A vast majority of people think it’s a total waste of time to search for extraterrestrial life in space – throughout the entire cosmos – not because they’re convinced ET doesn’t exist, but rather that ET has been (ancient astronauts) and is now (UFOs) not only here but up close and personal with Planet Earth and humanity.
Continued now from yesterday’s blog…
What becomes of all those UFO eyewitness reports (sometimes backed up by physical evidence)? Well those qualified to do so, scientists, military personnel (because UFOs were once a national security issue) and others so qualified try to come up with a prosaic answer. They don’t come up with an acceptable answer in all the cases. So then there are the UFO unknowns – the actual hardcore, bona-fide unidentified flying objects. Even the most hardened of UFO sceptics acknowledges that between 5% and 10% of UFO reports turn into hardcore unidentified sightings. When translated over six plus decades, worldwide, that’s one hell of a lot of mysterious residue one has to come to terms with. Why science and scientists, presumably charged with the responsibility of exploring the unknown and figuring out how things work, choose to ignore this massive pile of hardcore unknowns is quite beyond me. I mean if each and every UFO report that came in was quickly explained away, well everyone should and probably would be sceptical when yet another report hit the fan. But that’s not the case.
The fact, as noted above, what most sceptics readily acknowledge, is that between 5 and 10 percent of all reported UFO incidents remain unidentified after investigation by those qualified to do so. This fact apparently excites the scientific, astrobiology, and SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) communities not one jot. But, if SETI received out of all radio signals, 5% to 10% unexplained radio signals, (“WOW” signals), that of course would set the SETI community abuzz.
In a similar vein, if 5 to 10 percent of particle interactions were unexplainable by the current standard model of particle physics, that would set the physics community abuzz without question.
If the speed of light varied ever so slightly 5% to 10% of the times it were measured, the special relativity community would be agog, and extremely interested.
If 5 to 10 percent of galaxies showed a discrepancy between their red-shifts and their distances, that would set the cosmology community abuzz.
So, why the big scientific yawn over the apparently bona fide UFO’s unidentified percentage? Perhaps it might take sociologists who study the sociology of science to pin that one down. There’s a mystery just begging for serious attention here that has the potential for massive ramifications, not just scientific ones.
Now the hardcore unknowns aren’t a ‘possible this’ or a ‘probable that’ or maybe yet some other thing(s) that acquaint yet again to something in terms of a prosaic explanation. The experts haven’t a clue what these 5% to 10% of UFOs are.
So, faced with these hardcore bona fide unknowns, the public focuses on the ETH. That’s understandable as how many other possible explanations for the hardcore can there be?
Okay, maybe it’s time travellers from our future as one alternative. But then hardcore UFO unknowns aren’t clustered around significant historical events that would be must sees – the bread-and-butter of that industry – to tourists and historians from our future.
An early UFO ETH theory was that UFOs were actual living organisms who lived in outer space but now and again would dip into our atmosphere. No biologist could actually explain how such creatures could survive, far less thrive, in the harsh conditions of outer space.
Some suggest that the hardcore represent some sort of totally new natural phenomena, except there’s no even theoretical underpinning for new natural phenomena, and after six decades, well that’s a total failure to come to terms with an easy way out of the hardcore mess. However, natural phenomena wouldn’t exhibit intelligent behaviour in any event, which the hardcore UFOs do. That’s why they often tend to be the hardcore.
Now one might argue that if nine out of ten UFO reports turn out to be prosaic, then the final tenth one will to. That point of view (POV) is seemingly logical, but really illogical. If your footie team wins nine grand finals on the trot, well that’s no reason another team won’t win the next one. Toss heads nine times in a row – the tenth toss is still 50/50, not 100% in favour of heads. Nine out of ten of anything tells you zip about the tenth occurrence.
