UFOs: The Stellar Rainbow Connection

It’s pretty much common knowledge that most scientists reject the reality of UFOs, at least in terms of UFOs being something ultimately anomalous, like extraterrestrial spaceships. Eyewitness testimony doesn’t cut their mustard. Photographs don’t hack it. What they demand is something nuts-and-bolts that they can study, put under a microscope, pound with a hammer, pour acid on, etc. No actual body on the lab’s slab equals no actual evidence one can study therefore there is no reality to the nonexistent body and no correspondence will be entered into on the matter. I smell a double-standard rat!

A senior SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) astronomer recently posted an essay on UFOs in the Huffington Post where he first stated:  “Allow me to first note that this is a phenomenon worthy of attention. If aliens are really hanging out in our 'hood, it's hard to imagine any other fact more worthy of study.” Then he concludes with: “The fact is, if you're certain that our planet is hosting alien visitors, the way to gain acceptance for your point of view is to prove it, not insist that the problem lies with third parties. The blame game is a cop-out.”

WTF is this guy saying? UFOs are important but it’s up to others to do all the hard yards and prove that UFOs and aliens are related. You can just about hear the writer scream out WE REQUIRE PROOF as long as the burden is on others to come up with the smoking gun!

WE REQUIRE PROOF! That’s all fine, well and good in theory, an in an ideal world, except the average member of the great unwashed doesn’t have the name-brand, academic bona-fides or resources required. No matter what ‘proof” the great unwashed offer up, the WE REQUIRE PROOF demands of the many (scientists) outweigh the abilities of the few (the great unwashed) to proved the required goods. If I ring up a top scientist at a top university and say I have a piece of an alien spaceship, do you honestly think they will listen to me or slam down the phone uttering “another bloody wacko wasting my time”! So the ‘blame game’ is perhaps more a plea for those with the scientific bona-fides, and the resources and the credibility and respected home institutions to take the great unwashed a tad more seriously when it comes to UFO experiences and get their hands dirty studying the subject.

I play the blame game. I put blame on those who could, but won’t get their hands dirty. It’s intellectual cowardice pure and simple. The fairly obvious if unstated message is I’m interested in ET, I’m a SETI scientist by profession, but I’m not interested in UFOs unless someone else provides the proof that there is an actual alien connection. I’m not interested in UFOs because I won’t get external funding to study them. That’s because I’ve got too much on my plate already. That’s because I’d rather sit on my ass and let the great unwashed do the dirty work. That’s because someone might make fun of me, like my professional colleagues. The sociology (office politics) of the science community usually runs something along the lines of don’t stray beyond the mainstream; don’t think out of the box; don’t rock the boat or you’ll end up like Jonah and tossed overboard without a whale in sight.

So holier than thou essays like that posted by ‘Mr. SETI’ aren’t really helpful; relevant scientists need to put up some legit science or shut up since if they are clearly not part of the solution, they are part of the problem standing in the way of a solution!

Let’s forget the great unwashed for the moment; let’s talk nerdy talk and deal with evidence, not proof, just evidence, that something strange is afoot via observations from astronomers,  professional colleagues of SETI scientists, and their reported anomalous observations that are in the scientific literature. Now albeit it’s ‘colleagues’ from several generations ago and way before modern SETI times, but that doesn’t alter their academic bona-fides nor what they reported in the professional literature.

I refer to the numerous historical sightings of Neith (reported satellite of Venus) and the intra-Mercurial planet Vulcan along with numerous other sightings of alleged planets inside the orbit of Mercury. Not one, or two but multi-dozens of reports are in the scientific literature for both. That’s in addition to those multi-dozens of sightings of unpredicted by uncharted and unknown objects that made unexpected transits of the Sun and Moon. So, professional astronomers are on record as having seen, for all practical purposes, unidentified ‘aerial’ phenomena. Now we know there is no Neith and there is no Vulcan, etc. so exactly what did scientists in the astronomical profession observe? A UFO by any other name is still a UFO. Okay, that’s just evidence, not proof. Still, UFO observations are not exclusively the property of the great unwashed.   

WE REQUIRE PROOF! Okay, even if scientists don’t want to actively participate, their demand WE REQUIRE PROOF (lay it on the slab in my lab) sounds reasonable, until you realise that those same scientists accept the reality of many other things that they equally can’t study on a slab in the lab, things that only can be seen or photographed.

An obvious case in point is those stars in the night sky. You see them; you can photograph them, but to date you can’t study the physical object in the laboratory! You can’t put a star on the slab. So, if stars are acceptable, why not UFOs? Well, stars can be therefore they are; UFOs can’t be therefore they aren’t*.

Scientists have a readymade excuse for not being able to verify the bona-fides of stars as laboratory specimens; they are out of reach – way too distant to grab hold of. But they still argue that stars aren’t illusions or misidentifications or all-in-the-mind or hoaxes because astrophysical theory supports stars being what scientists believe they are. Of course in a manner of speaking starlight can be ‘captured’ and analysed in the lab, and at least stars have the decency of making their appearance on schedule. Still, you cannot examine up close and personal the physical star itself.

So as a generality, in defence to an anti-UFO stance, scientists will say there are theoretical reasons for accepting the reality of things they can’t put their mitts on, implying that there are no theoretical reasons supporting the UFO ETH (ExtraTerrestrial Hypothesis). Alas and alack, as an additional counterattack, as stars (and rainbows - see below) are supported by astrophysics’ theory, there is also an actual theoretical scenario that nearly demands that there be UFOs and that UFOs be extraterrestrial spacecraft – it’s known as the Fermi Paradox. That just basically says that even if there is only one advanced technological civilization ‘out there’ with the ability to “boldly go”, then the time it would take to explore (even at low sub light velocities – say 1% to 10% the speed of light) and colonize end-to-end our galaxy is but a tiny, tiny fraction of the age of our galaxy. So where is everybody? They should, if they exist at all, by rights be here. Why would they pay special attention to the third rock from the Sun? While stars and planets are dimes-a-dozen, abodes with biospheres are probably as rare as hen’s teeth – that’s why. Planet Earth is a hen’s tooth! Alas, while astrophysical theory passes their muster, the Fermi Paradox doesn’t cut their mustard apparently. That’s rather odd seeing as how SETI scientists must accept the premise that there does indeed exist at least one advanced ET high-tech civilization out there in order to justify their own profession!

