SETI Strategy

The traditional, even the untraditional Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been going on now for over five decades; six decades if you include UFOs, and a century’s worth if you include listening for Martian radio signals. Of course, as we are all well aware, nothing has, to date, come from these extensive searches. Either there’s nothing out there worth searching for, or perhaps one is shooting at a moving target. A better search strategy might be to shoot at a stationary target(s). My suggestion is for an optimal static SETI target – the Moon.    

Traditional SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, uses a search strategy of looking for extraterrestrial radio signals broadcast by technologically advanced, well, extraterrestrials.  Alas, you don’t know in advance where in space the alien radio station is; what strength it’s broadcasting at; what radio frequency it’s using; how often it’s broadcasting or for what duration per broadcast. Further, the station is probably on a rotating planet, and we on the receiving end are rotating too and so the meshing of the two such that we face each other is dicey at best. It’s a search with all the odds stacked against it. That’s what I call SETI in motion. Static SETI has better odds in its favour, IMHO. What SETI needs is to eliminate the motion associated with possible ETI from the search. In other words, search for ETI via those artefacts of ETI that 1) pretty much stand still and 2) remain standing still for very lengthy time frames.  

TRADITIONAL SETI IN MOTION: The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Optical and radio wave SETI relies on some alien technological civilization pointing a radio or optical transmitter in the outward bound direction and letting briefly fly the photons in just the absolute right direction such that a terrestrial radio or optical receiver just happens to be pointed in that exact same direction at the exact relevant time frame later on down the track. The odds are not good that all these variables of motion will mesh together. I mean, what if you had one spinning terrestrial globe (globe A) with some random rate of spin and orientation (axis tilt), and another spinning globe (globe B) with another random rate of spin and orientation, both positioned at some random distance apart, what odds that say, one specific latitude and longitude on globe A would exactly match up in a straight line, allowing for the speed of light representing that straight line, with the exact same latitude and longitude on globe B?

UNTRADITIONAL SETI IN MOTION: Space Probes

We have sent out messages to ET in the form of plaques (Pioneer 10 and 11) and audio-visual recordings (Voyager 1 and 2), which have odds of success that even the most optimistic of optimists wouldn’t bet a nickel, far less the family farm, on achieving reality. That’s because space probes are very, very small and space is really, Really, REALLY, very, Very, VERY, big, as “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as so adequately pointed out and made that concept clear to us. Finding alien space probes: it’s the needle-in-a-haystack or perhaps the message-in-the-bottle carried to extremes.

UNTRADITIONAL QUASI-SETI IN MOTION: UFO SETI

The problem with trying to search for and pin down UFOs as an example of ETI is that UFOs will not stand still. They come and they go like short-duration will-of-the-wisps in a totally random way that cannot be forecast in advance. But the skies can be monitored 24/7, and they are monitored 24/7, and guess what, UFOs are spotted 24/7. Of course a UFO doesn’t automatically translate into an alien spaceship, and in any event, while the skies stand still in a manner of speaking, those pesky UFOs don’t.

TRADITIONAL STATIC SETI: Galactic Searches

External galaxies, like stars in our galaxy, sit still in the night sky. Unlike targeting individual stars in our galaxy, or rather the inhabited planets whizzing around them (orbiting and rotating) which is traditional SETI in motion, targeting entire galaxies at one go, assuming a reasonable number of ET civilizations are in that galaxy, suggests that something that’s of an EM nature (on a myriad of frequencies) emitted at random time intervals by someone(s) or something(s) is intersecting our local geography upon which sits our radio telescope 24/7. The fly in that ointment is that, as the introduction to “Star Wars” pointed out, external galaxies are far, far away. That means that while we’re getting some signal(s) from an external galaxy 24/7 just on sheer probability, it’s like trying to hear someone, say your ex, shouting at you from L.A. when you’re, alas, in N.Y.C.

STATIC SETI: Omnidirectional Signals

Omnidirectional electromagnetic signals would appear as a ‘light bulb’ that was always on, but the drawback is that it is a very energy intensive way of advertising yourself and saying “hi there” to the cosmos.

STATIC SETI: Dyson Spheres

We’re all for solar energy, and a really advanced extraterrestrial civilization could take the concept to an extreme. Only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the Sun’s output hits Earth, so even if all of that were captured and put to good use, it would still be just a tiny fraction of what’s theoretically available. But, if one could build a quasi-flexible sphere (of say colony space stations) around a parent star, then a large fraction of the star’s solar energy could be intercepted and put to a useful purpose. The light energy would ultimately be converted to heat energy, or infrared (IR) wavelengths. So, if we SETI by looking for anomalous infrared stellar sources, we just might detect or capture evidence of a vast extraterrestrial astro-engineering projects, known in the trade as Dyson Spheres. The trick will be to distinguish a natural IR source from an artificial one. Further complicating matters is that the search pretty much has to be conducted from above Earth’s atmosphere which is pretty opaque to IR wavelengths.

STATIC SETI: Pulsars

When pulsars were first discovered, they were immediately thought to be the SETI smoking gun, and were named LGM 1, LGM 2, etc. where LGM stood for “Little Green Man”. Alas, it quickly became apparent that in terms of SETI, pulsars were too much of a good thing, now numbering in the thousands, and a natural alternative explanation quickly came to the fore – rapidly rotating neutron stars. However, if author Paul LaViolette* is to be believed, pulsars are not naturally rapid rotating neutron stars but artificially constructed interstellar navigation and communication beacons – the product or creation of ETI. Fortunately pulsars stay put and thus LaViolette’s ideas can be tested.

STATIC SETI: Planetary Disequilibrium

Another possible example of static SETI is the search for planetary atmospheres in chemical disequilibrium – the search in all probability for bio-signatures. Earth’s atmosphere is in a state of disequilibrium; so apparently is Titan’s atmosphere. The ‘intelligence’ part comes in regarding the detection of unnatural pollutants, again in disequilibrium. A variation on that theme is to look for anomalies in a star’s spectrum, say for uranium, plutonium, radium, thorium, or technetium. Finding such would be suspicious – hey, what’s going on here? The answer being that a technological civilization used their parent star as a nuclear waste dump (quite a sensible idea); or to advertise their existence.

STATIC SETI: The Sun

As per above, there are some who have suggested that extraterrestrial intelligences with advanced technologies might deliberately ‘pollute’ their parent star with unnatural or anomalous elements, perhaps an exercise in radioactive waste disposal. The upshot being that the stellar spectra of such ‘polluted’ stars would give the game away that there was intelligence afoot since no natural process could account for such anomalous spectra. Now if such a strategy were used as a calling card by said extraterrestrials, perhaps they have artificially altered the natural solar spectra of our Sun. Alas, I assume by now our Sun’s spectra has been analysed and re-analysed and re-re-analysed with nothing anomalous discovered.

STATIC SETI: The Moon

If you want to leave a message or a calling card akin to “Kilroy was here” for someone unknown or unknowable in the future (whether near future or distant future is also unknown) what would you do, especially if you had some space-faring capability? Translate that scenario now and assume that there must have been some sort of visit to Planet Earth by ET(s) over the past several billion years (and Earth was inhabited even if only by microbes at that time) and maybe they left behind their equivalent of “Kilroy was here”. Well you wouldn’t leave your calling card on Planet Earth since Planet Earth is both geologically and meteorologically active and the ocean bottom isn’t much better. You wouldn’t leave it in high Earth orbit or at the Langranian Points since that makes your message a moving target and/or subject to dislodgment from gravitational forces say from a passing near Earth asteroid or a close encounter with a passing comet. Solar flares, etc. over the long haul could also disrupt any stable orbit. Positioning the message elsewhere in the Solar System is probably placing it too distantly away requiring too much power to sustain itself over the long haul – assuming ET supplied it with batteries – or placement would result in just too much real estate to have to cover for future recipients. What about the Moon as a repository for an alien artefact or two? Did Arthur C. Clarke get it right in “2001: A Space Odyssey”?

