That the scientific communities and scientists in general (there are exceptions) dismiss the UFO ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) as pseudoscience and total bunk is understandable, but illogical. The scientists’ anti UFO ETH arguments don’t stand up to logical scrutiny. To adequately come to terms with the UFO ETH one needs to have a ‘deep time’ perspective; not just one of here and now or last week, month, year, decade or even centuries ago.
Whether you’re a UFO ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) supporter, a UFO ETH debunker, or you don’t give a damn either way about the UFO ETH at all (so then why are you reading this?), you’d be aware that overall the professional scientific community, including for some odd reason SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientists – the very clan who profess an intense interest in ETI – pooh-pooh the very notion of the UFO ETH.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
OBJECTION: They (the aliens) can’t get from there (wherever there is) to here – interstellar space is the ultimate no-fly quarantine zone and since superluminal velocities (i.e. – Star Trek’s warp drive comes to mind here) are a violation of Einstein’s special theory of relativity (though there’s nothing theoretical about that inconvenience anymore) that takes care of that. ET exists but can’t get here; therefore UFOs can’t be the products of ET.
ANSWER: I can not believe this old and totally outdated chestnut is still bandied about. The idiotic assumption here is, in a very anthropological way, is that ET must have a lifespan equal to that of humans. Humans cannot travel to the stars because we can’t travel fast enough in our short life-spans to make the journey from start to finish, and I assume here that if you start the journey you want to be around to finish the journey. Now there is no law in biological science that says an intelligent flesh-and-blood entity must kick-the-bucket after roughly three score and ten years. If you recall from mythology, the cosmic and sky ‘gods’ were (at least from a human perspective) as close to immortal as makes no odds. Quasi-immortality makes interstellar travel quite feasible. Of course any alien intelligence that can visit us will have technologies far beyond our own. Genetic or other forms of bioengineering could artificially extend life-spans by many orders of magnitude. Perhaps flesh-and-blood has morphed into silicon and steel. There’s the standard sci-fi scenarios of the multi-generation starship or hibernation that passes the time away without much additional aging. Then too perhaps a super-civilization of the extraterrestrial type has been able to approach luminal velocities; perhaps have physics and engineering that can go superluminal. But one doesn’t need such extreme possibilities. All it takes is the first initial journey. Once here, our quasi-immortal ET (the ‘gods’ of mythology) sets up shop, say even a lunar outpost. No further interstellar journeys required.
OBJECTION: It’s unlikely in the extreme that we (humans) would just happen by chance be the lucky generation, after 4.5 billion years have passed Earth by in cosmic isolation, for us to now experience on-site cosmic company. If you were to throw a dart randomly at 4.5 billion balloons, what odds that it would hit a balloon that co-existed with humanity’s existence, even being generous and giving us (humanity) an existence of say two million balloon years, far less hitting the balloon labeled 1947 (the accepted start of the modern UFO era)?
ANSWER: This is IMHO actually the best anti UFO ETH argument going but when taken to its logical conclusion provides the very answer which makes the UFO ETH nearly inevitable. Indeed, it would be utterly extraordinary in the extreme if that tiny niche of terrestrial time, say 1947 to the present, were the first and only niche of terrestrial time to host a visit by extraterrestrial intelligence(s). The obvious answer is that there have been previous niches in time, intervals of time, probably lots and lots and lots of them, when ET paid a visit. ET had had billions of years to randomly (or selectively) explore the (our) galaxy. At 1% light speed it only takes 10,000,000 years to cross the galaxy edge to edge. But the galaxy is ten billion years old. If there’s lots of space-faring alien civilizations, or even if there is just one, they are probably a lot closer to us than the worst case scenario of edge-to-edge (obviously, since we’re not on the galactic edge). Those who have pondered this issue and crunched the numbers, suggest that 10,000 to 100,000 years is a rough estimate of time intervals between random visits from ET. Still, 1947 to date could easily and probably would on probability fall outside that range. Maybe the last random visit was 9,000 years ago, or 90,000 years ago. We’d still have a bit of a wait (one thousand to ten thousand years) for the next call. But, and there’s always a “but”…
It doesn’t take much imagination – and many have imagined it – that ET has been in Earth’s hair on a nearly ongoing basis. The key point is once that initial chance discovery has happened, and that could have been billions of years ago, we’re charted, noted and logged biological real estate. We’re now a colored pin on the galactic map, say green for simple biosphere; yellow for complex life, orange for intelligence and red for here be a civilization. Within 100,000 years of that first contact (even if it were ET greeting our microbial ancestors), light speed radio communications would have notified all potentially receptive (and future receptive) alien civilizations that here was one of those rare abodes, a planet with a biosphere, and thus one worth ongoing routine (not random) investigations – for scientific reasons if nothing else.
