hours. This is an example of hypothesis-testing independent
of reindeer propulsion mechanisms or debates on the origins of elves. We
examine the hypothesis itself, making very straightforward assumptions, and
derive a result inconsistent with the hypothesis by many orders of magnitude.
We would then suggest that the hypothesis is untenable. We can make a similar examination, but with greater uncertainty, of the
extraterrestrial hypothesis that holds that a wide range of UFOs viewed on the
planet Earth are space vehicles from planets of other stars. The report rates,
at least in recent years, have been several per day, at the very least. I will
not make that assumption. I will make the much more conservative assumption
that one such report per year corresponds to a true interstellar visitation.
Let's see what this implies. We have to have some feeling for the number, N, of extant technical
civilizations in the Galaxy — that is, civilizations vastly in advance of
our
own, civilizations that are able, by whatever means, to perform interstellar
space flight. (While the means are difficult, they don't enter into this
discussion, just as reindeer propulsion mechanisms don't affect our discussion
of the Santa Claus hypothesis.) An attempt has been made to specify explicitly the factors that enter a
determination of the number of such technical civilizations in the Galaxy. I
will not here run through what numbers have been assigned to the various
quantities involved — it's a multiplication of many probabilities, and the
likelihood that we can make a good judgment decreases as we proceed down the
list. N depends first on the mean rate at which stars are formed in the Galaxy,
a number that is known reasonably well. It depends on the number of stars that
have planets, which is less well known, but there are some data on that. It
depends on the fraction of such planets that are so suitably located with
respect to their star that the environment is a feasible one for the origin of
life. It depends on the fraction of such otherwise feasible planets on which
the origin of life, in fact, occurs. It depends on the fraction of those
planets on which the origin of life occurs in which, after life has arisen, an
intelligent form comes into being. It depends on the fraction of those planets
in which intelligent forms have arisen that evolve a technical civilization
substantially in advance of our own. And it depends on the average lifetime of
such a technical civilization. It is clear that we are rapidly running out of examples as we go farther and
farther along. We have many stars, but only one instance of the origin of life,
and only a very limited number — some would say only one — of
instances of
the evolution of intelligent beings and technical civilizations on this planet.
And we have no cases whatever to make a judgment on the mean lifetime of a
technical civilization. Nevertheless, there is an entertainment that some of us
have been engaged in, making our best estimates about these numbers and coming
out with a value of N. The result that emerges is that N roughly equals one
tenth the average lifetime of a technical civilization in years. If we put in a number like ten million (107) years for the average lifetime of advanced technical civilizations, we come
out with a number for such technical
civilizations in the Galaxy of about a million (106) that is, a million other stars with planets on which today there are advanced
civilizations. This is quite a difficult calculation to do accurately. The
choice of ten-million years
for the average lifetime of a technical civilization is rather optimistic. But
let's take these optimistic numbers and see where they lead us. Let's assume that each of these million technical civilizations launches Q
interstellar space vehicles a year, so that 106Q interstellar space vehicles are launched per year. Let's assume that there's
only one contact made per journey. In the steady-state situation, there are
something like 106Q arrivals
somewhere or other per year. Now, there surely are something like 1010 interesting places in the Galaxy to go visit (we have several times 1011 stars) and, therefore, an average of 1/104 = 10-4 arrivals at a given interesting place (let's say a planet) per year. So if
only one UFO is to visit the Earth each year, we can calculate what mean launch
rate is required at each of these million worlds. The number turns out to be
ten-thousand launches per year per civilization, and ten-billion launches in
the Galaxy per year. This seems excessive. Even if we imagine a civilization
much more advanced than ours, to launch ten-thousand such vehicles for only one
to appear here is probably asking too much. And if we were more pessimistic on
the lifetime of advanced civilizations, we would require a proportionately
larger launch rate. But as the lifetime decreases, the probability that a
civilization would develop interstellar flight very likely decreases as well. There is a related point made by the American physicist Hong-Yee Chiu; he takes
more than one UFO arriving at Earth per year, but his argument follows along
the same lines as the one I have just presented. He calculates the total mass
of metals involved in all of these space vehicles during this history of the
Galaxy. The vehicle has to be of some size — it should be bigger than the
Apollo capsule, let's say — and we can calculate how much metal is
required. It turns out that the total mass of half a million stars has to be
processed and all their metals extracted. Or if we extend the argument and
assume that only the outer few hundred miles or so of stars like the Sun can be
mined by advanced technologies (farther in, it's too hot), we find that
two-billion such stars must be processed, or about 1 percent of the stars in
the Galaxy. This also sounds unlikely. Now you may say, "Well, that's a very parochial approach; maybe they have
plastic spaceships." Yes, I suppose that's possible. But the plastic has to
come from somewhere, and plastics vs. metals changes the conclusions very
little. This calculation gives some feeling for the magnitude of the task when
we are asked to believe that there are routine and frequent interstellar visits
to our planet. What about possible counterarguments? For example, it might be argued that we
are the object of special attention — we have just developed all sorts of
signs of civilization and high intelligence like nuclear weapons, and maybe,
therefore, we are of particular interest to interstellar anthropologists.
Perhaps. - But we have only signaled the presence of our technical civilization in the
past few decades. The news can be only some tens of light-years from us.
- Also, all the anthropologists in the world do not converge on the Andaman
Islands because the fish net has just been invented there. There are a few
fishnet specialists and a few Andaman specialists; and these guys say, "Well,
there's something terrific going on in the Andaman Islands. I've got to spent a
year there right away, because if I don't go now I'll miss out." But the
pottery experts and the specialists in Australian aborigines don't pack up
their bags and leave for the Indian Ocean.
