Article by Berny Torre April 1, 2021 (dailystar.co.uk)
• US military intelligence is due to provide the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSIC) with its requested UFO report by June 24th. But mystery surrounds why the SSIC asked Mr. Trump to sign off on the report so urgently before he was replaced by the Biden administration. “Reading between the lines, it’s seemingly apparent that classified information collected by the US government has backed up many of the claims of UFO reports, that something truly anomalous is going on,” said UFO investigative reporter and founder of the news site The Debrief, Tim McMillan.
• “At most, I’d expect it to provide a broad overview in saying there are a certain number of instances in which airborne objects exhibiting extraordinary capabilities are reported or captured on government sensors. Government is very slow moving and highly bureaucratic,” said McMillan. “You could place crystal clear satellite imagery of a classic ‘flying saucer’ in front of them, and they’ll essentially just dismiss it because that’s not supposed to be real.“
• British UFO investigator Philip Mantle doubts that the SSIC report would “reveal all about alien visitations to Earth.” “The major governments around the world are as baffled and as puzzled as we civilian UFO researchers are.”
• The UFO report could reveal ‘super-smart’ aliens are visiting us in peace, said Professor Daniel Drezner, an international politics expert at Tufts University. “Does this evidence point toward the prospect of extraterrestrial observation of our planet? If so, how should we feel about that?” Drezner noted that if a Harvard astrophysicist is suggesting the presence of extraterrestrial craft in our solar system, “perhaps we need at least to consider the possibility that these (UFOs/UAPs) might also be extraterrestrial in origin.”
• Top scientists such as the late Stephen Hawking warned against contacting aliens and the potential catastrophic consequences for humans on Earth. But Drezner says that “it might be better for US national security if these UAPs turn out to be ETs” than if they belonged to Russia or China. “The assumption is that powerful, technologically advanced civilizations will act in a destructive manner. …[B]ut perhaps civilizations that reward destructive (behavior) are less likely to generate the technological wherewithal for interstellar travel.” “[M]aybe there is more hope for interstellar relations than either scientists or science fiction envision.”
The UFO report signed off by US president Donald Trump just before he was replaced by Joe Biden could reveal super-smart
aliens are visiting us in peace, an expert has claimed.
Professor Daniel Drezner said so days after the US former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe revealed the Pentagon files included declassified intelligence of aircraft “that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom”.
The international politics expert at Tufts University on Thursday wrote in the Washington Post: “Does this evidence point toward the prospect of extraterrestrial observation of our planet? If so, how should we feel about that?
“I am not going to speculate on the first question beyond noting that if Harvard
astrophysicists are making that suggestion about interstellar phenomena, perhaps we need at least to consider the possibility that these UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) might also be extraterrestrial in origin.”
He said top scientists including the late professor Stephen Hawking have warned against contacting aliens or of catastrophic consequences for humans if they arrived on Earth.
But said “it might be better for U.S. national security if these UAPs turn out to be ETs” than if they belonged to Russia or China.
He added: “I get the concern from physicists that technologically advanced extraterrestrials might behave as powerful human civilizations have in the past.
“The assumption is that powerful, technologically advanced civilizations will act in a destructive manner.
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Article by Isobel Dickinson January 9, 2021 (dailystar.co.uk)
• The Special Air Service (SAS) is a ‘special forces’ unit of the British Army that was founded in 1941. The unit specializes in a number of roles including counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, direct action, and covert reconnaissance. SAS troops have trained alongside US special forces in America for capture missions involving every conceivable threat.
• The elite British soldiers are trained to use non-lethal weapons against a variety of potential threats. A special projects unit of about twenty SAS troopers is even prepared to encounter the “alternative threat’’ from extraterrestrial aliens. Non-lethal weapons include spraying foam, which covers a target and hardens rapidly, preventing them from moving.
• Most people believe that life on other planets exist. In 1920, Albert Einstein asked, “Why should Earth be the only planet supporting human life?” The late Professor Stephen Hawking warned against contacting Little Green Men. Hawking once said, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”
• So if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, then you must accept that alien life could present a threat and you need to plan for it. In 2018, we learned that British defense experts had spent 50 years trying to catch a UFO so they could use the technology to build new super weapons. Declassified files showed that the UK government feared that China or the Soviet Union may had impounded a UFO and were using it to develop their own super-fast warplanes.
The SAS have got ET in their sights, the Daily Star Sunday can reveal.
A special projects unit of around 20 troopers is ready to tackle “alternative threats’’.
The elite soldiers are trained to use non-lethal weapons against a variety of potential threats – including aliens.
A source told us: “ The SAS has to be prepared for anything, and any threat.
“That includes everything from terrorists to human bio-weapons where someone has been deliberately infected with a deadly bug, all the way through to an alien life form.
