Article by Kirsty Card August 2, 2021 (dailystar.co.uk)
• World-renowned alien hunter, author, and ex-CIA agent Derrel Sims appeared on the Into the Light paranormal podcast in 2015, where he spoke about his ground-breaking research during his 38-year career, hunting, researching, and collecting physical evidence left by alien contact and abduction to help victims to come to grips with their experiences.
• “What matters is what you do prove (is) what you actually can determine based on the available evidence. And we’ve… done 22 surgeries on people…(who) feel like they’ve been implanted with some type of device. [I]n some of those surgeries, we’ve actually removed objects that were actually terrestrial in origin.”
• Sims claims to have the largest personal collection of artefacts extracted from humans, including skin samples, DNA samples, X-rays, MRIs, sonograms, objects with possible forensic traces (glass, wall, etc.), and anomalous implants or artefacts.
• The 2015 podcast resurfaced just days after Harvard’s Professor Avi Loeb revealed that the Oumuamua object that tumbled through our solar system, displaying a self-generated propulsion from the Sun could have been an artificial intelligence probes visiting the planet from an alien civilization. “[M]ost stars formed before suns, billions of years before. Just imagine a civilization that predates us by a billion years,” said Loeb. “It’s enough time to send a chemically propelled spacecraft with artificial intelligence out into the world that is autonomous.” It has to behave autonomously because the distances between stars are very long. “All you need is one [civilization] …to populate the entire galaxy with self-replicating probes with AI.”
A former CIA agent confessed to collecting devices “found inside alien abduction victims” in an old podcast that has resurfaced on Twitter.
World-renowned alien hunter, author, and ex-CIA agent Derrel Sims appeared on the Into the Light paranormal podcast in 2015, where he spoke about his ground-breaking research during his 38-year career.
In the broadcast, which is available on Apple Podcasts, Sims claims he has been hunting, researching, and collecting physical evidence left by alien contact and abduction and helps victims to come to grips with their experiences.
He said: “Whenever I do my UFO investigations, a lot of people are always asking me to do that. And that’s a belief, it’s not what really matters in this business.
Avi Loeb
“What matters is what you do prove, it’s what you actually can determine based on
Oumuamua
the available evidence. And we’ve even done 22 surgeries on people latching on alien contact and feel like they’ve been implanted with some type of device.
“And then in some of those surgeries, we’ve actually removed objects that were actually terrestrial in origin.”
The investigator then added that he has the largest personal collection of artefacts extracted from humans.
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Article by Mindy Weisberger July 27, 2021 (livescience.com)
• The Galileo Project, a multi-institutional team of scientists led by Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb, will analyze data from astronomical surveys and telescope observations and design new algorithms using artificial intelligence (AI)
Article by Avi Loeb July 12, 2021 (scientificamerican.com)
• According to the article’s writer, the Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb, biological creatures are not functionally able to achieve interstellar travel. Even at the speed of light, travel between stars would take tens of thousands of years. Therefore, we would be more likely to find traces of alien technological debris accumulated in interstellar space over the past billions of years than we would finding aliens themselves.
• Most stars formed billions of years before ours did. Ancient civilizations could very likely predate Earth humans, and already dominate the Milky Way galaxy. The spread of alien technology that can persevere over long times and distances would multiply and spread at the highest speed with self-repair mechanisms that mitigate damage along their journey. Such technology artifacts could have already reached the habitable zones around all stars within the Milky Way, including our Sun. This is how we can expect to initially encounter evidence of intelligent extraterrestrials.
• Our own artificial intelligence technology is likely to supersede human intelligence within the coming decade. Our own autonomous AI systems connected to 3-D printers may replicate themselves and adapt to changing circumstances along their interstellar travels through machine learning. They could hibernate during long journeys and switch on as they approach stars where light radiation can recharge their energy supply. It is conceivable that the flat interstellar object, ‘Oumuamua’, was meant to collect sunlight and recharge its batteries. This technological artifact may have also served as a receiver for communication signals from probes already deposited on habitable planets like Earth or Mars.
• If any of the UAP/UFOs discussed in the Pentagon report to Congress is extraterrestrial in origin, then scientists have an obligation to decipher their purpose by collecting more data on their behavior. Owing to the long time-delay of any signals from their point of origin, these objects are likely autonomous.
• How can we tell whether an autonomous extraterrestrial AI system is a friend or a foe? To avoid a Trojan Horse scenario, we should first study the behavior of the alien probe to figure out what type of data they are accumulating. Second, we should examine how it responds to our actions. And with no choice left, we should engage its attention in a way that would promote our interests. Most importantly, humanity should avoid sending mixed messages to these probes, to avoid our own confusion in interpreting its response.
• Any decision on how to act with extraterrestrial AI technology must be coordinated by an international organization such as the United Nations and policed consistently by all governments on Earth. It would be prudent to appoint a forum composed of our most accomplished experts in the areas of computing (to interpret the meaning of any signal we intercept), physics (to understand the physical characteristics of the systems with which we interact) and strategy (to coordinate the best policy for accomplishing our goals).
• Ultimately, we might need to employ our own AI in order to properly interpret the alien AI. The experience will be as humbling as relying on our kids to make sense of new content on the internet by admitting that their computer skills exceed ours.
• So far, our fate on this planet has been under our control. This may not hold true after our encounter with extraterrestrial AI systems. Hence, there is a sense of urgency for our technological maturity in the global competition of galactic civilizations. Only by becoming sufficiently advanced can we overcome threats from alien AI technology. Our AI systems must outsmart the alien AI systems. Just as in the gunfights of the Wild West, the survivor might be the one who is first to draw a weapon without hesitation.
Avi Loeb
Despite the naïve storylines about interstellar travel in science fiction, biological
interstellar object, ‘Oumuamua’
creatures were not selected by Darwinian evolution to survive travel between stars. Such a trip would necessarily span many generations, since even at the speed of light, it would take tens of thousands of years to travel between stars in our galaxy’s disk and 10 times longer across its halo. If we ever encounter traces of aliens, therefore, it will likely be in the form of technology, not biology. Technological debris could have accumulated in interstellar space over the past billions of years, just as plastic bottles have accumulated on the surface of the ocean. The chance of detecting alien technological relics can be simply calculated from their number per unit volume near us rather than from the Drake equation, which applies strictly to communication signals from living civilizations.
On a recent podcast about my book Extraterrestrial, I was asked whether
Milky Way galaxy
extraterrestrial intelligence should be expected to follow the rational underpinning of morality, as neatly formulated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. This would be of concern to us during an encounter. Based on human history, I expressed doubt that morality would garner a global commitment from all intelligent beings in the Milky Way.
Instead, a code of conduct that allows systems of alien technology to dominate the galaxy would also make them more likely to be the way we would first encounter extraterrestrials. Practically, this rule will act as a sort of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, favoring systems that can persevere over long times and distances; and multiply quickly and spread at the highest speed with self-repair mechanisms that mitigate damage along their journey. Such systems could have reached the habitable zones around all stars within the Milky Way, including our sun, by now. Most stars formed billions of years before ours did, and technological equipment sent from habitable planets near them could have predated us by enough time to dominate the galaxy before we came to exist as a technological species.
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Article by Gautam Peddada June 20, 2021 (collective-evolution.com)
• Researchers from Arizona State University have performed studies to find out how we humans will deal with it if we make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life? Will we be terrified? Will we feel threatened? Will we be able to comprehend it? Will we accept it?
• On February 16th, ASU Assistant Professor of Psychology Michael Varnum presented the findings of the most recent study, “How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?” at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Austin, Texas. Varnum’s conclusion? “If we came face to face with life outside of Earth, we would actually be pretty upbeat about it.”
• A previous pilot study focused on people’s reaction to the discovery alien microbial life on Mars, the periodic dimming around Tabby’s Star, and other Earth-like exoplanets in a star’s habitable zone that could support life as we know it. The pilot study discovered that the language used to depict these events elicited much more positive than negative feelings.
• In a second study, the researchers invited over 500 people to write about their potential reactions to the discovery of alien microbial life ‘considering their individual sentiments as well as those of mankind as a whole’. Again, participants’ replies revealed substantially more positive than negative emotions. “I’d be a little excited about the news,” one participant remarked.
• Varnum’s ASU group gave an additional sample of over 500 people split into two groups. Group One participants read a previous article from The New York Times on probable evidence of ancient microbial life on a Mars meteorite. Group Two participants were given another New York Times article about the development of synthetic human-made life in a lab.
• The responses were considerably more positive about finding of microbial alien life than they were about developing synthetic life. With regard to other planets hosting life, one participant stated, “It’s an intriguing and fascinating discovery that might be only the beginning.”
• Varnum also examined recent media coverage that the interstellar ‘Oumuamua’ asteroid is actually a spacecraft. Here, too, Varnum discovered more positive than negative emotions, implying that humans may react favorably to news of the finding of sentient life elsewhere in the cosmos. “[T]aken together, this implies that if we find out we’re not alone, we’ll take the news rather well.”
As the possibilities of a non-human intellect being present on Earth increase on a daily basis, one
Michael Varnum
critical question must be addressed: How will we deal with it if we make contact? Will we be terrified if we feel threatened? Will we accept it? Will we be able to comprehend it? Or will we dismiss it as just another item to cope with in our increasingly fast-paced world?
Researchers from Arizona State University performed a study to try to find out the answer, and the article is titled “How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?”
The researchers looked at how language was used in media coverage of previous announcements of this kind, with an emphasis on alien microbial life (Pilot Study). A large online sample was asked to write about their own and humanity’s reaction to a hypothetical announcement of such a discovery, and another large online sample was asked to read and respond to a news article about the discovery of fossilised extraterrestrial microbial life in a Martian meteorite.
“If we came face to face with life outside of Earth, we would actually be pretty upbeat about it,” said Arizona State University Assistant Professor of Psychology Michael Varnum.
Varnum presented the study’s findings on February 16 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Austin, Texas.
The pilot study’s articles focused on the 1996 discovery of possibly fossilised extraterrestrial Martian microbes, the 2015 discovery of periodic dimming around Tabby’s Star, thought to indicate the presence of an artificially constructed “Dyson sphere,” and the 2017 discovery of Earth-like exoplanets in a star’s habitable zone. The pilot study discovered that the language used to depict these events elicited much more positive than negative feelings.
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Article by Joshua Smith May 10, 2021 (dailystar.co.uk)
• In October 2017, a mysterious cigar-shaped “asteroid” estimated to be 200m in diameter was spotted by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope. This first interstellar object ever found in the Milky Way, dubbed ‘Oumuamua’, was observed to be spinning and accelerating at a phenomenal speed, known as “non-gravitational acceleration”, through our solar system. Mainstream scientists determined that Oumuamua wa just a new kind of comet, propelled by a mechanism we simply don’t understand yet.
• But Harvard University Professor Avi Loeb (pictured above) insists that the most rational explanation for it is that it’s alien. Loeb has deduced the rock is actually a “sail” being propelled through space by photons. This is a type of technology that must be constructed by someone.
• Speaking on the Big Brains podcast (see video below), the professor said that humans could stand to gain an awful lot by learning about other civilizations through “space archaeology”. Loeb says, “Oumuamua could be a ‘technological relic’ that’s billions of years old and that just as we would study the Mayans or other civilizations from Earth’s past, we should do the same for whoever or whatever sent ‘Oumuamua through our solar system.”
