"Closing in on E.T."

Dear readers,

Another lovely day here in Adelaide, South Australia. A maximum of 27 degrees C with nice, clear blue skies sees me at my local library reading science magazines.

As you will be aware, I keep a watchful eye on the research into extra-solar planets, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI.)

In the "Australian Sky and Telescope" magazine (click here) for April 2011 (pages 26-35), there is a major article about SETI by one of SETI's leading researchers, Seth Shostak (click here.)

Although I keep up with SETI research, even I was surprised to read that "The number of star systems deliberately examined by SETI, looking for very weak transmissions over a wide swatch of the radio band, is only about 750, and they only received brief looks at any one given frequency." (p.27.) For some reason, I thought that this number was much higher than 750.

"The fortune so far to trip over an evidence of E.T. is akin to a search for kangaroos in Australia that gives up after examining one acre of the Outback."

The Theme:

The theme of the article is that modern radio searches have so far been minuscule, but that better technology may bring results by 2036

Shostak states that within 25 years, we will have searched perhaps 1 million stars instead of the 750 of today. "A million could be enough to garner success, if our galaxy's tally of transmitting civilisations is 10,000 or more."

Part of the new technology is the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) , with 42 out of the projected 350, small 6 metre diameter dishes currently existing in place. The ATA has already begun a couple of projects including targetting strips of sky near the galactic centre, and scanning in the anti-solar direction in case someone out there has seen the earth transiting our Sun.

A second SETI approach involves "looking for flashing lights from nearby stars." (p.30.) Currently, Harvard physicist Paul Horowitz has built a 1.8m diameter optical SETI scope.

Other approaches include the detection of beamed high-energy neutrinos.

"Within a generation, our experiments will have reconnoitred just about every star out to 1,000 light years or more. " (p.33.)

Kepler:

The NASA Kepler planet-finding mission (click here) hopefully will reveal a number of earth-like planets which SETI can then target.

A final SETI idea revolves around "How can our SETI experiments optimise the chance of finding non biological sentient entities?" "...logic suggests that we should direct some of our SETI efforts to localities where matter and energy are plentiful..." (p.34.)

Conclusion:

The article concludes:

"The march of progress will soon permit us to search the sky more quickly and with better sensitivity, than ever before. Our situation is akin to that of Christopher Columbus as he sailed past the breakwater of Palos De La Frontera in August 1492 and headed into the rolling swells of the Atlantic. It's still very early days, and the great excitement lies before us." (p.34.)

I found this an excllent layperson's review article of the state of SETI today.

"Contacee religions"

Dear readers

Its a glorious time in Adelaide at the moment. On Saturday I went to Semaphore beach to watch the Adelaide kite flying festival. There were hundreds of people on the beach flying all kinds of kites (there was even a UFO kite!) It was great to see families out together, enjoying the occasion. On Sunday I went to the Adelaide botanical gardens and spent several hours walking around this fantastic outdoor venue, taking photographs and looking at some of the exotic flowers.

Contactees:

Now for today's post. You will have seen that my co-blogger, Keith Basterfield, has developed an interest in the subject of "contactees." Contactees were individuals, starting in the 1950's, who said that they were in contact with people from outer space. You may know the names of George Adamski; Truman Bethurum; and Orfeo Angelucci. However, there were hundreds of others, including women such as Dana Howard (click here); and Mollie Thompson (click here.)

Contactees predated abductees by at least ten years and the main group of abductees came twenty years after most of the contactees. Today there is still a mix of both abductees and contactees out there in the community.

Fortean Times:

The English magazine Fortean Times number 271, dated March 2011, has an interesting article on pages 51-53. It is titled "Contactee religions", being number 37 in a series called "The Fortean Times Random Dictionary of the Dammed" compiled by the Hierophant's Apprentice.

The article opens by noting that both the "Space Brothers" who interacted with contactees in the 1950's and the grey aliens of the 1990's predicted problems for humanity.

Aspects of Adamski's (click here )accounts, and the Aetherius Society ( click here) are explored in terms of "the religious potential in UFOs." (p.57.)

"One of the Aetherius Society's major projects was charging prayer batteries; which were placed on the tops of 19 very high mountains, mostly in remote parts of the world..." (p.52.)