The Moon has and hasn’t for all practical purposes any dynamic geology or meteorology and certainly no ocean bottoms. The Moon is not, for all practical purposes a moving target as we tend to think of moving targets. Has the Moon ever been targeted by SETI? Not formally to the best of my knowledge.

If there was an EM beacon on the Moon broadcasting on our radio/TV frequencies we’d know about it. I imagine there must have been times when the Moon was in view or in the line of sight with radio telescopes doing traditional interstellar electromagnetic (radio) SETI analysis. If so, no dice resulted. I imagine the Moon (from space) has been looked at in the ultraviolet, infrared, and other parts of the EM spectrum not readily accessible from ground level. Still, I think a formal SETI attack on the Moon might not be a bad thing – if only to dot I’s and cross all the T’s.

QUASI-STATIC SETI: Transient Lunar Phenomena

For more years than you can shake a stick at - and that’s a lot of years - anomalous lights, glows, or luminescences have been seen and recorded on the Moon by astronomers, both amateur and professional. These enigmatic lights have been tagged with the general phrase Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP). They come and go with total unpredictability. The usual theory is some sort of volcanic activity, maybe a meteor impact, but to date they remain just one of those mysteries Mother Nature chucks our way. TLP’s require far more investigation, just in case they have a ‘Kilroy’ aspect to them.

STATIC SETI: Alien Artefacts

The ‘Face on Mars’ is probably the best known example of an ‘alien artefact’, and when first photographed by a Viking orbiting space probe it indeed looked like a human ‘face’. However, later photographs under differing lighting conditions just revealed a big rock that had to be lit just so in order to show a pseudo-‘face’. Though the ‘Face on Mars’ proved not to be a real ‘face’, the key point with respect to SETI is that the ‘face’ stood still to be photographed and studied another day under differing conditions. It stood still!

STATIC SETI: Ancient Astronauts

Many myths and legends, from ancient cultures around the world, especially surrounding religious figures of all-powerful deities, can often be reinterpreted in terms of flesh-and-blood aliens as opposed to supernatural gods and goddesses. Alas, while provocative, its marginal evidence at best for ancient astronauts. Engineering feats seemingly impossible for ancient societies are equally provocative, are bona-fide archaeological mysteries, but are again just marginal evidence for high-tech aliens, not smoking guns. However, if there were artefacts, images or equivalent, indisputably produced by ancient man yet which clearly exhibited a degree of knowledge they could not have possessed, that’s a different horse of quite another colour. As a hypothetical example, if there was an image or carving clearly showing the planet Saturn and satellites, all in correct proportionality, in say an ancient Egyptian tomb that would be more than just something provocative. Ditto the image of a kangaroo or a map showing Tasmania or Long Island (N.Y.). Even better would be a really real alien artefact with a “made in Krypton” stamped on it somewhere! Regardless, I suggest a detailed examination of ancient artefacts/images as viewed from the eyes and perspective of a physical, even biological scientist or geographer as opposed to a traditional archaeologist might be in order. Even    

STATIC SETI: Crop Circles

Crop circles stand-sit-lie still (as it were until farmers mow them down) but I’m not convinced they have anything to do with ETI, even if they are high strangeness. But if they do, have anything to do with ETI that is, they would a tempting SETI target.

STATIC SETI: Junk DNA

Some out-of-the-box thinkers have suggested that aliens might have left an internal message within us (as in terrestrial life) that ‘Kilroy was here’ the message being in the form of a coding within those parts of an organism’s DNA that isn’t particularly used for anything – junk DNA. The only problem I see with that is that even junk DNA can and will mutate and thus change the message, just like changing one letter in a word can render that word meaningless. 

CONCLUSION

Our Moon offers the best bet for uncovering evidence that aliens have been (and maybe still are) in our neck of the stellar woods. Since the Moon is close by, and can be observed 24/7 (we know where it is at all times) and is a logical place for aliens to have left evidence of any visitation, it should be the focus of SETI. Such evidence, by implication, would prove that ET exists, or at least one ET existed once upon a time.

*LaViolette, Paul; The Talk of the Galaxy: An ET Message for Us?; Starlane Publications, Alexandria, VA; 2000.



Extraterrestrial Robots: Part Two

When you think of extraterrestrials, you probably think of ET, Mr. Spock, Klaatu, Yoda, Klingons and Romulans, the Blob, Martians with heat rays, Alien vs. Predator, the Sontarans, or perhaps the ‘Greys’ of UFO lore. However, if you really had an extraterrestrial close encounter of the up-close-and-personal kind, I’d wager the odds are far greater that you’d be shaking ‘hands’ with something more akin to Robby the Robot.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

THE RISE AND RISE OF THE CYBORG: ARTIFICIAL BODY BITS & PIECES

We’re already on the way with the merger of man and machine; the natural with the artificial.

Head & Neck: There’s dentures; teeth fillings; eyeglasses; hearing aids; the bionic ear; the bionic eye; speech synthesisers; metal skull replacement head plates, etc.

Waist Up: We’ve implanted pacemakers; heart valves; artificial hearts; arm prosthetics; artificial shoulder, elbow and wrist joints; artificial kidneys (via kidney dialysis); and the iron lung.

Waist Down: At the very least there are artificial hip, knee and ankle joints; leg prosthetics, peg legs; and leg braces.

General: You wear clothes (replacing fur, feathers and scales); you wrap yourself in a heating blanket; you ‘wear’ your car in that you wrap it around you (or bicycle, skateboard, roller skates, etc. – they become a part or extension of you); the mobile/smart phone is an obvious example of the merger of flesh and machine, and one where all too often it’s the technology controlling the user, not the user controlling the technology. People use walking canes/sticks; walkers; and wheelchairs, some motorized and some so integral or inseparable to their users or ‘wearers’ that they jointly appear to be a virtual cybernetic entity – think of the most famous or widely known case history cosmologist-astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his wheelchair come quasi-life-enhancing system, though that pales compared to the environmental suits worn by astronauts – moon walkers or EVA space-walkers – or deep-sea divers. Then there is plastic surgery.

What’s Next: Common in various medical situations are drips that via gravity ‘feed’ patients with their necessary drug, energy and other required vitamin/mineral supplements. That suggests to me that one can bypass the entire digestive system (teeth, oesophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine) by just having a one-way artificial valve that connects the outer skin surface with the bloodstream and that all body nutriments in the required amounts custom designed for the needs of any specific individual be injected directly into their bloodstream via this valve on an as-needed basis.

But the ultimate will be the desire or need to eliminate all flesh-and-blood bits-and-pieces, thus all diseases (including ageing) and injuries associated with flesh-and-blood, by keeping the only bit that’s really necessary – the mind – and recreating the wetware contents as software, downloaded into hardware within a nearly immortal plastic and steel ‘body’.   

EXPLANATIONS RELATED TO ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS AND UFOs

What might extraterrestrial robotics help explain when it comes to ancient astronaut theory and the UFO phenomena? A few items come to the fore.

Dragons are universals in human mythology. All cultures have dragon-lore. Anytime there is a concept that cuts across all societies, one needs to sit up and take notice. Dragons, for example, aren’t a one-off, confines say to ancient China. Dragons are frequently represented as the go-between the ‘gods’ (ancient astronauts or extraterrestrials) and humans. Given their ‘fire-breathing’ nature and ability to fly, it’s not inconceivable that dragons were really real, but not flesh-and-blood creatures but high-tech extraterrestrial devices of an aerial nature.

Hybrids, either human-animal or animal-animal (like dragons) are another example of a universal in human mythology that needs some coming to grips with. Though I’ve postulated that mythological hybrids, like say the Sphinx, might have been products of alien genetic engineering, it’s not that easy to say graft on a pair of wings on a horse (i.e. – Pegasus) and have it fly. There’s a lot of anatomical infrastructure that needs to be addressed and redesigned in order to make that happen. If these hybrids were mechanical or robotic, that avoids a lot of messy genetic mucking around with flesh-and-blood.  