Okay, for terrestrial scientists, physical star-stuff can’t be placed on the lab’s slab. But there are parallels much closer to home where that excuse of extreme distance falls far short. Now here’s a parallel. The rainbow is the case in point. If scientists can play UFO skeptic, I can play the role of rainbow skeptic.

If you say you’ve seen a rainbow, you can’t prove that to me since you can’t bring the rainbow, or any part of it (like say the associated pot-of-gold), into my lab and place it on the slab for me to hammer away at or put under the microscope. You obviously believe in the reality of rainbows, yet you can’t put the one you see in the sky on your lab’s slab either. Okay, you know and I know that rainbows exist, but the critical point is that you cannot prove to me (or anyone) that you saw a rainbow. We all know eyewitness testimony, ain’t worth the price of spit in a bucket. As for photographs, being the grand skeptic I am, no doubt your photographs of rainbows are fakes, pure and simple. I REQUIRE PROOF of rainbows and you can’t provide it.

Can you capture and put an actual rainbow in the sky into a laboratory environment and subject it to cruel and unusual punishments?  You can artificially create one in the lab, but that’s not quite the same thing – it’s not the real McCoy. And what about that associated physical trace – the pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow? I’ve yet to read of any laboratory analysis of that pot and that gold. How do we know it’s really gold without slab-in-the-lab analysis? Maybe its fool’s gold! And just like Pandora’s ‘box’ is really a jar and not a box, maybe the ‘pot’ is really a bowl! Of course the scientists can’t quite get at the pot-of-gold since it’s guarded by a leprechaun, and no scientist is going to admit being thwarted by a little green man (or abducted by a little grey one either for that matter).

Okay, I would be foolish not to believe your observation and to deny the reality of rainbows, yet its okay for scientific skeptics to ignore the rainbow parallel when it comes to UFOs. Eyewitness testimony regarding UFO sightings isn’t worth the cost of the paper it’s printed on; photographs of UFOs are indeed pure Photoshop fakery.

But in fact, UFOs offer up way more physical evidence than the rainbow. Despite that pot-of-gold at the end of a rainbow legend, rainbows leave behind no physical traces; no physiological effects, and no electromagnetic effects; they make no sounds, etc. UFOs are not so hampered. So, if crunch-comes-crunch, the reality of UFOs have a lot more going for them in terms of physical evidence than the reality of rainbows. Of course no scientist in their right mind would exhibit scepticism of the existence of rainbows even without any physical evidence backing them up, but when it comes to UFOs, that’s a different horse of another colour – but is it really a different horse, and is it really of a different hue?

Of course one reason physical scientists accept the reality of the rainbow is that they’ve seen one themselves (many most likely) and seeing is believing as long as it’s they who are doing the seeing. If they themselves had witnessed a UFO event they (and their colleagues) could not identify then I’m sure they would be much more open and inclined to accept another’s eyewitness testimony. A bit of a double standard there of course but that’s human nature and scientists aren’t exempt from that weakness. Unfortunately, UFOs tend to be a rarer commodity than rainbows and therefore witnessed way less often, including viewings by scientists. 

While UFOs have a higher physical evidence quota than rainbows, they also have a higher strangeness quota too, which is not to say that rainbows don’t have a strange mythological aura about them. I wonder if the scientist who accepts the reality of the rainbow also accepts that the rainbow is a bridge to heaven (Asgard) according to Norse mythology and made famous in the conclusion to Richard Wagner’s first “Ring Cycle” opera “Das Rheingold”. Christian mythology has the rainbow as a sign that at least the next time God lays waste to the world it won’t be via the Big Wet, though I doubt you’ll find that in any textbook on optical and atmospheric phenomena. And if you’re into cryptozoology, the Australian aborigines have a Rainbow Serpent (which doubles as a creator deity), but then again, scientists aren’t noted for their curiosity into the actual existence of unknown mega-fauna or polytheistic creator deities** either for that matter. In fact, you name the culture; you’ll find a rainbow mythology contained within. Rainbows are associated with spirits and demons and all manner of omens from the good, to the bad and the ugly that scientists will reject as part and parcel of their belief system.

So, where do scientists draw the line? Rainbows – yes; rainbow serpents and rainbow bridges – no. And this distinction is rightly so, IMHO. But when they reject out of hand a phenomenon that actually has more and better evidence than say rainbows (auroras and sprites would be other cases in point) then eyebrows must be raised and questions asked – like please explain your logic.

While on the subject of things mythological, let’s go harking back to the stars and planets and other celestial objects. There’s a massive mythology from many ancient cultures that usually goes hand-in-hand with how those celestial objects and night sky patterns came to be. Astronomers don’t support those tall tales either since they have other more scientific theories that explain the origins of stars and constellations. Still, its two competing theories of how to account for say, the Pleiades star cluster. Once upon a time it was Zeus. Today it’s astrophysics. Who’s to say since neither scenario can be subjected to a definitive WE REQUIRE PROOF slab-in-the-lab test.

By the way, as a final counterattack, I haven’t yet seen any SETI scientist come up with proof positive on ET, so IMHO it’s still a tied ball game. But rather than have two opposing teams, SETI scientists may as well study UFOs as well since SETI to date has a batting average of zero. Perhaps that’s what comes from scientists putting all their ET eggs in just the SETI basket. 

*And the Sun can’t have sunspots since we all know that the Sun is perfect; meteorites can’t exist since we all know stones can’t fall from the sky;

**Though faith in the reality of God is hardly unknown to exist in some physical scientists, though like stars and rainbows, they can’t put God on the slab in their lab either. Somehow the WE REQUIRE PROOF criteria don’t matter in this case.

UFOs & Pilots: Flying the Deadly Skies: Part One

There have been thousands of pilots who have died while piloting, even apart from those killed in battle, that haven’t involved UFOs. There have been (by now) thousands of encounters between pilots and UFOs that haven’t involved death. However, there is an intersection between these two categories. 

