Show Me The Evidence!

You will find many claims in science and religious texts that this, that and the next thing is 100% factual and true. Usually, in science at least, those claims are backed up by hard evidence, peer reviewed, and published for the entire world to read and examine. However, that’s not always the case. Claims are sometimes made that such-and-such is factual, but there’s no supporting evidence, which a) wouldn’t be so bad if that were admitted, and b) if those failing to give their evidence didn’t demand hardcore evidence from others for their claims.  

Scientists and science buffs have a near religious mantra when it comes to the claims of what they term the pseudo-sciences, pseudo-scientists and pseudoscience buffs. That mantra is “show me the evidence”; Show Me The Evidence”; “SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE” - And rightly so. In general it is a good step in the advancement of knowledge to require some minimum amount of evidence when someone making a claim that has a good probability of being wrong.

But there’s a whole pot-full of scientific claims (and for completeness, religious claims) that’s given as unquestioned ‘fact’ albeit ‘fact’ with no supporting evidence at hand. These are ‘facts’ taken on pure faith. These ‘facts’ are presented by the faithful, in whatever discipline(s) their ‘facts’ reside in or belong to, as, well ‘facts’ yet offer up nothing in the way of evidence supporting these ‘facts’.

THE DOUBLE STANDARDS

So, it is a double standard to demand evidence from someone else’s bailiwick (say from so-called pseudoscience or the paranormal) while not presenting any evidence for your bailiwick (the sciences; religion).   

In other words, there’s often a double standard, probably linked to one half of the equation having an entry ticket to the ivory tower and the other half of the equation excluded from the ivory tower. Scientists (ivory tower resident) preaching to the layman (not ivory tower resident), usually present less evidence for their convictions than they demand in turn from the layman for their convictions or worldviews.

For example:

The Catholic Church probably demands some quite definitive and sufficient evidence of a miracle as claimed by Joe Faithful, but expects Joe Faithful to swallow hook, line and sinker stories (mythological tall tales IMHO) of a virgin birth, a deity who walks on water, and that Christmas is the actual birthday of Jesus.

It’s no great secret that some scientists believe in the reality of a creator God. Yet while they will accept God-the-Creator based on zero evidence, they will demand solid slab-in-the-lab physical evidence from their peers (not to mention the great unwashed layperson) for their bailiwicks and worldviews.

Biologists confront Bigfoot: Show us the evidence!

-         Eyewitness sightings, even multiple eyewitness sightings – not evidence.

-         Physical traces, like dung or hair – not evidence.

-         Films and photographs – not evidence.

-         Plaster casts of footprints – not evidence.

-         Required: One corpse, skeleton or live specimen – now that’s evidence.

Physical scientists confront UFOs: Show us the evidence!

-         Eyewitness sightings, even multiple eyewitness sightings – not evidence.

-         Radar ‘sightings’ – not evidence.

-         Eyewitness sightings backed up by radar ‘sightings’ – not evidence.

-         Films and photographs – not evidence.

-         Professional expertise and witness quality – not evidence (unless it turns a UFO into an IFO).

-         Ground traces – not evidence.

-         Physiological effects – not evidence.

-         Electromagnetic effects – not evidence.

-         Required: Stuff to place on the slab in the lab for analysis, or even a ‘Gray’ corpse – now that’s evidence.

Alas, that sort of tin bucket definition of what is, and is not, evidence wouldn’t hold any legal or courtroom water being so full of holes. But, then again the courtroom of science isn’t the courtroom of Perry Mason.

Okay, let’s flip over the coin and see what sorts of evidence some scientists and theologians present for their established, traditional and acceptable bailiwicks. 

COSMOLOGY: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- For a Multiverse as opposed to a Universe. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Big Bang actually created space as opposed to an event that happened in preexisting space. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Big Bang actually created time as opposed to an event that happened in preexisting time. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Big Bang actually created matter and energy out of absolutely nothing as opposed to an event that happened within the confines of preexisting matter and energy. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That space itself is expanding as opposed to the contents within space expanding through that existing space. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the singularity at the heart of a Black Hole is actually infinite in density and occupies zero volume as opposed to just being very dense and something that occupies a small but finite volume. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

PHYSICS: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That there really has to be a Theory of Everything (i.e. – quantum gravity) as opposed to there being two separate and apart sets of ‘software’ running the cosmos. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the elementary particles are actually tiny vibrating strings as opposed to tiny little ‘billiard balls’. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That there are an additional six spatial dimensions as opposed to the standard three (length, width and height). There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That there is such a thing as Supersymmetry (SUSY) as opposed to just normal symmetry. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the physical constants are indeed constant throughout all of time and space and under all conditions as opposed to really being variable depending. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That mathematics exists independently of the human (or biological) mind as opposed to mathematics existing solely within the confines of intelligence. In other words, in a Universe before life evolved, did mathematics exist? If so, show me the evidence. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That we exist in a really real reality as opposed to existence as virtual reality. That is, that our Universe actually exists and isn’t just a simulated universe – wallpaper to our ‘reality’. There is no more evidence for the former than there is relative to the latter.

BIOLOGY: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) actually exists to give justification to all the time, effort and cost of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) to pin down ETI’s celestial coordinates as opposed to humanity being the be-all-and-end-all in terms of advanced technological civilizations. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That human beings are the evolutionary product of natural selection as opposed to artificial selection, in either case from primate ancestors. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

ANOMALIES: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That all ‘crop circles’ are hoaxes and are the sole work of the human being as opposed to some have a more paranormal explanation. There is no evidence that the former is the case relative to the latter.

RELIGION: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That a monotheistic deity (i.e. – God) actually exists as opposed to there being no deity at all. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Bible is the literal word of that God as opposed to the recorded or written word of the human imagination. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That Heaven and Hell are actually geographical places as opposed to having existence solely within the human imagination. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That there really was a universal flood as opposed to accounts in mythology from around the world of separate and apart major flooding events. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the events (for example) in Exodus actually happened as opposed to being pure mythological fiction. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

Oh dear!

Dare I say it, “extraordinary claims [and most of the above are] require extraordinary evidence”. Heck, even a little bit would be an improvement. But there are many examples where those who demand the proof of other’s pudding can’t produce any pudding when it’s their turn to cough up.

It’s unfortunate, but double standards rule.



Those Oops In Physics: Part Two

Some physical scientists – professional skeptics – are quick to jump on what in their opinion are the flaws inherent in what they term pseudoscience or the paranormal. Perhaps they should gaze at their own navels first before criticizing others, as the following hopefully points out.