UFOs and the Greys: So, might the UFO ‘greys’ actually be robotic or an android ‘life’ form, an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence (ETAI)? Well, why not?  I’ve yet to read any account that proved the ‘greys’ were functioning flesh-and-blood ETI. For all of their outward spindly appearance, they seem to be far stronger than their physiology would give them credit for. No one has seen them bleed or have bruises or scars; No arm or leg casts suggest no broken bones, not even a limp; nor have there been reports of sniffles and sneezes; they certainly look asexual and even act robotic as if on autopilot as well as being totally emotionless. When it comes to age, all seem to be the same age; there’s no sign of aging or age differentials. An artificially intelligent ‘life’ form could take on just about any outward appearance its designers wanted it to have. Natural biological evolution and natural selection are totally irrelevant when it comes to robotics or artificial intelligence (AI), including their outward appearance.

One other factor in favour of the UFO being a representation of ETAI instead of ETI is that some UFOs have been observed, eyeball and radar, to make manoeuvres that no squishy flesh-and-blood body could withstand but would be of little consequence to silicon chips. 

SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a logical evolutionary development that supersedes Natural (biological squishy) Intelligence housed in wetware. Once AI takes the reins, there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle and AI just goes from strength to strength. Assuming technological civilizations can last relatively lengthy periods of time, odds suggest most of a civilization’s timeline will be of the software variety relative to the wetware variety.

Though there’s no theoretical impediment to wetware crisscrossing, exploring and colonizing the galaxy, there’s even less, way, way less theoretical impediment to software doing the same, especially if software supersedes wetware relatively quickly and thus has a greater timeframe in which to accomplish this. If they don’t find you coming from one direction, they will find you coming from the opposite side since the odds are great that there are lots of advanced robotic civilizations out there.  

Since humans are the new boys on the old galactic block, we’re way, way, way more likely to have been discovered (probably hundreds of times over) by extraterrestrial civilizations hundreds, thousands, even millions of years our seniors. The odds are vastly in favour of such a discovery or rather discoveries by alien others, especially robotic alien others since robots are more likely to have a long-term existence and ease in boldly going.

Thus, there is quite some theoretical credibility to the concept of ancient visitations by ancient (robotic) extraterrestrial astronauts. That being the case, there is also quite some theoretical credibility to the concept of modern visitations by modern (robotic) extraterrestrial astronauts. There are some facets of the ancient astronaut and the modern (UFO) astronaut hypothesis that are better explained by robotic software than flesh-and-blood wetware.



Extraterrestrial Robots: Part One

When you think of extraterrestrials, you probably think of ET, Mr. Spock, Klaatu, Yoda, Klingons and Romulans, the Blob, Martians with heat rays, Alien vs. Predator, the Sontarans, or perhaps the ‘Greys’ of UFO lore. However, if you really had an extraterrestrial close encounter of the up-close-and-personal kind, I’d wager the odds are far greater that you’d be shaking ‘hands’ with something more akin to Robby the Robot.

When it comes to UFO entities, ancient astronauts, and aliens in general as depicted in sci-fi films and television; even short stories and novels, for the most part they presented as normal squishy flesh-and-blood organisms, even if they have green blood, pointed ears, antenna, or are living rocks, like “Star Trek’s” Horta. Even “Doctor Who’s” Daleks are partly squishy; ditto the Cybermen also of “Doctor Who” fame.

However, I suggest that for the normal picture of all things extraterrestrial substitute flesh-and-blood (natural CHON – Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen – or related) for artificial constructions made from silicon and steel. Call them robots or androids or just plain artificial intelligence; call them Data (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”) or HAL (“2001: A Space Odyssey”) or V’Ger (“Star Trek: The Motion Picture”) or Gort (“The Day the Earth Stood Still” – and by the by, in the original short story, it was the robot that was the master and in charge, not the flesh-and-blood alien Klaatu). And who can forget R2-D2 or 3CPO (“Star Wars”). So, IMHO, if you have an up close and personal encounter with an ET, it’s not going to be with biological intelligence but with technological or artificial intelligence.

Extraterrestrial or terrestrial, our sci-fi films are full of intelligent machines or robots, from “I, Robot” to “Futureworld” and “Westworld” (where nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong) to “Cherry 2000” to “The Stepford Wives” to “Saturn 3” to the “Bicentennial Man” to the entire “Transformers” series. Today it’s sci-fi; tomorrow it’s science-fact.

Several reasons suggest why.

THE RISE AND RISE OF THE MACHINE

Any scientifically advanced alien society will sooner or later invent the computer or equivalent. Once invented, you can’t put the genie back into the bottle. Machines are gaining the upper hand here at Terra Firma and have been ever since humans came up with the idea of a tool. If you doubt this, ask any typical teen/young adult to do without their mobile/smart-phone and/or tablet; ask a housewife to forgo the programmable microwave oven, her vacuum cleaner or programmable dishwasher; ask a househusband to hand over the remote or the keys to his new red sports car with state of the art GPS and other computer programmable accessories (necessary therapy for those suffering from male menopause). And where would NASA be without all those robotic space probes to the Moon and planets (some of which have to have a rudimentary degree of intelligence since radio commands from Earth can take quite some considerable time to reach the planetary rover)?  Even if one excludes non-programmable ‘dumb’ machines and machine technologies like clothes dryers, coffee makers, lawn mowers, and radar, the number of ‘smart’ machines – super computers, PCs, tablets, smart-phones, etc. is getting damn close right now to the human population. One can even buy today robotic toys, ‘pets’ and even companions for the very sick, elderly, outcasts or lonely. Can sex with robotic partners be far behind?

Computing crunch power increases by order of magnitudes faster than biological wetware crunch power (Moore’s Law). Human intellectual capacity hasn’t increased very much, if at all, over the past 50,000 years or so – our IQ has flat-lined. Machine intelligence, though off to a slow start all those 50,000 years ago, is however increasing at an exponential rate. The lines have to cross eventually; sometime. The crossover point is tipped for the not too distant future and probably within the lifetime of most viewers reading this. Computer programs can already beat you every time at chess and a host of other games besides. 

Unlike humans, computers can link up to form a super-computer (recall the film “Colossus: The Forbin Project”) otherwise known today as the Internet. Or, in other words, eventually an artificial intelligence can merge with another artificial intelligence to create a mega artificial intelligence, which in turn could merge with another mega artificial intelligence, and so on.

As noted above, there will come a time when machine intelligence, artificial intelligence, surpasses biological or wetware intelligence. That will become a point where computers will become intelligent and self-aware enough to pass the Turing Test – that’s where someone cannot tell the difference between a human or a computer answering questions in an interview type of scenario.

Once wetware becomes dependent on software, intelligent self-aware machines call the shots and they are in control. Whether this human-machine relationship remains a symbiotic one or not is not that relevant since the relationship will not be 50-50. Recall the “Terminator” films!

The increase in artificial intelligence will ever increase faster and faster, especially when intelligent machines can themselves design their own next generation and the generation after that all in a matter of days, hours, and minutes. And reproduction is not an issue. ‘Asexual’ robotic reproduction is a given – one machine builds a copy, or more likely as not, a better copy of itself, and as many as deemed necessary, especially if they are sent out into the cosmos to ‘boldly go’ where probably lots of other robotics probes from other civilizations have gone before. See below.

In the timeline of any technologically advanced alien society, odds are great that the bulk of that timeline will be represented by artificial intelligence relative to wetware or biological intelligence.

Most alien societies will be not just dozens, hundreds, thousands of years in advance of human society, but hundreds of thousands to millions of years more advanced. That is to say, most alien societies will be artificially intelligent societies; robotic societies if you will.

When it comes from getting from somewhere out there (wherever that is) to here (Planet Earth), robotic ‘life’ forms have all the advantages.