The phrase “unidentified flying objects” suggests that UFOs have an affinity with our terrestrial pilots – both fly and share our airspace. Thus, terrestrial pilots should have seen and reported a goodly proportion of UFO events. And that indeed is the case. There’s been many an interesting close encounter between military, commercial and private pilots. No great news there. However, there have been several UFO incidents that have resulted in the death or disappearance (and presumed death) of the pilot(s) and sometimes crew too. That ratchets up the seriousness ante quite considerably.

UFO sightings by airline pilots (military, civilian, and private) now number in the thousands. Unfortunately, there have been instances of pilots who have died or who have gone missing (presumed dead) while witnessing, pursuing or otherwise involved with some form or other of UFO-related activity. That alone suggests that UFOs are not only a serious business, but also at times a deadly business.

The list of pilot encounters with UFOs is now so extensive that it would take several book length volumes to adequately cover the subject. There is however that deadly subset of those pilot-related encounters. Here are a few of the better known case histories and fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, they are relatively few. 

MAURY ISLAND INCIDENT (1947): This incident is only indirectly related to ‘pilots and UFOs’ insofar as it involves an alleged UFO incident and the death of two military officers piloting a military aircraft, but there was no direct encounter between the UFO and the aircraft. While there is a massive amount of material related to the Maury Island Incident, from conspiracy theories and cover-ups to threats by the Men in Black, to the disappearance of witnesses and evidence (photographs), even something approaching an outright hoax that ended up involving several of the early pioneers in the ‘flying saucer’ business, most of that story isn’t relevant to the deaths of the military officers and is omitted here.

The basic tale revolves around Harold A. Dahl, his son Charles, and a dog. They were all out boating near Maury Island in Puget Sound near Tacoma Washington on or about the 21^st of June 1947 (which actually precedes the ‘official’ beginnings of the modern UFO era by a few days). They claimed to have spotted an overhead fleet of what we’d now call (doughnut-shaped) UFOs flying in formation and surrounding another UFO which seemed to be having some sort of difficulty. The object that was in some distress or that was malfunctioning ejected some solid slag-like material which, obeying the laws of gravity, fell earthwards, struck and damaged Dahl’s jointly owned boat, caused some minor injuries to himself and his son, but alas killed the dog. Samples of the ‘slag’ were recovered. Via a roundabout route, two military (Army Air Corps) intelligence officers were ultimately called in to investigate. The two investigating officers, Captain William L. Davidson and Lieutenant Frank M. Brown of Army A-2 Intelligence, arrived and conducted interviews and obtained samples of the ‘slag’ before boarding and piloting their B-25 aircraft, destination Hamilton Field in California. The plane carrying the two investigators and the slag crashed near Kelso, Washington, shortly after leaving Tacoma, killing both men. Two others on board, one an aircrew the other a military ‘hitchhiker’, Sergeant Elmer L. Taft and Technical Sergeant Woodrow D. Matthews survived by parachuting from the airplane after it lost its left wing and the tail section due to a fire in the left engine.

An FBI report into the incident noted that investigators from McChord Field near Tacoma had investigated the wreckage and were convinced there was no sabotage involved. It’s noted that one of the leading USAF UFO investigators, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, chief of Project Blue Book in the early 1950s, wrote in his 1956 book “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects” that he was convinced that the entire UFO sighting story was a hoax. The initial FBI field report concluded the story was a hoax as well. Regardless whether the incident was true (as some still believe), the cover-up of an advanced, classified but nevertheless terrestrial aerospace craft, or a hoax, the death of Capt. Davidson and Lt. Brown was real enough.

MANTELL INCIDENT (1948): If there was ever a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, then the Mantell Incident qualifies.

On the afternoon of the 7^th of January 1948, Godman Army Airfield (at Fort Knox, Kentucky) was notified by the state highway patrol of a strange circular object they could not identify some 250 to 300 feet in diameter that was flying along a westward course. Being conscientious officers, they saw it as their duty to notify the nearest military base – Godman Field.

Military personnel, including the Commanding Officer, spotted the unknown object in question from the airfield’s control tower. It was also witnessed from other Army Airfields (Clinton County Army Air Field and Lockbourne Army Air Field, both in nearby Ohio). Witnesses collectively described the movement of the object ranging from stationary to 500 mph; ranging in altitude from near ground level to 10,000 feet. The lone object appeared to be white, but with a reddish fringe on the bottom.

Unfortunately, a formation of four P-51 Mustangs of the Kentucky Air National Guard just happened to be in the air and in the vicinity – that vicinity being the wrong place; wrong time for one of the pilots, the flight leader, Captain Thomas Mantell, an experienced pilot (over 2000 flying hours) and veteran of World War II.  Anyway, the P-51 flight was directed to get up close and personal and determine what this unknown object was.

Not all of the P-51’s were able to comply with that order to the maximum extent possible. One was low on fuel; two others didn’t have an adequate oxygen supply and had more sense than to climb too high though they kept pace with Mantell for as long as they could. Mantell, without an oxygen supply, however, being the flight leader and no doubt an alpha male, threw caution into the wind, boldly went ahead, outdistancing his wingmen when he shouldn’t of. He kept in hot pursuit, stating the object was moving at only half his speed and he was closing in for a better look. He allegedly described the object as metallic and of tremendous size, in contrast to some of his wingmen who described it as small and indistinct. 

To make a long story shorter, Capt. Mantell climbed too high, blacked out from lack of oxygen, and the rest, as they say, is history. His plane began spiraling back towards the ground. A witness later reported Mantell's Mustang in a circling descent. His plane crashed at a farm south of Franklin, Kentucky, on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. Some interested parties have suggested that while Mantell was an experienced pilot, he was rather new to the P-51 Mustang, and that this relative inexperience could have been a factor in the crash. Regardless, Captain Mantell was, as of 3:18 p.m. that date, the late Captain Mantell.

So what was the object that ultimately led to Mantell’s death? Well the first half-hearted explanation was that everyone had sighted, and the P-51’s had chased, the planet Venus! It’s obvious that no plane can climb high enough to get up close and personal with a planet that’s millions of miles away, so if Venus it was, it’s no wonder Mantell failed to close in on it. Desperate in the attempt, he climbed too high and passed out from lack of oxygen, that being the major factor in the resulting crash and his death. So went explanation number one.