Another example given is that of "the Unarius Academy of Science (click here) founded by Ruth Marian and Ernest L Norman in 1954..." (p.52.)

Another is the Cosmos Research Foundation founded by Gloria Lee-Byrd (click here,) which at its height had 2000 followers.

Interestingly, the article's author notes "Ufological religions are associated with the 1`950's, but the phenomenon is by no means dead. There is certainly a cult if not a religion, surrounding the claims of Billy Meier (click here) and his contacts with 'Pleiadeians' and his connection to the Talmud Jmmanuel (click here) , a gospel that supposedly predates the canonical synophic ones..." (p.53.)

Comments:

You might ask why should we study this material which comes from an era before I was born? For one, there are similarities between contactees and abductees. Both say they are in touch with aliens, who give them messages about the future of the earth.

The contents of these messages are usually set in the context of the era of the message.. In the 1950's humanity was concerned about the threat of nuclear weapons, and the "Space brothers" as the aliens were named, were also concerned about the same thing. For abductees many of the messages speak of the ecological danger to earth; reflecting our current concerns. Human nature is just that, and you can usefully draw conclusions from this older material.

If you have never read much on this topic, then the links I have placed in this post should provide you with a good overview.

Abductions all in the brain?

Hi all

I have just been reading a book titled "The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologists's Search for the God Experience." By Kevin Nelson. Published by Dutton. New York. 2011. ISBN 978-0-525-95188-9.

Nelson's work explores near-death experiences and suggests neurological causes for each of the elements of an NDE.

There are some serious implications for our research into UFO abductions, in Nelson's work. Please take a look at the full post on my own blog at:

http://anomalies-australiancomments.blogspot.com

Nelson himself, is very definite in his opinion on UFO abductions:

"Nobody knows how many thousands of people have memories of being abducted by aliens, finding themselves onboard spaceships, undergoing invasive medical procedures that leave no mark, meeting non-earthly beings that convey important messages to humanity or spiritual revelations, or having extraterrestrial sexual encounters. All these can be attributed to lucid dreaming REM intrusions and REM paralysis. " (p.196.)

While this is a too simplistic a statement, to me, there would appear to be some possible insights into UFO abductions arising from Nelson's work.

What do blog readers think?

Categorised and easily referenced

One of the most ordinary things we do in our lives is to take things we know and order them into a fashion which makes them well categorised and easily referenced. Unfortunately, it is probably the best and worst thing we ever do with regard to the UFO phenomenon.

The reason I say this is because every single incident is unique and often subjective in the remarks of a witness. Yet, the best way to file these incidents is to refer to them under a summary name of sorts. I guess that's okay, but it can lead to missing the important details that indeed set it apart from all others.

Allen Hendry wrote in his publication 'UFO Handbook' (1979, Doubleday) that if ants were to notice cars , trucks and buses as strange objects that flashed past a far away vantage point in an infrequent fashion, they would probably have the same problem. According to us humans, not all cars are the same; in fact, that's almost like swearing to some fanatics! As for trucks, well, I'm not sure what ants would make of them, but even we notice the difference as stark.

Yet, observers who did not know what they were would begin to categorise as we do.

Most of the works I consider to be standout cases are referred to as a Night light or a close encounter of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd kind, or maybe something else.

Keith Basterfield extended a catalogue early this century in order to summarise the vast amount of cases we were uncovering for public viewing from the National Archives. To this day, I still believe this to be the best of its type. The reason is that the opening line describes more detail than a single phrase. For I am human in my research methods and I will be looking for something logical to follow as to where I can or indeed will find certain cases. But they will not be so easily categorised, referenced or called by just a singular phrase.

Saucer committee in South Australia in 1954

Hi all

A while ago, I had an article published in the "UFOlogist magazine" which reviewed the history of UFO research in my home state of South Australia. During the course of my research I managed to locate and interview a number of then living individuals, who were part of this history.

In that article, I managed to reach back as far as 1953 when Frederick Phillip Stone started the Australian Flying Saucer Club, here in Adelaide.

1954- a UFO Committee:

Recently, while searching a newspaper archive database, I came across some material of interest from 1954 which I don't think has seen the light of day since then. Certainly, I have never seen any reference to it in the UFO literature. I will set out what I found, for the record.