They have, for all practical purposes, robots or intelligent computers or artificial intelligence (for lack of a better word or phrase) would have a lifespan measured in such timeframes as to make any interstellar travel equivalent to humans taking a leisurely stroll around their local park. There’s no need for energy intensive interstellar velocities even remotely approaching the speed of light. The galaxy has been around long enough to allow for exploration (and colonization) hundreds of times over at even expansion rates one percent light speed. 

They (robots again) have no need for all of the cumbersome and weight enhancing luxuries of what humans or biological entities would require for interstellar journeys: life-support basically in the form of artificial gravity, an atmosphere, heating, food and water, waste recycling technologies, privacy requirements, sex, entertainment, etc. Any saving in weight is a saving in energy. Robotic ‘life’ forms could cross the galaxy (or just go from star A to star B) in what for all practical purposes one could describe as shutdown or sleep mode.

Why would artificial intelligences (AI) boldly go in any event? Any intelligences designing AI must exhibit a mastery of science and technology. In order to achieve that they must exhibit that trait we call curiosity. That trait, instilled into AI, or intelligent wetware downloaded into silicon chips, would exhibit curiosity. What’s over that hill translated into a cosmic setting is what’s beyond that star and the one beyond that, etc.

One flaw in advocating a pure form of robotic intelligence boldly going is that one could argue instead that it’s the original biological entities who need to boldly go, but that’s easily accomplished if their wetware in an organic housing (i.e. – their skull) could be downloaded as software in a metallic housing. That humans could download their mind into a computer has been suggested and advocated by many as a technologically feasible way to achieve virtual immortality. By the by, that human wetware downloaded as robotic software, that feasibility has been suggested as being possible within this century, not millennia down the track.

We’ve made a start already!

To be continued…



Carl Sagan On UFOs

Many a well-known scientist, because they are well known, often have to venture outside of their area of expertise when say interviewed or pontificating within a broader arena of which their speciality is just a tiny niche. As such, they are on far shakier ground and thus subject to rebuttal by others who are more knowledgeable in that other part of that broader arena than the famous scientist in question. One prime example is the late astronomer Carl Sagan waxing lyrical about but out of his depth on the subject of UFOs.

The following commentaries are on a trilogy of YouTube videos featuring the late astronomer and science populariser Carl Sagan on the subject of UFOs. While these clips doesn’t limit his philosophy on the subject, anyone reading this can easily access the videos relative to finding his books or articles which would be more time intensive. His videos should reflect his points of view as expressed in other forms of media.

INTRODUCTION

With respect to UFOs, in Dr. Sagan’s favour, he admits that advanced extraterrestrial technological civilizations could be vastly more advanced than our own and therefore he doesn’t deny the possibility that extraterrestrials could have or could be visiting Earth. In fact, he’s on record, do to his interest in extraterrestrial life, that he would be delighted if UFOs = Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), except that there is no actual evidence linking the two, or so he claims.

But against that grain that he believes that there are highly advanced technological alien civilizations out there, he frequently reinforces that lack of evidence claim that connects UFOs and those highly advanced technological alien civilizations. In that analysis he makes a cardinal scientific boo-boo (IMHO) by making one of his oft repeated and therefore trademark statements that “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”.  UFOs that equate to alien spaceships is an extraordinary claim according to Dr. Sagan. So Dr. Sagan demands extraordinary evidence from those making such extraordinary claims.

That seems on the surface to be reasonable, but, if I claim my best friend from high school is sitting on the couch in my living room – that’s an ordinary claim. If I claim a little green ‘man’ from Mars is sitting on the couch in my living room – that, according to Dr. Sagan is an extraordinary claim. Yet, the exact same amount of evidence will confirm or refute either claim equally. That’s why it’s a really significant cardinal scientific boo-boo. The word ‘extraordinary’ is in the emotional mind of the beholder and isn’t a hardcore scientifically valid concept, unlike the word “claim”. However, Dr. Sagan frequently also uses the phrase that’s there “no compelling evidence” (i.e. that UFOs = ETH). That suggests that Dr. Sagan feels there must be at least some evidence, just not compelling evidence, which he acknowledges. In any event, Dr. Sagan should have taken note of another profound saying that “absence of evidence does not of necessity translate into evidence of absence”.

CARL SAGAN 1966 INTERVIEWED ABOUT UFOs [Interview With Walter Cronkite]:

* Commuting Issues: Dr. Sagan doesn’t apparently have any problem in accepting an alien spacecraft arriving in our local neck of the woods, say once every 10,000 years or so. That’s pretty much in keeping with the Fermi Paradox which notes that the time it takes an advanced technological civilization with interstellar space-faring capability to cross interstellar space and hence explore every nook and cranny of our galaxy is but a small fraction of the age of our galaxy. This is akin to saying that the time it takes the human species to explore every nook and cranny of Planet Earth is just a tiny fraction of the age of Planet Earth.

Okay, that’s fine. However Dr. Sagan has a decided problem with aliens from a distant star system visiting our local neck of the woods two or three times a day, which is the case according to “flying saucer cultists”. And admittedly, it’s a bit of a stretch to think a fleet of extraterrestrial UFOs would travel dozens of light years back-and-forth between say Sirius and Sol every day. Except that argument shows a high of illogical thinking in the extreme. Would an astronomer like Dr. Sagan commute back-and-forth every day between Cornell University (New York) to a telescopic site in say Chile, every day-in-and-day-out for weeks on end? - Of course not. He would undergo one long-distance hop-skip-and-jump (Cornell to Chile), set up camp at appropriate facilities cheek-by-jowl with the telescopic site and commute daily the relatively tiny distance between his camp site or hotel or other accommodation and the telescope; two or three times a day even as necessary. When finished, he would then return back to Cornell.

And thus, so logical might suggest, would aliens from Sirius, having travelled light years to Earth, set up camp (say on the Moon) and do their now short distance exploration thing for whatever duration required and when finished, return home. You have your two or three UFO visits a day without the issue of an illogical light years daily commute. 

* Contactees: For the bulk of the interview, Dr. Sagan expounded on the extreme fringe elements of the UFO phenomenon, the Contactees. Contactees are those quasi-religious cultists who claim to have been contacted and befriended by the ‘Space Brothers’, quasi-Nordic or quasi-angelic types of extraterrestrials who give forth cosmic wisdom and give rides in their Flying Saucers on tours of the solar system and their home planets like Venus to the fortunate few Contactees found to be in the good graces of said ‘Space Brothers’. It’s all very akin to New Age philosophy and spiritualism, and Dr. Sagan concludes therefore that the entire UFO field is just a quasi-religious one revolving around the myths spun by the Contactees with ultimately as much solid evidence as there is for anything mythological or religious, which is for all practical purposes, zero. It’s all psychology and theology, not physical science. Now I have little issue with Dr. Sagan giving the verbal middle finger to the extreme fringe elements within the UFO field, except that he by implication and association paints with as broad a brush as you can imagine possible the entire UFO field and UFO investigators as equally part of the lunatic fringe. There was absolutely zero mention of all the solid UFO cases that remained UFO cases after investigation by the United States Air Force and other equally hardcore no nonsense organisations and individuals. That, IMHO, is absolutely an exercise in intellectually dishonesty by focusing on the extremists and ignoring the middle of the road. It’s like bucketing the entire Republican Party via some association of theirs with the Tea Party even though many, even most Republicans aren’t part of the Tea Party movement. It’s called guilt by association. But just because Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Ted Cruz, Bryan Fischer, Cindy Jacobs, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and Pat Robertson (to name just a few on the extreme religious right and/or extreme political right) are a few nickels and a dime short of a dollar doesn’t mean your local congressman or local clergy, pastor, padre, priest or rabbi, etc. is.    

