Alien encounters of the absurd kind?

Alien encounters of all kinds have been experienced by humans through the ages; but just-released files released by the UK's National Archives on a defunct UFO-watching department give for the first time some indication of the vast number of 'flying saucer' sightings every year, and how many of them are in the spotter's mind. For more than half a century till it was closed down in December 2009, a unit of the Royal Air Force has been keeping tabs of UFO or unidentified flying object sightings, including scanning radio waves. The defence ministry closed its UFO desk because it served "no defence purpose" and was taking staff away from "more valuable defence-related activities", the files show. The unit was shut down in a year that showed its second highest number of sightings on record. By November, when it closed, it had had 643 reports, treble the number of the previous year (208), and far higher than over the first seven years of the decade, when annual sightings were a relatively stable 150. It was beaten only by 1978, when the release of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind led to a surge in interest - and 750 sightings. The latest tranche of 25 declassified files covers the final two years of work carried out by the UFO desk, from 2007 to November 2009. They show UFOs were reported at several UK landmarks, including Stonehenge, the Houses of Parliament, and Blackpool Pier. But the files show that the unit was inundated by reports from the public about 'Chinese lanterns', the flying lights that have become popular at weddings and parties. This made a strong case for civil servants arguing for the unit's closure. Such sightings are unlikely in India, where loud and garish 'rockets' are preferred to quietly floating Chinese Lanterns on all occasions - apart from the fact that one can hardly see a star in the sky due to the all-pervasive atmospheric pollution. Nonetheless, there are sightings – for example, what can one say about mountaineers atop Kanchenjunga – the world's third-highest peak – sighting a coffin-shaped object in the sky that hovers high above them for a couple of seconds and then zips away? If just one climber, or even two, had seen it one could dismiss it as an oxygen-deprived hallucination. But how does one dismiss several climbers from at least two different expeditions seeing the same phenomenon? One might perhaps conclude with Hamlet that ''There are more things in earth and heaven, Horatio, than meet the eye.'' Source: Article

Read More........→November 17, 2016

1973: Pascagoula Abduction

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Charlie Hickson has died, and Pascagoula will likely never again receive the sort of fame infused by his story. His was the account to make us say, hmm, maybe Charles Fort was right -- maybe we are"property." The evening -- that unique evening -- was growing later and darker on that strange night in October of 1973. Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, having been brought to the sheriff's office, began telling their bizarre story of alien abduction, an encounter that transformed their hopes for a few tranquil hours of fishing on the banks of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi to clock-stopping moments of horror. Hickson did his best to remain rational as he recounted, frankly, details of an unbelievable incident. Parker, however, was simply hysterical, apparently affected emotionally by something terrifying, a seemingly illogical confrontation with some nameless fear. Nor did a tape recording (the audio, several minutes in length, may still be available on the Internet at no charge) made in secret after the sheriff left the two alone for a few minutes help to dispel their incredible account, for their apprehension and confusion remained alarmingly intact, with no vocal evidence of a hoax. Ultimately, even Dr. J. Allen Hynek would be impressed with the fishermen's harrowing story. Another 28 years would go by before journalist Natalie Chambers wrote an astonishing update, distributed via the Associated Press, on October 21, 2001. It seems that Hickson and Parker had witnesses that night so long ago -- a car full of Navy servicemen who may have seen a peculiar airliner-size craft glide and descend into the fishing area. Chambers' article should have shocked the world out of its negative complacency toward the UFO abduction issue -- and maybe it would have, had the country and the world not been consumed with other terrors, those of a very human nature, just weeks before. During the years following the Pascagoula incident, Charlie Hickson never tired of relating the pair's story, and even made a few bucks speaking and writing about it. Calvin Parker, on the other hand, reportedly remained devastated, wanted nothing to do with publicity and left the area, taking unfathomable memories of the abduction incident with him. These are the kind of people to whom one wishes to express profound sympathy -- but then we pause, oblivious to knowing what to say, or what to do. We cannot relate. Relate to what? Source: http://robert-barrow.blogspot.in