The subject matter is a "Flying Saucer committee" which was set up to study reports of flying saucers seen in South Australia.

The first hint of the committee came in an article in the newspaper "Barrier Miner" (Broken Hill, New South Wales) dated Thursday 14 January 1954, on page 1. This story read:

"An expert committee will study reports of flying saucers in South Australia.

"Formation of the committee follows the widespread public interest in phenomenon seen over South Australia in recent weeks.

"The members include Emeritus Professor Sir Kerr Grant (formerly professor of Physics at Adelaide University), Mr R M Rechner (an experienced wartime pilot and now South Australian manager of Trans-Australia Airlines), the R.A.A.F. intelligence officer at Mallala (Flight-Lieut R. Miller) with the President of the Astronomical Society of South Australia (Professor L G Huxley) as a consultant. Professor Huxley is Physics Professor at Adelaide."

This led me on to a second newspaper article from "The Mail" Saturday 16 January 1954 page 4. This article reads:

"The Mail and the News have sponsored a committee to investigate flying saucers.

"The committee so far is:
Professor Sir Kerr Grant former physics professor.
Professor L G Huxley present physics professor.
Mr R M Rechner, wartime pilot and TAA manager in SA.
Flight Lieut R Miller RAAF intelligence officer at Mallala.
Mrs J Neale, housewife of Linden Park.
Mr Frank Shaw. The Mail and The News aviation correspondent.
The weather bureau director Mr R Hogan will act as meteorological consultant.

"The committee will study and discuss all reports and try to find a satisfactory explanation of the mysterious objects reported in our skies in recent weeks.

"Readers are invited to send reports to The Mail and The News to put before the committee."

Further information:

I looked to find further newspaper items on the committee and its members. On page 1 of the Advertiser newspaper for Friday 9 April 1954 I found an item titled "Flying Saucers Dubbed "Epidemic of Delusion" which mentions Professor Sir Kerr Grant. "Flying Saucers were an "epidemic of delusion", similar to many in the past, Professor Sir Kerr Grant said last night. He was taking part in a symposium on "Flying Saucers" in the Lady Symon Hall, arranged by the Adelaide University Science Association.

"Reported sightings of Flying Saucers were due to either natural phenomena, wishful seeing, or sheer mendacity," said professor Sir Kerr Grant. The State Manager of TAA (Mr R M Rechner) said the flying saucers had appeared in SA in such exotic forms as "flying dumb-bell," and a "flying needle." Possibly they were caused by different altitudes of aircraft, heat haze from the hills, or even practical jokes.

" Mr B Rote who was a meteorological officer with the RAAF during the World War II, and is now with the Long Range Weapons Establishment, said that possibly intelligent beings did exist on another planet, and were far ahead of us in aeronautics."

Page 7 of the Saturday 5 June 1954 issue of "The Advertiser" ran the following:

"Over the next couple of months, there might be many reports from people claiming to have seen "flying saucers" the Professor of Physics at Adelaide University, Professor L G Huxley said yesterday.

" Professor Huxly said he agreed with a U S Army Air Force statement yesterday that the "flying saucer season" which coincided with the July-August meteor showers was just coming up.

" We have long been aware that "flying saucers" might be associated with meteor showers," he said. "But we do doubt whether all the reports are connected with meteors, because generally they are not visible and must be detected by radar."

A note:

The Rt Hon R G Casey, Federal Minister for External Affairs, in the Australian Government, wrote to the Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, on Saturday 30 January 1954 (page 2) and suggested one of the explanations for flying saucers were meteors.

New book alert - John B Alexander

Dear readers

I have been waiting for the arrival of this work by John B Alexander. The book is titled "UFOs:myths,conspiracies, and realities." published 2011 by Thomas Dunne Books of New York. ISBN 978-0-312-64834-3.

The long weekend here in Adelaide (we had a public holiday in honor of a horse race) was indeed an ideal opportunity to thoroughly read this new book and digest its contents. It is a must have on the book shelf for the serious UFO researcher.

Acknowledgements:

I don't very often carefully peruse the acknowledgements page of a book, but I did so for this work. Here we will find old friends in Hal Puthoff; Kit Green; Jacques Vallee; Howell McConnell and Paul Smith. We also find a number of UFO researchers including Peter Sturrock, John Mack, Dave Pritchard. In addition there are astronaut Edgar Mitchell; activist Steven Bassett and researcher Colm Kelleher.

