UFOs: Bits and Pieces: SETI vs. the UFO

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time contrasting the accepted way of looking for intelligent aliens (SETI – the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) versus the unacceptable way (UFOs).

Radio (and other) astronomers who search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) in the cosmos appear to have little if any real interest in other avenues that have potential bearing on the issue, which makes we wonder about just how bona fide their overall interest in ETI really is. That’s because they tend not only to ignore those avenues, but often actively thumb their collective noses at, and ridicule subjects such as UFOs and ancient astronauts. I think they should have the academic courage to investigate these fields as well, as there is IMHO an ETI signal of wheat within the UFO (and ancient astronaut) chaffy noise.

But for some strange reason, SETI scientists exclude alien artefacts that have any potential connection with UFOs, and closely related the concept of ‘ancient astronauts’. That seems to be putting your SETI eggs in relatively fewer baskets than is necessary! I mean, SETI is trying to find extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). If UFOs and/or ancient astronauts provide evidence or support for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, you’d think SETI scientists would include UFOs and/or ancient astronauts in their collective baskets.

However, SETI, after five decades of scanning the heavens for intelligent messages, have managed to come up with only one real ‘WOW’ signal; one unknown signal, one unidentified signal, that unfortunately never repeated itself and thus couldn’t ever be scientifically and properly verified.

So sorry to have to say this, but UFOs have a lot more runs on the board than SETI, despite SETI being legit, accredited and accepted science and UFOs anything but. The track record for UFOs as a bona fide ETI subject is way better than the track record for SETI. As even UFO sceptics (like SETI scientists) have to acknowledge, some 5% to 10% of all UFO sightings or incidents remain hard core UFO sightings or incidents after proper analysis (and thus remain plausible or viable candidates for the UFO ETH) - the ‘unknowns’ category. If 5% to 10% of all interesting-at-first-glance SETI signals also proved, after proper analysis, to be legitimate ‘unknowns’; ‘WOW’ signals after the one and only one such ‘unknown’ ever recorded, that would really set the SETI community abuzz. That one SETI “WOW” signal has withstood the test of time – it remains a bona fide SETI unknown. My point is that each and every one of those 5 to 10% bona-fide unexplainable UFO incidents is, for all practical purposes, a ‘WOW’ event, equal in potential to the lone SETI ‘WOW’ signal. In the case of the UFO, the collective of ‘WOW’ events now number in the thousands to tens of thousands. As I said, UFOs have more ‘WOW’ runs on the board than SETI. 

As an example, one such ‘WOW’ UFO event happened on the evening of 13 March 1997 over the city of Phoenix, Arizona. Thousands of citizens, including the state’s Governor, Fife Symington III, witnessed (and several filmed) an aerial display of a silently gliding formation of lights in the sky of unknown origin, now dubbed, not surprisingly, ‘The Phoenix Lights’. Needless to say they remain unidentified, and you can get in-depth documentary coverage on YouTube. 

Another point is that say there’s one extraterrestrial technologically advanced civilization reasonably close to by – say within 10 to 50 light-years. Say their radio leakage window of (our) opportunity for (our) successful SETI is 100 to 200 years before all transmission traffic is via fibre optical or other cable and the radio noise, their radio leakage, for all practical purpose ceases. So, SETI has up to 200 years to point an antenna tuned at the right frequency and pointed in the right direction to log up a success story.

Now, what’s the duration of our extraterrestrial civilization’s attempts to boldly go – interstellar exploration? 100 years? 200 years? No, its way more than that because once started, even assuming the home planet goes kaput, exploration is ever ongoing. So the window of opportunity for us stay-at-home terrestrials to detect these boldly going extraterrestrials (and sooner of later we’d be accidentally stumbled over even if we hadn’t been detected before-the-fact due to our bio-signatures – technological or otherwise) is also pretty unlimited. If they are not here now (UFOs), maybe there’s some evidence they were here 200, 2000 or 20,000 years ago; or maybe tomorrow. The argument doesn’t really alter that much if at all no matter how many technologically advanced (capable of both radio and interstellar travel) there are. Radio leakage is short term; exploration is long term. Therefore, UFOs are a better bet than SETI. 

Now that’s not an attack on SETI. I like SETI; it’s good science. I wish SETI every success and if SETI captures THE signal tomorrow, I’d be delighted. It’s just that SETI isn’t the only game in town. UFO research is not a replacement for traditional SETI, but complementary.

SETI scientists & UFO ETH hunters have something in common – they both need the (deliberate or inadvertent) cooperation of what they seek – aliens (if aliens they be). SETI scientists need that radio (or optical or infrared) transmission. UFO hunters need UFOs to just bloody well stand still, or at least have the decency to crash in a public location!

 

In conclusion, I again wish to make it clear that I totally support radio, optical, and infrared SETI to the hilt. It is bona fide science. Nothing ventured, nothing gained is applicable here. Repeating myself, traditional SETI isn’t the only game available, and I equally support and encourage any and all other search strategies. To support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, there should be a scholarly examination of terrestrial mythology, especially religious mythology, for hints of ETI. For example, do all gods in all the worlds religious mythologies live in the sky (like Heaven, or Valhalla) and possess magical (technological) powers? Also, for once, there should be a serious scientific examination of the UFO data to determine once and for all if there is a case for some UFO events (like the Phoenix Lights) exhibiting ETI technology.    

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Roswell 1947

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time the alleged crash of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico in early July of 1947.

My bits and pieces wouldn’t be complete without reference to Roswell. I don’t wish to say too much about the Roswell, N.M. case (July 1947), other than to point out that the then US Army Air Force admitted publicly, in the media, in newspapers, on radio, that they had captured one of those mysterious (and only recently sighted – the modern UFO era was just weeks old) flying discs. No amount of back-pedalling can alter that now historical fact. It’s on the record. Look it up yourself! But wait, there’s more, and I’m not making any of this up. Firstly, forget the dozens of after-the-fact investigators into Roswell and their tomes. The only thing that really counts here is first hand, on-the-spot, eye-witness accounts. When it comes to that, the name Marcel should ring your bells and whistles.

Major Jesse Marcel (Senior) was the Army Air Force (AAF) as it was then called, military officer directed to investigate the report of some mysterious debris scattered outside of town. Now to achieve a rank of Major, in the military, suggests you’ve been around for a while. You’re not some newly commissioned greenhorn Second Louie. It suggests that one is competent enough to distinguish wheat from chaff. So, Major Marcel (Senior), upon on-site investigation of this crashed debris, became so excited that he actually took some of the debris home to show his family, waking up his young child (Jesse Marcel, Junior) in the middle of the night. It’s the sort of thing a SETI scientist might excitedly do if s/he received ‘that’ signal. Afterwards, of course, that, and all the other debris was collected by and turned over to the local AAF. Because of the unusual and highly suggestive other-worldly nature of the debris, the base commander ordered his public relations officer to issue a press statement that the AAF at Roswell had collected the crashed remains of one of these new fangled flying discs. Within 24 hours, higher authority directed that the story be changed and what had actually been recovered was a weather balloon. Major Marcel, the base commander and the press officer, being dutiful military types, just followed orders and said nothing – then. The actual debris was then flown off-site, off the Roswell base, first to Texas (where real weather balloon bits were displayed for a press conference), hence onwards elsewhere, but has apparently vanished now off the face of the Earth, unless of course it is still stored under classified wraps.