To imagine that there is something absolutely fascinating about what is
happening right here is precisely contrary to the idea that there are lots of
civilizations around. Because if the latter is true, the development of our
sort of civilization must be pretty common. And if we are not pretty common,
then there are not going to be many civilizations advanced enough to send
visitors. Second ET-UFO HypothesisEven so, is it not possible that the second UFO hypothesis is true that in
historical or recent prehistoric times an extraterrestrial space vehicle made
landfall on Earth? There is surely no way in which we can exclude such a
contingency. How could we prove it? A number of popular books have recently been written that allege to demonstrate
such a visitation. The arguments are of two sorts, LegendsI broached this subject in the book Intelligent Life in the Universe, written with the Soviet astrophysicist I. S. Shklovskii and published in
1966. I examined a typical legend suggestive of contact between our ancestors
and an apparent representative of a superior society. The legend, taken from
the earliest Sumerian mythology, is important, because the Sumerians are the
direct cultural antecedents of our own civilization. A superior being was
supposed to have taught the Sumerians mathematics, astronomy, agriculture,
social and political organization, and written language — all the arts
necessary for making the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to the first
civilization. But as provocative as this and similar legends were, I concluded that it was
impossible to demonstrate extraterrestrial contact from such legends: There are
plausible alternative explanations. We can understand why priests might make
myths about superior beings who inhabit the skies and give directions to human
beings on how to order their affairs. Among other "advantages," such legends
permit the priests to control the people. There is only one category of legend that would be convincing: When information
is contained in the legend that could not possibly have been generated by the
civilization that created the legend — if, for example, a number
transmitted
from thousands of years ago as holy turns out to be the nuclear fine-structure
constant. This would be a case worthy of some considerable attention. ArtifactsAlso convincing would be a certain class of artifact. If an artifact of
technology were passed on from an ancient civilization — an artifact that
is
far beyond the technological capabilities of the originating civilization
— we
would have an interesting prima facie case for extraterrestrial visitation. An
example would be an illuminated manuscript, rescued from an Irish monastery,
that contains the electronic circuit diagram for a superheterodyne radio
receiver. Great care would have to be taken about the provenance of this
artifact, just as art collectors are cautious about a newly discovered Raphael.
We would make sure that no contemporary Irish prankster was the source of the
circuit diagram. Von DannikenTo the best of my knowledge, there are no such legends and no such artifacts.
All the ancient artifacts put forward, for example, by Erik von Danniken in his
book Chariots of the Gods? have a variety of plausible, alternative
explanations. Representations of beings with large, elongated heads, alleged to
resemble space helmets, could equally well be - inelegant artistic renditions,
- depictions of ceremonial head masks or
- expressions of rampant hydrocephalia.
In fact, the expectation that extraterrestrial astronauts would look precisely
like American or Soviet astronauts, down to their space suits and eyeballs, is
probably less credible than the idea of a visitation itself. Likewise, the idea
expressed by von Danniken and others that ancient astronauts - erected airfields,
- employed rockets, and
- exploded nuclear weapons on Earth
is implausible in the extreme, precisely because we ourselves have just
developed this technology. A visitor from space will not be so close to us in time. - It is as if, framing such an idea in 1870, we concluded that
extraterrestrials use hot-air balloons for space exploration. Far from being
too daring, such ideas are stodgy in their unimaginativeness.
Most popular accounts of alleged contact with extraterrestrials are strikingly
chauvinistic.
— Adapted from
Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection:
An Extraterrestrial Perspective
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000) | |
| | |
6.0 Ancient Astronauts
The idea of UFO and alien-ET visitations has been extended to even earlier times
than Biblical times ... in fact, into the very mists of prehistory itself (if
we take the usual idea of prehistory as before
written history ... writing is usually thought to have been invented about 5,000 years
ago, i.e., sometime around 3,000 B.C.).
This prehistoric UFO visitation idea has even been given a name, such as the
ancient astronauts theory. Actually, there are several such theories, depending
on which author you read ... Click here to read a presentation of the 'Ancient Astronauts'.
And certain authors, such as Erich von Däniken, have advocated this ancient
astronaut theory very vocally and strongly ... including that sightings of UFOs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and ancient astronaut
visitations have been recorded in prehistoric cave paintings and rock art, some
of which have been carbon-dated to be as old as 32,000 years old!
7.0 More Recent UFOs & ETs/Aliens
There are, of course, even more reports of UFO and ET/Alien sightings in recent
times than during Antiquity/Biblical times ...
For example, in his book Aliens: Why Are They Here (1997; 2005), Bryan Appleyard mentioned the following:
In June 1864 in France a newspaper reported that American geologists had
discovered a hollow, egg-shaped object containing the mummified body of a
three-foot humanoid creature with a trunk projecting from the middle of its
forehead.
In 1884 in Nebraska cowboys saw what was taken to be an airship from another
planet crash to earth.
A wave of cigar-shaped UFO sightings began in northern California in 1896 and
ended in the Midwest six months later.
A curious letter in the Otago Daily Times in New Zealand on 29 July 1909 confidently stated that local airship sightings
were of 'atomic-powered spaceships' from Mars.
'From about 1880 through 1946,' writes the folklorist Thomas E. Bullard,
'witnesses reported a stream of aerial mysteries — phantom airships,
mysterious airplanes, foo fighters and ghost rockets — that reflected
technological expectations of the day or looked one step ahead. The phantom
airships of 1897 played to human hopes by heralding that man could fly at last,
whereas foo fighters as supposed enemy secret weapons during World War II and
ghost rockets as possible Soviet missiles at the onset of the cold war fueled
human fears of destruction from the sky.'
8.0 Postscript
This is still very much a preliminary examination of the
UFO Mystery ... Stay tuned for further updates ...
Cheers!