Continued now from yesterday’s blog…

Oops in Causality     

Causality (the future is contained in the past), cause-and-effect, has to operate across the board if Mother Nature is to be predictable, and prediction and predictability is at the heart of what makes science, science. Yet, some scientists insist some phenomena have no causality. Lack of causality implies that what happens is the result of some sort of ‘free will’ (or variations thereof) which is absurd. That would imply that an electron or a radioactive uranium atom has an independent ‘mind’ of its own. Lack of causality alone in IMHO is nearly sufficient evidence to justify the hypothesis that we are ‘living’ in a simulated (virtual reality) universe.

# Big Bang: Apparently the creation of the Universe (the Big Bang event) happened for absolutely no rhyme or reason at all. That means there was no first cause attributable for the effect that was Big Bang event. Does that strike anyone besides me as odd, as in absolutely impossible?

# Radioactivity: That two identical radioactive (unstable) nuclei will decay (go poof) at different times despite both being in the same place, in the same environment, at the same time. That’s therefore because of the ‘fact’ that an unstable radioactive nucleus will go poof for absolutely no reason at all. If there is no causality behind radioactive decay, then obviously any two identical radioactive nuclei can go poof in a totally random way. But random events shouldn’t result in a precise mathematical relationship, which is what is claimed by observation – the concept of the half-life.

# Electrons: That an electron will drop to a lower energy level by emitting a photon for absolutely no reason at all is strange given that an electron will jump to a higher energy level by absorbing a photon’s worth of energy. There’s no causality in the downward direction; there’s causality in the upwards direction. That’s nuts!  

# Pane in the Glass:  You have one light source. You have one normal everyday clear and clean pane of glass. Some of the light (photons) from the light source will pass clear through the clear glass, but some of those identical photons will reflect off the clear surface of the pane of glass. One set of circumstances yields two differing but simultaneous outcomes. That violates cause-and-effect. That’s crazy, but it happens as you can verify for yourself. 

Oops in Probability     

# Electric Charge: The electric charge of the proton is exactly equal and opposite to the electric charge on the electron, despite the proton being nearly 2000 times more massive. There’s no set in concrete theoretical reason why this should be so.

# Fine Tuning: In fact, you tend to a violation in probability when it comes to numerous examples of fine-tuning – the fine-tuning that allows the Universe to be bio-friendly. For example, if the force of gravity were slightly stronger, the Universe would have re-collapsed into a Big Crunch rather quickly, and thus there would have been no time allowed for life to form and evolve. If the force of gravity had been slightly weaker stars and galaxies wouldn’t have formed. No stars and galaxies: thus, again, a lifeless Universe.       

Oops in Theory vs. Observation

# Matter & Antimatter: Theory predicts there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the Universe. Observation shows that there is a massive predominance of matter over antimatter. Something is screwy somewhere.

# Vacuum Energy: Theory suggests a certain value for the vacuum energy. Experimental observation shows quite a different value for the vacuum energy. In fact, the difference between theory and observation is 120 orders of magnitude. Something is definitely screwy somewhere.

# Protons: Some theories suggest that like an isolated neutron, the proton is, over the long term, unstable and should go poof and decay. Alas, experiments, and there have been many of them, have failed to detect even one proton decay event. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

General Oops: WTF?

# Inflation: In addition to the above, the Big Bang event as a standalone event raised lots of problems, collectively known as the flatness problem; the horizon problem; and the monopole problem. To resolve those issues, a secondary theoretical and rather ad hoc expansion event, termed Inflation, was proposed. Alas, it lacks any shred of actual independent and observational evidence (apart from dealing with the Big Bang issues as noted), and has its own set of problems, not least of which there are many variations on the Inflation theme; how and why Inflation started and how and why Inflation stopped. If the Big Bang were really a comprehensive theory of everything with respect to the origin and early evolution of the cosmos, there wouldn’t be a horizon, flatness and monopole problem requiring an ad hoc tack-on.

# Dark Matter: There apparently isn’t enough mass contained within our galaxy (and others as well) to account for its structure and how it stays together as a collective conglomerate of stars, planets, interstellar dust, etc. So, with a wave of a magic physics wand, physicists and astrophysicists invent out of thin air an ad hoc explanation – all that missing matter must be “dark matter”, matter which we can’t see, can’t detect, and haven’t a real clue as to what it might be

# Cosmic Rays: Cosmic rays tend to be very high energy particles like electrons and positrons, protons and antiprotons, alpha particles and other atomic nuclei that originate from beyond our solar system. After that, things get iffy. Their actual point(s) of origin are anywhere and everywhere and to be honest their origin(s) are rather mysterious. You name the astronomical object and someone will have tagged it as a, if not the, source of cosmic rays. Among the candidates are supernovae, active galactic nuclei, magnetic variable stars, quasars, gamma-ray bursts, even the Crab Nebula (a pulsar) and the radio galaxy Centaurus A. It all seems to be a case of picking a number out of a hat or throwing a dart at a dartboard labeled with astronomical structures. Your guess (and that’s what they are) is as good as mine.

# The Fine Structure Constant: The mysticism over the number 137 (i.e. - actually 1/137) – the Fine Structure Constant – has the same sort of cultist fascination and impact on some physicists and the physics community in general as the dimensions and mathematical relationships and their significance inherent in the Great Pyramid (at Giza, Cairo) has to occultists, numerologists, mystics and pseudo-archaeologists. Then there’s all that endless numerological speculations on and significance of 666 to Christians. A rose by any other name applies here.

Conclusions

As we have seen, there are many ghosts that haunt the academic corridors of academic physics. Physicists need to exorcise those demonic spirits first, before trying to inflict their exorcisms on the rest of the irrational world.

* What can escape from a Black Hole is called Hawking radiation, but in that massive a Black Hole, the one required for a pinhead sized start to the cosmos, that radiation leakage would take a very, very, very long time to ooze out; hardly what you’d call an explosive event.

     

Some Interesting Reading

Baggott, Jim; Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth; Pegasus Books, New York; 2013:

Jones, Sheilla & Unzicker, Alexander; Bankrupting Physics: How Today’s Top Scientists Are Gambling Away Their Credibility; Palgrave Macmillan, New York; 2013:

Smolin, Lee; The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science and What Comes Next; Penguin Books, London; 2006:

Woit, Peter; Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics; Vintage Books, London; 2007:



Those Oops In Physics: Part One

Some physical scientists – professional skeptics – are quick to jump on what in their opinion are the flaws inherent in what they term pseudoscience or the paranormal. Perhaps they should gaze at their own navels first before criticizing others, as the following hopefully points out.