That a Major in the US AAF somehow could not tell the difference between debris from a crashed weather balloon (or even in yet another turnaround about-face, a Project Mogul balloon trail – well it’s still just a balloon) and a metallic crashed disc is too implausible or incredible to believe or take seriously. It’s like saying a SETI scientist couldn’t tell the difference between Morse Code and the radio hiss from the Big Bang’s cosmic microwave background radiation!

But wait, there’s more! After Marcel (Senior) retired from the military, he went public with his side of the story – weather balloon? Not a snowballs chance in Hell. His son, 11 years old at the time daddy woke him up, became a medical doctor and also a career military officer. But he now too has spoken out publicly and written about his, and his father’s encounters with what they both termed not-of-this-world technology. Marcel (Junior) remembers vividly that night and that material from the crashed disc collected by his father.

You can find relevant interviews with (now the late) Jesse Marcel (Senior), and his son, Dr. Jesse Marcel (Junior) on YouTube.

The Roswell AAF base commander (Colonel William Blanchard) was never reprimanded or disciplined for ordering the ‘crashed disc’ press release. In fact he eventually rose to the rank of that of Four-Star General.

The First Lieutenant, Walter Haut, who actually issued that press release, also issued a death bed affidavit attesting to the accuracy of the actual (no weather balloon) Roswell events. That affidavit can be found on the Internet at the following address: (http://roswellproof.homestead.com/index.html). 

Finally, the biggest ‘giggle’ factor detrimental to Roswell credibility are the reports of the alien bodies recovered. Why this should be so is beyond me for if UFOs are ‘manned’ by aliens, and if a UFO crashed, then it stands to reason that there will be alien bodies too – alive or dead. Of course one could argue that maybe the UFOs aren’t ‘manned’, but remote controlled drones – we have such things ourselves. Maybe the alien is actually  a form of extraterrestrial artificial intelligence – an onboard machine intelligence that controls/pilots the UFO, and resulting crash debris one couldn’t tell the difference between the remains of the ‘pilot’ from the rest of the nuts and bolts. But back to the bodies – by analogy, on balance, it would seem odd for an airliner to crash and there be no bodies. I find the idea of ‘alien bodies’ to contribute no extra ‘giggle’ factor to the Roswell incident.

Further reading on Roswell:

Berliner, Don & Friedman, Stanton T.; Crash at Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of A UFO; Paragon House, New York; 1992:

Berlitz, Charles & Moore, William L.; The Roswell Incident; Grosset & Dunlap, New York; 1980:

Carey, Thomas J. & Schmitt, Donald R.; Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up; Career Press, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey; 2007: 

Corso, Philip J. & Birnes, William J.; The Day After Roswell; Pocket Books, New York; 1997: 

Eberhart, George M. (Editor); The Roswell Report: A Historical Perspective; Center for UFO Studies, Chicago; 1991:

Hesemann, Michael & Mantle, Philip; Beyond Roswell: The Alien Autopsy Film, Area 51, & the U.S. Government Coverup of UFOs; Michael O’Mara Books Limited, London; 1997:

Klass, Philip J.; The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup; Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 1997:

Korff, Kal K.; The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don’t Want You To Know; Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 1997:

*Marcel, Jesse (Jr.) & Marcel, Linda; The Roswell Legacy: The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site; New Page Books, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey; 2009:

McAndrew, James & Weaver, Richard L.; The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert; Headquarters United States Air Force, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC; 1995:

Moore, Charles B., Saler, Benson & Ziegler, Charles A.; UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of A Modern Myth; Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC; 1997:

Randle, Kevin; Roswell UFO Crash Update: Exposing the Military Cover-up of the Century; Global Communications, New Brunswick, New Jersey; 1995:

Randle, Kevin D. & Schmitt, Donald R.; The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell; Avon Books, New York; 1994:

Randle, Kevin D. & Schmitt, Donald R.; UFO Crash at Roswell; Avon Books, New York; 1991:

Shawcross, Tim; The Roswell File; Bloomsbury, London; 1997:

Strieber, Whitley; Majestic; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1989: [Note: A novel and fictional account.]

*Key eyewitness document.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Name Dropping

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time naming some of the pro-UFO (as a serious scientific issue) people who have had first hand and hands-on experiences with UFOs.   

Given that a large percentage of the population of developed nations believe that there is something to the UFO subject beyond UFOs being just ‘silly-season’ fodder for the tabloids, it’s not surprising that a lot of household names would be among them. However, just because you’re famous as an actor or musician or politician or industrialist, etc. doesn’t by itself translate into having any more credibility when speaking out on the UFO subject vis-à-vis any old Jane Doe private citizen. However, there are some people who have had a more direct relationship with the subjects. While police and pilots and other qualified and trained observers of UFOs have credibility, they aren’t household names. In short, fame has nothing to do with UFO credibility. When I refer to ‘name dropping’, I mean naming people who, when it comes to the UFO as a credible scientific subject, have the runs on the board and have to be taken seriously by the UFO sceptics.

There are physical and other scientists with professional academic qualifications, who took (or take) the UFOs in general and often the UFO ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) question in particular very seriously. Scientists and academics like J. Allen Hynek (scientific advisor the USAF Project Blue Book who later founded to Center for UFO Studies), James E. McDonald, Berthold E. Schwarz (M.D.), John E. Mack (M.D.), Michael Swords, Ron Westrum, Jacques Vallee, Bruce Maccabee, David M. Jacobs, Thomas E. Bullard, Karla Turner, Stanton Friedman, Frank B. Salisbury, Ivan T. Sanderson, and Richard F. Haines. I could extend the list, but you get the gist.

I should also point out that both the former heads of the USAF Project Blue Book (Edward J. Ruppelt) and the British Dept. of Defence UFO study (Nick Pope) wrote books detailing their experiences, and both took the subject very seriously indeed.

Then there are former NASA astronauts like Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell who have come out in no uncertain terms that the UFO ETH is not only plausible, but beyond doubt.

There’s also a host of top military officers who have given credibility to the subject. One such notable was Barry Goldwater, better known as a politician and presidential candidate; he was also a USAF general officer.

For every well known UFO debunker or sceptic, there’s an equal and opposite pro-UFO (as in UFOs are serious business) counterpart. In fact, based on my own four decades of serious interest in this field, I’ve noted that there have been far more sceptics turned UFO believers (though not of necessity a believer in the ETH), than the other way around.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: The Betty & Barney Hill Abduction

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time the story of those first American UFO abductees, Betty and Barney Hill.