Now Venus, depending on where it is in its orbit, can been seen in daylight, if one knows exactly where to look. However, it’s going to be quite faint as a daylight object at the best of times, and 99.999% of people, while quite familiar with Venus as the celestial object called the morning or evening ‘star’, have never seen the planet in broad daylight. I know I haven’t. That all of a sudden so many people, the highway patrol, other civilians, ground based military personnel, Capt. Mantell and his wingmen, zeroed in on Venus is absolutely astounding – too astounding to be credible. In any event, what Venus would look like in the daytime sky, and the description of the object in question, just don’t mesh. Scratch Venus.

The next best option was, at that time, a top secret US Navy Skyhook weather balloon. Why a weather balloon should be top secret is beyond me, but classified it was. The general characteristics of the Skyhook are reasonably consistent with the appearance and movements reported by Mantell and other witnesses, the sticking point being no particular Skyhook balloon could be conclusively identified as being in the area in question during Mantell's pursuit according to some; facts disputed by the skeptics who said that multiple Skyhooks had been launched that day about 150 miles away.  Regardless, if the object was a Skyhook, it’s little wonder nobody could identify it as such seeing as how it was a classified project and object. Of course it wouldn’t have been very politically correct to admit that a secret American military program resulted in the demise of an American military pilot!

The cause of Mantell's crash remains officially listed as undetermined by the Air Force.

In 1948 flying discs or saucers were still pretty unique and so the first death directly attributed to a flying saucer was Big News and it was widely reported in the press. Unfortunately, some more lurid sections of the press suggested that Mantell had been shot down by the UFO and/or that his body was riddled with holes and/or his P-51 aircraft was found to be radioactive. These reports were false.

In the end, it matters little what the object was – bona-fide hardcore UFO or something more prosaic like Venus or a Skyhook weather balloon – Mantell was just as dead.

To be continued…

UFOs: If 19 out of 20, Therefore 20 out of 20!

The fact is, as most UFO sceptics readily acknowledge, between 5 and 10 percent of all reported UFO incidents remain unidentified after investigation by those qualified to do so. This fact apparently excites the scientific, astrobiology, and SETI communities not one jot. Now I would maintain that a 5 to 10% level of hardcore UFO unknowns, over six decades on, worldwide, is a major scientific anomaly. It amounts to at least several thousand unexplained UFO incidents. I was under the impression that it was the role and duty of scientists to research the unknown, but apparently not when it comes to this subject.

On the 26^th and 27^th of December 1969, the American Association for the Advancement of Science held a symposium on UFOs. The papers were edited by Carl Sagan and Thorton Page and published by Cornell University Press. One of the contributors was the late James E. McDonald*, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona. McDonald’s basic theme was to send a rocket up the proverbial butts of the overall scientific community for their near neglect of what he (and many laypeople) consider to be one of the top scientific anomalies of the 20^th Century (and now of the 21^st as well) – Unidentified Flying Objects.

Unfortunately, Dr. McDonald must surely be turning over in his grave because nothing has really changed since he presented that paper. Scientists and UFOs tend to party together in much the same way as oil and water mix.

Now any scientist with an open mind, albeit even a skeptical mind, has to acknowledge that between five and ten percent of all UFO reports remain bona fide UFO reports after investigation and analysis by those qualified to do so. Let’s make life simple and say the bona fide UFO unknown rate is 5% (or 19 out of 20). Let’s call these the hardcore UFOs – the residue that has been sifted out from the larger picture. Now is the hardcore UFO glass 95% empty and evaporating (if 19 out of 20 of UFOs are explainable, then 20 out of 20 are) or is the hardcore UFO glass 5% full (if 19 out of 20 are explainable, then it’s just 19 out of 20 that’s been explained, full stop)?

One of the main scientific arguments against UFOs being of any scientific interest is that if the substantial majority of UFO reports can be adequately explained (95%) then surely all could be if there was only sufficient information. Well, the USAF (as a typical government agency that was responsible for solving UFO sightings) had a category for ‘insufficient information’, as well as ‘possible’ this or ‘probable’ that. They also had a separate and apart category for ‘unknowns’. That is to say, they had sufficient information regarding a UFO sighting but hadn’t a clue as to what the object(s) were. That’s why they were tagged as ‘unknowns’. And that amounted to roughly five percent of all UFO sightings.

Okay, 19 out of 20 UFO reports prove to have prosaic explanations. Therefore the twentieth one has one as well. Sorry, the logic just isn’t there. The first and most obvious argument is that the 20^th UFO sighting has been singled out as being different because it is different. It’s like having one green apple in a basket of 19 red apples. If all you see on the surface are red apples, that don’t mean there’s not a green apple buried below, yet that’s what those who should know better conclude. Yet in reality you can’t conclude anything about the color of the apples out of sight in the apple basket until such time as you investigate and examine the color of all the apples present.

Other examples where 19 out of 20 don’t equate of necessity to 20 out of 20: If you recover from the flu nineteen times in a row, that doesn’t mean you’ll recover the twentieth time. If the N.Y. Yankees will nineteen baseball games in a row, that doesn’t mean they’ll win number twenty. If you toss a coin and it lands heads nineteen times in a row, that’s no reason to believe the twentieth toss will be heads. Taking an example from real science, if 193 species of primates have fur, surely the 194^th will have fur too. Alas, we’re the 194^th – “The Naked Ape”.

Here’s a bit of an experiment that helps demonstrate that the 20^th case can be the odd one out. Say you want to find out if relatively nonporous solid objects sink in fresh water. So you have a large bucket of fresh water, and into that bucket you toss an ordinary coin; a lump of glass; a lump of coal; a rock; a plastic comb; a brick; a lump of gold; a diamond; a china plate; a ball bearing; some copper wire; a piece of bone; a bit of cloth; a bowling ball; a CD; some lead shot; an aluminum ingot; a large salt crystal and a clam shell. That’s 19 items – they all sink, therefore you conclude that the next solid item you toss in will also sink – an ice cube. Oops; it’s back to the drawing board.