• “So communicating with them might be an unlikely occurrence, but if you are adapting the approach of space archeology, you don’t care about that because you’re looking for relics they left behind,” said Loeb. “Of course, they would indicate that civilizations (exist or existed), but you can try and figure out why they died and perhaps avoid a similar fate for ourselves. So it could be a lesson in history for us, it would keep us modest and better equipped for the future.”
• “The other thing that could happen is if you find technologies that are far more advanced than ours, we can import them to Earth. If we see an unusual object, we can in principle land on it, read off the label, ‘‘Made on planet X,’’ so we will know its origin, but also perhaps, copy that technology to Earth,” Loeb continues. “And, it might be a way of short-cutting into our future because it would take us many years to develop the same technology, so there are lots of benefits that I can imagine for humanity from just finding technological relics in space.”
• Professor Loeb has previously speculated that our solar system could be filled with quadrillion alien spaceships of which we have no knowledge. And in a recent interview with The Economist, Professor Loeb said that the cigar-shaped object may have been a message from a distant, more technologically advanced civilization.
• [Editor’s Note] Professor Loeb is absolutely right about the logic of conducting ‘space archaeology’ throughout our solar system. People like David Wilcock have revealed that our solar system is filled with relics from ancient visitors throughout history. In fact, Corey Goode reported that as Oumuamua was traversing the solar system in 2017, an archaeological team from a secret space program did dock with the tumbling cigar-shaped craft, entered it, and inventoried its contents. Goode said that the errant craft had already been scoured by others, but they were able to retrieve some artefacts that were hidden.
illustration of ‘Oumuamua’
A top scientist has said earth can “shortcut into its future” by
University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope
stealing alien technology off of a mysterious cigar-shaped asteroid which he believes may have been a UFO from a distant galaxy.
‘Oumuamua, estimated to be 200m in diameter, is the first interstellar object ever found in the Milky Way and was first spotted in October 2017 by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope while it was looking for comets and asteroids near the Earth.
The long, cigar-shaped rock was observed by experts to be spinning and accelerating at a phenomenal speed, known as “non-gravitational acceleration,” with some scientists baffled as to why.
Most experts agree ‘Oumuamua is probably a new kind of comet propelled by a mechanism we simply don’t understand yet.
But Professor Avi Loeb, who runs the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, insists the most rational explanation for it is that it’s alien.
Prof Loeb has deduced the rock is a “sail” being propelled through space by photons, and sails (used by scientists on Earth) have to be constructed as they are not naturally occurring.
33:47 minute Big Brains Podcast with Avi Loeb (‘The University of Chicago’ YouTube)
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Article by Avi Loeb April 15, 2021 (scientificamerican.com)
• Earth has been broadcasting radio waves into space for over a century, announcing our presence to any other technological civilizations within a hundred light-years that might monitor their sky with radio telescopes similar to ours. Our saving grace might be that these extraterrestrials may use chemical rockets, similar to our own, which would take them a million years to traverse that hundred light years to our doorstep.
• If extraterrestrials did arrive at our doorstep, how should we respond? There is no United Nations international protocol outlining what to do. Is it premature to contemplate a global policy long before it is required? How much advance warning will we have? Any alien spacecraft would at least reflect sunlight which we could detect from earth-based telescopes such as the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii.
• The first interstellar visitor discovered by Pan-STARRS observatory was on October 19, 2017. It was named ‘Oumuamua’ or “scout” in the Hawaiian language. The object showed many anomalous properties that made it different from any natural comet or asteroid that we had witnessed before in the solar system, allowing for the possibility that it could be a product of alien technology, as the article’s author, Avi Loeb (pictured above), discusses in his new book, Extraterrestrial. The likelihood that the object was a probe intended to spy on us is small because Oumuamua more than 10,000 years to traverse the solar system to get here. We have only been transmitting radio signals for over a hundred years.
• Even if ‘Oumuamua’ is an artificial craft, it is ancient and likely too old to be functional. But we can learn a great deal from inspecting and photographing such relics, whether tumbling through our galaxy or resting on the surface of the Moon or Mars where such unusual objects may have collected over billions of years. The lack of an atmosphere or geological activity would make the moon’s surface, in particular, like a museum of extraterrestrial equipment.
• We should keep our eyes open and searching through our telescopes for unusual objects, taking precaution about a vessel possibly masquerading as a Trojan Horse. There might be many small, fast-moving objects traveling through the solar system or other anomalies that we fail to recognize given the limited sensitivity of our telescopes. We could search for them in data streams generated by the Large Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on the Vera C. Rubin observatory.
• Gravitational waves were discovered by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) only after the National Science Foundation (NSF) invested $1.1 billion into it. Similarly, we should expect to find extraordinary evidence for ETs only after we invest major funds in a search. Taxpayer funding would be appropriate given the major impact that such discoveries would have on society—far exceeding the implication of discovering gravitational waves.
• Putting our hands on a piece of alien technology would change the way we perceive our place in the universe, our aspirations for space and our philosophical and theological beliefs. Or we could choose to stay ignorant about our neighbors until they show up. The possible existence of ETs will not go away if we ignore them, just like the Earth continued to move around the sun after religious authorities refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. The dinosaurs dominated the planet until the giant Chicxulub rock showed up in the sky 66 million years ago. We need to be watchful for the next ‘earth shattering’ encounter.
Avi Loeb peering through a telescope
When you’re in an unexplored wilderness, you’d better be quiet, because you never
Galileo peering through a telescope
know whether there might be dangerous predators lurking.
Unfortunately, Earth has not been following this cautionary principle so far: we’ve been broadcasting radio waves into space for more than a century. If there are technological civilizations within a hundred light-years that monitor their sky with radio telescopes similar to ours, then they may already know about our existence. We could hear from them in the future. Our saving grace might be that chemical rockets, similar to those used in the Voyager or New Horizons missions, would take a million
Oumuamua
years to traverse that hundred light years. And so, we might be out for prolonged suspense before encountering our cosmic neighbors.
If extraterrestrials eventually arrive at our doorstep, the question is: how should we respond? Clearly, interstellar affairs are not an imminent policy concern for any nation at this moment, so there is no international protocol issued by the United
Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii
Nations for what to do. We should keep in mind that within a million years, humans might reside on the moon, Mars or free-floating space platforms, and each community might choose to respond differently. It is premature to contemplate a global policy long before it is required.
Vera C. Rubin observatory in Chile
How much advance warning will we have? That depends on the size of the vehicle used by the ETs. Even without generating artificial light, any alien spacecraft would reflect sunlight. The Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii can detect reflected sunlight from objects bigger than a few hundred feet, the scale of a football field, that pass within the orbit of the Earth around the sun.The first interstellar visitor of such size was discovered by this telescope on October 19, 2017, and named ‘Oumuamua—“scout” in the Hawaiian language. The object showed many anomalous properties that made it different from any natural comet or asteroid that we had witnessed before in the solar system, allowing for the possibility that it is a product of alien technology, as discussed in my new book, Extraterrestrial.
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Article by Jamie Carter March 22, 2021 (forbes.com)
• In 1993, pressure by budget-conscious politicians stopped NASA funding of programs searching for extraterrestrial life in the solar system. But in recent decades, NASA has been working more and more with organizations such as SETI – the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. But a recent NASA-funded study paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica suggests that as NASA goes about its business in space, perhaps it should also keep an eye out for ‘technosignatures’ – or evidence of technology or industrial activity – without much additional spending.
• The study paper suggests that a permanent radio telescope could be set up on the far side of the Moon to search for alien signals. Interstellar probes from extraterrestrial civilizations might have been sent into our solar system long ago, and there may be artifacts or aliens “lurking” on asteroids or UFO crash sites on other planets giving off a laser or radio signal. “Such artifacts might have been captured by solar system bodies into stable orbits or they might even have crashed on planets, asteroids or moons,” reads the paper. “Bodies with old surfaces such as those of the Moon or Mars might still exhibit evidence for such collisions.”
• About every 100,000 years, the closest star ‘Proxima Centauri’ comes within nearly a light-year from the Sun – one quarter its usual distance. So there have been literally “tens of thousands” of opportunities for a technologically advanced civilization from that system to launch probes into our solar system, according to the paper.
• The study includes a list of nine ways that NASA missions could detect observational “proof of extraterrestrial life” beyond Earth in our solar system and beyond:
1. Conduct ultra-high resolution scans of the surfaces of the Moon, Mars, Mercury and Ceres for signs of impact or artifacts in crash sites that could be millions and billions of years old.
2. Look for CFC gases or nitrogen dioxide – pollutions typically associated with industrial activity or a byproduct of combustion or nuclear technology around distant exoplanets.
3. Conduct an all-sky survey using an infrared space telescope to search for “waste heat emission” from technological waste or Dyson spheres.
4. Put a permanent radio telescope dish on the “radio-quiet” far side of the Moon to conduct super-sensitive searches for distant technosignatures, free of human radio contamination.
5. Look for aliens and alien artifacts lurking on resources-rich asteroids orbiting the Sun with Earth.
6. Have an intercept mission ready to launch when a target like ‘Oumuamua’ next presents itself, tumbling through our solar system. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s all-sky surveys that is scheduled to begin later this year may very well find such a rogue object heading towards our star system.
7. Search existing NASA and academic data for objects in orbit around known exoplanets, atmospheric pollution and night-time illumination on exoplanets.
8. Conduct all-sky infrared laser pulse searches for in visible light and in wide regions.
9. Identify small asteroids under 10m in diameter that we may have previously overlooked, that may be artificial.
• [Editor’s Note] If deep state fronts such as NASA and SETI truly did any of these obvious things that their study paper suggests, they would find that we inhabit a solar system and star sector of this galaxy that is absolutely teaming with technologically advanced extraterrestrial activity. Of course, the deep state knows this. This is why they make a big deal out of publishing their “latest efforts” in their never-ending search for signs of extraterrestrial life. It is all for show.
From UFO crash sites on other planets and aliens “lurking” on asteroids to a permanent radio telescope on the far side of the Moon, a new NASA-funded study into the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life (SETI) details how future NASA missions could purposefully look for the “technosignatures” of advanced alien civilizations.
Described as evidence for the use of technology or industrial activity in other parts of the Universe, the search for technosignatures has barely begun, but could unearth something surprising without much additional spend, says the study.
After more or less ceasing its search for technosignatures in 1993 after pressure by politicians, NASA has become increasingly involved in SETI.
‘Oumuamua’ – rogue asteroid or alien tech?
Published in the specialized journal Acta Astronautica, the study includes a list of what’s NASA missions could detect as observational “proof of extraterrestrial life” beyond Earth.
Perhaps most intriguingly, the paper suggests that interstellar probes might have been sent into the Solar System a long time ago, perhaps during the last close encounter of our Sun with other stars.
The closest star to the Sun right now, Proxima Centauri, is over 4.2 light-years distant, but roughly every 100,000 years a star comes within nearly a light-year from the Sun. There have therefore been “tens of thousands” of opportunities for technologies similar to ours to have launched probes into our Solar System, according to the paper.
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Article by Berny Torre January 23, 2021 (dailystar.co.uk)
• In September 2017, a Hawaiian observatory using the highest definition telescope available detected an object traveling at 450,000mph from direction of the star, Vega, some 25 light-years away, which had entered our solar system. The elongated space object was dubbed “Oumuamua”, Hawaiian for “scout”. The object was studied by Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb (pictured above). Loeb noted that Oumuamua “showed an excess push away from the Sun, in addition to the Sun’s gravitational force acting on it”.