Some people for example claim that some UFOs are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft and get bucketed for their point of view. No evidence; no proof is the mantra of the skeptic – usually a physical scientist. However, IMHO, some physicists (or other equivalent physical scientists like astronomers) make even greater outrageous claims without a shred of evidence, far less proof. The attitude of some scientists seems to be along the lines of ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

Physics tends to be a subject that lots of ordinary folks shy away from, probably because physics tends to rely heavily on mathematics, and usually highly complex mathematics at that, advanced mathematics that aren’t taught until well into third or fourth year at university and into gradate school. However, even when modern physics is explained minus the mathematics, in what I guess would be termed layman’s language, physics turns out to be really, really weird. The mathematics tends to hide the weirdness from the uninitiated (since everything is double Dutch to them) but it’s there all the same. These are some of the examples I’ve come up against – a wall that one tends to bang one’s head against in frustration. The frustration tending to be in the first instance, what’s wrong with me that I can’t do an end run around the (only apparent) weirdness? Once one accepts that it’s not you, but the physics that’s weird, well that doesn’t eliminate the frustration or the feeling that one still needs to bang their heads against the wall! Of course maybe it’s not the physics that are weird but the physicists. It wouldn’t be the first time – but that’s another story.

Oops in Common Sense - Theory

Now I am aware that common sense is not an acceptable criterion in science, but there is a limit to what pills I will swallow. With the exceptions of the speed of light and neutron decay (see below under observations) there is no observational or experimental evidence for any of this theoretical nonsense.

# Point Particles: Particle physicists often use the term “point particles” when talking about the fundamental or elementary particles that make up matter, like electrons, etc. However, a point particle has zero dimensions, and as such takes up zero volume. The upshot is, if particles have no dimensionality, then matter cannot exist. Matter is made up of these elementary particles, and if each particle has zero volume, well zero plus zero plus zero equals zero. All of matter would have zero volume and that’s clearly not the case. Alternatively, point particles couldn’t smash together in say the Large Hadron Collider or in any other particle accelerator.

# Dimensions: That there are up to ten spatial dimensions (not three) if Superstring Theory or M-Theory is correct. In the words of the late physicist Wolfgang Pauli, that’s “not even wrong”. 

# Big Bang: That the first nanosecond of creation crammed the contents of our observable Universe into a volume less than a pinhead. In any event, if you could squeeze the contents of the observable Universe down into a pinhead’s volume, you’d end up with the Mother of all Black Holes from which nothing* would escape. Therefore there would be no Big Bang and thus our Universe would not have been brought into existence. 

# Big Bang: That the Big Bang event created time itself. This can’t even be done in theory, far less in actual practice. Pull the left leg!

# Big Bang: That the Big Bang event created space itself. This too is beyond the theoretical limits of modern physics and certainly cannot be duplicated in the laboratory. Now pull the right leg!

# Theory of Everything (TOE): There are three quantum (micro) forces that rule the roost – the strong nuclear; the weak nuclear; and electromagnetism. All three have been unified into the Standard Model of particle physics that’s called the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). There is also one force that rules that rules supreme in the classical (macro) world – gravity. Since the micro and the macro are both part of the larger picture – Mother Nature – it should seem obvious that gravity can and should be unified with the Standard Model to provide what’s known in the trade as a Theory of Everything (TOE). Alas, despite the best minds working on unification over many, many decades, nothing of substance has surfaced. The realm of the micro and the realm of the macro are incompatible, like two different sets of software that are separate and apart but collectively run the cosmos. That makes no sense. It should be relatively easy to unify all four forces.    

# Gravity: Centuries after Isaac Newton, the puzzlement that is gravity has still not been completely solved. There appears to be two competing theories. One, gravity is geometry, otherwise wrapped around Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Mass tells space how to curve; curved space tells mass how to move. Two, gravity is a force somewhat akin to electromagnetism in that it has an associated particle that conveys the gravitational force, like a photon conveys the electromagnetic force. That hypothetical or theoretical particle is termed the graviton, and remains to date undetected. You’d think by now the issue would have been settled. 

# Observation/Measurement: That the lack of observation or of measurement (same difference) has a bearing on the reality of what’s not being observed or not being measured is absurd. That’s like saying the Moon doesn’t exist, or may or may not exist, or exists and yet doesn’t exist at the same time, if nobody is looking at it. In any event, to but the worms back into that can, during the early history of our Universe, there were no observers (i.e. – no life forms of any kind) and the cosmos got along just hunky-dory. The Universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass about observers. Things either are, or they are not.

# Electrons: When an electron rises or falls from one energy level to another, when in-between the electron is in limbo, in Never-Never-Land, in The Twilight Zone, in another dimension for all we know. It just can’t be anywhere that’s locatable in-between for if it was – in-between that is – it would possess an in-between energy state that it is not allowed to have.

Oops in Common Sense - Observations  

# Velocities: Velocities maybe added or subtracted. If you are on a treadmill that’s moving left at 5 MPH, and you’re on it walking to the right at 5 MPH, to an external observer you are waking yet standing still. Now the exception to that universal rule is the speed of light. The velocity of light is a constant to an external observer no matter what. Why that should be no one knows, but it is so. However, my take on this can of worms which as a consequence require both time and length to be flexible, is one should always be a bit suspect when it comes to the lone ranger, the exception to the rule. There’s something weird afoot here.  

# Neutron Decay: One isolated neutron will decay in roughly 15 minutes into an electron, a proton and an antineutrino. That’s probably why a hydrogen atom hasn’t a neutron you’d think; there’s only one electron around a nucleus of one proton. Unfortunately heavy hydrogen is heavy because it has one neutron, so that blows that idea. Apparently therefore, any neutron inside or part of a nucleus is stable. So obviously two or more neutrons together (i.e. – part of a nucleus or within a neutron star) will not decay. Why one isolated neutron is unstable, yet a neutron or neutrons (two or more together) as part of a nucleus or as a neutron star are stable, is to me a mystery that defies logic. I mean, by analogy, an isolated radioactive (unstable) nucleus behaves no differently than its clone or twin that is cheek-by-jowl with others of its kind. 

Oops in Conservation Laws – The Free Lunch     

# Dark Energy: Apparently the density of Dark Energy remains constant while the volume of the Universe expands. That’s something from nothing. That’s a free lunch.

# Big Bang: First there was nothing; then there was something. That means the Big Bang event created both matter and energy out of less than thin air. That’s also a free lunch.

