Jan 03 2007
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A New Reason To Consider The ETH
Although we constantly harp on the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) here at ufomystic, we also strive to present all parts of the argument in pursuit of true skepticism. The shrillest and least circumspect voices in ufology tend to believe wholeheartedly in the ETH, but they may have a good reason, even though they probably won’t take the time to understand it.
Some readers may not be aware of a scientific paper published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) two years ago. While cleaning up the living room in preparation for the arrival of a new pet cat, I came across a copy of the article, which appeared in January of 2005. Co-authored by James Deardorff, Bernard Haisch, Bruce Maccabee, and Hal Puthoff (familiar names to many) it was one of the first articles to discuss UFOs and specifically extraterrestrial life to appear in a mainstream scientific journal in many years. There have probably been only a couple of hundred on the subject since J. Allen Hynek’s “Unusual Aerial Phenomena” was printed in the Journal of the Optical Society of America in 1953.
The tongue-tying title, Inflation-Theory Implications For Extraterrestrial Visitation, masks a revolutionary idea, namely, that advances in theoretical physics not only allow the possibility that we have been and are being visited by ETs, but that it would be surprising if we hadn’t been infused with alien visitors for years or centuries.
Inflation theory is a variation on the Big Bang. It proposes that, rather than the chaotic expansion inherent a universe that originated from a single event propagating in infinite directions, that there was, in the first few millionths of a second of creation, an organizing principle that allowed the universe to expand to the state we see it in now. The problem with the Big Bang is that we that the universe should look different from opposite sides of the horizon, but it doesn’t. Everything in space that we have been able to observe is moving away from us at the same speed. Rather than propose that the Earth was the originating point of all creation, in the early 1980s, some physicists theorized that spacetime expanded in those first milliseconds of creation, and matter just went along for the ride. The “inflation” that took place was faster than the speed of light, and matter just couldn’t move that quickly by itself. This did not violate Einstein’s theory of general relativity, because the circumstances of his theory were created by the inflation event! Everything now moves or expands at precisely the same rate from all other points in the universe, even light.
The authors also discuss the “brane” theory, which supposes that reality and the universe are composed of an infinite number of parallel “membranes” of spacetime coexisting alongside each other, but intimately connected. ETs, they contend, could have figured out how to navigate these “branes” or utilized the principles of inflation physics to cancel out the need to actually travel any great distance, or exist in a universe or reality where light travels slower than in ours. They could also have figured out how to navigate the membranes so that they pop in and out of ours, or merge ours with theirs for brief periods–no travel needed.
The paper also discusses the wealth of good, but not readily explainable sightings on record that are pointed to as prima-facie evidence that we have been visited by non-humans. Readers on this site do not need a rehash of these, but in the scope of a scientific paper, presented to non-ufologists, the inclusion is understandable.
“But why don’t these aliens just land on the White House lawn?” Echoing Whitley Strieber, as well as other more and less informed observers, they propose that the covert and curious nature of contact up to this point is exactly how another, more advanced civilization would initiate any sort of revelation of their presence. This would be to save us the hassle and crisis of such a paradigm-shattering event: Wait until most of us don’t have a problem with it. We may be nearing that point in the next 10 years or so. The authors gently suggest the hypothesis that “we actually do belong to a large civilization, but are unaware of that fact.”
It must be stressed that these theories are just that, and are still debated in the theoretical physics community, but if they turn out to be reasonably correct based on future observation and experiments, the ETHers (even the stupid ones) will have a feather in their caps. For now, it remains an intriguing possibility and a testament to Deardorff, Haisch, Maccabbee and Puthoff’s courage to put it into the minds of mainstream scientists in a form that many may find readily acceptable. We must remember that the Big Bang is a theory, evolution is a theory, etc.–they just happen to be robust ones.
The “ultraterrestrial” view of UFOs need not suffer under these circumstances. This may have been going on since there were humans to perceive it, and since the “brane” theory posits that an infinite number of alternate realities exist alongside ours, the “others” may have always been playing with our view of their existence.
As Keanu Reeves famously said, “Woah.”
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January 3rd, 2007 at 11:01 am
Greg
I never understood why so many people feel the need to limit other possible ET civilzations to our current level of technology, as if we were the standard for the entire universe. I don’t mean to sound as if I’m dimissing the “ultraterrestrial” idea, because I do find it interesting, but mainstream scientists seem stuck in one narrow-minded way of thinking. They think that if we can’t make it to a far away point with our outdated chemical fuel rockets, then ETs couldn’t either. , nevermind the fact that there are ways of getting around this problem as this article points out. Stanton Friedman has said that just with nuclear propulsion alone, it could cut the length of a trip down by half, nevermind wormholes and other possible means of traveling. As for the “landing on the White House” question..when we want to study gorillas in Africa, do we stop and explain ourselves to them first?