• Comets are known to swerve wildly away from the Sun due to evaporation, creating their distinctive tails. But no tail was seen on this object which instead accelerated smoothly from the Sun. Professor Loeb noted that Oumuamua’s change of speed suggested it lost about a tenth of its mass, which is quite a lot. “[W]e should have seen a very clear cloud of gas around it,” said Loeb. But they didn’t. Loeb’s conclusion was that the object was ‘powered’ by the light of the Sun. Therefore, the most rational explanation for Oumuamua was that it held alien technology. It was, in essence, an extraterrestrial craft.
• Professor Loeb has written a book called, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. In it, Loeb says that the space object shot past Earth before “moving swiftly toward the constellation Pegasus and the blackness beyond”. Given the odds of such an extraterrestrial object traveling through our solar system, Loeb surmises that “there should be one in every volume roughly the size of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. …So it means that there are plenty of them, a quadrillion of them, inside the Oort cloud. Inside the solar system.” A quadrillion extraterrestrial spaceships within our solar system – with humans outnumbered 140,000 to one.
• Professor Loeb believes more spaceships like Oumuamua are on the way, close enough so that human technology should soon allow us to detect these objects every month.
Oumuamua
A top Harvard astronomer says our Solar System could be filled with a quadrillion alien spaceships.
That’s one followed by 15 zeroes with humans outnumbered 140,000 to one.
Professor Avi Loeb reckons a space rock that visited Earth in 2017 was an alien – and believes more are on the way with a “quadrillion” similar objects within our Solar System alone.
The academic told the New Statesman that “there should be one in every volume roughly the size of the orbit of the Earth around the sun… it’s pretty small. So it means that there are plenty of them, a quadrillion of them, inside the Oort cloud. Inside the solar system. There are lots of them.”
Prof Loeb, who runs the Department of Astronomy at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, claimed an object travelled towards Earth’s solar system from the direction of Vega, some 25 light-years away, and intercepted our solar system’s orbital plane on September 6, 2017.
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Article by Paul Ratner April 14, 2020 (bigthink.com)
• On October 19, 2017, astronomers in Hawaii first spotted a 1,300 feet, cigar-shaped, reddish, dry, strangely-elongated object passing through our solar system. Dubbed ‘Oumuamua’, this was the first interstellar object that we’ve seen passing through our neck of the galaxy. It became the subject of much speculation, especially after it accelerated away from the Sun in a trajectory not explainable by the effects of gravity. Some even brought up the idea it might an extraterrestrial spacecraft or a probe.
• A new study conducted by Zhang Yun from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and Douglas N. C. Lin from University of California, Santa Cruz, says the mystery object Oumuamua is natural. Zhang and Lin believe it’s a piece that was ripped off of another celestial object by a larger object. Clues of its natural origin include the object’s coloring and its lack of any radio emissions coming from it.
• As to Oumuamua’s sudden acceleration away from the Sun, the researchers concluded that, although the object appeared ‘dry’, the Sun heated up the water ice under its surface resulting in a release of gas that served as a propellant.
• The scientists propose that when an object travels close by a star, the star’s gravitational “tidal forces” cause the object to break apart, melt and stretch into elongated fragments. The object then cools off as it moves away from the star, hardening into a crust. “This,” says Zhang, “would account for the vast population of rocky interstellar objects.” He thinks that all types of space objects, like comets, debris disks, and possibly even planets, can be turned into elongated Oumuamua-size bodies upon getting close to a star.
• The researchers believe that there are more such rocky objects flying in between solar systems than they previously considered. “‘Oumuamua is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Lin, adding, “We anticipate many more interstellar visitors with similar traits will be discovered by future observation.”
Scientists may have discovered the origins of ‘Oumuamua, the first interstellar object that was spotted visiting our Solar System. The reddish, dry, and strangely-elongated ‘Oumuamua, known to move in unexpected ways, has been a subject of much speculation. Some have, of course, brought up the idea it might an extraterrestrial spacecraft, possibly a probe. Now, scientists propose that tidal forces, gravitational interactions similar to those on Earth, are responsible for its existence and unusual behavior.
Douglas N. C. Lin
The cigar-shaped ‘Oumuamua is 400 meters (1,300 feet) in length and was first discovered on October 19, 2017 by the Hawaii-based Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1). Scientists and armchair astronomers the world over have since wondered about where it came from, especially in light of factors like its acceleration away from the Sun in a trajectory that is not explainable simply by the effects of gravity.
The new study, which was carried out by by Zhang Yun from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and Douglas N. C. Lin from University of California, Santa Cruz, says the object of mystery is natural. Clues pointing to that include the space body’s colors and the lack of any radio emissions coming from it.
While scientists expect an interstellar visitor to be icy, like a comet, Oumuamua is dry and has a rocky body like an asteroid, leading the researchers to conclude that there are more such rocky objects flying in between solar systems than they previously considered.
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Article by Dirk Schulze-Makuch December 10, 2019 (airspacemag.com)
• After more than three years of testing, the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope—the Five Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or “FAST” in southern China (pictured above) – is about to become operational. Chinese officials claim that FAST is already three times as sensitive as the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico, the second-largest single-dish telescope in the world.
• While the FAST trials have focused on detecting neutron stars, one of the goals during the telescope’s operational lifetime will be to search for signals from intelligent extraterrestrials. Do they exist? Are they bound by a non-interference ‘prime directive’? Many claim that UFOs and alien visitation has been covered up by the government, such as the 1947 Roswell UFO crash. Of course, this was only a high altitude balloon used by the U.S. Air Force for Project Mogul.
• In fact, 99 percent of all UFO reports can be easily explained as natural atmospheric phenomena like sprites – which produce dancing flashes of bright light when lightning is exciting the electrical field above a storm. Scientists focus their investigations on the one percent of UFO events that are stubbornly difficult to explain – not that the investigators have any evidence of aliens. But any scientific investigation has to be based on experiments and reproducibility. And when it comes to alien visitations, those standards can be difficult or impossible to apply.
• Considering that we still have no answer for the Great Silence of the elusive aliens, we have to leave open the possibility that aliens have been visiting Earth. From a practical standpoint, science may be better suited to analyzing alien artifacts or possible alien objects in space, such as the interstellar asteroid ʻOumuamua’. As our observatories improve, and better telescopes like FAST come online, we may find ourselves with many more such mysteries to solve.
• [Editor’s Note] Wow. This writer has guzzled so much of the deep state’s kool aid, he is completely mind controlled and devoid of independent thought. He accepts without question that the Roswell crash was a weather balloon. He believes that 99 percent of all UFO sightings are mere atmospheric phenomenon. It is hard to take anyone with such cognitive dissonance seriously. Hopefully, Chinese astronomers won’t be as hampered by deep state propaganda as are the hapless scientists in America. Humanity will welcome the truth for a change, regardless of where it comes from.
The world’s largest single-dish radio telescope—the Five Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in southern China—is about to start operation after more than three years of testing and commissioning. While the trials have focused on detecting neutron stars, one of the goals during the telescope’s operational lifetime will be to search for signals generated by intelligent extraterrestrials. Since Chinese officials claim that FAST is already three times as sensitive as the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico, the second-largest single-dish telescope in the world, we surely expect new discoveries.
We don’t know, of course, whether the giant telescope will detect signs of extraterrestrial technology. But we’d love to have an explanation for what’s been called the Great Silence, also known as the Fermi Paradox: If there is intelligent life out there, why don’t we see any evidence of it?
There are many possible answers, including the idea that we live in a kind of designated nature preserve, or zoo. Or, if you like Star Trek, maybe the aliens are applying their version of the prime directive and trying not to interfere with life on Earth.
When I was in New Mexico recently for a workshop on extant life on Mars, I also visited the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. While the museum did have some interesting exhibits, including artwork and depictions of aliens in science fiction movies, its focus on the famous 1947 Roswell UFO incident seemed to suggest a government cover-up of an alien visitation. Never mind that the Roswell event likely has a much more mundane explanation: the crash of a high altitude balloon like the ones used by the U.S. Air Force for Project Mogul.
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• In October 2017, a telescope at the University of Hawaii picked up a cigar-shaped object which had sling-shotted past the sun at 196,000 miles per hour. Scientists at the university dubbed it ‘Oumuamua’, Hawaiian for scout (depicted above). At first it was labeled an asteroid, and then a comet, but it certainly came from another solar system.
• Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard University’s astronomy department, and Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters theorizing that the object could be “light sail”, floating in interstellar space as debris from advanced technological equipment. “Alternatively,” they wrote, “a more exotic scenario is that Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”
• While scientists theorizing about alien life may find a rapt public audience, they can also draw cynical, even hostile reactions from their fellow scientists. Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, tweeted: “No, ‘Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship, and the authors of the paper insult honest scientific inquiry to even suggest it.” Or they may draw sarcasm, as Neil deGrasse Tyson once quipped to CNN: “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”
• The threat of being written off as a kook looms large for researchers. Many academics “won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole,” said Don Donderi, a retired associate professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal who now teaches a non-credit course called “UFOs: History and Reality” in the school’s continuing education department. No one at McGill seemed to mind when Donderi began writing about the paranormal in the 1970’s. But when he applied for a grant to investigate UFO sightings he was rejected. At his retirement, Donderi offered to give a free seminar on his UFO and alien abduction research, and was again turned down.
• Donderi notes that people who speak at UFO conferences “aren’t all equally good enough.” Meanwhile, those engaged in the search through bona fide organizations have come up with minimal results. Astronomers have been trying to communicate with alien life using radio waves since 1959, work that has continued by the SETI Institute to the present, but have found nothing. As a psychologist, Donderi believes that cognitive dissonance keeps the search for ET intelligence in limbo. “[A]cademics will bristle at conclusions that point to aliens,” says Donderi.
• Physicist Richard Bower of Durham University in England studies parallel universes. “We used to say that life is incredibly rare and we’re lucky to live on a habitable planet,’’ Bower said. “But we’ve now observed so many planets that are plausible habitats. It seems, based on scientific evidence, there’s no reason to think that planets like the Earth are rare.” Still, Bower is “less comfortable” with excessive speculation. Simply looking for alien life is too binary: if you don’t find it, you’ve got nothing. It is better to focus on questions that we may soon have the evidence to answer.
• We may be finding nothing because we’re doing it wrong. NASA physicist Silvano Colombano maintains that long-held assumptions have limited the earnest search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and that the “general avoidance of the subject by the scientific community” means no one questions them. Colombano suggests the search for alien intelligence is based on “cherished assumptions” that are holding it back, e.g.: that interstellar travel is unlikely, that alien civilizations use radio waves, that other life must be carbon-based, and that UFOs have never visited earth. Colombano makes a case for discarding these dusty beliefs, and instead imagine how alien societies’ technology might have evolved.
• Donderi concludes that the evidence is rising and feels that cognitive dissonance is at the moment collapsing. “[W]e’re at the beginning of the change,” he stated. Researchers expect more data about interstellar objects when the Large Synoptic Telescope in Chile starts operating in 2022.
In October 2017, a telescope operated by the University of Hawaii picked up a strange cigar-shaped object (artist rendering in top image), which had slingshotted past the sun at a more-than-brisk top speed of 196,000 miles per hour. Scientists at the university dubbed it ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout, and at first labelled it an asteroid, then a comet, but agreed that it came from another solar system.