To be continued…



Scientists’ Doublespeak: Part Two

Even the very best of scientists can exhibit some sort of scientific sleight-of-hand and bamboozle their lay audience with absurdities. Actually, this approach often is just taking a lazy way out. Explaining things in sufficient detail, to avoid the absurdities, would either be too involved or take up too much text. At least I hope that’s the case. If some scientists actually believe what they write, then something is rotten in academia.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Dark Energy: Something from Nothing: This is really an extension of both the above and below in that apparently space is constantly being created as you read this and that explains why the Universe is expanding: more on that below. But the bit of creation that keeps on keeping on is with respect to Dark Energy which actually provides the oomph that drives bits of space further apart thus making available more volume to have additional space be created in. Since Dark Energy is a property of space, it all becomes very circular. Dark Energy creates more space and more space creates more Dark Energy and it’s all a sort of positive never ending feedback mechanism. It’s also something from nothing and you cannot create energy out of nothing. Wouldn’t it be great if the energy you use – gasoline, electricity, etc. – was available for free since you could create an endless supply of it out of nothing? Dark Energy is a free lunch – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Cosmology and the Expansion of Space: We are all aware, at least since the early 20^th Century, that our Universe is expanding in volume. That’s the result of a rather messy trilogy of oomph events. The initial Big Bang explosion; a secondary extremely sudden and short-lived burst of ‘inflation’ that transpired almost immediately after the Big Bang; and finally a mysterious force called Dark Energy (named but not explained) that keeps shoving the already expanding Universe to ever greater and greater velocities. In other words, our Universe is not only expanding but the expansion rate is accelerating. Okay, that’s pretty much based on observational evidence. But that still leaves two scenarios. Following on from the above “keep it simple, stupid” rule, the obvious scenario is that all of the stuff of the Universe is expanding through existing and pre-existing space and time. However, standard model cosmologists, in keeping with their “something from nothing” rule, suggest that space itself is expanding; space itself is constantly being created (out of nothing), and thus space itself is causing the stuff of the Universe to spread farther and farther apart, the bits and pieces being dragged apart kicking and screaming somehow glued to their particular patch of space like dots painted or glued on the surface of a balloon that’s being inflated. Again, no cookbook is on offer that gives a recipe for expanding space or how you too at home can expand your space or create more space in which to store your knick-knacks. That space is currently being created out of nothing – that’s an extraordinary claim!

The Atomic Structure of Space-Time (Planck scales: lengths, volumes, etc.): By the very act of suggesting that space and time or space-time has a structure, one is suggesting that space and time are things, and like all things, at extremely tiny scales are subject to the laws, principles and relationships of quantum physics. In other words, space and time (like matter and energy) come in quanta – indivisible discrete units. It is proposed that these fundamental units of space and time or space-time are Planck units which they suggest are the shortest possible length (hence area hence volume) you can have; and a Planck length of time is the shortest measure of time that can exist. Now you will certainly find reference to these Planck units in the scientific literature. That’s not in question. What is in question is the interpretation. It is my understanding that Planck units are the smallest units possible where one can discuss meaningful events or happenings. There comes a time where a volume is too small for any meaningful physics to happen therein. There comes a point where a length of time is too brief for any meaningful event to happen within that time frame. That doesn’t mean that one can’t further divide a Planck unit into smaller and smaller segments unto infinity. It just isn’t meaningful to deal with such smaller units since nothing of significance can happen within them. So, space and time are not things. They can be subdivided indefinitely until the cows come home. There just is however a threshold value below which it’s not overly meaningful to discuss happenings there. If something meaningful is an elephant, it’s not meaningful to talk about an elephant inside a shoebox, though clearly shoebox volumes exist. If it takes a baseball one second to reach home plate from the pitcher’s mound, and it takes the batter say one-tenth of a second to react, then it is not meaningful for any discussion of that scenario to focus on billionths of a second time frames, though a billionth of a second is a legit division of time. That space and time can be constructed or formed out of discrete space or time quanta units – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Black Holes: Crossing the Event Horizon: For some inexplicable reason, I’ve noted several times some scientific author suggest that an external observer (call him Clive) will note that someone (call her Jane) about to crossover a Black Hole’s event horizon, will not only be travelling slower and slower by Clive’s clock as Jane approaches that event horizon, but in fact at contact with the event horizon, again as recorded by Clive, time will have stopped for Jane. In other words, Clive will never witness Jane’s crossover from outside the Black Hole to inside the Black Hole. Jane will appear to be frozen in time at the event horizon, yet as far as Jane is concerned, everything is normal in terms of time flowing at one second per second.

Now that’s a major paradox. Jane can’t be crossing the event horizon at one second per second while at the same time being frozen in time at the time of crossing according to Clive – the external observer. Of course the paradox is bullshit. To an external observer, Clive, time only comes to a screeching halt for someone like Jane, external to them, if they witness Jane travelling at the speed of light. That’s a physical impossibility. There’s no reason to believe that someone like Jane can be crossing the event horizon at light speed. There’s no absolute requirement that Jane is in fact crossing the event horizon at the speed of light. So, in actual reality, our observer Clive will see someone, anyone, including Jane, cross the event horizon, albeit at a slower rate than Jane herself, because Jane is travelling and doing the event horizon cross-over at less than light speed. That time stands still at the Black Hole’s event horizon – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Conclusions: Scientists are extremely fond of invoking the mantra that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Unfortunately, I’m damned if I find any evidence, far less any extraordinary evidence, for the above statements or alleged truisms. The only way I know of that could give you something for nothing, or disregard causality with reckless abandon, would be if we were all products of a virtual reality, just existing in a software-generated simulated universe where anything goes. But that too is an extraordinary claim!

Scientists’ Doublespeak: Part One

Even the very best of scientists can exhibit some sort of scientific sleight-of-hand and bamboozle their lay audience with absurdities. Actually, this approach often is just taking a lazy way out. Explaining things in sufficient detail, to avoid the absurdities, would either be too involved or take up too much text. At least I hope that’s the case. If some scientists actually believe what they write, then something is rotten in academia.

You know there are really times I think some physical scientists spend way to much time wrapped up in their own tiny little academic world, embracing highly intricate mathematical equations, think these formula have some actual connection with reality, interacting with likeminded colleagues, attending conferences of the likeminded – preachers preaching to the converted, and writing texts that contain, well, commonsense absurdities. There are times when perhaps they should just stand back, try to view the entire forest, instead of focusing on just one tiny leaf. Or, if they can’t do that, at least proofread some of the bovine fertilizer they write, especially for the layperson, and somehow come to terms with what they postulate is so absurd, that they end up being laughed at, not only to the detriment of themselves, but of the science they represent and in fact the downgrading of public opinion in science and scientists in general.

For example, these are common points of view I’ve read again and again, and most involve either zero or infinity. I’m not talking here by the way about colleagues having discussions over alternative cosmologies; thinking above quantum gravity; speculations on String Theory; theorizing over the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, ideas surrounding the likelihood of extraterrestrial life; mulling over if we are really virtual reality; ramblings off the top of the head about the possibilities of time travel; “what if” statements about Dark Matter or Dark Energy. Should some scientists wish to ponder over how many angels can squat on the head of a thumbtack, that’s okay too as far as I’m concerned. But I take issue with “and that’s the way it is” nonsense statements. Truisms - truisms that are nonsense. Extraordinary claims that are nonsense.

