Exobiology: UFOs and Science

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. 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.

Sceptics who dismiss UFOs out of hand as nonsense are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by ignoring the many unanswered and important questions surrounding the phenomena. Let’s start by assuming that UFOs do NOT have anything to do with extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). What’s the psychological, sociological, cultural, even religious need to have a UFO mythology? What’s the psychology, the sociology, the culture, etc. behind the phenomena, if UFOs aren’t nuts-and-bolts? What does it tell us about the human condition? Why does the phenomena cross, effect and appear to all ages, both sexes, all educational levels, all religious affiliations, all nationalities, and all races? Why 1947 as the year the modern UFO era began? Why saucer shapes and related? One would think that back around the late 1940’s that shapes, assuming active imaginations at work here, would be more akin to the V-2 rocket, or the sorts of ships associated with popular science fiction characters like Captain Video, Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon.  I have in front of me the “Starlog Photo Guidebook: Spaceships” [in science fiction TV and movies]. In looking at the early period, that is pre-1950, I note that the spaceships are rather conventional ones – rockets with tail fins and pointed noses, not flying discs. And, stating the fairly obvious, there were no Frisbees in 1947!

Why such persistence or longevity in the UFO phenomena, in particular given the sceptical treatment by most scientists, public officials, and the military? You’d think that the negative findings of the (University of Colorado) Condon Report and United Sates Air Force’s Project Blue Book would have thrown enough cold water over the issue to cause it to disappear – assuming that there’s really nothing to it of course? And why the alien abduction accounts? If they are products of the mind, what does that say about the human mind? That’s something worth researching no matter what.

Another topic worthy of academic consideration regardless what UFOs are, is why has the phenomena evolved over time? I mean other paranormal activities don’t evolve, like sightings of ghosts and reports of the Loch Ness Monster. But UFOs started out as daylight-discs and lights-in-the-sky, then evolved into close encounters, encounters with aliens and on to actual alien abductions. The UFO phenomena of the late 1940’s is quite different (simpler) from that of the late 1970’s, which is clearly less complex that that of the latter years of the first decade of the 21^st Century. Sceptics should be encouraging that sort of research.

However, I suggest there tends to be a scientific double standard at work here. Take the topic of string and superstring theory, to wit you’ll find lots of popular or quasi-popular books in your bookstore covering same. There certainly is a lot more solid physical evidence for the reality of UFOs vis-à-vis string/superstring theory, which, currently is the darling of the theoretical physics community and has been so for going on several decades now.  The topic has spawned multi-thousands of academic papers in highly technical physics journals, so string/superstring theory certainly has the respect of the academic community. However, there remains not one shred of actual evidence that they exist at all! String/superstring theory happens to be a beautiful mathematical construction that could explain the way the universe works. But decades later, it’s still just mathematics. No observation, no experiment, no nothing has shown they actually exist. So, the actual reality of UFOs is nonsense – the theoretical reality of strings and superstrings is embraced. Go figure!

While I’m very happy for all these physicists to spend all this time on a concept which, to date, has not revealed any physical reality whatever (yet, in theory describes some of the workings of the physical universe), it would be nice if some of those physicists could devote some of their professional time to a concept (UFOs = ETI) that has shown a tad more physical reality than string/superstring theory. Physical traces of UFO activity like angel’s hair, electromagnetic effects, radar returns, photographs and ground traces would be, I would have thought, might be of interest to physicists as well as other bits part and parcel of the phenomena like light, sound and aerodynamics.