Avi Loeb
Around the world, telescopes were quickly aimed toward ‘Oumuamua’s path, and scientists dove into the data. One of them, Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard University’s astronomy department, published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters the following year theorising that the object could be artificial. “Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from advanced technological equipment,” he and co-author Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, wrote. “Alternatively, a more exotic scenario is that ‘Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilisation.”
Don Donderi
That’s not something you read every day in a serious scientific journal. The paper went viral, and Loeb began fielding an onslaught of media calls while fellow scientists weighed in. In terms of his colleagues’ reaction, Loeb said, “almost all of them reacted favourably, and they thought, you know, it’s just an interesting idea.”
Even so, he added, there were some adverse reactions as well. One cutting tweet by Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, reads: My publicist asked me for a quote on the ‘Oumuamua story making the rounds. Here it is:
“No, ‘Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship, and the authors of the paper insult honest scientific inquiry to even suggest it.”
Richard Bower
Feel free to use that, @fcain, @tariqjmalik! — Paul M. Sutter (@PaulMattSutter) November 6, 2018
Also read: India Planning to Launch Own Space Station by 2030, ISRO Chief Says
All this hubbub took place in the aftermath of news reports that the Pentagon had been collecting data on UFO sightings for years. Clearly, the hunt for alien intelligence is alive and well in our solar system, and it’s hot news. Indeed, Loeb’s article was approved for publication in mere days.
Silvano Colombano
But while scientists tossing around the idea of alien life may find a rapt public audience, they can also draw cynical, even hostile reactions from their fellow scientists, a response summed up by acclaimed physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who once quipped to CNN: “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”
This paradox has ripple effects. The threat of being written off as a kook can loom large for researchers, especially young ones. A lot of academics “won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole,” said Don Donderi, a retired associate professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal who now teaches a non-credit course called “UFOs: History and Reality” in the school’s continuing education department.
Loeb says many discoveries have their roots in theories that were initially dismissed. He thinks open-mindedness keeps scientific inquiry moving forward while shutting down new theories “reduces the efficiency of science.”
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by Daniel W. Drezner May 28, 2019 (washingtonpost.com)
• UFOs have historically been associated with crackpot ideas like Big Foot or conspiracy theories involving crop circles, and consistently dismissed. But as more military pilots come forward to describe encounters with unidentified flying objects, government officials reluctantly acknowledge that UFOs (or “UAP”s) do exist. At this point, authorities are trying to destigmatize the reporting of UFOs while adamantly refusing to say that these UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin.
• Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall authored a paper entitled: “Sovereignty and the UFO”, published in the journal Political Theory, which argues that state sovereignty is “constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone.” They argue that the real reason UFOs have been dismissed is because it challenges the worldview in which human beings are the most technologically advanced life-forms. “UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility.” So if humankind is the most technologically advanced life form, then in order to preserve this premise, UFOs cannot be of an extraterrestrial origin. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.”
• Wendt and Duvall’s paper makes a persuasive case that UFOs certainly exist, even if they are not necessarily ETs. For them, the key is that no official authority takes seriously the idea that UFOs can be extraterrestrials. As they note, “considerable work goes into ignoring UFOs, constituting them as objects only of ridicule and scorn.”
• In recent years, however, there has been a subtle shift that poses some interesting questions for Wendt and Duvall’s argument. Discussion of actual UFOs has become the topic of serious mainstream media coverage. The government acknowledged the existence of a Pentagon program to study UFOs. A noted astrophysicist claimed that the ‘asteroid’ Oumuamua could be of artificial construction relying on a solar sail. Military pilots came forward in December 2017 and then again in May 2019 relating their encounters with UFOs on both the West and East Coasts of the US. No one in the Defense Department is saying that the objects are extraterrestrial, though even skeptics cannot completely rule out the possibility that extraterrestrial activity is involved.
• So the government and mainstream media are not behaving as Wendt and Duvall would predict. Politico’s Bryan Bender reported that, “The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with ‘unidentified aircraft,’ a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.” Deanna Paul of the Washington Post wrote, “Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence officer, told The Post that the new Navy guidelines formalized the reporting process, facilitating data-driven analysis while removing the stigma from talking about UFOs, calling it ‘the single greatest decision the Navy has made in decades.”
• As the stigma against the existence of UFOs wears off, will Earth governments face the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations as the origin of these unexplained UFOs?
The term “UFO” automatically triggers derision in most quarters of polite society. One of Christopher Buckley’s better satires, “Little Green Men,” is premised on a George F. Will-type pundit thinking that he has been abducted by aliens, with amusing results. UFOs have historically been associated with crackpot ideas like Big Foot or conspiracy theories involving crop circles.
The obvious reason for this is that the term “UFO” is usually assumed to be a synonym for “extraterrestrial life.” If you think about it, this is odd. UFO literally stands for “unidentified flying object.” A UFO is not necessarily an alien from another planet. It is simply a flying object that cannot be explained away through conventional means. Because UFOs are usually brought up only to crack jokes, however, they have been dismissed for decades.
One of the gutsiest working paper presentations I have witnessed was Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall presenting a draft version of “Sovereignty and the UFO.” In that paper, eventually published in the journal Political Theory, Wendt and Duvall argued that state sovereignty as we understand it is anthropocentric, or “constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone.” They argued that the real reason UFOs have been dismissed is because of the existential challenge that they pose for a worldview in which human beings are the most technologically advanced life-forms: “UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility…. The puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.”
When Wendt and Duvall made this argument, there were a lot of titters in the audience. I chuckled, too. Nonetheless, their paper makes a persuasive case that UFOs certainly exist, even if they are not necessarily ETs. For them, the key is that no official authority takes seriously the idea that UFOs can be extraterrestrials. As they note, “considerable work goes into ignoring UFOs, constituting them as objects only of ridicule and scorn.”
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• ‘Oumuamua’, a mysterious celestial object that hurtled close to the Earth in 2017, is the first known object to come here from outside the solar system. Rob Weryk, the person who initially spotted Oumuamua at the University of Hawaii, says that there isn’t “any reason to believe that it’s anything but a natural object.”
• But Professor Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb (pictured above) of Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics noted that the object did not behave like a typical comet or asteroid. If it were a comet, Loeb said, its excess acceleration would have likely been apparent in the form of a tail of dust or gas. Also, its elongated shape is unlike any asteroid or comet observed before. Loeb said he is simply using the available data to draw an evidence-based conclusion. “Let’s put all the possibilities on the table,” Loeb said. Perhaps, Loeb reasoned, the object had been an artificial object sent from an extraterrestrial civilization. “If someone would show me clear evidence that it’s natural in origin, then I would admit it and move on,” he said.
• Loeb’s speculation has drawn the ire of the scientific community. Astrophysicists from across the country have spoken out against Loeb’s theory, painting him as a sensationalist and worse. Some think that Loeb’s assertions will damage the field’s long-term credibility. “[P]eople think that astronomers are just hunting for aliens,” said Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist at Ohio State University. “The next time we go out to Congress or the public asking for money, there’s going to be a lot of people shaking their heads saying, ‘Oh, you guys are just nutballs.’”
• But Loeb has refused to back down, digging in his heels against what he considers unjust appraisal. His work, he insists, is not the result of some half-baked sci-fi fantasy. The researchers whose opinions Loeb does value have offered support for the idea — even if they’ve been wary of putting their names to it publicly. Loeb argues that scientific study has become far too conservative — avoiding controversial or unpopular examinations in favor of safer subjects that might earn a scientist an award or induction into a prestigious society, but are not necessarily conducive to substantial scientific advances.
• Irwin Shapiro, the former longtime director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, called Loeb “brilliant.” Stephen Hawking once dined at his home. In 2012, Loeb was named one of the 25 most influential people in space by Time Magazine.
• Loeb was raised in an Israeli farming village. He passed his days reading philosophy books and writing notes to himself. He didn’t move into the field of astrophysics until the age of 26. “The reason I’m different from my colleagues,” he said, “is because I was different from the beginning.”
• In spite of the backlash, Loeb has been happy to field calls from media outlets across the world, and is close to signing a deal for a book on ‘Oumauamua’. Seven different filmmakers have reached to him out about the possibility of doing a film.
Like a lot of people, Avi Loeb, the chairman of Harvard University’s renowned astronomy department, does his best thinking in the shower.
It’s where he has hatched ideas for papers on black holes and the future of the universe, and where, last year, he spent some time pondering a notion that would eventually make him — in some circles, at least — the subject of considerable ridicule.
artist’s rendering of ‘Oumuamua’
He’d been thinking about the phenomenon of ‘Oumuamua, a mysterious object that hurtled close to the Earth in 2017. It had become an instant sensation in the scientific community, the first known object from outside the solar system, and astronomers and astrophysicists had jumped to analyze and explain the anomalous object. Theories were developed. Papers were published.
Loeb had a theory, too, and late last year, he detailed it, along with co-author and postdoctoral researcher Shmuel Bialy, in an article for The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Perhaps, he reasoned, the structure had been an artificial object sent from an extraterrestrial civilization.
Almost immediately, the piece ignited the kind of firestorm rarely, if ever, seen in the buttoned-down world of modern-day astronomy.
In the months since the paper’s publication, astrophysicists from across the country have spoken out against Loeb’s theory, painting him as a sensationalist and worse. The researcher who first discovered ‘Oumuamua — Hawaiian for “messenger from afar arriving first” — via telescope has called Loeb’s suggestions “wild speculation.” Another compared Loeb’s logic to that of flat-earthers.
But even as criticism has continued to pour in, Loeb — who is short and slight and wears a near-constant half-smile — has refused to back down, digging in his heels against what he considers unjust appraisal.
He has brushed off much of the negative feedback as the jealous or prejudiced grumblings of scientists he doesn’t respect, adding that the researchers whose opinions he does value have offered support for the idea — even if they’ve been wary of putting their names to it publicly.
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by Chabeli Herrera March 19, 2019 (orlandosentinel.com)
• Over the past two years, scientists, politicians and professionals have increasingly been willing to touch the taboo subject of UFOs and perhaps lend a little credence to those who still believe.
• In December 2017, the New York Times reported that the U.S. had funded a secret, $22 million project to study UFO claims from 2007 to 2012. Declassified video taken in 2004 by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets off the coast of San Diego showed a craft with no apparent propulsion moving at alarmingly fast speeds. Navy pilot Commander David Fravor who witnessed the Tic Tac-shaped craft told the Washington Post that it was “something not from Earth.”
• Harvard’s astronomy department chair, Avi Loeb, along with colleague Shmuel Bialy, wrote in a publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters that an interstellar object seen passing through our solar system called Oumuamua “is a lightsail, flowing in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment.” Loeb theorized that, “Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”
• NASA’s Ames Research Center scientist Silvano Colombano went on record recently to suggest that NASA and the scientific community should be more open-minded in its approach to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. NASA is preoccupied with finding biosignatures through its Center for Life Detection Science than interested in analyzing alleged UFO sightings.
• MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) does analyze UFO sightings. It has 3,500 members in 42 countries. Barbara Stusse, 80, has been coming to MUFON meetings for three years. She says that her mother saw a UFO in 1947. In 1965, she read about Betty and Barney Hill and “believed it”.
• Kathleen Marden is MUFON’s director of experiencer research. She was 13 years old in September 1961 when her Aunt Betty Hill and her Uncle Barney Hill saw a UFO in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There were two hours they couldn’t account for, and Barney was sure he’d seen eight to eleven figures dressed in black shiny uniforms that were “somehow not human”. Under hypnosis, the Hills related how they were abducted and physically examined inside the UFO. “They examined their hands, they took their shoes off, they examined their feet, they did tests on them that appear to be testing their nervous systems, as well,” says Marden. She has written about the government’s ‘tampering’ with the Hill case. But lately Marden has seen a recent shift in the credence that people give to the UFO phenomenon, with the 2017 New York Times article being the turning point.
