Thanks to a recent piece by Ed Komarek on OpEdNews.com 2-13-08 entitled Where is our Rosie Parks? and the widespread knowledge and worldwide exposure of the January 8th Stephenville, Texas UFO sightings, I feel emboldened and wish to make contact with my fellow UFO freaks out there in the world. You can come out of the closet now folks. Seriously you can. And may the non-believers out there please hang with me with an open mind for only the amount of time that it takes to read a few paragraphs. Recent polls have shown that approx 70% of the US population can accept the reality of the existence of extraterrestrial life. The concept even sounds logical to me by the reasoning of numbers alone considering the vastness of the universe and the quantity of heavenly bodies "out there" that can possibly have conditions that sustain life. Our excursions to Mars have shown that such conditions may have once existed right next door at our neighboring planet. So why is it odd and peculiar to carry this thought one step further to acceptance of the possibility of visits from alien species? These visits are reported daily by people all over the world and yet we roll our eyes, turn and cough to mask over the word "crazy" when our friends bring up the subject. Did you ever wonder if you actually knew someone who was abducted by aliens but didn't know who the abductee was because no one in their right mind would have the guts to alert you to such news? Did you ever consider that believing in UFO's and their occupants isn't much different than believing in a flying burning bush delivering the bearer of stone tablets of wisdom, an immaculate conception, angels, demons, a resurrection, an ark, a transcendence into heaven, a holy man on earth, a deity or any other number of mystical and divine beings, objects and occurrences? We can believe a set of intangibles that requires nothing but faith while we cannot believe in something that has provided physical evidence and shown itself to us. How can we continue to hold onto such hypocrisy just to avoid dealing with the reality? Well hold onto your hats. That may change. News in the UFO community shows that reported sightings are on the rise. The UK saw a 39% increase in reports between 2006 and 2007. Perhaps you'll soon see something that makes you change your mind about all of this crazy alien stuff. Or will it take the uber-big display of battalions to finally convince us that visits from interplanetary species are something that we should have been prepared for? Are you prepared to know which of our guests of various sizes, shapes and colors are the good guys and which ones are the bad guys? How will you know whether or not to approach these strangers with hostility or peace? Might I be so bold as to suggest that the answer may lie within ancient structures, art, text and scriptures? And please consider dear American reader that UFO's were reported to have been spotted 405 times in the month of January of 2008 alone in an area that includes parts of Canada as well as the US according to reports received and listed by the national UFO reporting center, NUFORC.org. NUFORC does prescreen the listings for obvious hoaxes but understandably still cannot vouch for the authenticity of all reports.Sixty-four of the January sightings were in California, with thirty-eight in Texas, thirty-two in Florida and eighteen in New York per my quick count of listings for those chosen four states. There were 111 reports listed at NUFORC's website between February 1, 2008 and Valentine's Day. These are impressive numbers especially when one considers a quick estimation of 3600 reports per year just in North America, if one can assume that it is safe to base a quick calculation on the conservative number 300 for average monthly reports. Other websites reveal that the phenomenon occurs all over our planet earth. Isn't it time that we started discussing openly without shame how it is that we are going to greet our guests? They have been ringing the doorbell for quite a while, 60 years as a matter of fact. It's rude to continue to ignore them.
They are weather balloons, kids' balloons, Venus at sunrise and sunset, military experiments, street lights in the fog, birds, Northern lights, reflections on clouds, clouds, satellites, paragliders, planes, ultralights, parachute jumpers, meteors, wishful thinking, and hallucinations, among other things.
Untold billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each certainly make the liklihood of extraterrestial life plausible--indeed, probable. But advanced civilizations that manage to survive and are capable of interstellar travel are not quite the same as bacterial or viral-like chemical replicators.