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Carl Sagan was a big fan of the Drake equation (N=R* x fp x ne x fi x fi x fc x L), which argued for the great statistical probability of other life in the universe. In fact, I think this is what he was presenting at the rocket conference reported upon in Star and Stripes. The equation since often has been dismissed in light of something called the Fermi paradox, which agrees with the statistical probability of extraterrestrial life but points out the obvious, that we have no evidence for it. The Drake equation and the Fermi paradox are common reference points for scientists thinking about extraterrestrialism.
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Brian,
I agree. The article points out that if we consider the implications of the inflation and “brane” thoeries, that a whole new set of circumstances open up, and I have always been attracted to the idea of syncretism (combining differing philosophies into a new view.)
I don’t recall how Friedman got around the speed of light problem. I did bring up Strieber (no matter what you think of him) as proposing an eloquent model of ET contact.
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Hey Kenn,
The “Fermi Paradox” as it is known, and the Drake equation were mentioned in the paper, but if I discussed everything they did, I would have gotten a headache and the post would have gone on for a lot longer. As for no evidence, most scientists seem to look for evidence on their own terms, which the UFO subject will not grant them.
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Inflation Theory and the Big Bang have always bothered me a little. For starters, if we are to accept the red shifting of distant galaxies as evidence of the Doppler Effect, then in fact things are NOT moving away at a uniform speed since the further out a galaxy is the greater it is red shifted. Hubble’s Law posits that the speed at which other galaxies move away from our own is directly proportional to their distance from us.
Which brings up the second problem in that not all galaxies are moving away from each other. The common visual aid is to draw dots on a balloon, blow it up, and watch as each dot moves away from every other dot as the balloon expands. But in fact we know galaxies can and do collide with each other. The Andromeda galaxy and our own are closing in on each other. Here are some nice Hubble photos and computer simulations of these types of collisions. The conventional explanation for this has always been that some galaxies are drawn to each other by mutual gravitational attraction. Sounds nice, but the Pioneer probes’ anomalous acceleration sort of puts a hole in the “blame it on gravity” theory. Why is it accelerating away at an increasing rate the farther out it goes, but Andromeda is much further away yet moving towards us?
Lloyd Pye wrote me once and expounded on the idea that the universe runs more on electro-magnetic principles and plasma physics rather than on the more popular Big Bang/Gravity model. It sounded a tad odd but then again, so does dark energy and dark matter.
If ET and/or UT exist it doesn’t seem too far of a stretch that they could utilize which ever model turns out to be correct in order to come visit us. What’s that old saying? “A thing is only impossible until somebody actually accomplishes it.” Given that we’ve gone from horse and buggy to sending probes out of our own solar system in a little over a century it would be no great stretch to think that a civilization only a hundred years or so farther along than we are could traverse interstellar space as easily as we commute back and forth to work.
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Raven,
I looked at a couple of sites to get the info for this piece, but they were written in astronomer-speak, so it took awhile to get it. Obviously, I didn’t get it all. Lloyd Pye also gave us all an “alien skull” to laugh at, so I don’t know how to take his theories.
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:13 pm
The monotheistic accounts of the creation of the universe show the Earth predating our sun and the stars. Weirdly so do accounts from other religions namely Zoarastrinism and the Sumer religions. Since the book of Revelation talks about space having properties that would make it possible to roll space like a scroll or tear it, I think that gives it credibility (as Einstein postulated something very similar.) So if Earth predates the stars then the universe is geo-centric even if Earth isn’t at the spatial center of the universe. Even so, that doesn’t mean that the universe isn’t teeming with intelligent and non intelligent life. But, then again, maybe it isn’t. Maybe the whole rulebook gets thrown out. Maybe Earth is a construct from another dimension/universe and was planted here for reasons unknown. If space and time are linked together then as the universe expands we would not be able to perceive it because while it collapsed it would look the same. What I am saying is that we only sense time in one direction. (forgive me as I start sounding like a contactee) But how do we know that any other intelligent life forms have technology better than us or even that they are motivated to come visit? Even though I like the idea, it’s very Star Trek, I just find myself too pessimistic to buy into it.