The acknowledgements indicate the depth of "insider" knowledge brought to bear by Alexander in this tome.

Foreword;

The foreword is by renowned researcher Jacques Vallee. It's central issue revolves around the question of whether or not there was a secret study of UFOs going on in the US government? It was a question Vallee tried to answer in his "Forbidden Science-Volume 2" book.

Introduction:

Following a commentary by author Tom Clancy, Burt Rutan provides his perspective on the UFO phenomenon. "A reason that I remain an ET sceptic is that, for forty-five years I have been in a position to handle sensitive technical information and have not heard of anything related to ET hardware or reverse-engineering projects." (p.xxv.)

Prologue:

"UFOs are real! With no prevarication or qualification of terms, there are physical objects of unknown origin that do transit our universe." (p.1.)

Background:

Alexander's U.S. Army career was anything but normal. In 1980, he submitted a piece to "Military Review" called "The New Mental battlefield" which featured remote viewing and other psychic aspects of future possible warfare. This publication ultimately lead him to participate in an Army think-tank, and from there to the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) and Major General Albert "Bert" Stubblehine. "It was under the guidance and protection of General Stubblehine at INSCOM that I actively pursued a wide range of topics including various phenomena...of course, while I was assigned at INSCOM, UFOs from 1981 to 1984 were included in my mix of topics..." (p.12.)

Later, he went to work on a project which looked to coordinate next generation weapons systems. This provided a range of contacts in the technology field, such as at the Lockheed Skunk Works and Area 51.

Advanced Theoretical Physics Project:

Alexander decided to form a group, with an initial aim "...to determine who knew what about UFOs." (p.16.) "To legally avoid answering any UFO FOIA request, I adopted the term advanced theoretical physics..." (p.16.)

Membership of ATP was by invitation only, and no written records of meetings were kept by Alexander. Alexander declines to name a full list of ATP participants but "Membership included people from the Army, navy and Air Force, plus several from defense aerospace industries and some members from the Intelligence Community." (p.17.)

"Dr Bob Wood, then with McDonnell Douglas has identified himself as a participant to other UFO researchers. (p.17.) "Howell McConnell had been participating in the ATP from the beginning." (p.30.)

Intriguingly, a key question of who is the US government knew things - "The basic assumption remained the same-there was some secret organisation that had responsibility for the phenomenon. However, everyone from an organisation that seemed a likely candidate-either from the U.S. government or aerospace industry -thought it was some other agency or group that was conducting the research." (p.17.)

The ATP concluded that "some UFO cases were real anomalies..." (p.18.)

The search:

Alexander used the material gathered by ATP, prepared a briefing and set out to talk to people in the U.S. Government and private sector about UFOs. So between 1984 and 1988 he did just this. Alexander spoke to such people as Ben Rich, Lockheed Skunk Works; Dr Edward Teller; Burt Rutan; and organisation such as NORAD; the Defence Intelligence Agency; the Central Intelligence Agency; the National Security Agency; the Strategic Defence Initiative, and the Army Science Board.

"What I learned in my personal, face-to-face meetings runs counter to the wild tales that abound in conspiracy theory literature...despite their high level positions; they all seemed to think that someone else was responsible for the topic." (p.39.)

In short, he states "...finding no-one was responsible for this topic anywhere in the U.S. Government." (p.1.)

Phillip Corso:

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Phillip Corso wrote a book called "The Day After Roswell." "The book was purported to be the quintessential insider's revelation of information that the U. S. Government did retrieve a UFO at Roswell, New Mexico." (p.40.)

"Unfortunately, few of the extraordinary claims had any truth in them." (p.40.)

"Troubling were topics that ran counter to the known history of technological developments. " (p.42.) "However, when it comes to Corso's past, little is easy to follow. The basic reported path seems accurate, with a fair amount of fluff involved." (p.43.)

"Corso's most fundamentally important claim was that ET technology assisted in many of our scientific and engineering advances. This assertion is fatally flawed." (pp45-46.)

Condon etc:

Alexander revisits the Condon report of the late 1960's; explores the issue of how the U.S. Government works; U.S. Presidents and their UFO interests; and the topic of Majestic 12; the UFO views of a number of U.S. astronauts, and conspiracy theories.