Interstellar distances are truly beyond our imagination, and few people have taken the time to ponder them. Proxima Centuri, our nearest star, is 4.3 light years away. That's light travelling at 186,000 miles per second for 4.3 years. It's a hundred million times farther than the moon, 25,000 years, one way, by our fastest space ship. Even if you got there, you'd be in the middle of nowhere. The next star, Sirius, would be another 4.6 light years of travel. Just getting to the center of our aimlessly wandering Milky Way would take longer than we've existed as beings.
A quote here from Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, page 17 [START BRYSON QUOTE]:
Space, let me repeat, is enormous. The average distance between stars out there is 20 million million miles. Even at speeds approaching those of light, these are fantastically challenging distances for any traveling individual. Of course, it is possible that alien beings travel billions of miles to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in Wiltshire or frightening the daylights out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona (they must have teenagers, after all), but does seem unlikely.
Still, statistically the probability that there are other thinking beings out there is good. Nobody knows how many stars there are in the Mikly Way--estimates range from 100 billion [one with 11 zeros] or so to perhaps 400 billion--and the Milky Way is just one of 140 billion or so other galaxies, many of them even larger than ours....
[E]ven with the most conservative inputs the number of advanced civilizations just in the Milky Way always works out to be somewhere in the millions. [From what I've read, I don't think all scientists agree on this.]
What an interesting and exciting thought. We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs--people who don't know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin "Dear Sire," and congratulate us on the handsomeness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us....
"If we were randomly inserted into the universe," Sagan wrote, "the chances that you would be on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion." (That's 10 to the 33rd, or a one followed by thirty-three zeroes.) [END BRYSON QUOTE]
Anyone who's bothered to crack a book on evolution also understands that the chances of human-like creatures evolving are virtually negligible, even with the large numbers of potentially habitable planets (what is "habitable" and by what, is a whole issue in itself).
What we mean by intelligence is yet another field of study we are barely scratching the surface of; I'm still waiting for signs of intelligence here on earth--for example, our species as a whole recognizing that we are one species, and treating each other accordingly--and though I consider myself an optimist, I rather expect that human extinction will preempt those signs (much as I hope I'm wrong).
Meanwhile, I do happen to make UFOs for a living. Not only that, but I'd be happy to sell you one. Problem is, when word gets out a little more, they will be I(dentified)FOs rather than UFOs.
P.S. The importance of understanding the uniqueness of our place in space and time is, in my opinion, absolutely imperative for our survival. Without an appreciation of this specialness, we ignorantly go about trashing and destroying the only planet we'll ever have, and acting as if our economic system or social status or various other superstitions are more important than our survival. Yes, creating some genuine intelligence here on Earth would be a wonderful idea, for ourselves, our children, and other living things.
by
Daniel Geery (26 articles, 58 quicklinks, 121 diaries, 680 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 8:25:26 AM
Great points Daniel. I like Sci Fi as much as anyone else, but that doesn't mean I believe in intelligent aliens are actually visiting the Earth, since that would be particularly difficult.
Still waiting for that 3rd kind of encounter, or the second for that matter.
I have a feeling the wait is going to be very, very long.
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John R Moffett (80 articles, 14 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 598 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 9:47:24 AM
You mean the science fiction that predicted we'd have submarines, go to the moon, and have something like the Internet or a space station? That science fiction? Yeah, I read way too much of that stuff.
I don't believe or disbelieve whether ETs are visiting. I'm sure I won't, unless and until I either see one or the government acknowledges them. But that doesn't make UFO investigation invalid, or worthy of anyone's disdain.
Some respected scientists, including Carl Sagan, have considered the possbility that life exists elsewhere in the universe. The government funded SETI for a period of time. Presidents Reagan and Carter saw UFOs, and some people think Reagan's sighting affected him so much that it was partly behind his decision to push the Strategic Defense Initiative. When the government has released any of its UFO investigations, it has blacked out a significant portion of the information.
But . . . it's all just a joke.
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SpiritBlooms (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 2:14:02 PM
I respect your opinion but it does not appear that you are someone who has actually researched the topic. You are just stating an opinion.