Of course the reluctance of scientists to come to terms with the bona fide UFO hardcore is really an issue central to the sociology of science. In particular, the negative findings of the University of Colorado (Condon Committee) report (1968) have been cited as a decisive factor in the generally low level of interest in UFO activity among academics since that time. That’s despite the fact that that report couldn’t adequately explain 30% of the UFO cases it investigated. Despite that historical anomaly, UFOs for better or worse acquaint to aliens and the ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis). There’s something about aliens that translates into little green (or gray) men, fodder for the tabloids that has an overall aura as a ‘silly season’ filler when there’s no real news around. That’s not the sort of fodder scientists like to feed on.

But these UFO unknowns don’t have to be of necessity something that equates to alien intelligence therefore the UFO ETH.

Okay, maybe the hardcore UFOs are time travellers from our future – that’s one alternative. But then hardcore UFO unknowns aren’t clustered around significant historical events that would be must sees – the bread-and-butter of that time travel industry – to tourists and historians from our future.

An early UFO ETH theory was that UFOs were actual living but non-intelligent organisms that lived in outer space but now and again would dip into our atmosphere. No biologist could actually explain how such creatures could survive, far less thrive, in the harsh conditions of outer space. So, fluffy critters from outer space without benefit of a spaceship aren’t a likely option.

Some suggest that the hardcore represent some sort of totally new natural phenomena, except there’s no even theoretical underpinning for new natural phenomena, and after six decades, well that’s a total failure to come to terms with an easy way out of the hardcore mess. However, natural phenomena wouldn’t exhibit intelligent behaviour in any event, which the hardcore UFOs do. That’s why they often tend to be the hardcore. Yet, still there’s this observation about one UFO case studied by the University of Colorado under government contract to the USAF, headed by Dr. Edward Condon. The Condon Report, as it became known had this to say: “…this unusual sighting should therefore be assigned to the category of some almost certainly natural phenomenon, which is so rare that it apparently has never been reported before or since.” You’d think that would whet the appetite of any scientist eager to make a major discovery that leads to the road to Stockholm (and a Nobel Prize). Apparently that’s just not the case. Hardcore UFO sightings, even as an apparent natural phenomenon are taboo.

Regardless, ET, space critters, time travellers, unknown natural phenomena, whatever, scientists cannot claim the hardcore UFO issue settled while those unknowns remain. They are derelict in their duty by ignoring them, hoping they’ll just ‘go away’. It’s not good enough for scientists to say ‘if 19 out of 20, therefore 20 out of 20, and go on their merry way washing their hands of the otherwise reality that that logic is faulty. They need to prove that assertion, not ignore it. Translated, they’ve got to put up or shut up. 

Some might claim that it’s the alleged nature of the unknowns as claimed by the believers that puts the onus on them to prove their case. That would be so if they claimed the hardcore UFO unknowns were proof that UFOs were piloted by ET. However, while a few sprout that line (and if they do they should put up or shut up), a majority of pro-UFO people, believers if you will, just point to the unknowns as evidence (not proof – evidence and proof are two different things) that supports the UFO ETH. Unfortunately, if the UFO ETH is really true, proof of that tends to be out of the hands of the believers since if ET doesn’t want to be caught out, he/she/it won’t be – that’s the advantage of having advanced intelligence. You outsmart lesser intelligence. So the lesser intelligence needs the cooperation (or an unintended slipup – Roswell?) of the greater alien intelligence, and we’re not getting it. Of course if there is really no ET associated with the hardcore UFO residue, then that explains that. 

But nearly all UFO believers just really believe that there’s a case to be answered for that lone 20^th hardcore UFO event, regardless of what the explanation turns out to be. And the best people to find out that explanation(s) are scientists, yet scientists ignore the challenge as they did in Dr. McDonald’s day; as they continue to do well into the 21^st Century. 

*McDonald, James E.; Science in default: twenty-two years of inadequate UFO investigations; (in) Page, Thornton & Sagan, Carl (Editors); UFO’s: A Scientific Debate; Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York; 1972; pages 52-122.

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…

UFOs: The Skeptics, the Scientists and the Double Standards

We’d nearly all be aware that when it comes to the subject of UFOs, most scientists shun away from them like they would a skunk who let fly. Scientists and UFOs tend to party together in much the same way as oil and water mix. Professional sceptics have a field day with the topic by usually picking and choosing to give their middle finger to the easy targets, not the hardcore issues. For example, it’s easy to rubbish someone who says they took a trip in a flying saucer with the ‘space brothers’ to Saturn; it’s much harder to ridicule a military pilot who reports engaging in a dogfight with a UFO. So, is this behaviour rational or are there hidden agendas and double standards?

The UFO Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) can’t be therefore it isn’t; alright it might be but it still isn’t; don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up; and in any event it’s all pseudoscience and I just deal with real science. Trust me on this – I’m a scientist! And we all know scientists are 100% rational and right 100% of the time!

Many professional scientists, and other sceptics, when and if they think about UFOs at all, have been preconditioned to think of them in terms of the lunatic fringe, nutters who accept any and all pseudoscience associated with the paranormal and therefore not worthy of their attention, or if worthy, then worthy in a negative sense as only something to ridicule. They like to in a sense ‘pour water on a drowning man’ and pat themselves on the back as how superior they are relative to the astrology-minded; the great unwashed set who believe non-avian dinosaurs and humans coexisted together.  

Firstly, let’s dispose of the sceptics, professional and otherwise, since their double standard amounts to treating all pseudoscience or all paranormal topics equally. Actually therefore sceptics only have a single standard – no shades of grey. One size fits all. That is to say, no matter what the anomaly, it’s rubbish. Sceptics just lump together all that’s paranormal, and call it pseudoscience as any sceptics’ website or monograph will more than adequately demonstrate – all pseudoscience is nonsense and all = all. However, I suggest that instead of all anomalies being equal; some anomalies are more equal than others. In short, some anomalies are really bovine fertiliser, but hardly all. To lump astrology and UFOs in the same basket is a double standard, since the theoretical and observational evidence for each isn’t really equal. Likewise, there’s more theoretical and actual evidence for the existence of the Sasquatch (Bigfoot) than there is for say telepathy. Since sceptics can’t distinguish serious anomalies from trivial ones, well I can’t treat sceptics seriously since when crunch comes to the crunch, they can’t be bothered to do the proper research and make distinctions.

Scientists on the other hand should take everything on their individual merits, and clearly in any scientific field, not all topics have equal merits. Saying life exists on Mars is not in the same league as saying life exists on Venus. Despite that, some topics do have equal merits, but that doesn’t stop scientists from pretending they don’t. Take SETI for example.