• Trish Bishop of Kissimmee, Florida, relates her story of March 2013 at dusk when she saw a tall, muscular man wearing a formfitting tan colored uniform, boots and gloves was lingering in her backyard at the edge of a forest. But his face wasn’t human. His eyes bulged far out of their sockets. His jaw was over-sized. And his skin was white as chalk. Paralyzed with fear, she pretended not to watch the man while she called for help on her phone. Then man appeared to be climbing invisible steps. When he was about 10 feet off the ground, he turned his back to her and pulled himself up “into a UFO?” she thought — and he was gone. After four years, she got the nerve to report the incident to MUFON.
• The challenge with UFO and alien sightings has always been the lack of evidence. Bishop said she was too scared to take a photo of her alien. Little to no consequential evidence exists in other cases. University of Central Florida psychology professor Alvin Wang thinks that people project their predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories, and seek out others who reaffirm that belief. “[T]hey get …confirmation support, when they are members of UFO believers community,” said Wang.
He appeared as if a hologram at first — then solid — suddenly there and clear as you or I, at the edge of the forest behind Trish Bishop’s home in Kissimmee.
It was a Thursday in March 2013, the glow of the afternoon tucking in for the day behind the trees. He stood tall, at least 6-foot-3, perhaps 220 pounds and certainly muscular, wearing a formfitting tan colored uniform, boots and gloves. He lingered by the crape myrtle tree in the middle of the backyard.
When he turned around, it was his face, she remembers, that stopped her.
Bulging eyes jutting so far out of the sockets that Bishop wondered whether he could close them. Skin white as chalk.
And a jaw so large, it dispelled any notions the government worker had of the visitor being human.
“If you compare a human jawbone to his, we would be a chihuahua to a pit bull,” Bishop said.
Paralyzed with fear, she watched as what she believed to be an alien appeared to climb invisible steps, stopping often to snatch glances at her from where she sat on her back porch, fumbling with her phone to appear as though she couldn’t see him.
Her finger was pressed on the number “9” to dial for help.
When he was about 10 feet off the ground, he turned his back to her and pulled himself up — “into a UFO?” she thought — and was gone.
Bishop sat stunned. “I’ve got a freaking alien in my backyard,” she thought.
It would be four years before she told anyone her story, before she’d discover the Mutual Unidentified Flying Objects Network, a nationwide organization 50 years old, and file her report under case number 84886 with the local Florida chapter.
But she worried: Who would believe her?
These days, more people than you’d think.
Across restaurants and meeting rooms in the United States, MUFON groups still gather every month to discuss cases like Bishop’s with the enthusiasm that once gripped the nation during the Cold War, when UFO sightings still made a splash on the front page.
The Space Coast group, made up of some former NASA employees and engineers, has 118 members, the largest in the state. Across the U.S. they number 3,500, with additional offices in 42 countries.
For many years, they were alone entertaining UFO theories. No more.
In the past two years, scientists, politicians and professionals have increasingly been willing to touch the taboo subject and perhaps lend a little credence to those who still believe.
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by Dirk Schulze-Makuch March 11, 2019 (airspacemag.com)
• A remarkable meeting occurred over the weekend of March 9-10 in Tutzing, Germany, just outside of Munich. Its theme: Are we alone in the Universe? Eminent German astrobiologists and scientists were invited to give presentations, including Karl Menten, Director of the Max Planck Institute, Gerhard Haerendel, recipient of the Allan D. Emil Memorial Award for pioneering achievements in space sciences, Andreas Losch from the Institute of Systematic Theology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and the article’s author, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, who spoke on the Cosmic Zoo hypothesis.
• The meeting was hosted by the evangelical academy, underscoring the continuing interest of religious groups in the possibility of extraterrestrial life and what it might mean for faith communities. The Catholic Church appears to me to be the most interested group of all. In 2014 the Vatican Observatory even co-hosted a conference in Arizona on whether we are alone in the Universe.
• Earlier this year, the discovery of a new source of Fast Radio Bursts suggested that they could be messages from advanced technological civilizations. Tabby’s Star, which suddenly dips its light curve, has been linked to alien megastructures.
• Last November, Avi Loeb of Harvard University suggested that ‘Oumuamua’, the first object seen to enter our Solar System from interstellar space, could be a lightsail built by an advanced intelligent civilization. Its motion seems to indicate that something other than simple gravitation might be at work.
• The longest unresolved enigma is the Wow! signal, which has all the hallmarks of an alien transmission but unfortunately was only received once. It may have been a transmission from one starship to another, or perhaps from a ship to its home base, and Earth just happened to be in the way.
• However likely or unlikely these anomalies, it is clear that interest in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is on the rise again, as shown not only by this latest conference near Munich, but by NASA’s renewed interest in what’s now called “technosignatures” of advanced life. Many people, beyond just scientists, understand what a detection of extraterrestrial intelligent life elsewhere would mean – nothing less than a complete re-assessment of our place in the Universe.
A remarkable meeting occurred outside Munich, Germany this past weekend. Its theme: Are we alone in the Universe? The most eminent German-speaking scientists in the field of astrobiology were invited to give keynote presentations, which included talks by Karl Menten, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, on the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life; by Gerhard Haerendel, recipient of the Allan D. Emil Memorial Award for pioneering achievements in space sciences, on messaging to extraterrestrial civilizations (METI); and by Andreas Losch from the Institute of Systematic Theology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, on the scientific, philosophical and theological consequences of the presence of extraterrestrial civilizations. I also gave a talk, on the possibility of complex life on other planets based on the Cosmic Zoo hypothesis.
The meeting was hosted by the evangelical academy in Tutzing, Germany, underscoring the continuing interest of religious groups in the possibility of extraterrestrial life and what it might mean for faith communities. The Catholic Church appears to me to be the most interested group of all. In recent years I’ve seen many of its representatives at scientific meetings. In 2014 the Vatican Observatory (yes, they have their own observatory) even co-hosted a conference in Arizona on whether we are alone in the Universe.
So, are we?
If you were to ask Avi Loeb of Harvard University, he would likely direct your attention to ‘Oumuamua, the first object seen to enter our Solar System from interstellar space. Last November Loeb pointed to six strange facts about ‘Oumuamua, suggesting that it could be an artificial object, possibly a lightsail built by an advanced intelligent civilization. Most puzzling of all is its shape: long, shiny and unusually thin for a rock. And its motion seems to indicate that something other than simple gravitation might be at work.
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by Abraham Loeb March 4, 2019 (scientificamerican.com)
• The human species is not particularly smart. We fight among ourselves in “lose-lose” situations; we do not promote long-term solutions over short-term fixes; and we have been broadcasting our existence to the galaxy with radio waves for over a century without worrying whether about whether there are any predators or competitors in outer space.
• Mainstream scientists box themselves in under an arrogant presumption that extraterrestrials and alien artifacts do not exist, and go from there. They can only conceive of a civilization or a technology that is based upon our own environment, geology and technology. The human race as a whole suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which those with mediocre abilities insist that they’re unusually talented or smart.
• The only way that our species will mature is to get off this planet and see what’s out there. When an artefact such as Oumuamua passes through our solar system, we need to observe it with an open mind. Could it be technological debris from another civilization? We need to get past the “giggle factor” to explore the unexpected.
• We can only hope that we have not become the laughingstock of our galactic neighborhood by now. But even if we have, we can still get our act together and do better. We should find out first who is on our street by searching with our best telescopes for unusual electromagnetic flashes, industrial pollution of planetary atmospheres, artificial light or heat, artificial space debris or something completely unexpected.
• [Editor’s Note] Accolades to Harvard Professor Avi Loeb (pictured above) for breaking away from mainstream scientists’ intellectual cul-de-sac. Loeb either knows more than he’s letting on, or has great intuition about the strange cigar-shaped “asteroid”, Oumuamua, that passed through our solar system in 2017 with very unusual transit properties. In a recent ExoNews article, “Alliance War Against Deep State – Major Updates Coming”, Corey Goode recounts how he was debriefed on a U.S. Air Force secret space program mission where astronauts entered, investigated, and video recorded the ancient derelict spaceship months before it was detected moving through our solar system. Corey points out that Linda Moulton Howe has now brought forward two military men who have independent knowledge of this USAF-SSP Oumuamua mission, confirming exactly what Corey first revealed.
It is unclear how many intelligent civilizations have arisen in the Milky Way galaxy so far, but if some have, a pressing question comes to mind: were they or are they more intelligent than we are?
When reading the morning newspaper, it is difficult to avoid the thought that our own intelligence bar is not particularly high nor difficult to surpass. We fight among ourselves in “lose-lose” situations; we do not promote long-term solutions over short-term fixes; and we have been broadcasting our existence to the galaxy with radio waves for over a century without worrying whether about whether there are any predators or competitors in outer space. (If it’s the latter, they might have been ignoring us because we appear so incompetent.)
If other civilizations do exist, one key in becoming aware of them is whether we are intelligent enough to adequately interpret their signals or to identify a piece of their technology if it should appear in our solar system. One fact is clear: if we assign a zero prior probability for such evidence coming our way, as some scientists did in the case of ‘Oumuamua by invoking the principle “it’s never aliens,” we will indeed never find any. We will be like ostriches burying our heads in the sand.
In fact, this attitude may be one sign that our intelligence isn’t very impressive—that the human race as a whole suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which those with mediocre abilities insist that they’re unusually talented or smart.
How can our civilization mature? The same way kids do: by leaving home, going out into the neighborhood, meeting others and comparing notes with them. In other words, we can develop a balanced perspective on our current technological accomplishments by engaging in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Since our own technological development accelerates exponentially with an e-folding time of a few years, it is difficult to imagine what a much more advanced technology crafted by a civilization that had lived for a cosmic timescale—billions of such e-folding times—would look like.
As natural as this suggestion to search might seem, however it is evident that SETI faces a hostile mainstream culture in astronomy. The simple proposal to consider the possibility that ‘Oumumua is technological debris as an explanation for its unusual properties, for example was met with controversy on social media.
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by Freddie Jordan February 22, 2019 (express.co.uk)
• The eminent professor and head of astronomy at Harvard University, Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb (pictured above), has reiterated his position that it is “quite possible” that we have interacted with alien technology without realizing it. “[W]e often imagine what we know already,” says Loeb, “And until we develop the appropriate technology, we would not recognize it.”
• Loeb elaborated that there was nothing far-fetched about the search for alien life. “Of course, we should be open-minded.” “Many people adopt the attitude that it’s never aliens… “And this approach is similar to an ostrich putting its head in the sand.”
• “We should look for industrial pollution on the atmospheres of other planets and relics from dead civilizations out there,” says Loeb. “I call it space archaeology: basically digging into space and searching for traces of other civilizations that may not exist anymore.”
• Loeb points to ‘Oumuamua’, the thin, cigar-shaped entity that briefly shot through our solar system in 2017 as an example. No one can currently explain the reason for its trajectory towards the center of the galaxy, nor its lack of gaseous emissions.