Have you ever noticed that we are located in a extremely convenient pocket of the universe? It’s like we are in the perfect place to sustain life and to observe local space? How come we don’t live in a nebulae or closer to the center of the galaxy thereby eliminating out ability to observe space? Someone or something wants us to observe and learn. Life is a conspiracy!
This brings me to my UFO theory (as adapted from Vallee, Keel and Missler) these things are piloted by strange beings who originate here at Earth and even though they have advanced tech, they have no love for humans.
Maybe when the real ET’s show up they can help us rid ourselves of the problem?
Jess
January 4th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Greg,
I won’t pretend to understand all the math in the astronomy, either. I’ve got a buddy who’s a professor of physics at a university back in Oklahoma that has tried to give me the gist of it, but I’m afraid my calculus isn’t quite up to the task.
But for what it’s worth, here’s my kindergarten interpretation of what he has tried to explain to me:
1) The Hubble Constant stipulates that the farther away from us a galaxy is, the faster away it is moving, and that the rate it moves away from us is continually accelerating. To account for this, the nefarious “they” postulate the existence of “dark energy” that is driving everything outwards from the Big Bang point of origin. This dark energy supposedly makes up something along the lines of 65-70% of all matter/energy in the universe. However…
2) Not all galaxies are moving away from us (or from each other), as is evidenced by the collisions of galaxies and the intercept course the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies are on. So why isn’t this dark energy acting in a consistent way? “They” theorize that it is because local gravitational attractions i.e., attractions between nearby galaxies or galactic clusters, are overriding the accelerating effect of the dark energy. Which is a nice theory except…
3) Our space probes are experiencing unaccounted for accelerations even after you take into account all local gravitational interference from neighboring planets, moons, space debris, and everything else we can think of. So if local gravitation trumps dark energy, why do our very local space probes act as if they are being influenced more by dark energy than by local gravitation?
I know that’s a simplistic explanation (and may not be 1000% technically accurate,) but it’s about as sophisticated as I can get my brain wrapped around.
I guess what it all boils down to for me is that the Big Bang really is just a theory. Maybe it’s a good theory, but incomplete, or maybe an electric/plasma driven universe or something else will end up replacing it. I mention Lloyd Pye because he really drew my attention to the fact that there are some viable alternatives.
ET or UT, if they exist, may not need to overcome the travel obstacles that our current Big Bang/Relativistic universe model presents us with because the model itself might just be wrong.
Thinking back to the days when we held to the Earth-centered universe theory, with all the motions of the moon, sun, planets and stars going through wild circular gyrations in order to account for how they moved, our ancestors could still make pretty accurate predictions using these postulated paths of celestial objects. We know now that they were completely wrong about celestial mechanics, but that fact didn’t make the predictive value of their theories any less accurate.
But thinking from their perspective, what obstacles would have to be overcome, and how would we overcome them to, say, send a man to the moon? Would it even be possible to send a man to the moon using those old theories of celestial mechanics?
In the same way, what if our Big Bang/Relativistic model turns out to be equally as incorrect as the old Earth-centered model? Might we be trying to figure out solutions to problems that don’t exist; that only appear to exist because the model we are employing is throwing us a curve ball?
Perhaps, if the universe is electric (or something else) in nature, the light speed constant will no longer pose any limit on how quickly we can travel from here to there.
Oh, Lloyd has been gathering more data on that skull, by the way. He’s got through several phases of having the skull tested and evaluated by specialists in various disciplines and it is yielding some interesting results. His site Starchildproject.com has some good data. In particular, have a look at the section of 11 expert opinions based on examination of the skull. He’s been through some DNA testing already but the additional tests Lloyd wants to have performed are quite prohibitive from a grass roots group perspective.
January 4th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Raven,
I tried to stress that everything is a theory, and your point about throwing the whole thing out or giving it a radical makeover is well taken.
I looked at Pye’s site and the opinions of the medical doctors. From what they said, it is entirely possible that the skull is of a deformed human. Of course, that’s not the only answer, but the thing is apparently 900+ years old and the sort of genetic code that would have produced any other beings like it would probably have been discarded by natural selection by now. My problem is that he calls it the “starchild” skull, which is the sort of post-hoc labeling that may keep it from more serious study. Too bad that he can’t afford the DNA examination yet. If I were Robert Bigelow, I’d pay for it!
January 4th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Jess,
Space is so vast that I think that there are almost infinite places from which to observe it (including other habitable planets) so perhaps we’re not that special in that regard.