SETI (that’s the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientists tend to poo-poo ufology buffs for failing to come up with a UFO ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) smoking gun, or any compelling evidence, especially physical evidence for hardcore UFOs, in over six decades. That’s one topic. Of course they conveniently forget that SETI is entirely based on theory and SETI hasn’t produced a smoking gun conclusive of the existence of ETI either, over a near equal five decades of searching. But that’s another topic. However, both topics are in fact equal in that neither has produced a smoking gun that’s ‘killed’ the alien and provided a corpse for study. In fact, the amount of SETI evidence, including physical evidence, is but a short story compared to the full length UFO novel.

There is one other up-close-and-personal reason SETI scientists dump on the UFO ETH and/or ‘ancient astronauts’ is because they have a vested interest in SETI. They have spent careers, building equipment designed to look for alien intelligence out there, often been made fun of by other scientists (and the American Congress) in their hunt for ‘little green men’. It would be a serious blow to their egos, careers, reputations and an actual downright embarrassment if ET proven to be down here all along. So, it’s almost a natural reaction to rubbish any alternative idea. We’ve seen that any number of times in the history of science – Darwinian evolution vs. Lamarckian evolution; the Big Bang cosmology vs. the Steady State cosmology; catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism in geology. Debates have often been controversial, personal and bitter. So it’s interesting to note that when I communicate some of my unorthodox ideas to a well known SETI scientist, if I get under his skin, at worst I get no response; at best one that starts with “Dear Mr. Prytz”. Now if I say something he considers sensible (by his standards) the reply is “Dear John”. That’s a bit of a double standard too in its own right.

Now when it comes to SETI vs. the UFO ETH, that’s not to say SETI scientists shouldn’t continue to do SETI – they should – nothing ventured, nothing gained. But it gains them nothing to reject out of hand the rival idea that ET is or was down here are well as being up there.  

Quite apart from SETI, 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. Many a scientist will profess a firm belief in something that has absolutely ‘no evidence’ of any kind, conveniently forgetting that they have rubbished other people’s beliefs for having faith in six impossible things that appear on their dining room table prior to breakfast. And so we see here the beginnings of more general double standards.

A prime example of how some scientists have their lack of evidence and belief too is with respect to religion. Even as recently as 2009, a public opinion poll found that a significant (albeit minority) percentage of scientists had a belief in a God that was up close and personal in their lives. There’s not the slightest bit of evidence, physical or otherwise, that God exists. There’s absolutely no evidence for any deity (monotheistic or polytheistic), 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 God 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 double standards with respect to God: Show Me the Evidence!’ There just isn’t any.

That reminds me of God’s double standard of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. It’s just like God (of the Old Testament) to command “Thou shall not kill” while He goes off and nearly exterminates the entire terrestrial human and animal population vis-à-vis the universal deluge. Anyway, back to the scientist.

There are valid cases within science itself of scientists not only ‘having a lack of evidence for X’s reality but never-the-less a belief in X’s reality too’. Now without meaning to accuse scientists of pure hypocrisy, there are lots of current concepts in science that have absolutely no evidence of any sort apart from the purely theoretical to support them, yet are taken quite seriously by physical scientists. A partial list would include concepts like the Multiverse (there is more than one universe – ours - 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 our) Universe theory; and, shock-horror for those interested in SETI , the total lack of any under-the-microscope, hardcore evidence whatsoever for any intelligent life forms anywhere out there other than intelligent terrestrial life forms (humans). Yet it is acceptable for scientists to research these areas without being subjected 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.

Understandably for scientists, there is one very big and fundamental problem with UFOs. They tend to be unpredictable in time and space, and when they do show up; they don’t stand still and grant you an interview and allow you the leisure of taking out your yardstick or whatever other scientific instrument you care to name and measuring them.

But there are other case histories from the annals of science regarding ‘the nature of the evidence’ that have parallels with UFOs – physical phenomena that are unpredictable in time and space, that don’t stand still; that you can’t poke and prod, and that you can not put under the microscope and , examine at your leisure. These various phenomena; well 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 are akin to UFOs in that scientists lack the means to lock them down, isolate them, and study the unfolding event at their leisure. Yet, it is one rule for one (ball lightning, TLP, Tunguska); one rule for another (UFOs).

So there seems to be a double standard for acceptable evidence here. UFOs have apparently no verifiable evidence and a ‘giggle factor’; ball lightning and TLP have unverifiable evidence but no ‘giggle factor’, yet all of these have theoretical underpinnings that make their existence plausible. In the case of the UFO ETH, it’s the Fermi Paradox – that’s the ‘where are they, if they exist they should be here’ observation.

Ultimately the question here boils down to finding an answer (a smoking gun) to the question that humans have asked and speculated on for thousands of years – are we alone in the universe? There shouldn’t be any double standards employed when it comes down to addressing this issue. There are ultimately four choices: 1) We can choose not to answer the question because the world has bigger priorities than proving the existence of ‘little green men’; 2) we can, as SETI does, search out there, which obviously is a very logical thing to do even though it’s a proverbial ‘needle in the haystack’ search; 3) we can search down here – ancient astronauts and UFOs – which is a positive in that it restricts the haystack’s geography required to be examined, but on probability is less likely statistically that the needle will be there (another parallel being someone looking for a lost key underneath the lamppost just because the light’s better there); 4) or we can do both – search out there AND search down here and not put our quest for the ‘little green men’ into an either/or basket. Unfortunately, that’s way too idealistic a position to have accepted given the historical double standard already taken.

In conclusion, when it comes to the scientific community and evidence, there is often a double standard employed.  There’s not one shred of physical evidence for string theory, yet it’s an accepted area of funded academic research and has been for decades. On the UFO issue, many scientists while happy to accept the accuracy of eyewitness testimony when it provides data that turns a UFO event into an IFO, for some strange reason reject eyewitness testimony when it reinforces the unidentified or unknown status of the UFO event. That’s another double standard. Go figure!