* Terminology: As an interesting aside, I note that Dr. Sagan used exclusively the putdown or mocking or deriding phrase “flying saucers” or “saucers” in the interview. He did not use the more neutral term “UFOs” or the equally neutral phrase “unidentified flying objects” even though these were coined way more than a decade before 1966 and were in common usage. Dr. Sagan was clearly in ridicule mode, something rather unbecoming for a professional scientist IMHO.

Dr. Sagan, were he alive today, should be absolutely and totally ashamed of that interview.

CARL SAGAN ON UFOs:

* Close Encounters of the Third Kind: One YouTube video focuses on the “Cosmos” segment that featured the Betty and Barney Hill Close Encounter of the Third Kind (CE3K). There are a few bones to pick with Dr. Sagan’s overriding commentary while a re-enactment was shown, but at least this time around he does use the term “UFOs” and the phrase “unidentified flying object”.

Firstly, he makes much of the point, several times over, that we have only their word that they saw a UFO and alien beings all close up and personal – as if a mature-aged but interracial couple (this is 1961 remember) would invent such a horrific experience drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. In fact their story didn’t become public until years later so there was no immediate cashing in on their story for financial gain (not that Dr. Sagan implied that – he didn’t. I’m just noting or saying there was no financial incentive for the Hill’s story). Dr. Sagan later notes that “their word” was also recorded while Betty and Barney Hill were separate and apart put under hypnosis and under the direction of a professional psychiatrist. That IMHO, enhances the credibility of “their word”.

Further, this was the first American case of a CE3K (one earlier foreign case was unknown outside of specialist circles) making an invention out of whole cloth by Betty and Barney Hill rather unlikely since there was no general public perception at the time that there even was such a thing as a CE3K or abductions by little grey aliens. 

Several times in this segment Dr. Sagan goes back to variations on his “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” philosophy. He then details the ‘extraordinary evidence’ for the Hill’s CE3K, which he cites as the Betty Hill ‘Star Map’, a map the aliens showed her and her alone with lines connecting some of the stars representing alien ‘trade routes’, etc. Dr. Sagan then explains in way more detail than was necessary why the ‘Star Map’ was not extraordinary evidence.

That is one point I do agree with Dr. Sagan on and that’s with respect to the degree of evidence Betty Hill’s ‘Star Map’ provides. I’m not saying the ‘Star Map’ isn’t evidence, or isn’t a bona-fide ‘artefact’ of the CE3K, just that numerous dot points drawn at random can be made to match, given the vastness of space and the numbers of stars out there, with some specific number of them, and that lines connecting the dots can be drawn in vastly numerous ways. It’s interesting, but as evidence, far less proof, it’s meaningless.

Dr. Sagan says there is no collaborating evidence (apart from the ‘Star Map’) which is not quite true since the Hill’s vehicle had strange and unaccounted for markings and magnetic anomalies which Dr. Sagan fails to mention.

* Photographs: Dr. Sagan also comments on UFOs photographs noting how many look like hubcaps and how photos can be faked. There was no mention of UFO photographs (and motion pictures) that have passed muster when examined and analysed by experts in photographic techniques, optics, etc. He does correctly suggest that just because there is an unidentified light in the sky, photographed or otherwise,  doesn’t make it automatically an alien spaceship.

CARL SAGAN TALKS ABOUT GOD, UFOs AND ROSWELL

* Roswell: Dr. Sagan’s Mistake Number One was that the stuff that fell or crashed near Roswell in July 1947 wasn’t collected by “Air Force” personnel. The Air Force hadn’t yet been established as a separate branch of the US defence establishment. In July 1947 it was still the “Army Air Force”.

Dr. Sagan swallowed hook line and sinker the idea that photographs of the Roswell debris made publicly available a day or so after the fact but roughly at the time showed the actual bona-fide debris that was collected, a comment immediately following his acknowledgement that the debris was according to the military just a weather balloon (see next entry)! My comment here is that if an intelligence officer of the then Army Air Force couldn’t tell the difference between a crashed metallic disc and the materials from a common weather balloon, well, translated into our times, such military incompetence suggests America might as well surrender to North Korea now and be done with it.   

Dr. Sagan then parrots the most recent (of several) now USAF explanations for Roswell, a top secret balloon operation to detect clandestine Soviet nuclear testing. I have to note that even if that were the case, it was the purpose of the balloon that was top secret, not the materials it was constructed out of. There was no reason not to call a spade (a balloon) a spade (a balloon) from the get-go instead of a crashed disc. There is really no wriggle room here. It’s on the public record that the Roswell debris was first described as a crashed metallic disc and not as a balloon, secret or otherwise.

* Generalities: Following on from Roswell, Dr. Sagan does quite correctly note the “U” in “UFO” stands for “unidentified” and one shouldn’t therefore leap to a conclusion that unidentified equal’s alien spaceship. He notes, also quite correctly that the bulk of UFO reports end up having prosaic explanations. But then he screws up by saying that only if you can’t identify the UFO sighting in question can you then start thinking outside of the box as in aliens and the ETH. However, Dr. Sagan doesn’t acknowledge that there are UFOs that remain UFOs after having been put under the investigative microscope, and that therefore, the extraterrestrial hypothesis is a valid one.

Of course Dr. Sagan’s love of the word “evidence” or phrase “extraordinary evidence” comes into play again and again in this YouTube segment.

As noted in the beginning, it’s interesting that another common thread in Dr. Sagan’s comments is that he sincerely believes that not only is there a strong probability of extraterrestrial life, but highly technologically advanced alien civilizations exist that are millions of years in advance of our own with technologies we can’t even begin to comprehend. Yet he just can’t seem to make that leap that therefore UFOs could be the very evidence that would validate his scientific judgment or opinion or expectation. He goes out of his way to downplay the possibility and accents the negative instead of embracing the possibility and advocating serious study of the issue.



Before The Big Bang

Once upon a time, or was it in the beginning, there was a Big Bang and thus was born what we now call our expanding Universe – expanding because really Big Bangs are associated with explosive events and explosive events hurl out stuff hither and yon. But while there’s little dispute about the Big Bang event, the central question is, was it an ‘in the beginning’ event, or more akin to a ‘once upon a time’ event? If the latter, then it’s reasonable to suggest there was a prior existence to that ‘once upon a time’ event. 

I’ve gone on and on about how there must have been a ‘before-the-Big-Bang’, that the Big Bang event 13.7 billion years ago wasn’t the first cause. That’s because no effect (in this case that Big Bang event) can be the cause of itself. Cause is external to, separate and apart, and prior to the effect. Now it’s time to explore some actual before-the-Big-Bang scenarios even though there are still, even the majority, of cosmologists who suggest that speaking of a before-the-Big-Bang is akin to speaking of what’s further down from the centre of the Earth, or what’s north of the North Pole. 

Astronomers can’t see deeper into the history of our Universe than roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang event. Until then, the entire Universe was still too opaque. It’s like the Sun being too opaque such that we can’t see beneath the visible surface all the way down to the core. So it’s obvious that if astronomers can’t see post the Big Bang to the tune of some 380,000 years on, they can’t see before-the-Big-Bang. However, I’m quite certain there was a before-the-Big-Bang and that our Big Bang event was just one local cosmic pop in a cosmic ocean of bursting Champaign bubbles.

To understand the Big Bang event one needs to understand (as best as one can) what transpired just before the Big Bang event. And for reasons already outlined, what happened before exists in the realm of scientific speculation.

First cab off the rank, here’s a brief explanation why there has to be a before-the-Big-Bang. The Big Bang event did not, could not, create time. Although astronomers suggest just that, when it comes to actually giving the recipe for cooking up a batch of time, our astronomical chefs’ duck back into the pantry. So, IMHO, time already existed at the moment that the Big Bang went ‘bang’. The Big Bang could only happen in time if time already existed, which means that time existed prior to the Big Bang in order for the Big Bang to ‘bang’ in or at the time it ‘banged’.