As for other civilizations that are more advanced, perhaps they are advanced in a different direction than we are–not ahead, but maybe “to the side.”
I entertain the possibility (among many others) that whatever the “others” are, they exist as residents of the “everywhere” and “everytime,” so the definition of being from Earth or being advanced ahead of us starts to look inconsequential.
January 4th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Point regarding the name “Starchild” taken. It does predispose itself towards an alien interpretation. Lloyd’s DNA research was done in England, if I recall. I haven’t communicated with him in awhile other than to browse his website occasionally, but as I recall the DNA testing he’d like to do now is the nuclear DNA, from the father’s side. The mitochondrial DNA testing proved pretty conclusively that the mother was an ordinary human. In addition to being expensive (something on the order of $500 - $700k if I recall correctly), there was also the need for some advancement in the technology of testing he was waiting on; something regarding a sampling or some such thing that had yet to be developed.
An additional question I have regarding ET/UT I’ll direct at both you and Nick.
If we accept that the craft and beings people report seeing are strictly ET, the question arises, “If ET wants to interact with us, why doesn’t he just come out and say what’s on his mind?”
And one of the frequently received responses is that ET is so far advanced from us that we couldn’t comprehend his attempts at communication. This is often followed by something such as, “Well, you’re more advanced than an aardvark, but have you ever tried to communicate with or explain your intentions to one?”
I’ve always found that to be an evasion of the question rather than an answer. I have pets, and although I feel I’m probably considerably more intelligent than them, we do communicate. They have come to recognize that I provide for them and care for their needs, and there is what I believe to be a genuine sense of mutual affection. They “know” me enough to be comfortable around me because we have communicated. Perhaps not in the Queen’s English, but we DO communicate.
So I would expect that the intentions of ET, regardless of how advanced he might be, should be in some way communicable to us lowly humans, even if not in the ways we humans usually communicate with each other. My feeling is that if ET doesn’t openly communicate it’s probably because he doesn’t wish to. Whatever his motivations might be, our human wants and needs don’t enter into the equation. Or maybe he’s just ambivalent. Either way, we don’t count.
But if, as Nick and (I think) you have suggested, ET is really something more than just another carbon life form that happens to come from a different planet, then why no communication? The Tulpa you gents have discussed seem to have their genesis in our own human collective consciousness. At least that is what I think I’ve understood. Nick once wrote that their form changes with our cultural and social expectations. It would appear that their very existence is also influenced, since there are times when there are “flaps” and times when things are relatively quiet. Either way, wouldn’t such creatures, whose very existence is dependent on us, at least to some extent, have a vested interest in open communication? Why tease us a little, then hide behind the curtain again? What if we just decide to forget about them altogether and let them fade back into oblivion?
So I guess my question to both of you is, why doesn’t the Tulpa-type of being communicate openly, and in a way we could recognize as genuine communication, as I do with my pets? ET can afford to thumb his nose at us if he exists. He’s not dependent on us for his existence. Tulpa seems co-dependent, and in need of us. Any thoughts?
January 5th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Raven,
I sometimes think of the “others” in the way that Strieber describes his “visitors,” which seems to resonate a bit with the Keelian theories. What I get from Strieber’s books is that we need to change ourselves and the way we look at “reality” before we can see them for what they are, which is of course intimately connected to us. Once this happens, they will change their form and so will we (in self-awareness, which is all there is, after all.) Until this happens, I don’t think that there is any possibility of communication that makes much sense to either group.
One interesting thing Strieber said is that there was some sort of study out of Wright-Patterson AFB in the 1950s which concluded that the authorities could hold off any sort of “invasion” by simply denying the existence of the UFOnauts. Of course, this makes perfect sense to someone like Strieber, but it’s a good working model that might explain a lot.
As for tulpas, neither Nick nor I think that they are the answer to everything connected with the subject. Yes, they apparently do need us to exist, but unlike the “visitors,” they don’t have as much self-volition. They can appear as inanimate things as well as living, and are more easily dismissed (made to go away, once called) than what we perceive as “aliens.” Of course, there are many definitions of tulpas, but I think I have the general idea.
It’s interesting to me that the commenters on this site seem to take the existence of “aliens” (for want of a better term) as a fait accompli. I’m still at the “believable model” stage. We take a hypothesis and run with it, all the while without having a dogmatic attachment to any one idea. It’s nice to find that there are people who are capable of this.