A Case Study: The Betty and Barney Hill Abduction 

As a alien abduction case study, consider the alleged abduction of Betty and Barney Hill which is fairly well known even to the person only casually interested in the abduction phenomena. How can this case be explained?

In brief, the barebones of the details are that Betty and Barney Hill were returning to their home after holidays, driving their car. It was late at night. Both say a bright light which seemed to be pacing them. When they arrived home, they noticed that the trip had taken several hours longer than it should of. Also their car had some strange circular marks on it which affected a compass. The ‘missing time’ coupled with just a feeling of general unease over that trip finally led them to see a psychiatrist/neurologist, and under hypnosis, the story of their being taken on board a UFO by alien creatures (now called ‘the greys’) and subjected to an invasive medical examination by these creatures came to the fore. Betty Hill also, via hypnosis recalled seeing a star chart on board the alien’s ship, and was able to recreate it. An independent researcher was later able to match up the configuration of stars to actual stellar objects, but that interpretation has been controversial, as with so many stars to pick and choose from, its odds-on that sooner or later you’ll get a pretty close match. 

Now IMHO, the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction case is a way more credible case than most. Why? Firstly, it was the first that attracted media attention. There was no prior contamination and media saturation with the subject could have influenced them. By that I mean there was no prior well known, splashed-across-the-media, abduction accounts, so they had nothing to draw on – no inspiration. This couldn’t be a copycat event.

Secondly, it’s unlikely a mature couple (The Hill’s weren’t teenagers or young adults), and an interracial middle-aged couple at that, with no particular interest in UFOs or sci-fi, they weren’t sci-fi addicts, would invent such an abduction tale detailing the same sorts of alien beings that we’ve come to know and love now – ‘the greys’.

Most telling of all, why on earth would an inter-racial couple, in the early 60’s, in conservative America (and New England) wish to draw undue attention to them with such a tall tale? They wouldn’t need that kind of trouble! It’s controversial enough being an inter-racial couple without also being an inter-racial couple who sees LGM (Little Grey Men). An interracial couple (this was the 60’s) wouldn’t need that sort of publicity, and they certainly didn’t make any fortune out of eventually going public.

They weren’t into hallucinatory drugs. They weren’t hardly young kids with wild imaginations, rather a quite mature adult couple. They had no prior record of being publicity seekers and desiring media exposure. 

Their story first broke in a leaked series of newspaper articles, attracting the attention of research journalist John C. Fuller, who, then with the permission of the Hills, wrote up their story for “Look Magazine”, later expanded into book form by Mr. Fuller, with an introduction by the Hill’s psychiatrist/neurologist (Benjamin Simon, M.D.) who confirmed that Betty and Barney Hill weren’t ‘nuts’ or delusional or psychotic and honestly believed the story that came out. So we have two witnesses (Betty and Barney Hill) giving the same story, and the same story under hypnosis by a trained psychiatrist/neurologist. 

Lastly, the alleged abduction didn’t happen in their bedroom which now seems to be more the norm with implications that abductions are something mentally related to sleeping and dream states. For the Hill’s, their abduction happened while they were driving their car back from holiday. It’s rare that you fall asleep behind the wheel of your moving vehicle for any length of time with both car and occupants remaining undamaged! The Hills and their car weren’t damaged!

In summary, the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction case is a way more credible case than most. Why? Firstly, it was the first – no prior contamination and media saturation with the subject could have influenced them. Secondly, it’s unlikely a mature couple (not teenagers or young adults), and an interracial middle-aged couple at that, with no particular interest in UFOs or sci-fi, would invent such an abduction tale detailing the same sorts of beings that we’ve come to know and love now – the greys. An interracial couple (this was the 60’s) wouldn’t need that sort of publicity, and they certainly didn’t make any fortune out of eventually going public. Lastly, the alleged abduction didn’t happen in their bedroom; it happened while they were driving their car back from holiday. So we have two witnesses giving the same story.

A deliberate hoax / unintentional but imaginary / psychological / pharmacology / medical explanation makes no sense. I personally find it a far simpler explanation to believe that their account is firmly grounded in reality.  It happened, with all that that implies.

Further reading regarding Betty & Barney Hill:

Friedman, Stanton T. & Marden, Kathleen; Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience; New Page Books, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey; 2007: [Kathleen Marden is the late Betty Hill’s niece and trustee of her estate.]

Fuller, John G.: The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours “Aboard a Flying Saucer”; Dial Press, New York; 1966:

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Freedom of Information Act

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, this time why, if there’s nothing to the UFO phenomena, why do UFO documents often have to be obtained via the FOIA?

Why is it, if UFOs are total pseudoscience or paranormal nonsense, that so many individuals have had to resort to Freedom of Information Act actions (in the United States in particular) in order to get official (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.) UFO related government documents, many of which, if released, have large portions/chunks blacked out? Further, not all FOI requests succeed. Why indeed if UFOs are just ‘silly season’ fodder as claimed by the sceptics?  Rather strange don’t you think?

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Are UFOs A Passing Fad?

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the idea that the entire UFO phenomena is nothing but a passing fad.  

A fad is a temporary fashion – a flavour of the month. Fads come, and fads go. For example, the big band/swing era; white wall tires and tail fins; hula hoops and yo-yos; the Charleston and the Twist; disco music, pet rocks, slicked back hair (greasy kids stuff) and wearing baseball caps on backwards; westerns on TV and the silver screen have mostly ridden off into the sunset; goldfish swallowing; miniskirts, bellbottom trousers and hot pants; and lots more. A fad can be anything that you adopt as a cultural value-adding to your lifestyle that sets you apart from the community at large, yet keeps you reasonably associated as being a part of your contemporaries, but which you could drop from your lifestyle if you wished or if you were required to. It’s often the next ‘must have’ gadget that you just can’t live without (so you are told), but which will be superseded in a year or two by the next ‘must have’ gadget Mark II.

Non-fads are anything that are personal choices yet are also really essential to your day-to-day existence - so a thing like eating isn’t a fad. Sex isn’t a fad. Social interactions aren’t a fad. Even bicycles aren’t faddish because they have become an overall essential, tried and true ways and means of transport. Or, non-fads could be anything that an outside reality clobbers you over the head with, like the weather, death and taxes!

To repeat, fads are temporary phenomena, only briefly imprinting themselves on our collective psyche before the next big thing comes along. What’s the duration of a fad? There’s no fixed time frame – clothing fashions can change drastically from one year to the next; the influence of a blockbuster TV series or a motion picture, or say toys - maybe over several years. TV series don’t normally last more than one generation, usually far less. So, I’ll pick an average of one generation, on the grounds that the next generation don’t want to imitate or do like their parents did. They’d rather do their own thing in their own way. Kids born in the 1980’s aren’t likely to get to misty-eyed and nostalgic over Elvis and the Beatles and “I Love Lucy”.

Well, UFOs (and crop circles) are both way over a generation old now. UFOs in fact are over three generations old by now and going strong. That in itself suggests to me that UFOs are not a mere passing fad, but reflecting a reality that’s something more permanent or on-going.