Read More........→June 08, 2016

Be ready to witness alien life by 2025: NASA

WASHINGTON: If one is to believe in NASA, humanity is likely to witness the first signs of alien life in the next 10 years or so.Addressing a panel discussion recently on the space agency's search for habitable worlds and alien life, NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said: "I think we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we are going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years." "We know where to look. We know how to look. In most cases, we have the technology, and we are on a path to implementing it. And so I think we're definitely on the road," he told the gathering. Recent discoveries suggest that the solar system and broader Milky Way galaxy teem with environments that could support life as we know it. For example, oceans of liquid water slosh beneath the icy shells of the Jupiter moons Europa and Ganymede, as well as that of the Saturn satellite Enceladus. "Oceans covered much of Mars in the ancient past, and seasonal dark streaks observed on the Red Planet's surface today may be caused by salty flowing water," Stofan added. NASA's Curiosity rover has found carbon-containing organic molecules and "fixed" nitrogen, basic ingredients necessary for Earth-like life on the Martian surface, Space.com reported. NASA's Kepler space telescope suggests that nearly every star in the sky hosts planets -- and many of these worlds may be habitable. "We can see water in the interstellar clouds from which planetary systems and stellar systems form. We can see water in the disks of debris that are going to become planetary systems around other stars," informed Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division. NASA's next Mars rover, scheduled for launch in 2020, will search for signs of past life and cache samples for a possible return to Earth for analysis. NASA also aims to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s. It is also planning a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa which may launch as early as 2022. "I think we are one generation away in our solar system, whether it is on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation (away) on a planet around a nearby star," noted former astronaut John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. — IANS. BSource: Article

Read More........→November 17, 2015

Why Can't We See Evidence of Alien Life?

Chris Anderson, Educator, Andrew Park, Animator: The Fermi paradox (or Fermi’s paradox) is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial 

civilization and humanity’s lack of contact with, or evidence for, such civilizations. The basic points of the argument, made by physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael H. Hart, are: The Sun is a young star. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are billions of years older; Some of these stars likely have Earth-like planets which, if the Earth is typical, may develop intelligent life; Presumably some of these civilizations will develop interstellar travel, as Earth seems likely to do; At any practical pace of interstellar travel, the galaxy can be completely colonized in just a few tens of millions of years. According to this line of thinking, the Earth should have already been colonized, or at least visited. But no convincing evidence of this exists. Furthermore, no confirmed signs of intelligence elsewhere have been spotted, either in our galaxy or the more than 80 billion other galaxies of the observable universe. Hence Fermi’s question “Where is everybody?”. Stand by for an animated exploration of the famous Fermi Paradox. Given the vast number of planets in the universe, many much older than Earth, why haven’t we yet seen obvious signs of alien life? The potential answers to this
question are numerous and intriguing, alarming and hopeful. Stand by for an animated exploration of the famous Fermi Paradox. Given the vast number of planets in the universe, many much older than Earth, why haven't we yet seen obvious signs of alien life? The potential answers to this question are numerous and intriguing, alarming and hopeful.

• Probes, colonies, and other artifacts: As noted, given the size and age of the universe, and the relative rapidity at which dispersion of intelligent life can in principle occur, evidence of alien colonization attempts might plausibly be discovered. Evidence of exploration not containing extraterrestrial life, such as probes and information gathering devices, may also await discovery. Some theoretical exploration techniques such as the Von Neumann probe (a self-replicating device) could exhaustively explore a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years, with comparatively little investment in materials and energy relative to the results. If even a single civilization in the Milky Way attempted this, such probes could spread throughout the entire galaxy. Evidence of such probes might be found in the Solar System—perhaps in the asteroid belt where raw materials would be plentiful and easily accessed.[34] Another possibility for contact with an alien probe—one that would be trying to find human beings—is an alien Bracewell probe. Such a device would be an autonomous space probe whose purpose is to seek out and communicate with alien civilizations (as opposed to Von Neumann probes, which are usually described as purely exploratory). These were proposed as an alternative to carrying a slow speed-of-light dialogue between vastly distant neighbours. Rather than contending with the long delays a radio dialogue would suffer, a probe housing an artificial intelligence would seek out an alien civilization to carry on a close range communication with the discovered civilization. The findings of such a probe would still have to be transmitted to the home civilization at light speed, but an information-gathering dialogue could be conducted in real time. Since the 1950s, direct exploration has been carried out on a small fraction of the Solar System and no evidence that it has ever been visited by alien colonists, or probes, has been uncovered. Detailed exploration of areas of the Solar System where resources would be plentiful—such as the asteroids, the Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud and the planetary ring systems—may yet produce evidence of alien exploration, though these regions are vast and difficult to investigate. There have been preliminary efforts in this direction in the form of the SETA and SETV projects to search for extraterrestrial artifacts or other evidence of extraterrestrial visitation within the Solar System. There have also been attempts to signal, attract, or activate Bracewell probes in Earth’s local vicinity, including by scientists Robert Freitas and Francisco Valdes. Many of the projects that fall under this umbrella are considered “fringe” science by astronomers and none of the projects has located any artifacts. Should alien artifacts be discovered, even here on Earth, they may not be recognizable as such. The products of an alien mind and an advanced alien technology might not be perceptible or recognizable as artificial constructs. Exploratory devices in the form of bio-engineered life forms created through synthetic biology would presumably disintegrate after a point, leaving no evidence; an alien information gathering system based on molecular nanotechnology could be all around us at this very moment, completely undetected. The same might be true of civilizations that actively hide their investigations from us, for possible reasons described further in this article. Also, Clarke’s third law suggests that an alien civilization well in advance of humanity’s might have means of investigation that are not yet conceivable to human beings.

• Advanced stellar-scale artifacts: Further information: Dyson sphere, Kardashev scale, Alderson disk, Matrioshka brain, Stellar engine A variant of the speculative Dyson sphere. Such large scale artifacts would drastically alter the spectrum of a star. In 1959, Freeman Dyson observed that every developing human civilization constantly increases its energy consumption, and theoretically, a civilization of sufficient age would require all the energy produced by its star. The Dyson Sphere was the thought experiment that he derived as a solution: a shell or cloud of objects enclosing a star to harness as much radiant energy as possible. Such a feat of astroengineering would drastically alter the observed spectrum of the star involved, changing it at least partly from the normal emission lines of a natural stellar atmosphere, to that of a black body radiation, probably with a peak in the infrared. Dyson himself speculated that advanced alien civilizations might be detected by examining the spectra of stars, searching for such an altered spectrum. Since then, several other theoretical stellar-scale megastructures have been proposed, but the central idea remains that a highly advanced civilization—Type II or greater on the Kardashev scale—could alter its environment enough as to be detectable from interstellar distances. However, such constructs may be more difficult to detect than originally thought. Dyson spheres might have different emission spectra depending on the desired internal environment; life based on high-temperature reactions may require a high temperature environment, with resulting “waste radiation” in the visible spectrum, not the infrared. Additionally, a variant of the Dyson sphere has been proposed which would be difficult to observe from any great distance; a Matrioshka brain is a series of concentric spheres, each radiating less energy per area than its inner neighbour. The outermost sphere of such a structure could be close to the temperature of the interstellar background radiation, and thus be all but invisible. There have been some preliminary attempts to find evidence of the existence of Dyson spheres or other large Type-II or Type-III Kardashev scale artifacts that would alter the spectra of their core stars. These surveys have not located anything yet, though they are still incomplete. Similarly, direct observation of thousands of galaxies has shown no explicit evidence of artificial construction or modifications. 
• Explaining the paradox theoretically: Certain theoreticians accept that the apparent absence of evidence implies the absence of extraterrestrials and attempt to explain why. Others offer possible frameworks in which the silence may be explained without ruling out the possibility of such life, including assumptions about extraterrestrial behaviour and technology. Each of these hypothesized explanations is essentially an argument for decreasing the value of one or more of the terms in the Drake equation. The arguments are not, in general, mutually exclusive. For example, it could be both that life is rare, and technical civilizations are short lived, or many other combinations of the explanations below.
• Few, if any, other civilizations currently exist: One explanation is that the human civilization is alone (or very nearly so) in the galaxy. Several theories along these lines have been proposed, explaining why intelligent life might be either very rare, or very short lived. Implications of these hypotheses are examined as the Great Filte. Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/, Source: flickr.com

Read More........→September 19, 2015

1 in 5 people believe aliens live among us

People love aliens. It's a fact. But it's one thing for them to be beyond the farthest reaches of the galaxy and another for them to live next door. So GOOD and Column Five Media created this graphic to illustrate just how many people believe aliens walk among us. According to a survey conducted by

research firm Ipsos,  one in five people worldwide believe that there are aliens on Earth disguised as people. The numbers also indicate that believers also skew younger and male-er, which shows the younger generations are changing and becoming more open to accepting that aliens are real, great for

when alien contact is officially made. It's already been made unofficially.  But what's particularly fascinating—enough to make me not want to work harder on this UFO sight—is the percentages for skeptics and believers from place to place. What makes a believer in India as opposed to one in the Netherlands? And why leave out Africa and the Middle East entirely?  Source: Article

Read More........→July 15, 2015