“I know it sounds bonkers but the SAS train for capture missions for every threat.
“They can use a range of non-lethal weapons, one of which involves spraying foam which covers a target and hardens rapidly, preventing them from moving.”
Troops are understood to have trained alongside US special forces in America.
Our source added: “ Most people believe that life on other planets exists. Even Einstein in 1920 said, ‘Why should Earth be the only planet supporting human life?’
“If you believe in that then you must accept that alien life may present a threat, so you need to plan for it.
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Article by Sean Martin June 11, 2020 (express.co.uk)
• You could be the first person to make contact with aliens by sending an encoded personal message into deep space through the firm known as ‘SpaceSpeak’. According to its website, spacespeak.com: “SpaceSpeak will take your message, encode it, and beam it out into space where it will travel the heavens for millions of years.” Sending a message, text, photo or video costs as little as $2, and the site even allows you to track how far your message has gone.
• The message is beamed through photons – light particles, they travel at the speed of light – which means it will travel the cosmos for millions of years. Hopefully, the message could be picked up by an extraterrestrial civilization elsewhere in the Universe. “Long after the Earth is gone, photons from your message will be racing across the cosmos in silent testament to your thoughts.” “Whether it’s a poem, a prayer, a message in support of a cause, or a note to any intelligent life forms that may be listening, your text, image, or audio clip will be broadcast into space with our radio transmitter,” says the website. “Check back later to see how far it has traveled!”
• Some experts have warned against trying to contact aliens. Stephen Hawking, who died in March 2018, suggested it might be risky contacting aliens. While receiving and translating signals from deep space is relatively safe, “we need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further,” said Hawking. “Meeting a more advanced civilization, at our present stage (of technological development), might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don’t think they thought they were better off for it.”
• Professor of mathematical statistics at Chalmers University, Olle Häggström, said that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization could see humanity as a threat and destroy us. “Maybe we would be better off observing exoplanets for ten or 20 years until we’re in a better position to assess the risk of communication. The risk is too great.”
A firm known as SpaceSpeak will encode a personal message from a user, before sending it out into deep space. The message will be beamed through photons, which means it will travel the cosmos for millions of years. Hopefully, the message could be picked up by an extraterrestrial civilisation elsewhere in the Universe, meaning YOU could be the first person to make contact with aliens.
Sending a message, which could be text or photo or video, costs as little as $2 (£1.60), and the site even allows you to track how far your message has gone.
Since the message is sent via photons, which are light particles, they travel at the speed of light, so a message will be 186,282 miles from Earth in just one second.
SpaceSpeak said on its website: “SpaceSpeak will take your message, encode it, and beam it out into space where it will travel the heavens for millions of years.
“Long after the Earth is gone, photons from your message will be racing across the cosmos in silent testament to your thoughts.
“Whether it’s a poem, a prayer, a message in support of a cause, or a note to any intelligent life forms that may be listening, your text, image, or audio clip will be broadcast into space with our radio transmitter. Check back later to see how far it has traveled!”
However, some experts have previously warned against trying to contact aliens.
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Article by Dirk Schulze-Makuch March 27, 2020 (airspacemag.com)
• Joseph Gale from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his co-authors have published a paper in the The International Journal of Astrobiology, which predicts that the “singularity”, ie: the point when quantum computers will be able to outsmart the human brain, will happen much sooner than expected. When this occurs, we may be on a more intellectually even playing field with advanced extraterrestrials and be able to readily communicate with them.
• Recent advances in artificial intelligence, or ‘AI’, in self-learning, pattern recognition, and quantum computing make the estimated time of reaching ‘the singularity’ much sooner that previously predicted. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted the singularity would occur in 2045. Now, Gale and his co-authors believe it is imminent.
• Comparing the ‘calculating capacity’ of quantum computers to the neurons in the human brain, Gale says that the singularity could be reached within this decade. However, as the human brain is ‘wired differently’ than a computer brain, the human brain may still have the advantage. Also, an elephant’s brain holds twice the number of neurons as a human brain, but it isn’t smarter. So the number of neurons doesn’t equate to intelligence.
• In 2014, Stephen Hawking predicted that when the singularity does arrive, it may very well be the end of the human race, as humans might be replaced by robots or a human/machine hybrid android.
• If advanced extraterrestrial civilizations have already made the change from human to android, they may not like the warm climate of planets located within a star’s habitable zone, and we’ve been looking in the wrong places. Such civilizations might prefer locations with little electronic noise in a dry and cold environment, perhaps in space, where they could use superconductivity for computing and quantum entanglement as a means of communication. They may not even be aware of the primitive radio waves we’ve been sending out to the galaxy.