Fads and non-fads appear in all manner of genres. There are fads in sports, say in baseball where for a while the accent is on power and homeruns, yet a decade later it’s the hit-and-run, the sacrifice bunt or fly, walks, and base stealing. Yet a non-fad in baseball is throwing strikes and not making defensive errors.

What about science? Unlike say ‘cold fusion’, SETI is not a scientific fad; it’s gone on way too long for that. The man-on-the-Moon (Apollo) program however proved to be just that – a temporary blip on the landscape. Science graduates often have to choose career paths based on that’s likely to be non-faddish, long-term science. For example, string theory has been a reasonable career path for physics students for many decades now, so string theory can no longer be considered a fad in physics.

One thing is pretty clear – participation in a fad is something voluntary. So, crop circles, if all are manufactured by humans, would have to be faddish, were it not for the long duration of the phenomena. If crop circles, at least in part, have nothing to do with human proclivities to hoax others, then there’s no fad. UFO hoaxes are faddish; immediately jumping to conclusions of alien spaceships when seeing just a light in the sky is voluntary. But, if bona fide alien UFOs are a reality, then seeing one isn’t voluntary and UFOs therefore aren’t a fad.

The bottom line seems to be, if it proves to be ongoing, without any prior cultural background infrastructure, it’s not a fad. If it’s likely to die out within a generation or so, and it can be explained as a natural progression of what culturally has come before, then it’s a fad.

So, are UFOs (and say crop circles) a passing fad? Are UFOs all in the mind, something we adopt as a temporary way of assisting us coping with current reality, perhaps a novelty to give us respite from the ordinary? Are UFOs a reflection of our existing culture, say as expressed via Hollywood themes? Or, are UFOs like the weather – ever present and hammering that point home to us? Does Hollywood reflect the actual presence of UFOs in their themes, or are films perpetuating them in a faddish sort of way? 

The origin of the UFO phenomena, if one is to believe the idea that UFOs are all in the mind, was due to the onset of the Cold War, and hundreds of Hollywood films in the fifties played up to the red menace threat, often in the guise of alien invasions (can you recall that catch phrase ‘look to the skies’?). So, if UFOs are a fad, shouldn’t they have died out after the end of the Cold War and the demise of the red menace - reds under the beds? Whatever the origin of UFOs actually was, it does seem to be an origin independent of any cultural influences and no reasonable attempt to culturally explain them, and maintain their presence for over six decades, appears adequate. 

Whatever bona fide unexplained UFOs are, they certainly aren’t a fad, rather an ever ongoing phenomenon that’s part and parcel of our environmental background, cause or causes unknown, but probably extraterrestrial IMHO.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: The Evidence

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time what’s the evidence for the UFO ETH, noting that evidence and proof aren’t the same thing.

Many ideas or fads, be they in the sciences or the arts, don’t last long – theories come and theories go and actual fashions and fashion in music change yearly. What’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’ is often pretty fickle. A lot of what was popular in 1947 (the birth year of the modern UFO era) has fallen by the wayside now - but, interestingly enough, not the UFO ETH. The UFO ETH is as popular as ever, maybe even more so now than in 1947, not that popularity equates of necessity to something factual. If a billion people believe a stupid idea – like an invisible friend who art in heaven – it’s still a stupid idea. However, over six decades on, despite all the professional and amateur sceptics and the universal naysayer, the government denials, scientists professing ‘no evidence’, the ‘giggle’ factor and the ‘silly season’ publicity, the UFO ETH is alive and well thank you very much. Something must be driving this. Perhaps, at least to many of the great unwashed, there is some signal in the noise – some sort of evidence (albeit not physical enough to be acceptable to many professional scientists) that’s swaying the general public.

It is suggested, with good reason, that the whole issue of the UFO ETH must be judged on the basis of the evidence. And, it is claimed, that the evidence for visitation is so poor that very few scientists find it convincing. And that is true, at least the part that few scientists, publicly at least, find the UFO ETH somewhat lacking in solid evidence. Thus, the UFO ETH has garnered somewhat of an aura of being a ‘silly season’ subject, unworthy of scientific study. [To be honest, I’d often like to survey academics / scientists for their private opinions!]

UFOs vs. evidence for the ETH – there is no absolute smoking gun - yet. I’d be the first to acknowledge that. I’d suggest however that this is a case of where there’s smoke, there’s smoke. The fire has yet to be seen through the smoke. There however has got to be something suggestive about the nature of that smoke to drive lots of people, even some quite intelligent people, to accept the possibility of the UFO ETH. I mean the idea just didn’t pop out of the ether – out of thin air. Something very suggestive is driving it. 

I would ask the question whether by evidence one means a physical artefact that can be put under the microscope, or is human testimony, the sort that would convict someone of a crime and put them on death row enough evidence? I’m 99% convinced scientists would say the former, yet the evidence for the UFO ETH is 99% the latter (plus a few radar returns and films). Actually IMHO it’s ludicrous for UFO ETH sceptics to poo-poo and give the thumbs down to eyewitness testimony. After all, it’s accurate eyewitness testimony that enables the trained investigators to properly identify the vast majority of UFO reports, turning them into identified flying objects. So, when sceptics need eyewitness testimony to be accurate and turn UFO cases into something with ordinary and mundane causes – that’s fine. But when the tables are turned, sceptics turn turncoat as well so as to re-enforce their already-minds-made-up point of view. That is, eyewitness testimony that turns a UFO sighting into an unexplained bona fide UFO case, well then clearly the eyewitness testimony counts for nothing in terms of bona fide evidence.   

Now there are lots of current concepts in science that have absolutely no evidence to support them, yet are taken quite seriously by physical scientists. A partial list would include concepts like the Multiverse, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, string theory, the Higgs Boson, the possible existence of ten or eleven dimensions, the Ekpyrotic (two branes colliding origin of the) Universe theory, and, shock horror for those interested in SETI, the total lack of any under-the-microscope, hard core evidence whatsoever for any intelligent life forms other than intelligent terrestrial life forms. Yet it is acceptable for scientists to research these areas without being subject to having their sanity questioned. I fail to see why the UFO ETH is an exception to this.

Scientists need more than 20 fingers and toes to list all of the there-is-no-evidence-for- these-way-out-theories in science that ultimately had to wait years, decades, longer even for experimental confirmation. If scientists had put these in the too hard basket, or dismissed them with a ‘I just don’t believe it - it can’t be therefore it isn’t’ attitude, well we’d still all believe that the sun goes around the Earth, black holes would be confined to the pages of science fiction, and as for gravity bending light rays – forget it.

There are other ‘the nature of the evidence’ parallels with UFOs – physical phenomena that don’t stand still; you can’t poke and prod, put under the microscope, examine at your leisure and which are unpredictable in space and in time. Ball lightning comes to mind; ditto Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP); and you can’t rewind the clock and prepare for (instruments at the ready) and witness the one-off Tunguska event. There seems to be a double standard for evidence here. UFOs have a ‘giggle factor’; ball lightning does not, yet both have theoretical underpinnings that make their existence plausible. In the case of UFOs, it’s the Fermi Paradox as noted above.