The terrestrial parallels are obvious. Once we discovered Antarctica it quickly became common knowledge. We went back, again, and again and again, finally setting up near permanent quarters despite the obvious costs and hardships, all in the name of science. We’ll go back to the Moon too one day – maybe not anytime real soon, but eventually. Your great grandkids will see lunar settlements or outposts like we today see in Antarctica . ET and Earth may have had the same ongoing relationship. We might find we have ET for company on the Moon like we’ve had ET for company on Earth.
Now fast-forward and recall from our mythologies around the world – all races, all cultures, all geographical settlements – the tales of the sky ‘gods’ and beings associated with various constellations and stellar addresses. Those same ‘gods’, who often get around in aerial ‘chariots’, gave the gifts of knowledge and culture and rudimentary technologies to primitive (hunter-gather) mankind. They stick around to monitor their experiment.
Now fast-forward to 1947 through to the present. The ‘gods’ have become ET, and they are going to keep close tabs on us, since they know that one day, even if thousands of years down the track, we’ll boldly go like they have boldly gone. We have our intelligence gathering agencies; ET has theirs as well.
OBJECTION: UFOs, if alien owned and operated, can only be here, on-site, in response to the modern human presence. That’s actually advocated by many pro UFO ETH buffs that how can it be a coincidence that aliens have arrived just at the same time we started playing around with dangerous toys – nuclear weapons; going into space; and reeking environmental havoc upon ourselves. Skeptics counter that for humans to be known by those out there, they can only know of us via our electromagnetic (EM) signals, which propagate outwards out there at light speed. Thus, our EM signals (nuclear blasts, radio/TV broadcasts, radar emissions, etc.) haven’t had much time to get very far out there, because prior to say 1900 Earth was pretty quiet in giving off human technological EM noise. Even our atmospheric pollution, potentially detectable from way out there via spectroscopic analysis, wasn’t really at highly abnormal levels prior to 1900. It’s only in the 20th Century did it really kick into high gear.
So, if you take 1947 as the start year of the modern UFO era – their arrival date – and assuming they left home as soon as they detected our EM signal then their home has go to be so close by to Earth as to be statistically unlikely in the extreme. Since ET’s home is certainly not within our solar system, then by elimination, that leaves nearby stars. But only subluminal interstellar travel is possible, and even interstellar velocities of say 10% light speed are pushing the envelop. Our closest stellar companions are over four light years away, so it would take ET over forty years to reach us from the closest stellar abode. Add to that the four light years it took our EM signal to reach them in the first place, well that’s about 44 years all up. Subtract that from 1947 – well, 1903 isn’t known for our high intensity radio broadcasts, and radar, TV and nuclear lights are still future technology. Therefore, ET didn’t arrive in 1947 due to any human activity, and since obviously only human activity would attract ET to travel here in the first place – therefore UFOs can not be anything alien!
ANSWER: The basic assumption here is so anthropomorphic (human centered) as to be laughable. Firstly, even if the aliens arrived out of concern to post-1900’s human activities, that doesn’t mean they weren’t already here, if not on-site, in the immediate solar system area, like having a lunar base, or even an orbiting space colony ship as base of operations. One doesn’t have to postulate them being a minimum of over four light years away. Secondly, let’s forget the human element – as per the above argument, Planet Earth has been noted and logged in a galactic database for a minimum of millions of years, more likely as not an order of magnitude greater – billions of years. It’s an egocentric inspired, but just coincidence, that alien UFOs are around when humans dominate Earth’s environment.
To be continued...
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