• [Editor’s Note] Professor Loeb might begin his “space archaeology” right here on Earth. Corey Goode has stated that there are intact alien spaceships lying on the ground surface of Antarctica underneath two miles of ice, as well as the remnants of an alien civilization that inhabited the continent around 12,000 years ago. Also, Linda Moulton Howe has recently brought forth a former Navy Seal she calls Spartan 1, and a former Marine she calls Spartan 2, who have independently confirmed that the melting Antarctic ice has revealed a 62-acre-wide, octagonal-shaped granite structure that serves as a passageway going through the two miles of ice to a base located at the ground surface, also accessible by submarine, which they say has a mechanical doorway, automatic lighting inside, and hieroglyphic writings on the walls. These men also corroborate Corey Goode’s report that the US Air Force’s secret space program landed a research craft on the Oumuamua asteroid, bored a hole into it, and entered it only to find that it was actually a derelict extraterrestrial spaceship. See Dr. Michael Salla’s recent article on this amazing discovery, Navy Insiders Corroborate Secret Antarctic Space Fleet & Mission to Oumuamua.
Professor Avi Loeb, who is head of astronomy at Harvard University, reiterated that it is indeed “quite possible” that we have interacted with alien technology without realising. Professor Loeb made the astonishing revelation this week to Express.co.uk. He explained: “It’s quite possible that we did detect some traces of other civilisations but haven’t recognised them.
“The reason is we often imagine what we know already – what we have developed ourselves.
“And until we develop the appropriate technology, we would not recognise it out there in the sky.”
Oumuamua
The esteemed astronomer elaborated that there was nothing far fetched about the search for alien life.
He said: “Of course, we should be open-minded and not dismiss the opportunity to look at the sky.
“Many people adopt the attitude that it’s never aliens.
“And this approach is similar to an ostrich putting its head in the sand and not even looking through the telescope to search for it.
“I think we should be open-minded. We should look for industrial pollution on the atmospheres of other planets and relics from dead civilisations out there.
“I call it space archaeology: basically digging into space and searching for traces of other civilisations that may not exist anymore.”
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by Anders Anglesey February 18, 2019 (dailystar.co.uk)
• Theoretical physicist, Dr Michio Kaku, 72, believes traditional ideas of extraterrestrials may not be what mankind eventually encounters. Dr Kaku says people have been conditioned to think of extraterrestrials looking like Captain Kirk, ignoring their huge technological advancements. Therefore, the aliens that we will ‘eventually’ meet will be cyborgs – part biological, part machine. We just need a greater imagination.
• On the other hand, Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, 57, says, “I do not view the possibility of a technological (advanced) civilization as speculative, for two reasons. The first is that we exist. And the second is that at least a quarter of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy have a planet like Earth, with surface conditions that are very similar to Earth, and the chemistry of life as we know it could develop.” “[T]here are tens of billions of stars in the Milky Way. It is quite likely we are not alone.”
• [Editor’s Note] This article draws the line between the mainstream scientists who peddle wild speculation, and those, like Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb, who base his theories on demonstrable facts, such as the flight properties of the cigar-shaped Oumuamua ‘asteroid’ indicating that it might actually be a spacecraft. (see Dr Salla’s article on ‘insider’s’ take on Oumuamua here) It appears that Dr Michio Kaku’s primary function is to throw any ridiculous notion out there to keep the Deep State’s disinformation campaign flowing, along with a dash of imminent fear, in order to scare and confuse people with regard to the extraterrestrial presence so that the general public doesn’t have a clue as to what is truly going on. Kaku has to know that extraterrestrials have been visiting the Earth. But he’d rather ‘use his imagination’ to come up with killer robots – this week. It’s all part of the ongoing cover-up. Well done Dr Kaku. But your time is running out. Full disclosure will reveal you for what you are.
The theoretical physicist, 72, believes traditional imaginings of extraterrestrials may not be what mankind eventually encounters.
Dr Michio Kaku
He argued that biological bodies are too limited for advanced species and that, instead, aliens could be found to have cybernetic features.
Dr Kaku said people had been conditioned to think of extraterrestrials in a certain way, ignoring their huge advancements in technology.
Speaking to Coast to Coast AM, Dr Kaku added: “I would have loved it if Hollywood had some imagination.
“I think one day when we actually meet aliens from outer space, they will not be totally biological, they may be part cyborg, part biological.
Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb
“We’re so brainwashed into thinking they must look like Captain Kirk, right, that we neglect the fact that if they are that advanced, then they realise there are limitations to a biological body.
“They may be part cybernetic and not totally biological so I think we are missing the boat there.”
It comes as a Harvard astronomer admitted he believes aliens exist in space.
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A former Navy Seal and a Marine Corps special operator have just revealed in an interview their knowledge of a secret space fleet that operates out of Antarctica, which flew a landing mission to the recent interstellar visitor to our solar system, Oumuamua. They were interviewed by veteran UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe who released their startling testimonies on her YouTube channel live streaming on February 20, 2019.
Howe had previously released Part 1 of her interview where Spartan 1, a former Navy Seal, described entering an octagon shaped structure covering approximately 62 acres near the Beardsmore Glacier in Antarctica. His account of what he witnessed and his mission there is described in my earlier article.
Spartan 1 had also shared his knowledge of the existence of a coalition of major nations that are signatories to the Antarctic Treaty, who operate a secret space program out of Antarctica.
This coalition that I talk about, it’s Great Britain, United States, France, Germany, Canada, Russia. There has been a space fleet in existence for the last 25 years” [Timestamp 9:01]
In response to Howe’s question about who is paying for and operating the space fleet, Spartan 1 asserted: “All these coalition countries”.
Spartan 1 went on to describe the different extraterrestrial races that collaborate with the space coalition and how Antarctica is the hub of operations:
Spartan 1: I have only been told about of at least seven different species of aliens that the coalition has been in contact with.
Howe: How have they been described?
Spartan 1: Anywhere from warlike to very peaceful… [Timestamp 17:20]
Howe: Do you have the impression that Antarctica is the central crossing hub for these seven species?
Next, Howe introduced the second whistleblower, Spartan 2, who is also a special operator, but whose service branch was instead the US Marine Corps.
Spartan 2 first contacted Howe on March 22, 2017 by email and wrote: “Antarctica contains wonders beyond what most can comprehend. It has ties to space and technology beyond belief”. [Timestamp 22:06]
He revealed that for the last decade he has worked with an official from U.S. Cyber Command, whose 8th floor office is responsible for conducting trade with extraterrestrial races. The official, whose first name is Kim, told Spartan 1 and 2 about a secret mission to Oumuamua – the interstellar object that sparked scientific speculation due to its unusual cigar shape and how it accelerated as it began leaving our solar system, which Howe discussed in her live streaming session.
Spartan 2 then dropped a bombshell when he said:
We got confirmation that our buddies landed on Oumuamua like months before anybody even knew it was out there. Our guys were on Oumuamua, or whatever they call that thing. It’s not a rock … it’s an old derelict ship. At least that’s what they told us… and we boarded it months before anybody knew about it. [Timestamp 25:00]
In response to Howe’s question of who gave them their information, Spartan 1 disclosed:
“I can only tell you his first name is Kim, he worked for NSA, has worked for NSA for years. Then, just recently, in the last year he has been put in charge of a certain department in Cyber Command. All I know is that it’s on the 8th floor of the NSA building” [Timestamp 25:30]
Spartan 1 confirmed that the 8th floor of Cyber Command is like a communications department in charge of interstellar trade with extraterrestrials.
The revelations by Spartan 1 and 2 about the secret space mission to Oumuamua before its “official discovery” on October 19, 2017 corroborates an earlier account of this mission by secret space program insider Corey Goode. Goode says that on December 17, 2017, he was taken to a secret moon base called Lunar Operations Command where he received a briefing about the Oumuamua mission involving an alliance of space programs and nations.
Goode asserted that during the briefing he viewed a video of the Oumuamua mission, and that it was led by a senior USAF official he had dubbed “Sigmund”. Goode said:
Sigmund puffed up proudly and stated, “I led an expedition to see who this craft belonged to. Wait until you hear what we found.” Suddenly we started seeing all sorts of readings and telemetry on the monitor. I could also hear what sounded like an old NASA radio transmission. There were beeps along with a pilot calling in positions of his craft, as well as the one he was trying to dock with. That lasted for about five minutes as I saw the two craft spiraling closer and closer together.
As the pilot matched the spin of the object they were approaching, you could see a long cigar-shaped structure that had shiny patches of what looked like ice on the outside. It was obviously made of stone, and looked as if it had been through many meteor showers and collisions. The video broke to a scene where a few people who were suited up in space suits were pushing themselves through what looked like a bored-out hole going down into the rock.
More information about what Goode was told about the secret Oumuamua mission is available here.
Artist illustration of Oumuamua and visiting spacecraft. Credit: Gaia TV/Sphere Being Alliance
Significantly, key elements of what Goode was told and publicly revealed back in January 2018 about the Oumuamua mission have now been independently corroborated by the two new whistleblowers, Spartan 1 and 2. This means that there are three individuals who have now gone on the public record about receiving first hand testimony of a classified mission to Oumuamua by a coalition of nations controlling a secret space fleet.
Goode has also spoken in the past about Antarctica being a hub for deep space operations by different groups, nations, and corporations, which is consistent with what Spartan 1 and 2 have revealed.
Goode has also described the creation of an international space fleet created in the early 1990’s that focuses on scientific research in deep space and other solar systems, which he dubbed the “Global Galactic League of Nations.” Again, this is consistent with what Spartan 1 and 2 have just revealed.
Howe has conducted due diligence on her two new whistleblowers in terms of reviewing documents confirming their military service. This makes their respective testimonies about Antarctica and Oumuamua difficult to dismiss, thereby corroborating what Goode had revealed more than a year earlier about the secret mission to Oumuamua.
by Abraham Loeb January 26, 2019 (scientificamerican.com)
• The excitement of the scientific enterprise is all about expanding our current knowledge of the universe a little at a time. Learning all at once of the knowledge of an alien civilization with billions of years of scientific and technological exploration would be a shock to the system, and would be difficult to reconcile. As science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke stated: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Put another way, members of such a civilization would appear to us as a pretty good approximation to God.
• A device of advanced alien technology to us, would be like a smart phone to an early human caveman. This could be similar to our mainstream scientist’s reaction to the recent visitor to our solar system, the elongated rocky object known as ‘Oumuamua’. Oumuamua showed six peculiar properties but was nevertheless interpreted as a mere rock. One may wonder whether we are able to recognize technologies that were not developed by us.
• Scientists have considered whether life itself was seeded on Earth by an alien civilization in a process called “directed panspermia.” We can begin to wrap our heads around seeds of life brought to the Earth in the form of microbes, or perhaps a 3-D printer that produced these seeds out of the raw materials on Earth. Our imagination of what aliens might do may improve once we too are able to produce synthetic life in the laboratory.
• If life was seeded artificially on Earth, one may wonder whether the seeders are checking on the outcome. Are they disappointed and have given up on us? The experiment may have failed, or we are simply irresponsible and too slow to mature. Perhaps if we knew that someone is looking over our shoulders, we would do better.
• Our civilization is highly vulnerable to annihilation by self-inflicted wounds, such as nuclear wars or climate change, as well as external threats such as asteroid impacts or evolution of the sun. It would be not be prudent to keep all our eggs in one basket. We should venture into space and seed objects beyond the Earth with life as we know it, thus reducing the risk of complete destruction and securing the longevity of things we care about.