Please actually look at the evidence and then make an informed statement. See my comment below for a starting point on your disclosure. If I can be of assistance pointing you to other solid evidence on the topic please let me know. My email address is fields@gator.net.
Respectfully,
Frank
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Franklin Fields (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 15 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 12:02:51 PM
Another unmentioned tidbit is that say an alien craft stocked itself with food and fuel for 200 years, then brought on families to reproduce and continue the voyage until they arrive and... and... they show up, take a few photos, and turn around and go home???
I do think there is life out there, it would be unreasonable to think otherwise, but until I see more than a photo or a light, I'll stick with searching for intelligent life here, which is hard enough as it is...
And, for the record, this website probably needs to curtail these types of articles, this is a news based info blog, and it loses credibility by allowing these articles. Sorry if you feel offended, but get a life... There are many more credible concerns going on in our own world to get to caught up in photos, alien conspiracy theories and strange lights in the sky.
I'll gladly eat my words under more conclusive proof
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denvan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 28 comments)
on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 3:42:26 PM
Texas news that went international. And the poor journalist for the small hometown newspaper who broke the story lost her job due to directives from corporate heads on high.
All I am saying is that there is evidence enough, and enough people seriously aware of the issue now, that this topic needs to be explored further. It does have implications for national security and "continuity of government." You are concerned about those things right?
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Angela Zayak (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 31 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 9:19:30 PM
The old distance is too great theory just doesn't hold water anymore. Too many credible witnesses from military generals to the average policeman have reported sightings. Our arrogance that we know the only way to travel in space and it takes to long to get anywhere is absurd. I think the greatest distance for people to overcome is their fear that we may not be alone, and what that would do to their personal reality.
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freedomrider (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 10:16:55 AM
Current science does not explain many accepted natural occurances in full to this date. We are still on a journey of discovery, so it is no surprise that we common citizens, even the well educated ones, don't know all of the answers.
As far as interplanetary travel goes and its related obstacles of time and distance, I suggest that the commentors explore string theory for information pertaining to multiple dimensions. I also suggest study of recent developments in theory regarding worm holes. Even though we may not as yet understand exactly how UFO's and their occupants defy OUR laws of physics, it doesn't necessarily mean that our sky brothers suffer from the same lack of knowledge.
I also suggest taking a look at reported sightings. Many do not describe far, far away small lights that can easily be explained away. I personally have seen UFO's on four occasions over the decades. The size of the objects, their shapes, the patterns of lights on the objects, and the manuevering capabilities could definately not be brushed off as a balloon, comet, asteroid or known man-made aircraft. In many cases the low altitude of the object affords the viewer observation of details that cannot be matched to any known arial craft.
Most people who report sightings try first to use logic to explain what they saw and they don't make an immediate leap to UFO simply because of the stigma attached to such a report. And where there a multiple sightings offering the same description, is it fair to assume mass hysteria or that all of the witnesses are a little bats-in-the-belfry without an actual investigation? I think not, that's called prejudice.
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Angela Zayak (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 31 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 10:26:34 AM
Over the last 2 or 3 years, string theory, far from making progress, is starting to be recognized as a scientific dead-end. From high hopes in the '80s and '90s as a long-sought, legitimate "Unified Theory of Everything", it has, in fact, turned into a mathematical engine of sheer speculation: a "Unified Theory of Anything".
As such it allows personable speculative physicists like Michio Kaku to, well, speculate on just about anything: time travel, wormholes, and parallel universes.
But string theory, as a theory, has fallen off the deep end. In attempts to repair internal inconsistencies and conflicts with actual observations, it has invented and cobbled together enough mathematics, and extreme, even possibly incorrect mathematics at that, that it's now in a position to predict any number of viable alternative realities but lacks the ability to prove them.
So it’s reasonable to be skeptical about what it has to say; more so, since it’s starting to be relied upon so much by New Age and mystic authorities.