The mention of eyewitness testimony of course brings to the fore visual images. An image (picture) is worth a thousand words as the saying goes. For visual images to really be effective, they have got to be captured in some form or other. Still photographs and motion pictures come to mind here. There are of course a fair few photographs; alas fewer motion pictures of UFOs – no bona fide examples of actual LGM (the “G” could stand for ‘Gray”) - are present and accounted for. However, films and photographs and fakery are too often associated. But even real motion pictures of ‘lights in the sky’, albeit unidentified ‘lights in the sky’ don’t have quite the same visual impact as some of those from our historical past – not film, but something more durable. It’s a lot harder to explain away images from ancient history – images often carved out of stone or carved into stone.
For example, there are the famous statues on Easter Island . Well, the representations are human, but not quite human enough. If they are a representation of ancestor worship (as is commonly cited) then either the ancestors were very strange or else the stone masons were rather poor carvers, or they were one of the first to have invented abstract art. There’s something screwy somewhere in attributing the Easter Island statues as representing a strictly human form. If not strictly human, what’s the alternative?
You have some of the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’ with jackal and falcon heads – how many humans do you see down at your local shopping mall with animal heads?
The Nazca Lines are world famous. They basically are etchings (representing various animals and other objects) made in the dry desert plains in Southern Peru that, much like crop circles, can only be really appreciated from the air. In fact they were only discovered in the 1930’s from aircraft flying overhead. There’s no doubt humans constructed the lines, which took a lot of time, effort and energy, but to what purpose? Certainly they were not runways for flying saucers and astronomical alignments and associated explanations fail too. Since they were clearly meant to be seen from the air and since we’re talking about their construction some 400 to 650 years AD – sort of our pre-flight era – then the most logical explanation is that they were art works for the sky gods to see and appreciate.
Tassili n’Ajjer is located in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria
Visoki Dečani is a major Serbian Orthodox Christian monastery located in Kosovo. Within are various murals. On the "The Crucifixion" fresco, painted in 1350, objects similar to UFOs can be found. They represent two comets that look like space ships, with two men inside of them, and are often cited by those interested in ‘ancient astronauts’. The images are certainly striking. You have to decide for yourself if these images are representing really real ‘ancient astronauts’ aerial craft.
Cylinder Seals date from about 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. They tell ‘picture stories’ and were engraved on cylinders that could be rolled onto a flat surface like wet clay. The interesting bit is that not only are some images clearly mythological, showing dragons and various gods, but some images are clearly astronomical. Celestial objects abound. No less a scientist than the late Dr. Carl Sagan, is on record (in his co-authored book “Intelligent Life in the Universe”) as noting that some cylinder seals clearly show various extra-solar planetary systems, often in association with specific deities.
There are many, many ancient figurines or statues showing beings something less than what we’d call ‘human’. Of the lot, I personally found some of the most striking to be male and female clay figurines dating from the archaeological period called the Obed time or Obed horizon in Mesopotamia , roughly fourth millennium BC, with insect-like heads or at least eyes. In fact the eyes are very striking, and certainly representing nothing terrestrial – they remind me of the modern depiction of the eyes of the UFO-related greys.
Speaking of which, there was that immense psychological subconscious reaction to the face of the ‘Grey’ on the cover of Whitley Strieber’s book “Communion”.
The Piri Reis Map is another well known case of something that really shouldn’t be, but is. Piri Reis was a Turkish admiral and cartographer who strutted his stuff in the early 1500’s. The famous map in question shows in considerable detail the coastlines of the Americas, greater detail than exploration of that era would have been possible, plus the opposite side of the Atlantic (which, okay, was pretty well known), but most impressive, parts of coastal Antarctica, a continent which hadn’t yet been discovered (though highly speculated about). However, in fairness, there are enough errors that sceptics can easily dismiss this as evidence of ‘ancient astronauts’ – close, but no cigar.
Then there’s the popular literature. There was the immense popularity of Erich Von Daniken’s ancient astronaut books – they really rang quite a responsive chord around the world. UFO books tend to sell well too, for example, as noted above Whitley Strieber’s “Communion” and sequels; also Budd Hopkins “Missing Time” and later works. For people to shell out their hard earned bucks for books that are on the fringe of science and acceptability – well, there’s got to be some sort of responsive chord driving this.
In conclusion, I want to believe? Indeed I do – believe that is!
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