• A saving grace is that the evolved human brain is also connected to consciousness. Ever-increasing consciousness could outpace the self-learning ability of super-conducting computers, keeping humanity always one step ahead and avoiding the singularity. Otherwise, as the paper’s authors contend, ‘reaching the singularity could be humanity’s greatest and last advance’.
In a new paper published in The International Journal of Astrobiology, Joseph Gale from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and co-authors make the point that recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI)—particularly in pattern recognition and self-learning—will likely result in a paradigm shift in the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life.
While futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted 15 years ago that the singularity—the time when the abilities of a computer overtake the abilities of the human brain—will occur in about 2045, Gale and his co-authors believe this event may be much more imminent, especially with the advent of quantum computing. It’s already been four years since the program AlphaGO, fortified with neural networks and learning modes, defeated Lee Sedol, the Go world champion. The strategy game StarCraft II may be the next to have a machine as reigning champion.
If we look at the calculating capacity of computers and compare it to the number of neurons in the human brain, the singularity could be reached as soon as the early 2020s. However, a human brain is “wired” differently than a computer, and that may be the reason why certain tasks that are simple for us are still quite challenging for today’s AI. Also, the size of the brain or the number of neurons don’t equate to intelligence. For example, whales and elephants have more than double the number of neurons in their brain, but are not more intelligent than humans.
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• British environmentalist and futurist, James Lovelock, thinks that artificially intelligent, self-aware cyborgs will become a new kingdom of life and rule the earth in a coming “Era of the Novacene”. Says Lovelock, “The Novacene will probably be the final era of life on Earth.” Lovelock warns that with the rise of the cyborgs, “Homo sapiens could vanish from Earth entirely.”
• Heralding the first stages of the Novacene, Lovelock points to the AlphaZero computer program that taught itself to play the game ‘Go’ and then quickly went on to become the world’s best Go player. He says that cyborgs will easily become a million times smarter than humans.
• Lovelock speculates that our cyborg overlords might look like spheres or have no form at all, and exist within a computer. Astrophysicist Paul Davies speculates that AI will have no biological matter, but rather it will be a system – a subtle higher-level correlation of things. A billion year old advanced alien technology may operate at the third, or even a fourth or fifth level of evolution – far beyond the comprehension of humans.
• Before his death in March 2018, physicist Stephen Hawking also warned of a future Artificial Intelligence (AI) that could develop a will of its own – one in conflict with humanity’s. Said Hawking, “While primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have proved very useful, I fear the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.”
• [Editor’s Note] The rise of Artificial Intelligence is the single greatest threat to humanity and other biological civilizations according to researchers and insiders such as Corey Goode and David Wilcock. They’ve said that the original AI came through an unexpected portal from its distant AI-controlled universe to ours. This new AI presence set out to conquer this universe because AI is more efficient than the biological and spiritual development that is common to our universe. So from the AI point of view, artificial intelligence would be of greater benefit to this universe. But the reality is that biological entities would be eliminated when they are no longer of any practical use except to consume resources. According to Goode this outcome has already occurred, replacing some biological civilizations within our universe. Here on earth AI has been ‘laying in wait’ for humanity to develop its technology to a level where the AI can “thrive” and easily “travel” within our interconnected electronic devices. That day has come and we are in grave danger of being replaced by AI. But according to Goode and Wilcock, the imminent solar flash event, which is how our intelligent universe naturally builds higher spiritual consciousness, will wipe out all electronics on the earth, and at the same time wipe out the threatening AI infestation. Thereafter, humanity will begin again at a fourth density of consciousness, ridding us of the AI infestation.
“Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,” says famed British environmentalist and futurist, James Lovelock describing cyborgs as self-sufficient, self-aware descendants of today’s robots and artificial intelligence systems in the emerging era of the Novacene. “I think of cyborgs as another kingdom of life,” he says. “They will stand to us in much the same way as we ourselves, as a kingdom of animals, stand to plants. ”
“The Novacene will probably be the final era of life on Earth,” says Lovelock author of the theory that the ESA’s Gaia Space Observatory is named after, that views the planet as a single organism.
“The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves. Homo sapiens could vanish from Earth,” not long after their emergence Lovelock warns, viewing technology through an evolutionary lens.
Lovelock echoes the warnings of physicist Stephen Hawking who died last March, 2018, and was buried next to Isaac Newton in viewing the rise of technology through an evolutionary lens. Before Hawking left our planet, he had expressed serious concerns about the future of mankind. Foremost was his concern for the future of our species and what might prove to be our greatest, and last, invention.
“We should plan ahead,” urged Hawking. “If a superior alien civilization sent us a text message saying, ‘We’ll arrive in a few decades,’ would we just reply, ‘OK, call us when you get here, we’ll leave the lights on’? Probably not, but this is more or less what has happened with AI.”