Particle Physics: Elementary particles are point particles that have zero dimensionality hence zero volume. Now if that were really the case, one couldn’t have particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider that collide, well say protons together. You have to have some sort of dimensionality bulk if you are going to slam into something else – which must have bulk. Further, you are composed of those dimensionless (zero) point particles. In basic maths, zero plus zero plus zero plus zero (extend this millions of times on) equals zero. If all the stuff that makes you up is dimensionless, then you are dimensionless, you have no height, no front-back length, no left-right width, therefore no volume, which if true, ruins your breakfast and your sex life! Another point overlooked is that one of the fundamental properties of particles is spin – angular momentum. Now it has to be obvious to even Blind Freddy that something cannot spin unless it is spinning around a centre (axis of rotation – that’s normally the up-down dimension) and through the left-right and front-back dimensions – like a spinning ice skater. So, if something spins, it has to have a spatial extension, like a planet or a bicycle wheel or a baseball. That an elementary particle has zero volume – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Radioactivity’s Lack of Causality: If there is one thing that you absolutely rely on every day in every way it is causality. If A happens; B happens. If B happens; C happens. Everything happens because something previously happened. Ah, but take radioactivity. A pair of unstable radioactive atoms sits side-by-side. After say one hour, one decays; the other doesn’t, yet their environmental surroundings are the same; absolutely identical. What caused one to go poof but not the other? Who knows? All scientists say is that there was no causality involved. Personally, I think such a statement resides in fairy-dairy land along with the person who uttered it. Einstein summed it up best when he suggested that God does not play dice with the Universe. If one atom when poof and the other didn’t, well IMHO there was a reason for that. There was a cause why one did and one didn’t.  Invoking the absence of cause-and-effect in a physical happening – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Cosmological Singularities: Infinite density has been the state of affairs often attributed to the state of the singularity, an entity which exists in two places. Firstly, a singularity is postulated at the time of the Big Bang event. Secondly, you’ll find the term singularity attributed to the inside of a Black Hole. So what’s this all about? If you cram a lot of mass into a tiny volume, you’ll get a singularity. The Big Bang event contained all the mass there is in our Universe, and because the Universe is expanding, one can run the film backwards to the beginning, and that’s postulated to end up as a rather tiny volume – I say theoretically postulated since it’s theoretically impossible to see what happened until roughly 300,000 years after the Big Bang actually happened. Okay, so we have a Big Bang singularity. The Black Hole singularity is straightforward – a Black Hole by definition contains enough mass, therefore enough gravity, to prevent even light from escaping its grasp. Now that’s a lot of mass. Also, a Black Hole is a relatively small object as astronomical objects go. So, that combination of lots of mass in a small volume arises again. Now mass and associated gravity are within the realm of General Relativity. Tiny volumes are the realm of Quantum Mechanics. The fly in the ointment is that the equations of General Relativity aren’t compatible with the equations of Quantum Mechanics. Physics breaks down when it comes to describing a singularity. Lazy physicists just take the easy option and say that as more and more mass is squeezed into smaller and smaller volumes the density rises and rises until it hits infinity! Lazy physicists fail to engage their wetware and come to terms with what an absurd phrase ‘infinite density’ is. Density is mass per volume. To have infinite density you’d need either infinite mass, and that’s nonsense since the mass inside a Black Hole is hardly infinite nor is the mass of our entire Universe infinite, or zero volume, and that’s equally nonsense. You can’t cram an infinite amount of stuff into zero space. Infinite density – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Infinite Gravity: If, any only if you had infinite mass gathered together in zero volume would you generate infinite gravity. The Universe doesn’t have infinite mass so infinite gravity bites the dust on that basis alone. You can’t have zero volume that contains something, so infinite gravity also bites the dust from that perspective. Any finite amount of mass contained in an extremely tiny volume will generate extreme gravity, but there’s a universe of difference and distinction between extreme gravity and infinite gravity. That’s more soiled underwear for any scientist prone to use the phrase ‘infinite gravity’. There’s no such animal in the zoo of physics. Infinite gravity – that’s an extraordinary claim!

The Big Bang’s Infinite Temperature: At the time of the Big Bang, the temperature therein was no doubt extreme. Any explosive event generates heat, be it a firecracker, an H-Bomb, or a supernova. But no temperature can be infinitely hot. Why? Heat is energy. ‘Infinitely hot’ is therefore something requiring an infinite amount of energy necessary to generate something that’s ‘infinitely hot’. Temperature is also just a measurement of the average velocity of matter/energy. If one had an infinitely hot temperature, the average velocity of the matter/energy would be infinite. One cannot have an infinite velocity since the cosmic speed limit is the speed of light which is 186,000 miles/second. Therefore, the scientist who uses the phrase ‘infinite temperature’ is talking pure bullshit, and I’ve read accounts by some of the greats using that very phrase.  Infinite temperature - that’s an extraordinary claim!

The Big Bang’s Creation of Matter and Energy: It’s rammed down the throats of students starting in junior high school that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only changed from one form to another form. No argument there, from me at least. However, modern cosmologists postulate exactly that at the moment of the Big Bang event – matter and energy were created, a clear violation of basic conservation laws. That’s an extraordinary claim!

The Big Bang’s Creation of Space and Time: Now the question is, can space and/or time be created? Standard model cosmologists say “yes”, space and time were literally created at the moment of the Big Bang event. Space and time had no meaning and no existence prior to that event. The common analogy given is that to ask if there was time and space before the Big Bang is akin to asking if there is something south of the South Pole. In other words, it’s a nonsense question. However, IMHO, it’s those standard model cosmologists who advocate the nonsense. It’s quite easy for them to say that time and space was created. It’s nearly infinitely more difficult for them to write the cookbook that gives the actual recipe. They haven’t; they can’t, because they are advocating the creation of “something from nothing”. Applying Occam’s Razor, that “keep it simple, stupid” rule, it’s way more believable that space and time have always existed and that the Big Bang event happened inside existing space and time. That somehow space and time can be created, was created at the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago – that’s an extraordinary claim!

To be continued…

UFOs: Show Me the Evidence! Part Three

UFO skeptics claim that there’s little or no credible evidence that any UFO event can be interpreted as an alien spaceship doing its alien flying thing, boldly going on Planet Earth where no extraterrestrial has gone before. However, the fact that there exists such a thing as the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), six decades (and then some) on must suggest that there is some really real evidence in support of that UFO ETH belief, belief supported by opinion polls over many, many years.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Extraordinary Claims

Lastly, something really needs to be said that there’s one set of standards of evidence for one set of phenomena, and another set of standards of evidence for other sets of phenomena. That is to say, if you want to be extraordinarily sceptical about some things, you claim you need extraordinary evidence to make you see the sceptical error of your ways!

There exists a phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”'. I've seen that mantra in numerous books, articles, on the Internet, etc. I understand it originates from the late and great Carl Sagan. Were Dr. Sagan alive today I'd take my comments to him, but seeing as how he's no longer available, this section of the essay will suffice instead.