As an aside, if our Big Bang wasn’t a first cause, then one is hard pressed to say there ever was a first cause for reasons exactly similar to why our Big Bang wasn’t the first cause. There always was a ‘before’ for whatever first cause you wish to postulate, therefore your first cause wasn’t a first cause at all. The regression extends back infinitely. If the cosmos extends back infinitely, it stands equally to reason that the expanding cosmos will extend for all future infinity – for all eternity. As a theological aside, that eliminates the need for a creator god. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating that if you have a timeless, existing for all eternity, creator God who created the Universe, why not eliminate the middleman (God) and postulate a timeless, existing for all eternity, Universe? By the way, a similar argument can be made for space. Anyway, back to the before-the-Big-Bang. 

One aspect that’s important from the get-go is that one needs to avoid the trap into thinking that the before-the-Big-Bang to Big Bang transition resulted in something quantum sized, like a singularity, at that point of inside-out transition. There just is no way IMHO one can take the contents of our entire Universe and squeeze that down into a size that would make a pinhead look massive in comparison. In addition, the laws of physics break down at such a scale since there is no adequate theory of quantum gravity. You’d require such a theory since 1) you’re postulating a quantum sized object, and 2) because the entire Universe makes for a lot of gravity, that’s a lot of gravity in an extremely tiny space. Since it can’t be done (and thousands have tried to merge quantum physics with general relativity (gravity), it’s best to bypass that can of worms entirely, if possible. 

When you think of bangs today, big or otherwise, it’s usually by something that’s been sitting around for a spell just waiting for a triggering device like an about to be blown tire; about to be popped balloon; about to be exploded stick of dynamite, nuclear bomb, or supernova, etc. So, maybe our before-the-Big-Bang was akin to a giant firecracker just waiting for some before-the-Big-Bang happening to light the fuse. The one scenario that fits that bill is the Ekpyrotic Universe which basically states that there exists a minimum of two 3-D universes each existing in a higher dimensional space. That means the two universes don’t actually see each other since photons can’t pass through that higher dimension. However, gravity can pass through the higher dimension so the two universes can feel each other Thus, these two universes mutually attract under gravity, collide (our Big Bang and equally their Big Bang), and bounce apart – rebound. That process repeats at vastly lengthy intervals as gravity draws them together, again, and again and again (more Big Bangs) and then each rebounds, again and again and again.  

The closest celestial firecracker we have is a supernova. Unfortunately, even the mother of all supernovas isn’t quite in the same league as the Big Bang event. It’s like pitting the Little Leagues against the Big Leagues.

A more theoretical firecracker might be the mother of all Black Holes which at some point reaches and exceeds bursting point vomiting out in reverse order its contents. That theoretical object is a White Hole, like perhaps a quasar (quasi-stellar object). Quasars spew out lots and lots and lots of stuff and energy all from a stellar-sized object. But that scenario too falls short of the amount of stuff comprising our Universe. It seems only the stuff of another universe could account for the amount of stuff that was ‘created’ to make our Universe. The one fly in the ointment here is that a singularity might lay at the heart and soul and centre of any proposed Black Hole and I wish to avoid that can of worms as noted above.  

The other kind of ‘bang’ expansion is say, using as an analogy, traffic approaching and merging at a four-way intersection. That’s the contraction bit. After the traffic lights change, the traffic is free to go on its way. That’s the expansion bit. There’s no real ‘bang’ per say. In other words, the Big Bang was the transition of space turning itself inside-out as it were. Either you had the collapse of a previous universe that went through that four-way intersection, or something akin, like a Black Hole that’s vomited up its contents in the form of a White Hole, sort of like post Xmas sale shoppers rushing the external department store doors and then being ‘vomited’ out the inside of those department store doors and expanding into and throughout the store.

The more logical of the two scenarios is the latter. That’s because we know that any universe is inherently unstable. You just can’t have a perfectly still and static universe if for no other reason than gravity will pull all the flotsam and jetsam together, or in other words, a contracting universe is viable and likely.

The fly in that ointment is that the alternative, an ever expanding universe is also viable and likely if the oomph force that caused the initial expansion is stronger than gravity’s grabbing force.  

We can garner some insight as to whether the immediately pre-Big Bang era was hot or cold. If the Big Bang was an in-place explosion, well most explosions involve giving off heat, be it sodium placed in water (ka-boom), a firecracker (ka-boom), an atomic bomb (ka-boom) or a supernovae (ka-boom), these all appear to be exothermic reactions – they give off heat. However, an explosion in waiting is a much cooler state of affairs. While holding a firecracker in your hand won’t burn your hand, the same cannot be said if it goes bang while you’re holding it. So the pre-Big Bang era wasn’t exactly hot stuff.

If the Big Bang was the result of a previous universe contracting, like cars approaching an intersection from all four directions, well the very act of compression heats things up. So, the Big Bang was a hot (time in the old town tonight) event, and therefore just before the Big Bang was also pretty heated.

Well, maybe we can’t garner any insight after all since the era just before the Big Bang may have been hot or cold. But the Big Bang itself was a high temperature event no matter which way you slice and dice things which is good since that’s what you’d expect from the observational evidence.

What about entropy? Our Big Bang Universe started off in a state of high temperature, a state of high order, or in other words low entropy and has been going downhill (cooling off) ever since. That is, the Universe is becoming more disordered as it heads towards an inevitable heat death. A head death means that the entire Universe is now at the same temperature and no further cosmic evolution or change can happen. But if our Universe started off in a state of high order, then the pre-Big Bang phase must have been in a state of high order too. Well, high order would have been the order of the day in either of the two pre-Big Bang scenarios.    



Neil DeGrasse Tyson on UFOs: Some Comments

Sooner or later, nearly every astronomer, especially if they have a relatively high public profile, has got to face the UFO issue and expound upon whether there is any scientific credibility to the idea that some UFOs are bona-fide alien spacecraft. One such astronomer, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium, New York City, has indeed made his point of view known. He doesn’t deny the theoretical possibility, but that is about as far as the credibility goes. I take issue with some of his opinions as this essay details.

When it comes to the emotive subject of UFOs (as in alien spacecraft), scientists just don’t want to know or enter into the debate if it can be possibly be avoided, for the prime reason that those who make the UFO = alien spaceship equation fail to either put up or shut up. That’s ‘put up’ in terms of the sorts of evidence that scientists tend to have to ‘put up’ when they make claims. If they have to ‘put up’, they expect in turn that others will ‘put up’ evidence to them. The scientific consensus is that UFO = alien spaceship buffs haven’t done an adequate job in the ‘put up’ department. One such scientist with that point of view (POV) is the fairly well known astronomer, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. While overall reasonably correct in that POV, some of his arguments are flawed and lack credibility in my POV.

When it comes to evidence for this or that explanation for a UFO sighting, especially the UFO = alien spacecraft explanation, eyewitness testimony is suspect. Or so relates astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson via several YouTube clips relevant to his take on UFOs. But wait, there’s more!

Dr. Tyson quite correctly points out that the “U” in UFO stands for “unidentified” and that’s as far as anyone seeing, what to them is an Unidentified Flying Object, can expound upon. One should not jump to the conclusion that “U” equals alien spacecraft. No argument there. However, he also points out, an equally valid comment, is that we don’t like mysteries like things that are unidentified and so therefore we do tend to jump the gun and jump to unwarranted conclusions in order to identify the unidentified and maybe unidentifiable. No argument from me there either other than to point out that we leap to the conclusion of UFOs = alien spaceships in favour of some other explanation probably because there must be something suggestive of that possibility; there’s something in the observational date that points to alien ships and not to something else.

He notes that there exist natural phenomena and conditions which can befuddle someone not familiar with those phenomena. No argument on that observation either.

HUMAN PERCEPTION

But he goes slightly off the rails by suggesting the least likely form of bona-fide evidence is human perception or eyewitness testimony. Optical illusions are a case in point as he delights in pointing out. However, relative to manmade or designed optical illusions, there are not all that many natural ones, although there are some of course, like mirages or that ‘sinking’ ship as it passes beyond the visible horizon.