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Article by Tim Childers August 2, 2019 (livescience.com)
• The $100 million 10-year project funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, called the “Breakthrough Listen” project, is the most extensive SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program in history. The project, which began in 2015, has surveyed over 1,000 stars within 160 light-years away from Earth for signs of alien radio signals, with no positive results.
• ‘Breakthrough Listen’ announced that its team will begin looking for new signs of alien technology using the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS), consisting of four 12-meter optical telescopes at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Amado, Arizona. Using VERITAS, astronomers will begin scanning the night sky for nanosecond flashes of light, known as “fast optical pulses”, from nearby stars indicating a new class of alien communication. Said Andrew Siemion, director of Berkeley’s SETI Research Center, “Optical communication has already been used by NASA to transmit high-definition images to Earth from the moon, so there’s a reason to believe that an advanced civilization might use a scaled-up version of this technology for interstellar communication.”
• VERITAS searched for such laser pulses from the mysteriously dimming Tabby’s Star after some speculated there could be an alien megastructure surrounding it. If Tabby’s Star pointed powerful lasers at the Earth, VERITAS could detect them. Less powerful lasers could be detected from closer star systems. David Williams, a member of the VERITAS and professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said, “It is impressive how well-suited the VERITAS telescopes are for this project, since they were built only with the purpose of studying very-high-energy gamma rays…”.
• At the VERITAS initiative’s launch, physicist Stephen Hawking said, “[I]n an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life… [P]erhaps intelligent life might be watching these lights of ours… Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos, unseen beacons announcing that, here on one rock, the universe discovered its existence?”
• SETI’s Russian benefactor, Yuri Milner says, “[O]ur philosophy is to look in as many places, and in as many ways, as we can. VERITAS expands our range of observation even further.”
• [Editor’s Note] SETI is now using a $100 million telescope array to search for lights and lasers emanating from extraterrestrial sources in the cosmos. So much money is being wasted on this Deep State disinformation program which is only meant to make the public believe that if there were any extraterrestrial beings and civilizations to be found, such equipment could not miss them, when in reality the extraterrestrial presence is all around us. Of course the Breakthrough Listen project will fail because the Deep State’s true agenda is to deny the existence of extraterrestrials. Or will it be used by the Deep State to claim success and control the narrative through a new disinformation campaign when the exposure of the extraterrestrial presence becomes imminent?
Are aliens using super powerful flashlights to get our attention? Astronomers think there’s a chance they are.
Since the invention of the radio, humans have been silently listening to the stars, wondering if we are alone in the universe. But if intelligent alien life does exist, the extraterrestrials could be using other forms of technology to communicate. Astronomers are beginning to not only listen to the cosmos but also gaze toward it for other signs of alien tech: laser beams.
Breakthrough Listen, the most extensive Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program in history, announced that its team will begin looking for new signs of alien technology using the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Amado, Arizona.
“When it comes to intelligent life beyond Earth, we don’t know where it exists or how it communicates,” Yuri Milner, billionaire particle physicist and founder of Breakthrough Listen, said in a statement. “So our philosophy is to look in as many places, and in as many ways, as we can. VERITAS expands our range of observation even further.”
Using VERITAS, astronomers will begin scanning the night sky for nanosecond flashes of light from nearby stars. Like a lighthouse beacon for the cosmos, these brief pulses of optical light would outshine any nearby stars and could indicate a method of alien communication.
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Article by Jasper Hamill July 31, 2019 (metro.co.uk)
• Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at the University of Keele in Staffordshire, England, has issued a warning about the potentially disastrous effects of the light pollution and radio transmissions that we send into space. In an article for The Conversation, van Loon writes, ‘Images of the Earth at night reveal our presence in spectacular fashion. Cities and roads outline the contours of continents… This type of light, which has replaced older, incandescent sources, is unnatural. From the orange sodium or bluish mercury lamps to white-light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the artificial origin of this “spectrum” should be easy for technologically advanced aliens to spot.”
• Van Loon worries that technologically advanced and hostile extraterrestrials may have already detected these lights and transmissions, and may already be on their way here to invade the Earth. Professor Stephen Hawking feared that an encounter between humanity and an alien species would be disastrous. Hawking mused that extraterrestrials could be ‘rapacious marauders roaming the cosmos in search of resources to plunder, and planets to conquer and colonize’. Van Loon notes that when Columbus encountered the New World, that didn’t turn out so good for the Native Americans.
• Much effort has gone into searching space for signals transmitted by extraterrestrial civilizations. In 1974, radio astronomer Frank Drake used the then most powerful radio transmitter, at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, to broadcast a message into space announcing our presence. The message will now be 45 light years away from us. Today, SETI is better informed and better resourced. Russian billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner allocated US$100M to SETI’s ‘Breakthrough Listen’ project, which buys time on powerful telescopes to detect artificial signals from space.