Despite the impression one gets from textbooks, our current knowledge of the universe represents a small island in a vast ocean of ignorance. The scientific enterprise is all about expanding the landmass of this island. And it is fun to engage in the activity of gaining knowledge; knowing everything in advance would have been much more boring. Still, it would be shocking to learn all at once of the discoveries of an alien civilization that’s been doing scientific and technological exploration for billions of years, in contrast to our mere few centuries. The eminent science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke codified this idea in the third of his three laws : “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Put another way, members of such a civilization would appear to us as a pretty good approximation to God.
Abraham Loeb
Meeting a piece of advanced technological equipment developed by an extraterrestrial intelligence might resemble an imaginary encounter of ancient cave people with a modern cell phone. At first, they would interpret it as a shiny rock, not recognizing it as a communication device. The same thing might have happened in reaction to the first detection of an interstellar visitor to the solar system, ‘Oumuamua, which showed six peculiar properties but was nevertheless interpreted as a rock by mainstream astronomers.
Because it would likely be relatively small, most advanced equipment could only be recognized in the darkness of space when it comes close enough to our nearest lamppost, the sun. We can search for technological “keys” under this lamppost, but most of them will stay unnoticed if they pass far away. More fundamentally, one may wonder whether we are able to recognize technologies that were not already developed by us. After all, these technologies might feature subtle purposes—like the cell phone communication signals that a cave person would miss.
Is there something we might be missing already here and now?
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On January 16, the head of Harvard University’s astronomy department, Prof. Abraham Loeb, gave an interview where he defended his controversial paper that the interstellar object detected by a Hawaii based telescope on October 19, 2017, and named “Oumuamua”, was a spacecraft of some kind. While astronomers continue to debate the scant scientific data gleaned from telescopes to determine Oumuamua’s origins and nature, a whistleblower/insider’s report of an alleged covert space mission to Oumuamua that acquired much scientific data after landing on it is being ignored.
While astronomers might be forgiven for ignoring insider/whistleblower reports of covert missions to artifacts in the solar system due to a lack of corroborating scientific data, political scientists interested in space affairs, which falls under the rubrics of “astropolitics” or “exopolitics”, do not have such a luxury. Insiders/whistleblowers provide a rare glimpse into the rarified world of highly classified compartmentalized projects and therefore their claims need to be investigated since corroborating evidence may be absent due to the classification process, rather than being non-existent. If found to be credible insider/whistleblower claims need to be analyzed with regard to available scientific data as outlined in a 2014 paper published in the Astropolitics Journal.
Before examining the alleged covert mission that landed on Oumuamau, it’s worth reviewing what astronomers have said about it to date.
In a TED talk published on July 19, 2018, the astrobiologist, Dr. Karen J. Meech, discussed what was known about Oumuamua which was given the formal designation of 1I/2017 U1. She explained the excitement of astronomers who had long awaited the arrival of the first object from another solar system. They initially gave it the informal name of Rama, after the derelict spacecraft depicted in Arthur C. Clark’s 1973 novel, Rendezvous with Rama that was spotted after passing close by the Earth.
Meech explained in her TED talk that this was not deemed suitable. As will be later explained, the name Rama was in fact very appropriate given how a secret space program organized a landing mission.
Given that the interstellar object was discovered from the Pan-STARRS telescope on Haleakala Observatory on the Hawaiian island of Maui, two Hawaii culture experts were consulted. They named it Oumuamua – Hawaiian for “scout or messenger from distant past reaching out to us”. The images taken by the Hubble and Pan-STARRS telescopes were quite faint, so not much could be learned about Oumuamua’s geometry and composition.
Nevertheless, the initial artist depiction was of it being a long-cigar shaped object that was turning and rolling along its interstellar orbital path as though violently ejected from some distant stellar event that occurred in the remote past.
What really attracted scientific attention was when Oumuamua accelerated as it approached the sun according to data provided by the Hubble telescope in June 2018.
While acceleration is normal for comets that have long icy tails which ignite thereby propelling the comet forward, Oumuamua was no comet. Somehow the sun’s solar energy appeared to be accelerating Oumuamua.
This led to Prof. Loeb and his colleague from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Dr. Shmuel Bialy, speculating that Oumuamua may have contained a solar sail and was therefore being charged up and accelerating as it received the solar energy. They presented their conjecture in a paper titled, “Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?” and wrote:
Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment… The lightsail technology might be abundantly used for transportation of cargo between planets … or between stars…In the former case, dynamical ejection from a planetary System could result in space debris of equipment that is not operational any more … and is floating at the characteristic speed of stars relative to each other in the Solar neighborhood. This would account for the various anomalies of ‘Oumuamua, such as the unusual geometry inferred from its lightcurve … its low thermal emission, suggesting high reflectivity … and its deviation from a Keplerian orbit … without any sign of a cometary tail … or spin-up torques …
Bialy and Loeb went on to offer an even more exotic explanation that Oumuamua is an interstellar probe that is basically at rest relative to other stars in our local stellar cluster:
Alternatively, a more exotic scenario is that ‘Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization…. This discrepancy is readily solved if ‘Oumuamua does not follow a random trajectory but is rather a targeted probe. Interestingly, ‘Oumuamua’s entry velocity is found to be extremely close to the velocity of the Local Standard of Rest, in a kinematic region that is occupied by less than 1 to 500 stars.
In his January 16 interview Loeb elaborated on the idea of Oumuamua being a kind of interstellar probe or buoy powered by solar sails that once monitored space traffic in our local region of the galaxy:
“If you average the velocities of all the stars in the region … you get a system that’s called the ‘local standard of rest.’ Oumuamua was at rest relative to that system. It didn’t come to us. It waited in place, like a buoy on the surface of the ocean, until the ‘ship’ of the solar system ran into it. To make things clear, only one of 500 stars in the system is as much at rest as Oumuamua…
Loeb in his interview explains that he and his colleague Bialy are not the only astronomers questioning whether Oumuamua is an extraterrestrial spacecraft, but they are reluctant to publicly state their opinions given the paucity of data gleaned from the Pan-STARRS and Hubble telescopes.
What would greatly surprise Loeb and other astronomers is that much more scientific data about Oumuamua has been gathered, but this had been classified at a very high level of national security.
According to Corey Goode, who claims to have worked on multiple secret space programs, he watched a video recording of a covert landing mission to Oumuamua conducted by an alliance of these programs that first observed it prior to its entry into our solar system. This is particularly significant given that Oumoamoa’s “official” discovery on October 19, 2017, was after it had passed the sun and was flying past Earth on the outbound portion of its interstellar journey.
Goode’s credibility as a genuine insider was recently given a dramatic boost with confirmation of two Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRD) dealing with “warp drives” and “traversable wormholes” that he was the first to publicly release in late 2017. The documents showed the scientific feasibility of advanced propulsion technologies that Goode had claimed were used in secret space programs.
The two documents were part of a list of 38 “Unclassified: For Official Use Only” documents that the Defense Intelligence Agency confirmed as authentic on January 16, 2019 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Federation of American Scientists.
The recent confirmation of Goode’s leaked DIRD documents means that his testimony about Oumuamua cannot be simply dismissed out of hand, and is well worth considering by astronomers seeking answers to Oumuamua’s origin and composition.
In January 2018, Goode provided a detailed description of what he saw in a video shown to him and others attending a briefing concerning recent covert space activities. Goode wrote about what he witnessed along with the explanation by a former USAF officer [Sigmund] participating in the briefing:
The person leading the meeting then brought our attention to a large smart-glass pad monitor that was lowering from the ceiling. Sigmund then stood up and said “I have a treat for the both of you.” He walked up to the monitor and stared at it while talking. He stated that they had been monitoring what appeared to be a derelict space craft that was headed towards our Sol System.
This would prove to be the same cigar-shaped “asteroid” that NASA and the mainstream media dubbed Oumuamua, and publicized widely in this same time frame.
Goode next explained what he was told about secret space mission sent to observe and land on Oumuamua:
Sigmund puffed up proudly and stated, “I led an expedition to see who this craft belonged to. Wait until you hear what we found.” Suddenly we started seeing all sorts of readings and telemetry on the monitor. I could also hear what sounded like an old NASA radio transmission. There were beeps along with a pilot calling in positions of his craft, as well as the one he was trying to dock with. That lasted for about five minutes as I saw the two craft spiraling closer and closer together.
As the pilot matched the spin of the object they were approaching, you could see a long cigar-shaped structure that had shiny patches of what looked like ice on the outside. It was obviously made of stone, and looked as if it had been through many meteor showers and collisions. The video broke to a scene where a few people who were suited up in space suits were pushing themselves through what looked like a bored-out hole going down into the rock.
Artist illustration of Oumuamua and visiting spacecraft. Credit: Gaia TV/Sphere Being Alliance
Goode also described what secret space program astronauts found when entering inside Oumuamua:
The shuttle had docked with the mystery vessel close to what looked like a metallic oval dome, which was sitting about a third of the way down its fuselage. It appeared to have been breached many times, and was full of holes and dents from obvious impacts. In the next scene, you could see the men in a weightless environment, with lights on their chests, helmets and the tops of their wrists. They split up and were talking to each other through the communications systems in their suits.
One of them was chipping samples out of the icy residue on the floors and walls. This same frozen, organic sludge was on the outside of the ship as well. It appeared like foamy, dirty lake water that had been frozen. The ship was obviously very ancient. It had been boarded and stripped of technology many times by unknown races.
Sigmund stated that when they tested the sludge later, they determined that it was partly the remains of the original crew. There were many panels removed from the walls, ceilings and floors, leaving empty compartments where technology was once located.
Goode went on to describe the discovery of preserved bodies of former crew members, the identity of an ancient extraterrestrial race they belonged to, the craft being trapped in orbit for millions of years, and a hieroglyphic language found inside the craft.
All this might sound incredible to astronomers relying on the scant data provided by the two telescopes that observed Oumuamua from a great distance. Goode’s release of DIA documents showing the feasibility of advanced propulsion systems such as warp drives, gives a degree of credibility to his claim that a covert space mission to Oumuamua was conducted and recorded on video.
It is certain that the video Goode witnessed has been shown to many scientists with need to know inside the covert world of secret space programs. The similarity of Goode’s account with what Clark described in Rendezvous with Rama is extraordinary. Perhaps Prof. Loeb and Dr. Bialy may have been made aware of such extraordinary information and are presenting their Oumoumou spacecraft hypothesis to open the minds of incredulous colleagues . Eventually, such classified data will be revealed to give a much more accurate and fuller picture of objects such as Oumuamua entering or inside our solar system, and the classified missions to these conducted by multiple secret space programs.
• Dozens of NASA space scientists teamed up to explore how our species could detect ‘technosignatures’, ie: the name for pieces of evidence which give away the presence of advanced alien civilizations – radio waves are detected coming from a distant star system, or Dyson Sphere ‘megastructure’ power stations surrounding a star in order to harvest its’ energy, for example.
• A November 28, 2018 NASA report entitled “NASA and the Search for Technosignatures” suggests that the truth about extraterrestrials could be lurking right under our noses. In a new report, scientists suggest that our own planet may be hiding alien ‘artifacts’, some of which may even have been built by extinct civilizations who lived on Mars, Venus or even Earth.
• ‘Because the geological, paleontological, and archaeological records on Earth are so incomplete, it is even possible that the Earth itself hosts such (extraterrestrial) artifacts, although, again, this idea is often conflated with unscientific popular imaginings and science fiction stories about alien visitation, and so must be approached carefully,’ the NASA researchers wrote.