Please don't get me wrong. I've spent a fair fraction of my life trying to accommodate and reconcile the paradoxes between my spiritual view of reality and current scientific views of the universe. But appealing to string theory as "science", or as even reasonably well-accepted "science" goes too far simply because it's impossible to prove any of the things that it describes.
I, for one, believe that string theory is almost certainly incorrect. There IS a theory out there, still to be discovered, but it will require another paradigm shift, similar to when Copernicus displaced the Earth from the center of the universe, or when Einstein recognized the basic equivalence between gravitational "forces" and acceleration.
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Robert Knowles (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 43 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 2:22:23 PM
but Mr Knowles, you said something along the lines that string theory (albeit in its newest twisted and perverted attempts at application) is less believable now that mystics and new agers have had a go at it. I agree that these sorts of applications can get a bit mushy and stretched, but it shouldn't take away from the original theory.
If we go back in time, we'll see that string theory is not science or religion. It is mathematics. And math is a little harder to mess with, yes?
I do see your point, but I'd argue that proving the existance of 11 dimensions via math is a significant fairly recent development.
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Angela Zayak (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 31 comments)
on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 9:31:21 PM
What if you had one of the potential millions of unofficial "unreported" sightings? Seeing can be believing when what one sees one simply have no explanation for. There are lots of "me's" out there. I for one will keep my mind open and continue to think for myself. I find great personal joy knowing that the universe could be as diverse as what may be left of life on our precious Earth.
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Victrola (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 16 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 2:39:32 PM
Many people's spirits have left their bodies in near death experiences. Here is a fascinating account of a near death experience which has been accepted by Deepak Chopra in which the person traveled through differnet dimensions unencumbered by the physical body.
I encourage everyone that I possibly can encourage, to take a good long look at developments in math and quantum physics. Science is on the verge of possibly proving that much of what we consider to be "paranormal" is real. Very real indeed. Science is our friend. Its proof for those sceptics amongst us.
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Angela Zayak (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 31 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 11:42:42 AM
On one side we have the biblically/Koranically lobotomized assuring us that there is a hereafter and that mankind is under the thumb of an invisible creator. On the other side we have folks like this, looking for salvation from the world's problems in little green men from outer space.
Yikes. No wonder things are such a mess.
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Stephen Pizzo (88 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 26 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 10:44:32 AM
The possible answers to that question almost cannot be counted if one approaches the idea with outside of the box thinking. Perhaps planets comprised primarily of water are valuable commodities in the interstellar or cosmic community. Or perhaps other species have wrecked their own planets, as we have done, and they know that good planets are hard to find. If there is an all-knowing almighty perhaps he, she or it, has assigned a task of watching over us to some of his, her, or its other humanoid creations simply because we are known to be imperfect as a species. Just to name a few possibilities. I'm sure creative and imaginative minds can come up with quite a few possible other answers for "why?"
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Angela Zayak (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 31 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 11:35:35 AM
and parenthetically speaking - I do believe in life elsewhere. But - the military is always at least 50 years ahead technologically of what they give us, so the likelihood that anomalous sightings being of man-made origin should be fully disclosed before we start ascribing extraterrestrial sources for what we do not yet know.
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CasaZaza (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 119 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 11:42:52 AM
I tend to think that crashed alien craft have been reversed engineered and that you make a vaild point. We should indeed consider that there may be advanced and undisclosed aircraft that belong to our military as well as to the "others."
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Angela Zayak (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 31 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 11:53:58 AM
WHERE ARE THEY? You do have to be nuts to keep yapping about "sightings". Show them to me. Interview them. Have them walking the streets, or collaborating with scientists on expanding the knowledge we have on space. Do you really think people are so naive and desperate that theyll just take your word about "sightings?" Youre such a fraud. How can you make an assertion and furnish no proof whatsoever? Dont waste my time.
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Guajolotl (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 132 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 11:28:55 AM