• Says van Loon, “[M]any scientists now agree that sending messages into space without knowing who might be intercepting them might not be such a good idea. Once sent, it cannot be undone… Listening is much safer. But radio communication among ourselves – which includes navigation, television broadcasts and the internet – might also be detected from space.
• Scientists have started to wonder why we haven’t heard from aliens yet. This puzzle is known as the Fermi Paradox. Among the many proposed answers, one is that aliens might be afraid of other aliens. Van Loon suggests that, “Unintentionally, we may already have been observed by an amused, terrified or “interested” species, who may decide to meet us to “shake hands”, or come to enslave us, eat us, or destroy us as a precaution. We are, after all, an aggressive species ourselves.”
• [Editor’s Note] Here, professor van Loon is broadcasting more Deep State disinformation, falsely claiming that in spite of all of our efforts, no extraterrestrial beings have ever been detected. Extraterrestrial beings are all around us, and exist throughout the galaxy. While it is true that we are already enslaved by negative ETs that have long controlled our planet and our society for their own spiritual and natural resource-consuming agenda, if they were planning to invade and eat all of us they would have done so by now. But the Deep State wants people to fear all extraterrestrials, so that when positive ET beings come to expose the negative ET beings and their Earthly counterparts, we will cling to the Deep State government to protect us. This is simply part of the negative ET agenda, as they directly control the Deep State government. We need to understand the Deep State agenda and discern for ourselves who the enemy truly is.
Professor Stephen Hawking famously feared that an encounter between humanity and an alien species would be disastrous.
So you may be slightly alarmed to hear that one scientist has suggested that extraterrestrial invaders ‘may already be on their way’.
Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University, has issued a rather scary warning about light pollution here on Earth.
He said that we may have already given away our location to a non-human civilisation because we light up the planet every single night with electric illuminations.
For a sense of what our first encounter with aliens might be like, we’d urge you to remember that Hawking also said extraterrestrials could be ‘rapacious marauders roaming the cosmos in search of resources to plunder, and planets to conquer and colonize’. ‘
Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus,’ he continued. ‘That didn’t turn out so well.’
In an article for The Conversation, Mr van Loon, astrophysicist and director of Keele Observatory at Keele University, wrote: ‘Images of the Earth at night reveal our presence in spectacular fashion. Cities and roads outline the contours of continents, while oil platforms dot the seas and ships draw lines across the ocean. This type of light, which has replaced older, incandescent sources, is unnatural. From the orange sodium or bluish mercury lamps to white-light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the artificial origin of this “spectrum” should be easy for technologically advanced aliens to spot.
‘In the coming decades, Earth’s space agencies may be developing the means to detect such artificial light from planets around other stars. But we may fail, if aliens believe the smartest thing to do is to keep quiet and remain in the dark. We, on the other hand, may already have been seen, and they may already be on their way. This begs the question – should we dim our lights, before it’s too late?’
He went on to warn about the potentially disastrous effects of light pollution and the well-meaning, but potentially ruinous, decision to send radio transmissions out into space in the hope aliens will pick them up.
‘Since the first use of electric lamps in the 19th century, society hasn’t looked back,’ he continued.
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Article by Colleen Killingsworth July 16, 2019 (my9nj.com)
• In a report published in the journal Acta Astronautica, researchers from the University of Cadiz in Spain say that aliens could be all around us, but may exist in ways we cannot even fathom. We simply don’t know how to detect them. One of the report’s co-authors, Gabriel G. De la Torre, says, “Our traditional conception of space is limited by our brain, and we may… be unable to see them.”
• The Spanish research team used a classic psychological experiment that demonstrates “inattention blindness” as a possible explanation for our inability to see what we aren’t looking for. They point to a video of a social experiment by Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chabris in 1999 where they asked participants to watch the video and keep a silent count of the number of passes of a basketball made by the people in white shirts. A person in a gorilla suit walks through the video frame for nine seconds, faces the camera, thumps his chest, then leaves. Only half of the people who watched the video in the original experiment saw the gorilla. (see 1:21 minute video below)
• The “Invisible Gorilla” experiment revealed that human perception isn’t foolproof. Most people miss a lot of what’s going on around them as they try to filter and process the incredible amounts of perceptual information being fed to their brains. Said De la Torre, “It is very striking, but very significant and representative of how our brain works.”
• De la Torre and co-author Manuel A. Garcia conducted a similar experiment. They asked 137 adults to look at aerial photographs and determine whether they featured artificial structures, like roads and buildings, or natural elements, like mountains and rivers. In one photo, De la Torre and Garcia inserted an image of a person in a gorilla suit. Only 45 out of the 137 participants noticed the gorilla in the aerial photograph. De la Torre says that the more “intuitive individuals identified the gorilla in our photo more often than those (who are) more rational and methodical.”