Of course the ultimate conclusion to be drawn is that scientists are human too and have their own agendas, backgrounds and personalities which can and do colour their belief systems. Apart from the ever logical Mr. Spock, is there any human, past or present (and probably future) who hasn’t at one time or other employed a double standard? Not that that makes the double standard acceptable of course, but theoretical idealism and practical reality is two very separate things.

So, IMHO, the double standard fails because though sceptics and scientists rally against the UFO ETH, and perhaps they are right in their conclusions, skeptics and scientists aren’t all-knowing and often base their conclusions on faith or belief. They too are human with all the accompanying baggage that implies and they can, and do, make mistakes, and such is the case I believe when it comes to labeling the pro UFO ETH a pseudoscience. Once upon a time Galileo Galilei and Nicolaus Copernicus would have been considered pseudo-astronomers; Heinrich Schliemann (of Troy fame) someone who dabbled in pseudo-archaeology; Charles Darwin was a pseudo-naturalist; and Alfred Wegener, obviously put forth a theory (continental drift) that could only be described as pseudo-geology at the time. Even originally Albert Einstein was so far out in left field that his scientific seniors and superiors could easily have described his physics as pseudo-physics. Only time and history will be the judge whether or not the UFO ETH is or was pseudoscience or real science. The jury IMHO is still out on that issue. 

Evidence and the Twelfth Man: How Much Is Enough? Part One

A phrase has appeared in many popular science books as well as sceptical books about various aspects of the paranormal and pseudoscience, but which has, in classic meme fashion, spread to other subjects as well. That phrase is “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. However, I feel that phrase has well outlived its original purpose, is total nonsense, and has passed its ‘use by’ date by several decades at least. 

How much evidence does it take to convince someone of something like a jury; a scientist; a ‘professional’ sceptic; the great unwashed? The answer is obviously “Enough”. Any more than that is overkill. Of course what’s enough for any particular scenario will vary depending on the person. So, as per the film “12 Angry Men”, what’s enough evidence to convince 11 men wasn’t enough to convince the 12^th. Still, in theory there would come a point where additional evidence would be enough to sway that 12^th man. But that’s no more than just enough additional amount of evidence that he would require to join the other 11. The 12^th man requires some additional evidence, not extraordinarily more evidence; not overkill.

So why do scientists demand evidence overkill as per the way overused and illogical phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE). No, claims of any kind require sufficient evidence to convince that 12^th man – no more and no less. ECREE needs to be consigned to the rubbish bin. I can understand the intent behind the phrase, but not the logic.

Sometimes you hear a song once too often and it loses its appeal. Sometimes it never had any appeal in the first place. In this case, it’s somewhere in-between. I didn’t object to the ECREE phrase at first, but after the 1000^th time, and especially upon more sober reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a nonsense phrase.

I gather an original purpose of ECREE was to separate the scientists making scientific claims, backed by independent verification and peer review, from the non-scientists making pseudo-scientific (i.e. – extraordinary) claims. This was all with the view on the grounds scientists don’t have the time and inclination to investigate every pseudo-scientific claim, so if they are to take the great unwashed seriously, a truckload of evidence had better be presented to them – far more than would be required initially from one of their peers. While that makes a bit of sense, it perpetuates an us vs. them dichotomy and makes scientists more elite than they really are, and/or makes the great unwashed even more unwashed than they really are. Anyway, this you’d better dump on me an extraordinary amount of evidence in my lap before I take you seriously (and even then I’ll probably take you with a grain of salt because I doubt I’ll have the right time of day for you because my mind is made up so don’t confuse me with facts or evidence) has become enshrined in the ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ mantra. 

Now at the onset, let me state that claims require evidence. That is not in dispute. That philosophy is an absolutely central concept part and parcel of our modern civilization. The entire foundation of our legal system answers to that principle. The scientific community, peer review, has adopted that principle. Even in everyday personal life, we insist on the viability of that principle. I mean if you claim you have a red dress, some doubting Thomas is perfectly within his rights to make you prove it – provide the evidence. And so you go to your closet, bring out the red dress, and so prove your claim. Now if you claim to have 1000 red dresses, which may seem like an extraordinary claim, but the nature of the evidence is exactly the same. You go to your closet, drag out 1000 red dresses, and dispatch Mr. Doubting Thomas quick-smart.

Oh, there is one great exception to the ‘claims require evidence’ principle – religion. When it comes to religious claims, however outrageous and illogical then may seem, you don’t have to provide any evidence, extraordinary or otherwise. It’s all about blind faith – faith is the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to believing in – to be honest – unsubstantiated claims.

Now the problem is that the work ‘extraordinary’ is in the mind of the beholder. What’s extraordinary to one individual isn’t even remotely extraordinary to another. It’s an emotive, personally judgmental word.

If I claim there’s a blue sedan parked in my driveway, that’s an ordinary claim.

If I claim there’s a ‘flying saucer’ parked in my driveway, you’d say that’s an extraordinary claim. However, both claims, ordinary or extraordinary, require the exact same amount of evidence. 

In the no-nonsense legal world, there’s no need for extraordinary evidence. You don’t require twice or thrice the number of witnesses to convict in the case of murder vis-à-vis shoplifting, even though murder is a far rarer and more extraordinary crime than shoplifting.

You go to the bank. Whether you withdraw an ordinary $1 or an extraordinary $10,000, you will be required to produce evidence that you are who you say you are – your signature, and perhaps photographic identification. But, in either case, it’s the same evidence.

To be continued…

Ghosts That Go Bump In the Night: Part Two

I think there might be a real scientific case to answer regarding an explanation for ghosts. However, IMHO ghosts have nothing to do with human spirits and evidence of an afterlife. Rather, all can be explained by postulating that we live in, and are the product of a simulated Universe. However, let’s look at alternative explanations first.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The immediate, and most obvious, explanation(s) revolve around routine, ordinary, physical events that witnesses misinterpret. There can be many natural sources for strange lights; many natural sources for weird noises, even apparent changes in temperatures associated with spiritual manifestations.