Hard data:

Chapter 10 takes a look at strong UFO cases. The UK Bentwaters 1980 events; the 1980's Cash-Landrum case; the 1973 Mansfield helicopter encounter; the 1997 Phoenix lights; some fot eh evenst at Gilf Breeze; the Malstrom Air Force base in 1967; and others are reviewed.

He reviews evidence from the United Kingdom and NATO, and goes into detail on the 1976 Tehran, Iran aircraft encounter.

Speculations:

Alexander puts forward an hypothesis. "There is a concept I propose for consideration termed precognitive sentient phenomena (PSP)...The Precognitive Sentient Phenomena concept suggests that there is some external controlling agent that initiates these events that are observed and reported. It appears as though that agent not only determines all factors of the event, but is already (ie precognitively) aware of how the observers or researchers will respond to any given stimuli." (p.227.)

Alexander says "What is suggested is that there is a need to cast a broader net for content and not just limit the input to sightings of hard physical objects." (p.229.)

"We agree that at times hard, physical craft exist, but there is much more to the phenomena. Unfortunately the true boundaries are unknown. It seems certain that human consciousness is at least part of the formula." (p.229.)

"It is therfore my contention that if there is any hope of understanding the phenomena, it is imperative thatt he search be expanded nor delimited." (p.229.)

Alexander even puts forward proposals for studing PSP and outlines these ideas on page 238.

Disclosure:

"In reality, the disclosure movement is both a distraction and disingenious." (p.239.)

"For the record, I do not believe that there are pervasive secrets held by government officials that would change how people regard this issue." (p.240.)

Roswell:

"There are several alternatives that seem to make more sense than a crashed UFO...First of all, the location must be suspect." (p.243.) By this the author means that it occurred in the heart of a military test area.

However, his final words are: "Explaining Roswell is never easy, and given the high degree of cross-contamination of information, the truth will probably remain forever clouded. "(p248.)

Alien abductuions:

"Like UFOs, there are tantilizing indications that some tangible evidence points to the physical reality of at least some of these events." (p.249.)

Epilogue:

"There is little doubt that some unidentified flying objects are real, three dimensional solid objects, which are physically present and observable." (p269.)

As regards to moving UFO research forward, Alexander states "There is an urgent need to support scientists who are willing to investigate phenomena, including UFOs." He also suggest that the "Office of the Secrtary of Defence should issue a directive releasing every official witness from any prior security restriction, thus allowing free discussion of previously untold accounts."

In conclusion:

"Based on credible witnesses and backed by physical evidence, I conclude that the UFO observations are manifestations of issues that are anfractuous and beyond current comprehension. The extraterrestrial hypothesis is but one possibility, and probably not the best fit with the facts." (p.273.)

Comments:

I thorughly enjoyed this most important book. Alexander provides a no-frills, hard hitting examination of the UFO phenomenon from the perspective of an individual who has done the hard work in arriving at his current conclusions.

Sky phenomenon in 1793 in Australia

Hi all

I visited the rooms of the Royal Geographic Society on North Terrace, Adelaide, the other day to take a look at a report of a sky phenomenon I'd read about in a UFO book. After 20 minutes of searching, I located a book which contained an account of the phenomenon. The book was published in 1798, 213 years ago!

The book was titled "An account of the English Colony in New South Wales: with remarks on the disposition, customs, manners, &c of the native inhabitants of that country." The author was David Collins who was listed as the late Judge Advocate and Secretary of the colony. The book was printed by T Cadell, Jun. & W Davies. London. 1798.

The phenomenon was described on page 285 as follows. I have corrected the use of the letter "f" for some uses of the letter "s" to make it easier to read.

"An extraordinary appearance in the sky was observed by several people between five and six o'clock in the evening of Friday the 12th of the month. It was noticed in the north-west, and appeared as if a ray of forked lightning had been stationary in that quarter of the sky for about fifteen minutes, which was the time it was visible. It was not to be discerned, however, after the sun had quitted the horizon."

The date of observation was 12 April 1793.

I also checked two later editions of the book. The same description appeared on page 211 of the 1804 edition, and on pages 181-182 in the 1910 edition.