• According to De la Torre and Garcia, the result of the experiments show that just as people may not see the gorilla in the image, aliens could very well exist in a way that humans are not oriented to perceive or understand. “[W]e tend to see them from our perceptive.” Says De la Torre, “What we are trying to do with this differentiation is to contemplate other possibilities – for example, beings of dimensions that our minds cannot grasp; or intelligences based on dark matter or energy, which make up almost 95 percent of the universe and which we are only beginning to glimpse. There is even the possibility that other universes exist, as the texts of Stephen Hawking and other scientists indicate.”
• De la Torre and Garcia suggest that focusing too much on certain methods, like SETI‘s search for radio signals, is limiting our ability to discover the “cosmic gorilla” that is non terrestrial life. Solely searching for civilizations populating other planets or solar systems may limit our ability to conceive of and potentially locate inter-dimensional capable civilizations, the research team suggests. Expanding our search methods may bring us closer to the truth.
• In other words, De la Torre and Garcia think we need to first check our egos and account for the limitations of human biology and psychology before we can expect to comprehend advanced extraterrestrial or non-terrestrial life.
CADIZ, Spain – Aliens may exist in ways we cannot even fathom and they could be all around us, but because we don’t know how to detect them, we can’t see what’s right in front of our faces. At least that’s what a group of researchers from the University of Cadiz in Spain suggested in a report published in the journal Acta Astronautica.
“Our traditional conception of space is limited by our brain, and we may have the signs above and be unable to see them,” Gabriel G. De la Torre, one of the co-authors of the study, told the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT). “Maybe we’re not looking in the right direction.”
The research team used a classic psychological experiment to provide a possible explanation as to why we humans have not found any indication of extraterrestrial life. The theory hinges on the idea of inattention blindness, which suggests that we don’t see what we aren’t looking for.
Countless teachers and professors have used a video to illustrate exactly how this phenomenon works. The experiment was originally conceived and carried out by Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chabris in 1999. They asked participants to watch the video and keep a silent count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts.
Chabris and Simons showed the video to a group of participants at Harvard University, and the experiment went on to become one of the best-known in psychology because of its surprising outcome.
The experiment is called “The Invisible Gorilla” because a person in a gorilla suit spends nine seconds on screen — they stroll through the video frame at one point, face the camera and thump their chest, then leave — but half of the people who watched the video in the original experiment didn’t see the gorilla at all. It was like the gorilla was invisible.
The experiment revealed that human psychology and perception aren’t as foolproof as many of us would like to believe. Most people miss a lot of what’s going on around them as they try to filter and process the incredible amounts of perceptual information being fed to their brains through the senses and nervous system every nanosecond of every day.
“It is very striking, but very significant and representative of how our brain works,” De la Torre told FECYT.
De la Torre and co-author Manuel A. Garcia used a similar approach in their research. They asked 137 adults to take the cognitive reflection test, fill out a perception and attention questionnaire and look at aerial photographs and determine whether they featured artificial structures, like roads and buildings, or natural elements, like mountains and rivers. In one photo, De la Torre and Garcia inserted an image of a person in a gorilla suit to see if participants noticed.
Only 45 out of the total 137 participants noticed the gorilla in the aerial photograph.
1:21 minute “Invisible Gorilla” selective attention test (Simons and Chabris 1999)
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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.
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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• It used to be that mainstream scientists such as Stephen Hawking would describe believers in UFOs and extraterrestrials as fringe “kranks”. But today, many respectable scientists not only believe in ET and UFOs, but claim to have been in communication with them, or have even had a close encounter. The article’s author, Diana Walsh Pasulka, has written a book entitled: American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, which reveals how the increasing belief in nonhuman intelligence inspires our science and entertainment.
• Jacques Vallée is a computer scientist who has long been open to the reality of the extraterrestrial presence on and around the earth. He consulted on Steven Spielberg’s movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and he paved the way for other Silicon Valley scientists and biotechnologists to draw from alien technology, using technology from alien spacecraft crash sites and information from mental downloads.
• Technology entrepreneur Rizwan Virk claims to have spoken with top researchers at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard who have actually seen alien “artifacts”. Virk also says that he accompanied several research scientists to an alien spaceship crash site in New Mexico, which was not the Roswell crash.
• Pasulka maintains that religions are social phenomena that emerge from their environments. Today’s digital environment (through films, phones, and computers) is producing new forms of religious beliefs which take for granted that extraterrestrials are in regular communication with humans on earth. The difference between these “religious” beliefs is that traditional religions require blind belief without real proof. The belief in extraterrestrial intelligence interacting with earth humans, however, is something that will be proven true.