Oh, by the way, that ultra overused phrase ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ is nonsense. Claims of course require evidence, but the word ‘extraordinary’ is in the mind of the beholder. What’s extraordinary to one is routine, boring, commonplace and downright bloody obvious to another. And speaking of the common phrase, another one is ‘absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence’.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Earlier Is Better

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time, my observation that when it comes to greater credibility for the reality of the UFO phenomena in general and the ETH in particular, earlier is better.  

The UFO phenomenon is now well over 60 years old. The public in this 21^st Century has been well and truly saturated with UFO stories, mythology and lore. Thus, if Mr. or Mrs. Joe Blow Public reports anything UFO related today, well they have had a lot of previous bits and pieces to draw on – assuming they are making things up. However, if Mr. or Mrs. Joe Blow Public reported something from 1947, say through 1952, then that public saturation with all things ufological must have been quite a deal less. Thus, earlier reports seem to me to be more, all else being equal, credible – far less media, Hollywood, etc. coverage that could have had influence on the public mind.

That’s of course not to say that everything post 1952 is bunk and junk. There have been many substantial solid cases over the most recent five decades. It’s just the percentage of those types of cases, relative to the total, was probably higher and slightly more credible before the mythology solidified.

Abductions are an exception as the typical UFO abduction case didn’t exist in the 40’s and 50’s; ditto astronaut sightings. But on balance, I’d place greater reliability and credibility in those earlier cases. One other reason for doing so is that today’s CGI digital processing and manipulation of images can provide mind-boggling (but fake) UFO film and photographic ‘evidence’. It was much harder to fake images in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.

With respect to the alien abductions subset of the UFO puzzle, that first case that reached the public has to be pretty convincing since there was no previous UFO abduction mythology for the abductees to draw off of. That first case takes imagination – if indeed it was imaginary. That second case, well we’ve all heard to term ‘copycat’. That’s not to saw all subsequent abduction cases are copycat phoneys, but once the overall scenario is out of the bag, that’s always a possibility that can detract from the credibility of them.

So, again, earlier is better as a very general rule of thumb.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Those Crop Circles: The Julia Set of 1996

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time a phenomena that may, or may not, be connected with the UFO ETH – those crop circles, specifically the Julia Set of July 1996.    

While crop circles have been reported from around the world, in the main they tend to be associated with the English countryside in the warmer months when crops are high and agricultural graffiti artists can strut their stuff. Just who these ‘artists’ are hasn’t been proven in any sort of scientific (or legal) court, but just like we all know ‘the butler did it’, well it’s obvious the whodunit here is from the same species as the butler. We have to believe that, because if the butler didn’t do it, we got a major mystery on our collective hands that most of us would rather not acknowledge. Here’s part of the reason the butler didn’t do it.

Apart from a few deluded New Age hippy types, everyone just knows that crop circles are human made hoaxes. That’s despite all the obvious logistical problems in creating perfect, yet massive geometric patterns in near total darkness. That’s despite the fact that hardly anyone has ever been caught in the act. That’s despite the fact that sometimes the overnight weather was wet with rain (this is England after all). Still, what else could they be? But even one exception breaks the ‘everyone knows it’s a hoax’ rule. Consider the 1996 Julia Set.

Most crop circles are discovered in the morning by farmers or farm hands that are up early and out and about to start their day’s work in the field(s), though some discoveries are by motorists, passersby, sometimes pilots. Still, the discoveries tend to be made sooner in the day rather than later in the day. 900 foot crop circle formations are rather hard to miss, even from the ground, and some are way bigger than that.

Translated, that suggests that this agricultural graffiti was constructed and produced overnight, under cover of darkness, the obvious implication being human hoaxers operating in the dark thus avoiding detection.

Despite the fact there are massive problems with that theory – it’s like trying to make then assemble a one thousand piece jigsaw puzzle using just starlight and complete it perfectly in a few hours; no flashlights allowed giving your position away. What isn’t reported to the police isn’t of concern to the hoaxer(s). Still, you’d have to have a few screws loose, tramping around in a muddy field in the dark of night, carting around all sorts of equipment, planks and rollers and ropes for hours on end, just to produce something for which you can’t ever receive public recognition for – least you get paid a visit by the police for trespassing and willful criminal damage.

Let’s accept the universally accepted basic logic anyway. Crop circles are human hoaxes. But could a hoaxer(s) do a crop circle pattern or formation in broad daylight, of a size demanding many hours of labor, with eyewitnesses around, and escape detection?  Or could a massive crop circle avoid being seen in broad daylight in a heavily trafficked area? I suggest that’s highly unlikely on both counts.

It’s late afternoon on a sunny English summer Sunday – July 7^th 1996 to be exact. The location, a farmer’s (identity known) field within a stone’s throw of a major tourist attraction – Stonehenge (you may have heard of it). A major highway, the A303 separates the field from the Stonehenge site - Lots of motorists passing by. Security guards are present at Stonehenge 24/7 as tourists aren’t allowed anymore to wander within the standing stones. Stonehenge is strictly a look from the outside and don’t touch attraction now.

There’s usually a lot of aerial traffic too – lots of private planes operating out of nearby Thruxton Airport, often giving tourists an aerial view of Stonehenge. Now one such pilot (identity known) with one passenger taking off out of Exeter, passing over Stonehenge late that Sunday afternoon, while glancing downwards, sees nothing out of the ordinary. That same pilot, on the return flight, again passing over Stonehenge just 45 minutes later, sees a massive centipede-like geometric pattern (a Julia Set fractal pattern) comprising 149* individual circles (ranging from 50 feet to 14 inches in diameter) spanning 915 feet in length tip-to-tail and 500 feet in width in the farmer’s field, well within the view of passing motorists and the Stonehenge security guards (and tourists). 

Needless to say, prior to the pilot’s return flight and his subsequent sighting, nobody (tourists, motorists, farm hands, security guards) saw a thing. That suggests that, in broad daylight, the entire Julia Set complex was constructed in actually less than 45 minutes. That’s unaltered by a few motorists, over a decade later, who have claimed to have seen at that time and place a strange mist. Whether they did or didn’t isn’t relevant to the basic facts that human hoaxers aren’t in the running as culprits in this specific crop circle episode.

But if they (hoaxers) are, in the running, how did the hoaxers do it? One person (identity known) has claimed that he along with two other people created the Julia Set complex in under three hours early that Sunday morning while it was still dark. One notes by the way that security guards are present at Stonehenge around the clock, so clearly the hoaxers, if they really existed, didn’t use any lighting. That further suggests that this massive formation went unnoticed and unseen in broad daylight for nearly 12 hours within sight of the top tourist attraction in England and a major motorway! Check out the photographs on the WWW and tell me how they done it! Could you and any two of your friends produce that complex geometric formation in darkness in less than three hours? It’s yet another case of someone claiming to be a bank robber for the publicity because that’s easier than actually being a bank robber which results in not only getting publicity but a prison sentence as well. The other alternative is that this person has so flown his anti-crop circle flag up the flagpole and publicly saluted it that he can’t back down now, no matter what!