Claims require evidence. That's not in dispute. However, the word 'extraordinary' is in the mind of the beholder. What might be an extraordinary claim to you might not be an extraordinary claim to me, and vice versa. Murder is a more extraordinary crime than littering, yet the same evidence (say a security camera film) will convict in both cases. You don't need twice the amount of evidence in a murder trial vis-à-vis being convicted of littering. So, claims, of any kind, require enough evidence to convince anyone with an open mind - no more; no less.

If I, one of the vast majority of laymen, were to make a claim that the double slit experiment beloved in quantum physics provides evidence for the existence of parallel universes, or that a positron (an anti-electron) was actually nothing more than an electron going backwards in time, that would be extraordinary. If a professional scientist, a physicist, were to make those same claims, it’s not extraordinary presumably because physicists know what they are talking about. Yet it’s the same set of claims. They can’t be both extraordinary and ordinary at the same time!

Many of the greatest and now accepted parts of science started out as an extraordinary claim - like quantum mechanics or relativity theory or the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun. But did these claims really need extraordinary (like double the experimental) evidence vis-à-vis other claims that are now equally parts of the accepted science we find in the textbooks? For open-minded people, especially scientists, such claims probably did not require extraordinary evidence. And how in fact do you quantify extraordinary over ordinary evidence? Is twice as much extraordinary or three times or ten times? If someone is really a true-blue skeptic, it might not make the slightest difference, they would always demand more. No amount of evidence is extraordinary enough for them.

Few scientists now dispute the (initially extraordinary) claim of the reality of ball lightning, yet not only is it far rarer than UFO sightings, it has less of a theoretical underpinning than the proposal that some UFOs have an extraterrestrial intelligence behind them. Ball lightning hasn’t been put under a laboratory microscope any more than UFOs have. There are lots of parallels between ball lightning and UFOs for the sociologists of science to ponder. Yet one has credibility, one doesn’t. Why? It makes relatively little sense.

It is said, and there is truth in this, that science and scientists do not have the time and resources to investigate every claim ever made about the natural world. There must be some ways and means of distinguishing reasonable from unreasonable (i.e. – extraordinary) claims. While I don’t have an easy answer to that – though I’ll give one immediately below – I’ll just initially observe that there’s been a lot of seemingly reasonable claims that are now only footnotes in the history of science, and a fair few unreasonable claims that are now part of the bedrock on which our sciences, technology and civilization rests.

However, instead of ordinary vs. extraordinary distinctions, I’d suggest important vs. relatively unimportant claims. Lots of claims, whether proven or unproven, aren’t going to set the world on fire. Others have the potential to make for paradigm shifts in our understanding of the world and the cosmos. The equation UFOs = evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence is such an example. The claim needs to be investigated, yet not requiring massive more investigations than any other sort of scientific puzzle would require.

So, we desire evidence for the extraterrestrial nature of UFOs, not extraordinary evidence since that word ‘extraordinary’ has too much philosophical baggage attached to be meaningful.

To sum up this section, that ultra overused phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is nonsense. Claims of course require evidence, but the word ‘extraordinary’ is in the mind of the beholder. What’s extraordinary to one is routine, boring, commonplace and downright bloody obvious to another. And speaking of the common phrase, another one is ‘absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence’, or in this context, absence of evidence for the UFO ETH (which I dispute) is not the same thing as evidence of absence of the UFO related alien here on Earth.

Summary & Conclusions

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

But there is a reason. There’s more than enough eyewitness testimony and physical evidence that would satisfy any court of law; any judge; any jury in just about any other set of circumstances to render a verdict of guilty. But the UFO ETH can not yet be rendered guilty, because though there’s not yet to date that smoking gun. There’s lots of evidence – no proof. There’s no absolute under-the-microscope, on the lab’s slab, proof positive of the UFO ETH. If any UFO ETH buff says they have proof, skeptics should tell them to ‘put up or shut up’. If however they say they have evidence in favor of the UFO ETH, ask them politely what it is.  

UFOs: Show Me the Evidence! Part Two

UFO skeptics claim that there’s little or no credible evidence that any UFO event can be interpreted as an alien spaceship doing its alien flying thing, boldly going on Planet Earth where no extraterrestrial has gone before. However, the fact that there exists such a thing as the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), six decades (and then some) on must suggest that there is some really real evidence in support of that UFO ETH belief, belief supported by opinion polls over many, many years.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Nature of Evidence:

It is claimed by scientists and other UFO sceptics, with good scientific reason, that the whole issue of the UFO ETH must be judged on the basis of actual evidence. And, it is claimed, by those sceptics, that the evidence for alien visitation is so poor that very few scientists find it convincing, convincing enough to devote their time and energy into pursuing the matter. And that is true, at least the part that few scientists, publicly at least, find the UFO ETH more than somewhat lacking in solid evidence – the sort of evidence that can be laid down on a lab slab or at least put under a microscope. Since there’s no such evidence, the UFO ETH has garnered somewhat of an aura of being just a ‘silly season’ subject, unworthy of scientific study, though to be honest, I’d often like to survey academics / scientists for their private opinions!

I would ask the question whether by evidence one means a physical artefact that can be put under the microscope, or is human testimony, the sort that would convict someone of a crime and put them on death row enough evidence? I’m 99% convinced 99% of scientists would say the former, yet the evidence for the UFO ETH is 99% the latter (plus a few radar returns and films). Actually IMHO it’s ludicrous for UFO ETH sceptics to poo-poo and give the thumbs down to eyewitness testimony. After all, it’s accurate eyewitness testimony that enables the trained investigators to properly identify the vast majority of UFO reports, turning them into identified flying objects to the tune of around 95%. So, when sceptics need eyewitness testimony to be accurate and turn UFO cases into something with ordinary and mundane causes – that’s fine. But when the tables are turned, sceptics turn turncoat as well so as to re-enforce their already-minds-made-up point of view. That is, eyewitness testimony that turns a UFO sighting into an unexplained bona fide UFO case, even if only about 5% of the time, well then clearly the eyewitness testimony counts for nothing in terms of bona fide evidence.   

I make one defense however for the UFO ETH since scientists counter that each of the threads that an extraterrestrial intelligence having been then or now on Earth are weak-in-the-knees when it comes to solid evidence? Roswell is weak; UFO abduction cases are weak; the UFO conspiracy or cover-up case is weak; UFO photographs and videos are weak; UFO radar cases are weak; the case for Erich von Daniken’s ancient astronauts is weak; the ghost rocket sightings (1946) are weak; contactee claims are especially weak; UFO eye-witness reports are unreliable, etc. But, put them (and much more besides) all together and like all good detective stories combine/integrate all the clues into one composite whole (after separating out the wheat from the chaff and eliminating the red herrings) then the whole is more than the sum of the parts. You get a fairly consistent pattern that emerges; not the radio signal patter-of-little-dots-and-dashes the SETI scientist wants but a nuts-and-bolts and a here-and-now pattern.