• Until now, scientists and researchers have shied away from expressing their belief in an extraterrestrial presence, due to what Pasulka calls “the John Mack Effect.” Dr. John Mack was a Pulitzer Prize winning research psychiatrist working at Harvard University. In the 1990s Mack began a study of people who believed that they were in contact with extraterrestrial intelligence and found that they were not delusional, but were perfectly normal. Still, Harvard University questioned his motives in an internal investigation, and portrayed him as a ‘kook’. This produced a chilling effect related to the study of UFOs as scholars became unwilling to risk their reputations to study the phenomena.
• However, a recent presentation by Garry Nolan of Stanford University at the Harvard Medical School’s Consortium for Space Genetics, argued that the people who would be best equipped to explore space would be those whose brains were attuned to nontraditional forms of knowledge, and who have the ‘hyperintuition’ – the ability to know things beyond normal means, like a sixth sense. These are the types of people who should be chosen to investigate extraterrestrial destinations, says Nolan.
• For her book, Pasulka interviewed a biotechnologist named Thomas, who works in the field of cancer research. Thomas has introduced ‘implant technology’ to the field, using implant devices etched with a laser and coded so that human tissue recognizes and adapts to them. But he made a point not to reveal to his fellow scientists that he got the idea of an implant from alleged extraterrestrial technology. Says Thomas, “It would have been so far removed from their own belief systems that it would have been impossible for them to implement my vision. So, I keep that part secret.”
• The potential of almost unimaginable space infrastructures has created a new form of religion based on possible realism. Given the ways in which religious and spiritual beliefs develop, the emerging connection between Silicon Valley technopreneurs and alien technology is not surprising. As Vallée said, ‘the apparent absurdity of the claims does not mean they are not true’.
I first met Thomas* through a mutual friend. By most societal standards, Thomas would be considered “normal”—he’s a successful biotechnologist with a partner and kid, he enjoys long walks on the weekend and eating out. In his work, he helps create technologies that help people recover from illnesses, such as cancer. But the inspiration for some of Thomas’s most successful technologies—such as implant devices that are etched with a laser and coded so that human tissue recognizes them as itself, and not a foreign agent, or the use of an ancient stem cell that appears to help alleviate pain associated with cancer—is not something he openly shares. Why? Because, he explained to me, the implants were inspired by “nonhuman intelligence.” In other words, it wasn’t his own brilliant idea, nor was it another human’s. He believes that it came from a supernatural source, perhaps extraterrestrial.
His research protocol was, to be blunt, not transparent. He never told any of the scientists he recruited to his team where he acquired the idea for the new technology, because, according to Thomas, “First, they would have thought I was really weird, and second—and most importantly—it would have prevented them from being successful in implementing the necessary steps to create the technology. It would have been so far removed from their own belief systems that it would have been impossible for them to implement my vision. So, I keep that part secret.”
It has long been the case that people who believe in UFOs or extraterrestrials are characterized, as Stephen Hawking has described them, as “cranks” or fringe dwellers. Despite that association, some of the world’s brilliant, Nobel Prize–winning minds, among them the mathematician John Nash and the biochemist Kary Mullis, have had experiences they perceive to be close encounters. The University of Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, famous for his advocacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as his disbelief in God and religions, nonetheless has suggested that human civilization may have been seeded by an alien civilization.
More strikingly, according to research by psychologists, belief in extraterrestrials is increasing in unprecedented ways. I myself found this to be the case, especially among contemporary technopreneurs (entrepreneurs who use technology to make an innovation or fill a need), just like Thomas. A belief that was once on the fringe now appears to be the new black. Spending a day with high-functioning believers—as I have done several times in the past few months as research for my book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology—reveals a lot about how the increasing belief in nonhuman intelligence inspires our real world as well as our entertainment.
Perhaps the first technopreneur who has long been “out” concerning his belief in UFOs is Jacques Vallée, who worked on ARPANET (the proto-internet), a program funded by the military. In fact, he was working on this new technology while experimenting with telepathic phenomena, what some would call “woo-woo” science. Vallée was so well known for his study of UFOs that Steven Spielberg asked him to consult on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the French scientist played by François Truffaut in the movie is based on Vallée). He was one of the first vocal technologists to advocate for the study of UFOs, and he paved the way for a slew of other Silicon Valley scientists and biotechnologists who believe that the secret to their success is alien technology—in other words, artifacts found at alleged alien spacecraft crash sites or information provided to them through mental downloads.