Over 14,000 tourists visited the Julia Set formation before the farmer had to do what farmers do and harvest what was left of his crop; there are lots of photographs available in post 1996 crop circle books and on the Internet that verify the proximity of the Julia Set to Stonehenge with the A303 Motorway bisecting. It’s easy to plug in something like “Julia Set” plus “Stonehenge” into Google’s search engines, like Google Web and Google Images and judge for yourself the bona fides.

Now I don’t know how the Julia Set near Stonehenge in July of 1996 was created; or what intelligence created it. I am (along with those New Age hippy types and other open minded people) convinced the intelligence wasn’t human. I’ll just leave it at that.

*Some sources originally gave the set as containing 151 individual circles, not 149, but 149 is the correct number.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Those Crop Circles

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time a phenomena that may, or may not, be connected with the UFO ETH – those crop circles.    

I’m sure the phrase ‘crop circles’ need little introduction. I can’t imagine too many people being ignorant of the general phenomena – there’s lots of books, media coverage, internet sites, TV specials, feature films, even calendars which have, and continue to cover the subject.

There’s no doubt that crop circles exist – that’s undisputed. Crop circles are an ever on-going phenomenon, the pictograms growing in complexity year by year. So there’s an evolutionary pattern that needs explaining. And at least crop circles have the decency to sit still and not vanish without trace like UFOs, the Yeti and the lone mysterious interstellar ‘wow’ signal so suggestive, yet so illusive of proving the existence of, extraterrestrial intelligence!

There’s no denying the picturesqueness of them, and often, in fact in more recent times, their geometric complexity.

So what the hell are crop circles? Are they a new form of human graffiti? Are they messages from extraterrestrials? Are they a cry for help from our own Mother Earth or Mother Nature? Are they a now and again mysterious, but ultimately natural, even if chaotic feature of Mother Nature – say weather or biological phenomena? Are they in fact none of the above?

When it comes to the British crop circle phenomena, no explanation put forth makes any logical sense. The best of all the implausible explanations is the extraterrestrial intelligence one, but only on a scale of two out of ten because the rest don’t even rate that highly. 

I’ll start this off with a controversial statement. I thing the crop circle (or corn circle as it is sometimes referred to) phenomena is currently the greatest terrestrial scientific puzzle going – full stop.

I admit from square one that I haven’t the foggiest idea what they actually are, or represent, but I at least think I know what they’re not.

For better or worse, crop (or sometimes ‘corn’) circles have been associated with UFOs to a greater or lesser extent depending on whom you consult. Firstly, there’s no doubt that crop circles exist – that’s undisputed. Secondly, crop circles are the product of intelligence; there’s no way Mother Nature can naturally make these complex geometric formations – that’s undisputable. Thirdly, although there are isolated cases from other countries, crop circle formations are 99 & 44/100% reside in merry old England – no arguments there.

That third fact brings up question one: assuming crop circles are hoaxes, what is it about the British mind set that prompts them to commit these ‘works of art’? That’s never been explained. Maybe crop circle hoaxers might be more reluctant to do their thing in the USA where farmers shoot first and ask questions later, and although there are a few, why not lots and lots of ‘circles’ in France, Canada, Australia and a host of other nations with major agricultural (crop) industries?

Question two, again assuming hoaxes, can the sum total of crop circle formations be explained by artistic human intelligence, keeping in mind the restraints of sheer numbers of circles; the period of limited darkness in which to operate (high summer in England); the fact that it is dark; the possibility of being caught (you don’t want to use flashlights); not to mention additional time required for the ever increasing complexity of these crop circle formations?

Question three: assuming now not human, but extraterrestrial intelligence (the UFO connection – if any), what is the motive? Sceptics have pointed out, rightly so, that it is ludicrous in the extreme to suggest that extraterrestrials come here, from there (wherever there is) just to do geometrical graffiti using agricultural crops as their canvas! It’s probably equally ludicrous to suggest that UFOs are alien tourist buses, the extraterrestrials on a holiday tourist tour, and England has been set aside as the area for extraterrestrial artists on tour to practice their art!

But, there could be another aspect to E.T. and the circle mystery. There are the trickster gods of mythology, who are actually not supernatural deities but extraterrestrials. If trickster ‘gods’ wanted to have a bit of relatively harmless fun with us humans, well perhaps they’re behind the crop circle business! Now the absurdity of E.T. coming across light-years of space away with a motive just to dabble in agricultural (crop circle) graffiti has been pointed out by others. I quite agree. But, if E.T. were already here (and agricultural graffiti wasn’t the motivation) and some E.T.’s have a wicked sense of humour and like to befuddle the humans, well that’s a motive!

But, maybe crop circles are a smoking gun that we do live in a simulated Universe and on a simulated planet. All other ‘rational’ explanations are equally, if not more so, ridiculous. If extraterrestrials, their motive isn’t at all obvious apart from playing April Fools’ pranks.  If human in origin, crop circle graffiti should be way more widespread like ordinary back alley brick wall graffiti is, not to mention that a lot higher percentage of crop circle culprits or ‘artists’ should have been caught, tried, convicted, and fined for vandalism, destruction of private property and just plain trespassing. 

Now to my way of thinking, two things seem crystal clear here. There’s intelligence behind the crop circle phenomena; equally clear (to me anyway) it’s not by any stretch of the imagination a 100% human intelligence – the hoaxes – criminal activity - referred to above.

If the intelligence behind crop circles is not even close to being 100% human intelligence in the main, then it must be a non-human intelligence, though not of necessity extraterrestrial intelligence. So, what about a non-human intelligence? While we share this planet with other relatively intelligent species – dolphins, parrots, apes, the octopus – I find it unlikely in the extreme that crop circles can be blamed, or credited, to any of them.

Since I know of no other native intelligences on Planet Earth, I’m somewhat reluctantly forced to now go for an extraterrestrial intelligence, without any evidence other than process of elimination.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: The Contactees

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time with another famous, or infamous, part of the UFO subculture – the Contactees.  

If the subject of UFOs brings embarrassment to the scientific community, then the subject of the contactees brings embarrassment to the UFO community! Shortly after the dawn of the modern UFO era (1947), an offshoot appeared; humans claiming to have been contacted by the extraterrestrials of those UFOs. Unfortunately, those making the claims, the contactees (as they came to be called) told such outlandish tales that not only did they discredit themselves, but took nearly the whole UFO subject down the gurgler with them. Perhaps it’s now time for a reassessment or reevaluation of the contactees: perpetrators or victims? Did the contactees knowingly try to hoodwink the public with tales of the “Space Brothers”, or did real “Space Brothers” hoodwink the contactees, at least in part, into telling on the surface rather outlandish tales?