Now admittedly any one of a hundred different and independent threads might in itself be not all that convincing, but then all 100 or so threads are woven together – that’s a different duck of another color. It’s like if it looks like a duck – it may not be a duck. If it flies like a duck – it may not be a duck. If it walks like a duck – it may not be a duck. If it swims like a duck – it may not be a duck. If it quacks like a duck – it may not be a duck. But if it looks, flies, walks, swims and quacks like a duck – then it’s a duck!

The Actual Evidence

What’s the general evidence for UFOs and by extension the UFO ETH? Well, you have multi-tens of thousands of UFO sightings, probably six figures worth by now, many multi-witness sightings, more than a few multi-independent multi-witness sightings; sightings by people used to the outdoors and aerial phenomena (like pilots), films and photographs that have defied the best experts to explain them in conventional terms, radar returns, physical ground traces, physiological effects on biological tissues, including humans; often more than one of these categories applies per incident.

You have a global phenomena, where countries from Australia, the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, France, Russia, Mexico, etc. have devoted considerable resources to finding answers to what many see as a ‘silly season’ filler with a high ‘giggle’ factor. That makes little logical sense – the ‘giggle’ factor, not the official investigations. There are neither psychological, sociological or cultural reasons to explain the origin of UFOs in general, nor specific UFO reports. It’s all evidence, and grist for the mill.  So, what part of the word ‘evidence’ don’t you understand? The crux of the matter is not lack of evidence; it is how that evidence is interpreted. So take the bona-fide UFO residue, that hardcore 5%.  Now what is this residue and what happens if you apply Occam’s Razor to it? Well, maybe bona-fide UFOs are just ghosts, or angels, or the work of the devil, or some nation’s secret weapons, or craft from a terrestrial advanced civilization that inhabits our hollow Earth! Or, maybe the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is the most plausible. I think Occam’s Razor would err on the side of the ETH when trying to come to terms with that hardcore unexplainable 5%.

Eyewitness and Evidence

Physical scientists won’t accept eyewitness accounts despite the double standards that entails in that if a physical scientist reports seeing something (like ball lightning or a ‘shooting star’, he or she expects to be believed. But not when it comes to UFOs.

Okay, so multi-tens of thousands of eyewitness accounts count for nothing, especially when many of those sightings were by trained observers, and multi-witness cases at that.

If eyewitnesses were the be-all-and-end all of the evidence, well that itself would be pretty suggestive IMHO. But eyewitness cases are often backed up by a radar tracking or ground traces or physiological effects or (electromagnetic) EM effects or motion pictures or still photographs. Radar, ground traces, EM effects also exist separate from eyewitnesses. UFOs are a global phenomenon that cuts across all age, sex, racial, cultural etc. boundaries. If UFOs were just the province of one country or region, or only witnessed by those with an IQ less than 90, well that would be suspect. But that’s not the case. UFOs have been taken seriously enough to be an official part of government programs from around the world, unlike say poltergeist events which aren’t part of official taxpayer funded investigations. And expert military and scientific analysis can not explain, depending on where and time, between five and ten percent of all UFO reports. Just because 18 or 19 out of 20 UFO events are explainable in prosaic terms, doesn’t automatically translate into accepting that 20 out of 20 are.

Evidence versus Proof

What many of the UFO ETH skeptics or debunkers are confusing here is the concept of ‘evidence’ vs. the concept of ‘proof’. There are massive amounts of evidence for the UFO ETH as noted above. For example, I’d consider as part of legit evidence documents released under the FOI (Freedom of Information) Act that show that in 1947, the then Army Air Force (AAF) requested the FBI to assist in investigating ‘flying disc’ reports all as part of the developing Cold War hysteria at the time. The FBI (Hoover) responded that they would cooperate only if they were granted access to the “crashed discs”, something the AAF refused. While that’s evidence; it’s not proof. SETI has received one “WOW” signal – unverified. While that’s evidence; it’s not proof.

Sceptics would argue that the burden of proof that extraterrestrials are behind (at least some of) the UFO phenomena lies with the believers – those who claim such is the case. And that’s true. But there’s another side to that coin. Sceptics need to look at what evidence is presented and not have a closed-mind-locked-away-in-a-closet attitude.

To be continued…

UFOs: Show Me the Evidence! Part One

UFO skeptics claim that there’s little or no credible evidence that any UFO event can be interpreted as an alien spaceship doing its alien flying thing, boldly going on Planet Earth where no extraterrestrial has gone before. However, the fact that there exists such a thing as the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), six decades (and then some) on must suggest that there is some really real evidence in support of that UFO ETH belief, belief supported by opinion polls over many, many years.

Introduction

Many ideas or fads, be they in the sciences or the arts, don’t last long – theories come and theories go and actual clothing fashions and trends in pop music change yearly. What’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’ is often pretty fickle. A lot of what was popular in 1947 (the birth year of the modern UFO era) has fallen by the wayside now - but, interestingly enough, not the UFO ETH. The UFO ETH is as popular as ever, maybe even more so now than in 1947 (or shortly thereafter – it took a while for the ETH idea to come to the fore), not that popularity equates of necessity to something factual. If a billion people believe a stupid idea – like an invisible friend who art in heaven – it’s still a stupid idea.

However, over six decades on, despite all the professional and amateur sceptics and the universal naysayer, the government denials, scientists professing the ‘no evidence’ mantra, the ‘giggle’ factor and the ‘silly season’ publicity, fodder only fit for the tabloids, the UFO ETH is alive and well thank you very much. Something must be driving this. Perhaps, at least for many of the great unwashed, there is some signal in the noise – some sort of evidence (albeit not physical enough to be acceptable to many professional scientists) that’s swaying the general public into believing that aliens are not only here, but here and now.

Of course it is not sufficient enough for visiting aliens and their interstellar craft (UFOs if you will) to just theoretically exist (since there’s no actual physics or engineering preventing this) – there’s got to be some kind of actual evidence – and it exists in spades as we shall see.

A History Lesson

The UFO ETH only exists, early 1950’s onwards, because for the first three to four years of the then ‘flying discs’ or ‘flying saucers’ phenomena, starting in the late 1940’s, ‘saucers’ or ‘discs’ were assumed to be terrestrial in origin – secret Soviet devices (to the Americans); secret American devices (to the Russians). When those ideas became untenable, the obvious conclusions were that UFOs was all in the mind (some sort of Cold War hysteria); misidentifications, hoaxes, hallucinations, etc. But that became as equally untenable as solid case after solid case came in and proved to be unexplainable by any and all acceptable terrestrial possibilities. By elimination – well according to Sherlock Holmes, ‘when you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’ – one was forced to at least consider the ETH a plausible alternative to the initial ‘manufactured by’ terrestrial hypothesis.