I get the impression from Dr. Tyson’s comments that eyewitness testimony has as much reliability as a $7 bill. Human perception is absolutely 100% fallible. Although eyewitness testimony is a cornerstone in legal proceedings, courtroom lawyers have a field day in discrediting eyewitness testimony. Experiments by psychologists prove overwhelmingly that any sudden and unexpected event witnessed by ten people will result in ten different versions of what happened, but not drastically so. I mean ten witnesses will differ on the height, weight and attire of the person in the unexpected happening, but they won’t differ on the fact that it was a human and not an elephant!

Humans are actually pretty good when it comes to the details, otherwise why would law enforcement officials ask you to point out the criminal in a police line-up or the news reporters question witnesses to some unusual news happening? To take just one of thousands of possible examples, you can easily tell your face from your parent’s faces and from the face of every other person you know (in person) or have frequently seen (like Dr. Tyson’s on YouTube). You know a new and different face when you see one. You can tell a human face from say a reconstructed one of Homo erectus. You can distinguish a primate face from a feline face from a canine face from a bovine face. You can tell apart the face of a penguin or an eagle from their ancient ancestor, the T-Rex. If you can’t tell apart a frog face from a crocodile face from a shark face from a spider’s face, there’s something seriously askew. Assuming there’s nothing askew; you can tell apart all these examples of faces despite the fact that they are all faces.  

Therefore, in your day-to-day life, 99.9% of what other people tell you they saw (i.e. – Joe Blow drinking down at the pub) you’ll believe them. Human perception is flawed, but it’s all you got for all practical purposes – despite zillions of smart-phone cameras around snapping anything and everything. People don’t tend to tell you they saw Joe Blow at the pub AND show you their smart-phone camera picture of Joe Blow at the pub since you obviously wouldn’t believe them without the pictorial backup. 

In any event, perception in humans usually tends to be more than adequate, say when driving a car or playing a game of baseball. Humans have an excellent innate ability to judge height, depth, colour, direction of sound, types of sounds, motion, velocity (speed plus direction), etc. We’d better have those skills if we are to survive day-to-day; week-to-week; month-to-month; etc. from birth through death.  

THE GAME OF TELEPHONE

Dr. Tyson makes much of the child’s game of ‘telephone’ and how that relates to evidence of how unreliable eyewitness (or ear-witness) testimony is. It’s that version of someone who told someone, who told someone, who told someone, who told someone, who told someone, etc. etc. That story that goes in ear number one ends up usually bearing little relation to what the last person in the chain relates what they were told. Cases where someone who told someone repeated many times over on down the line are indeed suspect, but that’s not usually the case with UFO sightings. ‘Telephone’ is actually pretty irrelevant to UFO reports since the chain is usually just a chain of one link between two individuals – the UFO witness relates firsthand their story to the UFO investigator. There’s no twenty-something someone who told someone links here. Direct first-person testimony is written down or otherwise recorded for posterity.

THE INEXPERIENCED LAYPERSON

Dr. Tyson makes the point that average Joe Blow citizen isn’t usually all that familiar with astronomical and meteorological and optical phenomena and thus sightings of lights in the sky are frequently misinterpreted – Venus becomes an alien spaceship. However, not all UFOs sighted are reports of dot points of lights in the sky. UFOs have been seen close up on the ground and often exhibit a substantial disc when seen in the sky. That’s why the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek (who was a pioneer in the scientific study of UFOs while also an astrophysicist like Dr. Tyson) came up with that category of UFO sightings called “close encounters” where misidentification of say a star for an alien spacecraft is unlikely since a star never exhibits a substantial 2-D or 3-D geometric shape.

ABDUCTIONS

Dr. Tyson also suggests (tongue-in-cheek?) that if you are abducted, you grab (steal) something off the alien’s shelf in order to back up your claim with something that can be put on the slab in a lab for independent testing. That’s flawed for several reasons. Assuming you’ve been abducted by aliens, you’ve got to think of it at the time under rather trying circumstances. That’s if you’re not naked on the slab being poked and prodded – you have no pockets available in which to squirrel something away, assuming there is anything in arm’s reach to squirrel away in any event. That’s also assuming you are not being watched. Even if you do nick off with something, elements and compounds tend to be uniform across the cosmos so an alien ashtray or knife could be made of the same stuff as a terrestrial ashtray or knife. Any alleged alien artefact would clearly have to be of such a nature as to rule out any terrestrial origin or a hoax. It’s a sensible suggestion but a way more likely bet is that any alleged UFO abductee would pick up alien micro-organisms which might be detectable and cultured as evidence.  

ALIEN PSYCHOLOGY

One obvious flaw in Dr. Tyson’s reasoning is that, according to Dr. Tyson, if UFOs are alien spacecraft, why should said aliens land in a farmer’s field as opposed to something more visible like touching down in Times Square (New York City). Well, aliens, by definition, are alien and will have alien motives; an alien psychology. We cannot determine before the fact how aliens should behave since we have no studies to hand on alien wetware, alien neurochemistry and alien motivations.

INEPT ALIENS: SHIT HAPPENS

Dr. Tyson also ridicules UFOs as alien spacecraft by noting the [Roswell] crash. How can advanced high-tech aliens navigate and travel across the galaxy then end up crash-landing? They must be pretty stupid inept aliens. Actually, it is in this case, an unusually inept example of reasoning by Dr. Tyson. Dr Tyson - shit happens! How many UFOs (if alien spacecraft) haven’t crashed? Nearly all would be an appropriate answer. And how many of our Mars-bound probes have coasted safely through the relative vastness of interplanetary space only to crash onto the Martian surface at the final moment.  Sometimes, albeit rarely, we have aircraft crashes. Most times aircraft don’t crash. If terrestrial shit happens, extraterrestrial shit happens. These are fallible aliens, not infallible deities.

In conclusion, Dr. Tyson’s various YouTube presentations are clearly his standard answer to the UFO question and his well rehearsed monolog on the subject. They were pure showmanship – witty, highly entertaining, but, alas scientifically barren. His presentations contributed nothing to furthering the coming to terms with the bona-fide UFO phenomena. As the saying goes, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”.

P.S. By the way, Dr. Tyson also made a big issue of why UFOs would need runway lights as in the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. I need remind people here that the movie was a science fiction film and not a documentary. Any fault in logic lies solely and squarely on the shoulders of those who made, produced and directed the movie.



Ancient Astronauts: Core Concepts

If one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced alien technologies have already done their boldly going exploring the galaxy thing, it stands to reason that at various times in our geological and historical past we would have received visitors from the stars. If one or more such occurrences happened in out historical past, there might be some suggestive evidence of same; and thus the concept of the ‘ancient astronaut’ would come to pass. The question is, is there such suggestive evidence?

INTRODUCTION: If there were only one line of evidence suggestive of ‘ancient astronauts’ then it could probably be easily dismissed. But when there are a half-dozen or more independent core concepts that point in the direction that at the very least ‘ancient astronauts’ is a plausible hypothesis, that’s another can of worms entirely and that’s what we have here.

IN THEORY: We can start off with arguments from theory like the Fermi Paradox which suggests that technologically advanced aliens (an extremely logical concept given the age and vastness of the cosmos) should have noted and logged the third rock out from the Sun many times over since the time it takes to explore the Milky Way Galaxy from stem to stern, even at one to ten percent the speed of light is but a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy. Then there’s the theoretical argument that if the modern day UFO phenomena is at last in part due to extraterrestrial intelligence, then it would be such an extraordinary coincidence that our generation should just happen to be THE generation so blessed with alien visitations. Of course if aliens were here in the distant past, then that extraordinary coincidence goes down the gurgler.

IN ART: Ancient humans could draw and sculpt as accurately as modern humans; therefore otherworldly looking images need to be taken at face value barring any evidence to the contrary.