Certain privileged humans (called ‘contactees’) have claimed to have had personal and/or mental (psychic; channeling) contact with friendly, completely human-appearing space aliens – at least claimed by their own admissions. These angelic-like UFO related extraterrestrial beings, fully human in appearance, were pretty much a stand alone staple of the (mainly 1950’s) contactees who claimed to have had personal contact with and feel-good cosmic messages from said like angelic-like extraterrestrial beings, often called by the contactees as our ‘space brothers’ who have come to Earth in their ‘flying saucers*’. Of course many contactees were further privileged to have been taken for rides in these ‘flying saucers’, and traveled into space and to other planets, usually the home abodes of their angelically-human hosts, most often Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Well actually the ‘flying saucers’ were more akin to Star Trek’s shuttlecraft; the real alien vessels were the orbiting ‘Mother Ships’, akin the Star Trek’s NCC 1701 Enterprise, and it was these ‘Mother Ships’ that usually zipped our contactee passengers on a grand tour of our solar system and their home planet.

It was unfortunate that such claims tarnished the wider subject of UFOs (as possible evidence that extraterrestrial intelligence existed). However, in some degree of historical hindsight, when perhaps tarnished then, that clearly might not be quite the case now.

The contactees were often bucketed as total loonies back then (in the 50’s) by the mainstream, even mainstream people interested in extraterrestrial life and UFOs, including myself. That’s no less so today if someone is still foolish enough to mention them – like me here and now. But a question remains on the grounds of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, did the contactees (collectively) invent these angelic-like extraterrestrial beings with the intent of fraud; or to have some fun and hoax the public and pull the wool over their unsuspecting eyes; or perhaps they just, collectively, had some serious mental issues, say delusions of sorts. Or, perhaps the contactees were relating the truth as they thought they had experienced it, when perhaps the angelic-like extraterrestrial beings were being less than 100% honest with them for reasons best known to themselves, though one can speculate.

Let’s start with the assumption that the contactees were in fact innocent and told their stories as perceived or as it seemed by them.

In the 1950’s our ‘space brothers’ only told as much of their story as would be comprehensible to the relatively simple people of that era. Now truthfully, the contactees (George Adamski say as an example of the general contactee stereotype) were relatively simple folk. They weren’t university deans, or theoretical physicists, or four-star generals, or diplomatic statesmen and legal eagles and MD’s, etc. That brings up an obvious question, why would our ‘space brothers' bother with the great unwashed when they could just as easily land on the White House lawn and be addressing Congress within hours? Well, the contactees, simple folk, were the sort of folk that our gentle hippy-like ‘space brothers’ would have associated with. However, the contactees were fed enough bovine fertilizer that their idealistic philosophical messages got buried along with their tall tales of trips to Venus and Saturn, etc., where the ‘space brothers’ lived. Although then again, you have that angelic-like ancient Near Eastern goddess Inanna or Inana (Ishtar) identified with the celestial planet Venus, so who knows where the ‘gods’ have actually set up camp!

I mean here that any advanced technological civilization can boldly go and thwart Mother Nature’s hostile environments with a bit of can-do effort. Obvious terrestrial examples show how humans can now live on the polar icecaps; under the ocean; in extremely arid regions; even on the lunar surface. So, who’s to say the ‘space brothers’ didn’t have an HQ on Venus or Saturn or the far side of the Moon? 

Now about the messages from the ‘space brothers’; dead and buried hogwash, or did those 50’s idealistic ‘space brother’ philosophical messages really get buried? Perhaps our ‘space brothers’ are a bit more clued than given credit for.

I can’t help but wonder, maybe it’s no coincidence that almost immediately following the heyday of the contactees came the era of the Hippies and counterculture with their idealistic philosophical concepts (influences which have filtered down to this very day and age) of “hell no, we won’t go”; burn your draft card; bra-burning; flower-power; love; peace; brotherhood (and sisterhood); the dawning of the Age of Aquarius; free love, drop out, tune in, etc. You can’t help but feel that the ‘space brothers’ as generally described, would have fitted right into that picture. Our ‘space brothers’ might have been more at home with people who smoked pot and attended Woodstock than lunching with politicians and generals smoking cigars, drinking scotch-on-the-rocks and sanctioning the dropping of napalm and Agent Orange on Vietnam.   

There might be an historical connection. It’s been speculated that the ‘gods’ (including ‘God’ were really ‘ancient astronauts’ – presumably that would have to include Jesus Christ. So, was J.C. an ‘ancient astronaut’? But if J.C. really was an ‘ancient astronaut’, that just might give a whole new credibility to those 50’s contactees. J.C. was a near clone of the 50’s ‘space brothers’.

There is an interesting quasi-parallel between the 50’s contactees and the later abductees, even though the “Nordic” “Space Brothers” appear vastly different than the abductees “Greys”. The contactees were pre-Hippy New Ager types. In contrast, many abductees seem to undergo quasi-New Age lifestyle changes post abduction(s). They may have become vegetarians, gave up smoking or drinking, joined community groups, started participating in charity work, developed ecological concerns and/or become overall a more spiritually-oriented being.

*Contactees didn’t use the term UFOs or the phrase ‘unidentified flying objects’ because to them there was nothing unidentified about them.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: The Condon Report

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the rather famous, or infamous, University Colorado UFO study under project director Dr. Edward U. Condon which ultimately provided the reason for the USAF to get out of the UFO business.

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs, a concept either dismissed or ignored by the general scientific community. Part of that scientific snub is in no short order due to what’s commonly called ‘The Condon Report’, a scientific study into UFOs undertaken by the University of Colorado on behalf of the U.S. Air Force (USAF).

From the early days of the modern UFO era (1947+), the United States Air Force (USAF) took charge of investigating the flying discs or saucers, later tagged ‘unidentified flying objects’ on the grounds of national security and coming to terms with violations of American air space.

But at the height of the Cold War era, the military had to downplay any possibility that the flying discs could be foreign technology – reds under the beds sort of stuff; the McCarthy era. Thus, the military put the emphasis on hoaxes, natural phenomena, misidentifications, anything but nuts-and-bolts that could belong to a foreign power.

Ultimately that proved to be a PR disaster when it became fairly obvious that many official explanations of UFO sightings as prosaic phenomena were more far out than the UFO ETH. By the early 1960’s, the public’s perceptions of the USAF competence in handling their UFO investigations (under the code name Project Bluebook) was proving to be a public relations nightmare, capped off by the J. Allen Hynek (who was the main scientific consultant to the USAF on the UFO issue) ‘swamp gas’ fiasco or debacle.

That ‘swamp gas’ episode was a turning point for now the USAF UFO Project Bluebook investigation was becoming a real public relations disaster. The more the Air Force tried to downgrade the issue, the more the public smelled whitewash. Since the USAF knew the UFOs were not a national security issue – no alien invasion had resulted after two decades – it was time to exit gracefully from any involvement relating to the UFO issue. The question was how to accomplish that in an apparently open and in the public eye manner. Well, what about a totally independent study by an established university headed by a well known and respected scientist (or at least someone well known and respected by the scientific community – most scientists don’t tend to be household names).