Once it became crystal clear that UFOs were not a national security issue, but a scientific issue, well what better way for those charged with investigating UFOs as a national security issue to bail out by having them investigated as a scientific issue instead? And so was contracted out a so-called ‘scientific investigation into UFOs’ to the University of Colorado under the directorship of one Dr. Edward U. Condon. The findings were never in doubt even before the study was completed.

The illogic of the scientific mind was made crystal clear in the ultimate debunking of the UFO ETH. The University of Colorado Scientific Study into UFOs [the Edward U. Condon study] concluded it (the UFO ETH) was all a lot of rubbish – except for the fact that that very study, that very report, couldn’t explain away, with any terrestrial phenomena known, over 30% of the UFO cases it studied. It’s like a jury stating 1/3^rd not guilty; 2/3rds guilty – well the majority ayes have it – let’s carry out the execution.

The Problem with Obtaining and Verifying UFO Evidence

The trouble with UFOs is that they won’t stand still! You can’t put them under a microscope, poke and prod them, or study and measure them at your leisure like you can most phenomena. You can’t predict in advance where and when and for how long they will appear. 

Scientists and Evidence: The Double Standard

The majority of scientists, especially physical scientists, usually poo-poo the UFO ETH with a there’s ‘no evidence’ mantra. But such scientists leave themselves wide open to the double standard.

A prime example of how some scientists have their cake and eat it too is with respect to religion. There’s absolutely no evidence for any deity, yet many scientists have no trouble accepting on faith and having a belief in a deity (or deities) sight unseen by anyone and everyone. No one verifiable has seen the monotheistic deity and all the polytheistic deities are apparently, according to scholars, entirely mythological. Go figure. This essay could just as easily been constructed around a theme of ‘God: Show Me the Evidence!’

But there are valid cases within science of scientists not only ‘having their cake and eating it too’. Scientists need more than 20 fingers and toes to list all of the there-is-no-evidence-for- these-way-out-theories in science that ultimately had to wait years, decades, longer even for experimental confirmation. If scientists had put these in the too hard basket, or dismissed them with a ‘I just don’t believe it - it can’t be therefore it isn’t’ attitude, well we’d still all believe all manner of things that ain’t necessarily so, in fact aren’t so.

Now without meaning to accuse scientists of pure hypocrisy, there are lots of current concepts in science that have absolutely no evidence to support them, yet are taken quite seriously by physical scientists. A partial list would include concepts like the Multiverse (there are more than one universes within the overriding cosmos); the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics; particle physic’s string theory; the Higgs Boson; the possible existence of ten or eleven dimensions; the Ekpyrotic (two string theory [mem]branes colliding and accounting for the origin of the) Universe theory; and, shock-horror for those interested in SETI (that’s the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), the total lack of any under-the-microscope, hardcore evidence whatsoever for any intelligent life forms other than intelligent terrestrial life forms. Yet it is acceptable for scientists to research these areas without being subject to having their sanity questioned. I fail to see why the UFO ETH is an exception to this. Even forget the UFO ETH – just the UFO phenomena full-stop is off limits. Be that as it may, it is.

There are other case histories from the annals of science regarding ‘the nature of the evidence’ that have parallels with UFOs – physical phenomena that don’t stand still. You can’t poke and prod, put under the microscope, examine at your leisure and which are unpredictable in space and in time various phenomena. Ball lightning comes to mind; ditto Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP); and you can’t rewind the clock and prepare for (instruments at the ready) and witness the one-off Tunguska event.

There seems to be a double standard for evidence here. UFOs have a ‘giggle factor’; ball lightning and TLP do not, yet both have theoretical underpinnings that make their existence plausible. In the case of UFOs, it’s the Fermi Paradox – that’s the ‘where are they, if they exist they should be here’ observation.

Here are a few more realities that scientists once rejected as having no evidence.

The Sun went around the Earth – there was no evidence for any other configuration.

Our Universe could not be anything but static. The Universe could be neither expanding nor contracting. Einstein however knew the Universe should be contracting because of the attractive force of gravity. To counter that, and keep the Universe static, he and the scientists of his times believed in a ‘cosmological constant’, a repulsive force to exactly counter gravity’s pull. Einstein later called that his greatest blunder since there wasn’t any actual evidence for it. However, that ‘cosmological constant’ has recently resurfaced in the form of ‘dark energy’, so Einstein might have been right after all!

Those cosmic suckers, Black Holes, while existing theoretically on paper, could not actually exist in reality - in practice they were quite the impossible object without any observational evidence to contradict that alleged impossibility.

Despite theory, gravity couldn’t bend light rays – forget it because no observational evidence had ever seen such a thing. Of course that was to change.

No one in their right mind would believe that it was possible that mankind had any actual evolutionary relationship with ‘lower’ life forms. Where’s the evidence? Then along comes Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, and the rest, as they say, is history.

That matter could actually consist of indivisible bits called atoms; well that atomic theory was nonsense, even if it did date back to the ancient Greeks, since there was absolutely no shred of evidence to support it.

That ‘island universes’ were actually independent conglomerations of stars and not nebulous entities part and parcel of our own Milky Way Galaxy was deemed highly improbable by experts for lack of any observational evidence.

Catastrophism in geology was considered a no-no for much of the time since it began as a legit part of earth science. All evidence in geology (especially landforms) pointed to a gradual softly-softly, slowly-slowly, process. Violent events need not apply to explain things. Tell that to the dinosaurs! Of course we know better today. Catastrophism has taken its place and role playing in the geologic scheme of things.

Speaking of geology, the idea of continental drift was once considered preposterous pie-in-the-sky stuff despite observational evidence that the outlines of the continents could be matched like a jigsaw puzzle. Geologists countered that there was no even theoretical evidence for a physical mechanism that could push continents around. Well, there was as it turned out, only we may no longer call it continental drift but rather plate tectonics. 

Once upon a time, the concept of nuclear energy was pie in the sky – a subject no scientist would take seriously since there was no evidence for any such an energy source, at least until X-Rays were accidentally discovered. .

Prior to the initial test, there was ‘experts in explosives’ who said that the A-bomb would never work – again, observational evidence proved superior to theoretical ‘evidence’ as to how the real world worked.

Powered flight was once considered impossible because evidence proved that balloons were the only feasible means of air travel.

Rocket travel was utter bilge as there was nothing in space for the rocket’s exhaust to push against. That was just so obvious that no actual evidence was required.

It was impossible for the human body to travel faster than the speed of a (fill in the blank) without suffering fatal physiological consequences, and what human would risk life-and-limb to provide evidence to the contrary?

The sound barrier would never be broken, despite evidence that the crack of the bullwhip was exactly that. 

It was considered impossible for stones to fall from the sky – evidence provided by eye-witnesses to the contrary be damned. Today, we incorrectly call them ‘shooting stars’; more correctly meteors, and when then hit the ground, meteorites. 

To be continued…