The next most obvious category of explanations resides within the mind. If you’re tired, under the influence, have through no fault of your own abnormal brain chemistry or disease or injury, then what you perceive might not be what you think it is. Some people might be extra sensitive in their perception of and able to be influenced by infrasound or magnetic fields. There are dreams that can be extremely vivid (lucid dreams), and hallucinations. For the ‘all in the mind’ theory to be credible, you’ve got to give equal opportunity to a whole range of other equally logical, yet equally nonsensical items like sightings of flying pink elephants. The mind can conceive of flying pink elephants equally as well as ghosts, yet where are the reports of flying pink elephants? There are millions of other plausible topics that could be imagined and reported as reality but aren’t. So when you get thousands of sightings of one data point in a landscape of plausible millions of data points (that aren’t ever noted and logged), what does that tell you about the ‘all in the mind’ theory?

However, I suggest that on balance, while there is certainly some truth in a sweeping generalization that each and every ghostly sighting has a prosaic explanation, I remain unconvinced that all those who experience apparitions are akin to having converted believers preached to. Sure, some people seek out ghostly encounters and expect to experience same just like some Bigfoot/Sasquatch hunters see a partly concealed animal a mile or more away in thick forest and immediately jump to the conclusion that it must be a Bigfoot. The will to believe is a powerful influence.

A believer in the ‘flying saucer’ explanation of all things UFO is more likely to look at the planet Venus and explain ‘There, an alien spacecraft’, than someone who poo-poos the whole UFO subject.  It takes something extraordinary to turn a non-believer/sceptic into a believer/convert, especially when extraordinary event conversions cut across all cultures over thousands of years!

So, we have extraordinary encounters and reports from far too many un-expecting and unprepared witnesses, from all walks of life, since at least the times of the ancient Greeks. There’s thousands of reports from witnesses not seeking out new (or any) ghostly encounters, those sober disbelievers who get bumped in the night anyway. Well, as I said, there are just a few too many to suggest that prosaic explanations can account for 100% of cases. 95% I’ll go along with; just not 100%. So, what other explanations are plausible? 

One can invoke the idea of parallel worlds to explain ghosts, not as the remains of the dead but is barely perceptible images of living beings (or inanimate objects) on a parallel world; a parallel Earth in all probability. But parallel worlds or universes are theoretical at best and the macro mechanism(s) by which these macro ghostly entities could appear in our realm is also very hypothetical, and it’s compounding one speculation by heaping on it another. However, there’s a better bet in theorising that on the quantum (micro) level, there could be interactions between parallel worlds. However, that probably doesn’t help us explain ghostly manifestations.  

It’s pretty obvious that the existence of a discrete chunk of matter/energy has an influence of other discrete chunks of matter/energy that influence remaining - for a while at least -even when the first chunk moves away or otherwise vanishes or changes in form. For example, the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) is the ghostly remains of the Big Bang origin event of our Universe. The Big Bang is no more, but the influence remains. If you look at a bright light then turn the light off, you’ll still see, for a brief while, an afterimage of that light. You can also detect its infrared (heat) radiation for a spell, even after lights out! You might be able to tell that someone has recently been in a room because the temperature is slightly higher in one place coupled with a higher concentration of perfume in that same place not to mention that the sofa cushions (that same location) are still slightly depressed as if someone had been recently sitting on them. Footprints are another example of influence between one chunk of matter/energy and another – influence left behind even though the original chunk is now far away. Such are the clues from which Sherlock Holmes and kin make their living from.

Now to the best of my knowledge, ghostly manifestations tend to be recent – recent with respect to human history. That is, I know of no reports of ghostly dinosaurs, or sabre tooth cats or Neanderthals (there’s no haunted caveman caves). While I’m sure the ancient Greeks saw ghosts from their recent past, we don’t tend to see ghosts of ancient Greeks. It almost seems that after a certain period of time, whatever influence on the environment the original matter/energy chunk (human for sake of argument) had, the remnants, those ghostly manifestations, ultimately fades away to something no longer distinguishable from the ordinary or everyday background, and does so usually within several centuries. Imagine turning off a light having it slowly fade away, but taking perhaps many centuries to do so.

The problem with this idea is that I’m sure any physicist could calculate how long it would take for any residual trace of something to fade and blend into the background as to be indistinguishable from the background. It doesn’t take all that long after turning off the oven for its temperature to cool to that equalling the background temperature. So, explaining ghostly images days, months, years, even decades or many centuries after-the-fact is problematical at best. I like the idea, but I can’t see a way to make it work in practice. Be that as it may, there’s probably some wheat among the chaff here, although I’m not quite sure however what this observation (that ghosts fade away in time) all means, if anything. But I think it’s an important observation and offers up a clue towards an ultimate resolution. 

One could easily imagine a ghost (or any kind – formally animate or inanimate) as the product of a hologram. The only difficulty with that idea, of course, is that ghostly apparitions have been observed, noted and logged way, way before modern holographic technology came into being.

Simulations on the other hand could be a horse of a different colour. The basic premise here is that you and I and all we see and hear (and touch, taste and smell) is an illusion because we are all simulated beings ‘living’ in a virtual world, the creation of a person or persons (or even an alien or aliens) unknown. We, and our Universe, are as ‘real’ as the characters and their universe are in a computer game. In a simulation of that sort, it’s certainly possible, maybe even logical, to provide as a subroutine an afterlife – a plane of higher dimensional existence (whatever that means exactly) – perhaps something, a concept, we’ve come to identify as Heaven or Hell. But let’s just call that subroutine afterlife the ‘spirit world’. If we can have ghosts in our virtual computer game worlds, then by implication, our Supreme Simulator could have provided the software for ghosts or ghostly apparitions (animate or inanimate) inhabiting the subroutine spirit world!

On the other hand, why would a Supreme Simulator provide a software subroutine providing for ghosts? Well, who knows the mind and rational of our Supreme Simulator, especially if our S.S. is an alien? Actually, I think the simulation of ghostly phenomena could be a mistake; something not actually intended. I suspect our ghostly manifestations are just a previously deleted bit of software. Since nothing is ever truly deleted – deleted files can usually be recovered albeit by experts. Overwriting previous text doesn’t apparently actually destroy in total what was there before-the-fact. In a manner somewhat akin to receiving interference and ghostly images on your TV set, previous software, now deleted, might every now and again come marginally into the foreground.

So the bottom line is that science says they (meaning the things that go bump in the night, the afterlife remains of dead entities or non-biological things) can not be; witnesses testimony notwithstanding. Impasse! On the other hand, the simulation argument works for me. Impasse no longer!