I just looked up “mystic” in the dictionary and definition #4 seems to fit: “Beyond human comprehension; mysterious or enigmatic.” So the title of this site covers a lot more ground than the management may have originally intended with a clever name!
January 5th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I agree with you. I’ve quizzed you and Nick about Tulpas a little bit and played devil’s advocate, but the truth is I have long believed that ET may in fact be more than a single kind of being.
I teased Nick awhile back about Mark Kimmel who runs the Cosmic Paradigm website. Mark talks a great deal about there being various beings that he refers to as Extraterrestrials and Celestials. These run that spectrum from ordinary aliens to something more along the lines of the Tulpas, and just about everything else in between. He states that it is difficult if not impossible in his opinion to know which form or manifestation a person might be seeing at any given time. Could be ET, could be something more incorporeal, or whatever.
Kimmel’s take on it heavily favors the idea that all these various beings are here to help us evolve ourselves and join the greater Cosmic Community. He does acknowledge that some are in it for their own reasons which have nothing to do with benefiting humans, but most of what he focuses on are positives. Sometimes it seems to me to be a little bit too Pollyanna-ish. I don’t know though. Perhaps he’s right.
At the Check The Evidence website in their audio listings there is an mp3 lecture for download that Kimmel gave at a UFO conference that is a nice summary of his views, and my gut tells me there is probably a good bit of truth in the opinions he expresses in it. I found it to be well worth the time to give it a listen.
January 5th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Though I enjoy playing the devil’s advocate a bit I must confess that my honest expectation is that ET is more than just one thing.
Mark Kimmel has expressed his views that the manifestations people witness run the spectrum from true space aliens to beings that exist as “spirit” (interpret that term however you like,) and everything in between. He feels it is often difficult to know which kind of being it is that one might chance to witness.
I don’t necessarily disagree with that in theory, but Kimmel does lean heavily towards the “they’re mostly nice, and they’re here to help us humans evolve to higher levels” sort of view. I’m not as certain as he is about all that cosmic, fuzzy-friendship. My suspicion is that some are friendly, some are hostile, and some are pretty much indifferent. Kimmel’s website is CosmicParadigm.com He lays out his beliefs pretty clearly. There’s also an mp3 of an address he gave at a UFO symposium available for download in the audio section of the Check The Evidence website. That lecture summarizes his views pretty well.
I’m probably as guilty as the next guy of having some entrenched beliefs. I try to keep an open mind but don’t always meet with 100% success. I mentioned to Nick that I decided to read his Body Snatchers book because of a somewhat negative review it received from Stanton Friedman that piqued my interest. In truth, I read Freidman’s review hoping he would shred the book into microscopic pieces so that I could put it on my ignore list. I’ve always favored the Roswell/Alien theory, and it’s distressing to see a viable challenger to that view. Friedman’s review however, had the opposite effect since there wasn’t much in the way of refutation in it. So I had to settle myself on reading it myself.
Now, having nearly completed the book I’ve come to the conclusion that the Unit 731 theory has more in the way of a traceable paper trail than the ET theory. For the most part, the 731 view satisfactorily explains much of the testimony of people who were told by military and/or other authority figures to shut up about what they thought they had seen or heard. It doesn’t make those people out to be liars or dispute what they claim they were told, but simply offers a plausible alternative motive for all the secrecy. And when you get down to those few witnesses who say, “I personally saw alien bodies and/or spacecraft”, they have no more tangible evidence to support their statements than the witnesses in Nick’s book do. But Occam’s Razor gives the edge to the Unit 731 theory because there is so much paper documentation.
I guess I’m going to have to surrender one of my most cherished myths! “Alas, poor Roswell, I knew him, Horatio…”
January 6th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Raven:
Thanks for the comments re the book. There are a couple of things that I overlooked for the book and that would have added to the story even more. One being that Melvin Brown, who was stationed at Roswell in 47, told his family that the bodies he saw could have “passed for Chinese.” This was published back in 1991 in Tim Good’s Alien Liaison book.
Also: Colonel Philip Corso who wrote the book The Day After Roswell was a close friend and work colleague of Major General Charles Willoughby, head of the Intel Dept of Allied Forces HQ under MacArthur during WW2. It was Willoughby who arranged for the Unit 731 materials to reach the USA.
So, Corso (who also worked with Operation Paperclip) may have known of the 731 angle - and this may have led to writing a book that steered as far away as possible from anything that suggested a secret experiment.
Since publication of the book, various other insiders have come forward and I hope to do a follow-up report at some point.