• The report continues, ‘If technosignatures were discovered in the solar system, it would be worth considering whether their origin might not be interstellar. Specifically, since the Earth is home to the only known species capable of interstellar communication and planetary travel (although both technologies remain in their early development), the Earth remains the only known planet fecund enough to promote technological life, and so it or an early, habitable Mars or Venus could even be the origin of such technology.’
• The NASA report noted that ‘Technosignatures in the solar system might come in the form of free-floating probes or structures—either passing through the solar system or in orbit around the Sun or other body—or in the form of structures or other signs of technologies on planetary surfaces.’
• So far, the only potential alien artifact we’ve seen has been ‘Oumuamua’, the first ‘interstellar visitor’ to be observed in our stellar neighborhood after traveling here in 2017 through deep space. Still, most scientists believe its origins are natural rather than artificial. Oumuamua changed direction as it passed the sun, which may have been caused by a natural process called outgassing – although there is a very slight chance this could have been the result of it being steered somehow. (see previous ExoNews article on the Oumuamua visitor here)
You might think that humanity’s best chance of finding alien life involves peering deep into space and analysing faraway galaxies.
But a Nasa study has suggested the truth about extraterrestrials could be lurking right under our noses.
Dozens of space scientists have teamed up to explore how our species could detect ‘technosignatures’, the name for pieces of evidence which give away the presence of advanced alien civilisations.
Some of these tell-tale signs are obvious. For instance, if loads of radio waves are detected coming from a distant star system, then it could be a clue which shows it’s inhabited by intelligent extraterrestrial organisms.
We could also search for alien societies by looking for ‘megastructures’ called Dyson Spheres, which are theoretical power stations built surrounding a star to harvest its energy.
These would be easy to spot because they are likely to be gigantic and block out starlight whenever they pass in front of their sun.
Other technosignatures are harder to identify, such as evidence that a planet has been polluted by heavy industry.
In the new report, scientists also make the fascinating suggestion that our own planet may be hiding alien ‘artefacts’, some of which may even have been built by extinct civilisations which lived on Mars, Venus or even Earth.
‘Because the geological, paleontological, and archaeological records on Earth are so incomplete, it is even possible that the Earth itself hosts such artefacts, although, again, this idea is often conflated with unscientific popular imaginings and science fiction stories about alien visitation, and so must be approached carefully,’ researchers wrote.
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by Corey S. Powell December 25, 2018 (nbcnews.com)
• In 2017, an enigmatic object from beyond our solar system, named Oumuamua (depicted above), startled astronomers when it came streaking past the sun. In November 2018, Avi Loeb, the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-wrote a paper with a post-doctoral student, Shmuel Bialy, reporting that Oumuamua is so unusual that scientists should consider the possibility that it could be an interstellar craft built by extraterrestrials. Oumuamua is a Hawaiian word meaning “messenger from the past.”
• Some of Loeb’s colleagues were intrigued. Others were disconcerted. But suddenly mainstream scientists were seriously talking about alien spaceships. Loeb is well aware that most scientists recoil from anything that sounds like UFO craziness. But he believes an overabundance of skepticism has cut them off from out-of-the box ideas. Says Loeb, “Why have a prejudice? Why argue that it must be natural? What do we gain, other than putting blinders on our eyes?”
• Penn State astronomer Jason Wright shares Loeb’s desire for open discussion. “There’s a real culture change. SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence)is becoming a serious scientific discipline,” he says. Wright raises the possibility that a now-defunct alien civilization may have left behind artifacts on the moon where they could have survived, even if deposited there billions of years ago. Almost all such searches are destined for failure, Wright says, and all it takes is one success to change the world.
• Oumuamua’s unusual trajectory meant it had to have come from outside the solar system — and that it could have been traveling for millions of years. “It’s very elongated, with an axis ratio of at least 7 to 1,” astronomer Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said. It’s at least seven times as long as it is wide — shaped like a cigar. Or, as Loeb proposes in his paper, maybe a flattened disk. At only 1,000 feet long it is too small to be a comet. And it has no distinctive comet tail. Also, it seems to be much more reflective than the typical comet.
• The biggest puzzle about Oumuamua was the way it moved. (see previous ExoNews article here) As it zoomed away from the sun, it sped up slightly, as if given an invisible push. Comets often accelerate that way when gases boil off their surface under heat from the sun. But observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope showed no such material coming off of Oumuamua.
• At this point, Loeb thought it was time to consider a more radical interpretation. Perhaps Oumuamua isn’t a comet at all, and that the acceleration was caused not by boiling gases but by the pressure of sunlight against a very wide, thin lightweight structure. Loeb and Bialy suggested that such an object could be technological debris or even “a fully operational (alien) probe.”
• Loeb anticipated a harsh reaction to his paper. One anonymous researcher disparaged the Bialy and Loeb paper as “irresponsible,” and “just out to grab attention.” Loeb shrugs off the reflexive dismissals, saying that his lofty academic position actually obligates him to be a pot-stirrer, “I can say these things other people can’t because I have tenure at Harvard. The whole idea of getting tenure is to allow you to be free in your mind. I used the opportunity of Oumuamua to make a statement.” “All I’m doing is following the standard scientific process, looking for explanations,” Loeb says.
Last year, an enigmatic object named Oumuamua startled astronomers when it came streaking past the sun, giving humanity its first close-up look at an object from beyond our solar system. This year, the interstellar visitor did something even more remarkable: It made it respectable to talk about alien spaceships.
The turning point came in November, when Avi Loeb, the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-wrote a paper saying that Oumuamua is so unusual that scientists should consider the possibility that it’s not a far-out comet or asteroid, as his colleagues assumed, but rather an artificial structure.
Avi Loeb
In other words, maybe it’s an interstellar craft built by extraterrestrials.
Some of Loeb’s colleagues were intrigued. Others were disconcerted. But suddenly mainstream scientists were talking about how to tell if Oumuamua is a natural object or — as Loeb raised as a possibility in his paper — an alien spacecraft designed to capture the force of sunlight (a so-called lightsail).
Loeb is well aware that most scientists recoil from anything that sounds like UFO craziness, but he believes an overabundance of skepticism has cut them off from out-of-the box ideas. “The point of doing science is not to have a prejudice,” he says. “A prejudice is based on the experience of the past, but if you want to allow yourself to make discoveries, then the future will not be the same as the past.”
Shmuel Bialy
Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer who recently launched a graduate program in SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), shares Loeb’s desire for open discussion — and offers an upbeat assessment of the field’s growing respectability. “There’s a real culture change. SETI is becoming a serious scientific discipline,” he says.
STRANGE VISITOR FROM THE STARS
It was clear from the start that Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh) would shake up astronomy’s status quo. Shortly after its discovery, scientists realized that the object’s unusual trajectory meant it had to have come from outside the solar system — and that it could have been traveling for millions of years. They quickly dubbed the mysterious object Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning “messenger from the past.”
There were more surprises. Oumuamua was too far away for astronomers to observe its shape directly, but they could tell by the extreme way its brightness shifted as it tumbled through space that it wasn’t like any space rock they had ever seen.
“It’s very elongated, with an axis ratio of at least 7 to 1,” astronomer Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said in an email. In other words, it’s at least seven times as long as it is wide — shaped like a cigar, perhaps. Or, as Loeb proposes in his paper, maybe a flattened disk.
Astronomers’ models predict that most of the small bodies wandering in interstellar space are comets. But when Meech and others examined it, Oumuamua showed no sign of the expected comet-like tail. It’s also quite small, on the order of 1,000 feet long, and it seems to be much more reflective than the comets we know.
Intrigued by its oddities, several groups of SETI researchers listened for possible radio transmissions from Oumuamua — and heard nothing.
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by Alex Hollings December 12, 2018 (thenewsrep.com)
• The idea of alien life is continuing to gain acceptance among the world’s preeminent scientists and experts.
• NASA – Silvano Colombano, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center, made international headlines with his assertion that our planet may have been visited by extraterrestrial life, just not in a form we readily comprehend. Colombano later explained that the intent of his analysis was to get people to take the concept of aliens visiting earth a bit more seriously than our culture permits. “My perspective was simply that reports of unidentified aerial phenomena should be the object of serious study,” he said.
• The Pentagon – A year ago, the New York Times broke the story that the Pentagon earmarking some $22 million for the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was devoted specifically to investigating UFO sightings made by U.S. military personnel. Among the sightings the Pentagon had investigated was the now infamous “Nimitz incident,” which saw U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets scrambled on multiple occasions to intercept UFOs in the airspace around the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group.
• Harvard – This has also been a time of impressive scientific discoveries pertaining to exoplanets, some that Harvard scientists believe could potentially harbor life with technology so advanced, we humans struggle to comprehend what it could even be. A series of repeating Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) that have been recorded from a specific distant galaxy has led to a debate between scientists who simply can’t come up with a plausible explanation for the immense amount of energy being released with each burst.
• A more recent Harvard paper contends that a cigar-shaped object called ‘Oumuamua that entered into our solar system from deep space last year may have actually been artificial. “‘Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization,” a Harvard paper asserted, citing the celestial body’s apparent acceleration as it departed our solar system as evidence. It propelled itself forward more so than gravitational assistance and the release of gasses or water vapor would allow.
This past Monday, a paper written by Silvano Colombano, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center, made international headlines thanks to the paper’s assertion that our planet may have been visited by extraterrestrial life. The ensuing media frenzy, Colombano admits, lost sight of his actual points in favor of exaggerated headlines and click-bait assertions… but the deeper premise remains: the idea of alien life is continuing to gain acceptance among the world’s preeminent scientists and experts.
The paper asserts that alien life may not come in forms we readily comprehend — in fact — it almost certainly would need to be vastly different from life we’ve seen thus far in order to survive the rigors of extended space travel. In keeping with that assertion about the nature of alien life, Colombano extended his line of thinking to the technology they may need to employ in order to traverse deep space.
“Considering further that technological development in our civilization started only about 10K years ago and has seen the rise of scientific methodologies only in the past 500 years, we can surmise that we might have a real problem in predicting technological evolution even for the next thousand years, let alone 6 Million times that amount,” Colombano wrote about the type of technology an alien civilization may utilize.
Since his paper made the global rounds, he has attempted to set the record straight about his analysis; explaining that his real intent was to get people to take the concept of aliens visiting earth a bit more seriously than culture permits at present.
“My perspective was simply that reports of unidentified aerial phenomena should be the object of serious study, even if the chance of identification of some alien technology is very small,” he explained.
Within the pockets of the internet devoted to UFO’s, alien life, and the government conspiracies that always seem to accompany them, none of Colombano’s assertions were all that new or original. The ideas that alien life may not be carbon based, would need to possess technology too great for us to imagine, and could be visiting us here on planet earth, are all old tropes for their community. To be honest, even having that signal boosted by a prominent NASA researcher and professor may not have been enough to really ruffle many feathers, but it’s the timing of Colombano’s work that’s helped garner attention.
His paper, titled, “New Assumptions to Guide SETI Research,” came after a series of notable stories once again catapulted UFOs, or UAPs, as they’re now frequently called (short for Unexplained Aerial Phenomena), back into the cultural lexicon. The first was the New York Times breaking a story about the Pentagon earmarking some $22 million for the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was devoted specifically to investigating UFO sightings made by U.S. military personnel. Among the sightings the Pentagon had investigated was the now infamous “Nimitz incident,” which saw U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets scrambled on multiple occasions to intercept UFOs in the airspace around the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
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