So, in order to bring in qualified, independent, experts, restore credibility (and get a reason to get out of the UFO business) the USAF turned to the University of Colorado, and respected physicist Edward U. Condon, to look into the UFO issue.

Unfortunately, Dr. Condon, as head of the independent investigation, proved to be more a liability than an asset. Staffers uncovered a memo by his higher echelon team that strongly suggested that he had already made his mind up even before the formal and serious study began, that UFOs were a non-issue. That produced such dissention in the ranks, and media publicity, that the internal politics just about shattered any credibility to the investigation. Some members quit and offered scathing rebuttals to the inner workings of the University of Colorado study. True to form, the final report apparently dumped poo on the subject, or at least the introductory / summary chapter written by Condon himself.  

Now of course when you issue a 1000+ page report to the press, who have deadlines to meet, all they have time for is to digest the introductory / summary and write their articles from what that says. What is says is that there’s no meat on the bone; the USAF should stop wasting time on the subject – which is exactly what the USAF wanted to hear – bail out from this PR nightmare. Subject closed. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out that way.

Now Condon was clearly 100% anti-UFO before the study even began, but any read of the lengthy actual report relative to Condon’s summary (what the press, etc. took note of being short and first up) - well Condon said there was nothing to the UFO ETH; but the actual report compiled by his staff couldn’t explain over 30% of the cases it studied.

So there is no similarity between the questions the actual report raises and the summary conclusions reached as given in that first chapter. Few people have taken the time to separate the wheat from the chaff in the Condon Report. The first chapter is the chaff; the bulk of the report contains the wheat.

What you’ll find in the non-Condon written bulk of the University of Colorado report is that case after case (well about 30% of cases in fact) are unexplainable. How Condon can say that there’s nothing to the subject in the summary, while his team suggests that 30% of what you’ve investigated is anything but ‘nothing’, remains a perplexing historical mystery – except for that earlier leaked memo which showed that Condon, despite being a scientist, had a closed mind on the subject.  Contrary to popular opinion, the Condon report proved the need for heightened UFO investigation, not the need to abandon UFO investigation.

But in hindsight the Condon Report proved to be a pivotal point in the history of UFOs. It provided a reason for the U.S. Air Force to get out of the UFO business – publicly at least; it provided a disincentive for scientists to further seriously study the UFO issue. Condon set back the scientific study of UFOs by decades – it probably still hasn’t recovered from the debacle. And thus, to this day, scientists shy away from the UFO ETH issue. As far as the scientific community is concerned, the case is closed, and Condon closed it.

Further readings regarding the (University of Colorado) Condon Report:

Fuller, John G. (Editor); Aliens in the Skies: The New UFO Battle of the Scientists: The Scientific Rebuttal to the Condon Committee Report: Testimony by Six Leading Scientists Before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics July 29, 1968; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y.; 1969:

Harkins, R. Roger & Saunders, David R; UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong; Signet Books, N.Y.; 1968: [Saunders was a member of the University of Colorado UFO Study.]

University of Colorado & Gillmor, Daniel S. (Editor); Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects Conducted by the University of Colorado Under Contract  to the United States Air Force; Bantam Books, N.Y.; 1969: [The Condon Committee Report.]

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Area 51

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the top secret military base known as Dreamland, Area 51 or just plain Groom Lake, Nevada, and claims the remains of crashed UFOs are present there being back-engineered and providing the United States with alien technologies.   

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs. The Big Question not only is, is there an official UFO cover-up, but is Area 51 part of that cover-up? There are many people who have investigated this issue and decided the question in the affirmative. Are they right?

“Area 51”, as it is commonly called, is a large military base in the remotest of the remote part of the U.S. state of Nevada. It clearly deals with a lot of top secret high technology R&D work, for the most part involving prototypes of futuristic military aircraft and various technologies that will (ideally) make them better than that possessed by any other country. The question most often asked is whether of not 1) America has in its possession one or more ‘flying saucers’, crashed or otherwise; 2) if ‘yes’, are the saucers extraterrestrial, and if so, 3) is any associated alien technology being back-engineered in order to give America that futuristic edge in military aviation?

Many UFO investigators will tell you, but obviously can’t prove is that if UFO sceptics could have access to the secrets of Area 51, well, they just wouldn’t be sceptics any longer. The idea that Area 51 is a geek’s paradise getting to play with all sorts of alien high-tech gadgets is also well re-enforced in the film and TV industry, and a common plot in sci-fi alien cover-up conspiracy novels. An obvious example was the many references to Area 51 in the hit sci-fi TV series “Stargate: SG-1”. 

If a government, any government of any country, had possession of alien technology, say the remains of a crashed flying saucer, there is little doubt that the powers-that-be would try to 1) figure it all out and b) keep it secret from other foreign powers-that-be. That would be the case as well if say the Americans were to obtain terrestrial technology with military applications from captured Russian or Chinese or for that matter even Australian hardware. Thus, it would come as no real surprise that such a government would have one or more top secret sites where such back-engineering would be done, and secrets kept. However, even if no government had any alien technology, they still would have top secret sites for producing, testing, and etc. terrestrial technology vital to national security. Thus, the existence of Area 51 (a.k.a. Dreamland) does not of necessity prove that the United States (in this example) has alien technology in its possession. But, if you accept Roswell (and/or other tales of captured alien technology), then Area 51 (or akin) follows of necessity.

So, even assuming that Area 51 (Groom Lake, Nevada) has bugger-all to do with UFOs doesn’t negate secrecy going on. There’s no denying the place exists. That’s on the public record. Satellite and ground photographs exist. There’s no getting around the fact that signs are posted around the site that there will be ‘no trespassing’ and that if you do, ‘use of deadly force is authorised’ to keep you out. [That especially includes UFO believers!] That too is on the public record, filmed and documented. Translated, there are things going on at Area 51 the American government and military doesn’t want anyone to know about. Pine Gap in Central Australia is another such location. Many more exist throughout the world. You want cover-ups, censorship and related – call it what you will. Well, something that immediately comes to mind was the Manhattan Project. Then there’s that U-2 spy plane (and a whole range of stealth military aircraft that remained top secret while in development). Likewise, the Project Mogul package designed to detect foreign nuclear weapons testing, launched to high altitudes by balloon, as beloved as an explanation for Roswell. (I’m sure Project Mogul existed, whether it really explains Roswell is quite another matter.)

In conclusion, if the American government/military has in its possession alien technology, probably from a crashed UFO (flying disc), probably the one from Roswell, then Area 51 is a likely place for it to end up, and you, part of the great unwashed with no need to know, aren’t likely to find out the real facts of the matter anytime soon. The powers-that-be will deny have extraterrestrial technology in their possession, but they would have to say that regardless of whether or not it was really true.

Further readings:

Darlington, David; Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles: The Legend of America’s Most Secret Military Base; Henry Holt & Company, New York; 1997: 

Jacobsen, Annie; Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base; Little, Brown & Company, New York; 2011.

Patton, Phil; Travels in Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51; Orion Media, London; 1997: