UFO’s

The question of UFO’s is a perplexing one these days. Seemingly impossible to explain in any satisfying way. They have been a constant in the lives of most people now alive, so the time has come to try to make some progress here.

First, we should subdivide the problem and then deal with the subdivisions one at a time. There is the question of whether or not extraterrestrial life exists. After that, whether or not “intelligent” extraterrestrial life exists. After that, whether or not space faring species exist. These are scientific or objective questions, best dealt with from that perspective.

UFO related phenomena can be subdivided into three categories: actual unidentified flying objects, crop circles, and abductions. They should be dealt with separately.

The first set of issues, the existence of aliens, has been dealt with very effectively by science and the media. In general it is a matter of identifying the odds, for and against such an eventuality. To calculate them, one must identify the factors and quantify each of them to the best of his ability with available scientific knowledge. This is because no credible instance of actually observing extra terrestrials, that all can credit, has yet occurred.

So, what are the factors? Most generally recognize that a star must have planets, some of which must exist of a size approximating that of Earth and at a distance from the star suitable to produce useful temperatures, and that the planet must have free water. Given those prerequisites, life seems likely to generate, either with asteroid provided amino acids or self generated proteins resulting from electrical energy in contact with water.

After that, will the generated life eventually produce objectivity? If so, how long will it last? Since we only have an example set of one case, these questions are hard to answer. What we do know is there is an apparent lack of space faring species and we will have to reach a conclusion as to why that is the case. One factor that I would add to the above equation is: since in our experience humans have spent a much greater percentage of the life of the species in the subjective state than in the objective one, how long is the average objective species likely to remain that way? By objective we mean having sufficient brain size to generate the mental energy necessary to recognize objects external to the experiencer, and the desire to do so. A human baby, for example, is not objective. A culture, such as the American Indians, basing its world view on the sanctity of the natural world is not objective.

Since, in our experience, we seem to have existed for at least three million years, of which only a few hundred comprise the objective era, this would seem to militate against the likelihood of space faring creatures. In fact, I would hazard the guess that, taking all of the factors into account, there is a low likelihood of more than one such species per galaxy. And given the difficulty of contact within the galaxy, the likelihood of intergalactic contact is vanishingly small.

Well, as I said, this question is dealt with very effectively by the scientific community and I saw it presented on the Discovery Channel in a very attractive way.

So, this brings us to the question of UFO’s. First unidentified flying objects. To deal with this effectively we cannot rely only on objectivity. There are the objects and there are also the observers. So, in the objective realm, what might these things be, outside of alien spaceships? Many explanations have been offered: asteroids, weather balloons, clouds (sun dogs), and experimental aircraft. All of these explain some subset of the occurrences, but I guess the most important phenomenon contributing to these reports is atmospheric magnification. That is the phenomenon responsible for the frequently seen extra large sun and moon at sunrise/moonrise and sunset/moonset. I would theorize that these special atmospheric lenses result from temperature inversions, that is reversals in the normal decline of temperature as altitude increases. I would further theorize that they can occur as discreet objects, perhaps several discontinuously floating above some location and moving according to the prevailing winds.

When one of these is positioned such that an observer is on one side and some glowing object is on the other, like a star, that object will appear much larger than normal. This would produce the appearance of a large glowing ball in the sky, and as the lens drifted the ball would fade and disappear only to reappear when another suitable star occupied the correct position relative to the observer. This produces a very satisfying explanation for nighttime UFO’s. They would appear to increase in brightness and then fade, as if in motion. If the lens were long and thin, several stars might be caught at the same time giving the impression of a structure. If a number of these lenses drifted in the prevailing winds they might produce reports over large distances. We will take the other explanations as accounting for daytime reports.

Next, the subjective explanation. Why do most of the reports occur in the US? I would hazard that the answer lies in the movies. These reports have largely been coincident with the movie industry’s use of science fiction as suitable material for producing entertaining theatrical experiences, readily exploited by the technology of the medium.

The next feature of the UFO phenomenon we have to deal with is crop circles, somewhat more difficult to explain, since there is objective evidence for all to see and touch. The designs are, in many cases, intricate. The sizes are large. They have been appearing for about fifteen or twenty years now and no satisfying perpetrators or methods have as yet, come to light. Some hoaxers have confessed, but there is no way that they can cover the available occurrences. Currently about 200 per year are appearing, mostly in England, some of which are on the order of three to six football fields in size. Some are geometrically precise. The chosen symbols are commonly recognizable as those that have occurred in the history of humanity. The designs appear to occur in the space of one night. The stalks are uncut, just bent over, generally in a spiral pattern. No tracks of a machine lead to and from them.

The most satisfying explanation for these phenomena is testing of a secret, new military weapon. The sort of weapon I have in mind is a focusable laser. One that can be controlled by some sort of template. This would be an attractive weapon. One could hope to destroy selected targets from within a dense set of objects one didn’t wish to destroy and unlike bombs, the weapon wouldn’t be destroyed in the process. The weapon would function as follows. It would be comprised of several lasers controlled by a template and mounted in an aircraft. When the coordinates of the target have been entered into the machine and it is activated, the weapon seeks out the desired location and when within range the lasers, moving in a spiral pattern blanket the area to be dealt with, with laser light of sufficient power to destroy the target. Since the beams are encountering the earth vertically, they don’t disturb the standing stalks, but reflect off the earth in a chaotic way damaging the stalks near the base. The heated air suffices to suck the stalks over in the direction of movement of the beam. To test this theory, simply ask yourself how you would test such a device if you had a need and wished to keep it secret. The Brits are much admired for creativity in the military, I would say this is an example.

No subjective explanation is required here, since there are objective results.

The final phenomenon to be dealt with is so called “alien abductions”. These experiences are the most subjective, there being no objective evidence whatsoever. In most cases, the experiencer has only a fragmentary recall of the experience, similar to that we all experience when trying to recall a dream. If dreams are the explanation, we should be able to explain the meaning of them, by studying the methods of dream interpretation, especially the methods of Carl Jung, the premier dream interpreter thus far to exist. In his analyses, Jung points out that the dreamer is always dreaming about him or herself and that all the characters in the dream are different manifestations of the dreamers own personality. In addition the dream is seeking to represent some aspect of the dreamers life of current concern to him. Also, the dreamer is in a totally subjective state, so events depicted are symbols rather than objects.

So, the dream to be dealt with here usually involves the dreamer awakening in an alien environment with alien life forms performing experiments on him, frequently concentrating on his sexual organs. The dreamer is always returned safely, though frightened, to his bed, physically unharmed. What would one expect the life of such a dreamer to be like? One would expect him to be suffering from feelings of alienation in his waking life. One would expect him to feel this most intensely when visiting the doctor. After all, the dreamer is the real alien. All other characters share the same features. Only the dreamer is different. Since the characters in the dream are all manifestations of the dreamers own personality, we would expect him to be suffering from self alienation. Another feature of these experiences is that the majority occur to individuals living in rural areas.

The expectation would then be that these individuals will not have fully adapted to modern life, especially those aspects having to do with population density. The HMO medical experience, for example. Or any automated human experience, like getting a drivers license, for another example. Imagine a person, having spent his entire life in the rural south, near a small town. He gets some sort of medical problem that can’t be dealt with locally and has to travel to the nearest city. He goes to an unfamiliar medical clinic, enters a long line of sufferers awaiting medical attention, is finally admitted into a sterile room where a doctor and two nurses, dressed in an alien, for him, costume, begin to prod him in private areas with instruments he does not understand. If, at the same time, the medical people, having done the same for a hundred or so people that day, fail to make any effort to comfort his fears, what would be the expected result? Of course you could say that, due to television doctor shows, all know what to expect, and this would be sufficiently true to allow the sufferer to go through with it at all. But it would not deal with the subjective experience, and anyway, doctors on TV are invariably sensitive to the feelings of the patient.

In summary, three types of UFO manifestations occur, one objective, one part objective and part subjective, and the last totally subjective. Rational explanations are available, and those explanations are preferable to the irrational sort for those wishing to avoid confusion regarding what the objective world is like, in which we all exist, as distinct from the subjective world in which only the experiencer exists. With respect to extraterrestrial, objective, space faring creatures, if current thinking is correct regarding the basic requirements that would be expected to produce such life forms, then the rational expectation will be that they are rare, if they exist at all. On the other hand, if this is a poor environment for the production of such a species, and other environments are better, or if a species, having once arrived at the objective state, tends to remain there for long periods of time, then perhaps they are more common. This idea, however, seems to be in conflict with experience. If objective species were common, surely their electromagnetic signals would be available for us to sample.

One final question should be dealt with here. Why the desire on so many people’s part to believe these phenomena are the result of alien activities? One problem The New World Order brings with it is boredom.

Species go out of existence for a variety of reasons, mainly environmental. Civilized man has yet to experience severe environmental change and, while humans probably will survive such an occurrence, because of economic dependencies, civilization is unlikely to. Thus, the expectation would be that the life cycle of an objective species would likely be relatively (tens of thousands of years, compared to the shark or alligator, a mere moment) short.