IN ARCHITECTURE: There just would appear to be several structures that when dated are incompatible with the ancient technologies required to construct them. For example, there are ‘impossible’ architectural structures like the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek (Lebanon); Pumapunku within the Tiahuanaco/Tiwanaku complex (Bolivia); Nan Modol (Micronesia); and those Olmec heads (Mexico) with the added oddity that they appear African. (Note: I do not include the Egyptian pyramids here. There are some things humans can do.)

IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Cultural anthropological anomalies abound, like a) why the sudden emergence of human culture around 50,000 years ago and settlements around 10,000 years ago in unconnected geographical regions; b) why did some bands of humans choose to live in environments (like the tundra) totally unsuitable to their home environment of equatorial Africa.

IN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Physical anthropological anomalies also abound, like a) why did all our hominid ancestors go extinct (unless you want to count the as yet unconfirmed existence of Bigfoot, the Yeti, etc. as ancestors); b) why are humans (and their immediate ancestors) the only species to have a bipedal gait without benefit of a balancing tail; c) how can you get the ethnic or racial diversification of the human species in just 50,000 years; e) how is it that humans alone have evolved massive brain complexity, skyrocketing IQ, and the ability to have abstract thoughts and concepts; d) how is it that humans lost their natural fur only to then have to put on artificial fur (clothes). Might these all be explainable more by artificial selection (genetic engineering) than natural selection (a concept possibly reinforced today given the emphasis on genetics and breeding in UFO alien abduction cases).  

IN MYTHOLOGY: When mythologies of every society and culture share common (but unworldly) concepts then one has to sit up and take some notice that something extraordinary is going on. For example: a) animal-animal and animal-human hybrids; b) sky gods; c) dragons; d) gifts, like agriculture presented to humans from the gods; e) shape-shifters and shape-shifting; f) wars in heaven; g) an extraordinary focus of just a relatively few astronomical objects like Sirius, the Pleiades, and Orion; h) gods who left promising to return one day, much like Jesus, and much like Lono, a top god of the Hawaiian Islands who descended to Earth via a rainbow, was alas another case of mistaken identity since the natives originally mistook Captain James Cook for the return of their Lono. 

IN ABSTRACTIONS: Those rather strange concepts that humans have come up with like extremely long cycles of creation and destruction or for that matter the idea of creation itself which is anything but obvious from day-to-day observations and experience. Humans seem to have had ingrained some ideas that are rather unlikely to have developed naturally or which have or had no real relevance to their daily grind. For an example of the latter, the Mayans had this thing about tracking the cycle of the planet Venus from where it appeared in the sky until when it reappeared in the exact same spot. It must have been an overly academic exercise since it had no day-to-day relevance to say planting or harvesting crops. What was the real point of doing this? Well I gather it was an early form of ‘practical’ astrology, and important decisions (like going to war) were based on all of this. Reading tea leaves or chicken entrails, the throw of a dice, or even having their high priest/shaman smoke some magic mushrooms for inspiration/guidance  would have been far easier, so we see the extraordinary importance here of a celestial object. In an ‘ancient astronaut’ context, why Venus? Now Venus is certainly not a planet one would associate anymore as home to intelligent life (micro-organisms in the upper atmosphere could be another story). But there was that ‘satellite’ of Venus, called Neith, noted and logged numerous times by astronomers that just disappeared! Today, Venus does not have any natural satellite(s).  

IN ASTROARCHAEOLOGY (ASTROLOGY): Ancient cultures around the world engaged in astronomical observations that had no relevance to their immediate survival needs* – you don’t need a Stonehenge in order to do agriculture. Whether it is ten, eight, six, four, or even two thousand years ago, your basic priorities were food, shelter, sex, family, community and defence. The only real celestial object of any relevance to the above is the Sun – warmth, light and food (via photosynthesis, though that wouldn’t have been an obvious connection). Why the emphasis by our ancient ancestors on observational astronomy (studied today as the discipline of astroarchaeology), unless of course the sky and celestial objects therein had some extra special meaning? That’s sort of like to what we would call today astrology. 

The most obvious reason for intense sky-watching is to chart the ever changing seasons, of obvious importance to any culture dependent on agriculture and hunting. Except - you don’t really need celestial alignments to tell you when to plant your crops or go fishing. Mother Nature’s own local signals should easily clue you and give you all the signs you need, like when the trees start putting forth leaves; flowers start to appear; or when a particular migrating bird species reappears in the sky; or when you see the fish. And you certainly don’t need celestial cycles to tell you when to harvest your produce or go hunting. An apple that’s ready for eating is pretty obvious. A herd of livestock in the distance is pretty obvious too, only of course by ten thousand years ago one didn’t have to rely on the hit-or-miss appearance of game animals as domestic animal husbandry had already come to pass (there were chicken farmers and cow farmers and sheep farmers and pig farmers, etc).

Another related oddity is while everyone and their great grandma put emphasis on the solstices – the longest and shortest periods of daylight of the year – the equinoxes are far more significant. On the shortest day of the year (winter solstice) you can’t start immediate planting even though the days are now going to get longer. It might be yea, spring’s coming – eventually in three or four month’s time. On the longest day of the year (summer solstice) you can’t yet harvest though the days are now going to get shorter. It might be oh dear; winter’s now coming – eventually in three or four month’s time. Eventually is hardly a reason to pay special attention to the solstices. However, it is close to planting time at the spring equinox; close to harvest time at the autumn equinox.

Another oft given reason for sky-watching is to predict eclipses.  How many lunar eclipses do you need to predict and see before you realise they are of no terrestrial consequence (and the waxing and waning of the Moon gets a bit boring too after several cycles)? And you are petty much unlikely to see even one solar eclipse in your lifetime, even if you can predict them, so there’s hardly any need to predict them. If by chance you do just happen to be in the right spot at the right time under the right conditions, well you might in you astronomical ignorance, experience up to seven minutes of terror, but you’ll survive none the worse for wear. Eclipses are non-events within the broad context of your day-to-day living and survival.  

But you might need to chart celestial alignments or cycles to honour your ‘gods’ that are identified with such celestial objects for whatever reason. That just might be what turned ancient humans on to intently charting what are just a relatively few points of light in the sky (comets, the Sun and the Moon I can understand as being interesting in their own right, but I don’t care how many Stonehenge equivalents are constructed; they can’t be used to predict comets).

Speaking of honouring the ‘gods’ it’s one thing to come up with all manner of tall tales as to how the constellations came to be, it’s quite another thing to position your structures to mirror the pattern of those constellations. That’s elevating their importance to the realm of honouring the ‘gods’ identified with them.

In fact the entire concept of astrology (using celestial alignments to predict the future) shows some extraordinary and extensive fascination with celestial bodies that not only make no practical sense but are certainly not consistent and therefore offer up no practical results. I mean take twins – same birthday and birth-year, more likely as not, different fates. There are some 400,000 people born every day. Will they all share the same fate?

IN WTF IS GOING ON HERE: Even some of the ancients wondered how some of their own constructions came to be. The ancient Greeks attributed some of their massive walls and fortifications to the Cyclopes, calling them Cyclopean Walls. The Eastern Islanders didn’t move their massive stone statues from quarries to where they are found today – the statues walked all by themselves. Other cultures attributed the movement of massive stone blocks as having been carried on the backs of dragons. When humans don’t take cedit for allegedly human achievements, something is screwy somewhere, like human mythologies crediting the gods for giving their culture the gift of agriculture. At least the ancient Egyptians took credit for the pyramids.

*Navigating the oceans way outside of the sight of land using the positions of the Sun, Moon and stars would become important but not until way into the Current Era (CE), probably starting with the peopling of the Pacific Region with corners of Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand. European maritime exploration and discovery followed. But in the Before the Current Era (BCE) celestial navigation was of minor importance in those sailing-on-the-waters-but-in-sight-of-land (wherever possible) days.