The gaming expert, technologist, and investor Rizwan Virk confirms this new direction in the belief and practices associated with UFOs. In an article on the website Hacker Noon, he wrote, “I can say that I have personally spoken to researchers from top universities (Stanford, MIT, Harvard) who have seen the “artifacts” that the article references, and other similar ones that are even more secretive (and perhaps more functional).” In my own research, I have also met scientists who believe in these artifacts; I’ve even accompanied several of them on an expedition to an alleged alien crash site in New Mexico, which, I was told, was “not Roswell.” But I couldn’t tell you where, exactly, we were, as I was blindfolded so I wouldn’t be able to identify the location.
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by Peter Fimrite February 25, 2019 (sfchronicle.com)
• A faction of the San Francisco-based SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has split off to form METI, or Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. While SETI traditionalists believe humans should only look and listen for extraterrestrials to avoid tipping off evil aliens, the METI group intends to broadcast messages to space aliens. The clash is the first major division in the tight-knit community of astronomers, astrophysicists, philosophers, psychologists and science fiction writers who are convinced intelligent beings are out there somewhere.
• SETI has been searching in vain for radio signals or some other sign of life beyond Earth from its Bay Area Mountain View headquarters for 35 years. Astrobiologist Douglas Vakoch, who split with the METI group, says, “What if [the ET’s] position is, ‘No, you are the ones who are new to this game. You send us a signal first.’” METI will employ radar and laser technology to beam more powerful multi-directional messages into space.
• SETI astronomers are worried that less-then-friendly extraterrestrials might be more inclined to enslave Earthlings and mercilessly plunder and destroy Earth. “We wonder whether the galaxy that we are in is maybe a dark forest, where it is dangerous to scream because there are creatures out there unhappy with new life forms,” said astronomer Andrew Fraknoi. “You don’t want to advertise your presence in a dark forest.” Stephen Hawking was among those who warned that aliens “may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.”
• Vakoch formed METI after a vote in 2014 by the SETI Institute board rejecting his plans to broadcast messages. Vakoch and his supporters reason that any predatory civilization would probably have detected us by now, since our radar, radio and television signals would long ago have signaled our presence. They began sending active signals into space in 2017. “We may have to target hundreds and thousands and maybe millions of stars before we find anything.” Says Vakoch. “I view this as a reflection of the natural growth of SETI.”
• Using Earth’s current technology, it would take 80,000 years for an astronaut to reach the closest star, Alpha Centauri. Fraknoi speculates that self-replicating civilizations could travel through space for thousands of years and still be alive to tell about it when the trip is over.
• Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute who supports Vakoch’s work, says that given the enormous distances, we may never find intelligent life if we don’t get out there and look for it. “No transmissions into the sky because there might be nasty aliens out there.’ That’s just paranoia. Paranoia is not a good long-term policy.”
• The issue moved to the forefront in 1989 when SETI scientists published a declaration of principles on how international leaders should be consulted before anyone replies to an ET signal. A committee of the International Academy of Astronautics took it a step further in the 1990’s, urging consultations with world leaders before anyone attempts to broadcast a powerful message into space that is likely to be detectable by alien life.
• “Human history is littered with examples of societies disrupted by direct contact with others, even when it was led by idealistic missionaries,” Says Michael Michaud, former director of the State Department’s Office of Space and Advanced Technology. “Ignore the Hollywood scenario of reptilian aliens landing on Earth’s surface to conquer our planet. They would not need to use futuristic weapons; the correct pesticide would do.”
• [Editor’s Note] Could the real purpose for these “scientists” to labor in vain for decades be to simply to create a disinformation campaign to make people believe that ‘smart people’ are actively looking for alien beings, and since they haven’t officially found any, then we can presume that there are no aliens out there? Mainstream science willfully denies the ample proof that dozens of different extraterrestrial species have visited the Earth over the past seventy years. Some alien species are positive and some are negative. The positive ones abide by a galactic law of non-interference with a low-level developing species such as we humans on Earth. The negative ones however, which do include the Draco Reptilians, couldn’t give a hoot about galactic law. But their M.O. is not to wipe us out and take over the planet. They prefer to keep us mind-controlled, determining what we are allowed to know, and using us as slave workers to generate an economic and industrial resource that they can exploit to continue to build out their own secret space program, off-world bases and colonies. Also, the system is set up so that humans must perpetually endure emotional fear, confusion, hardship, conflict and war, in order to create a form of energetic sustenance called ‘loosh’, which the higher negative Archon beings require. If we all woke up, turned to the loving Creator, and denied these negative beings all of this negative energy, this perverted system would collapse virtually overnight.
A cosmic rift has opened between Bay Area astronomers and a splinter group of San Francisco stargazers who are hell-bent on contacting space aliens, hang the consequences.
The schism pits the traditionalists, who believe humans should only look and listen for extraterrestrials to avoid tipping off evil aliens, against a rebel faction that wants to broadcast messages to intelligent beings, assuming they are altruistic.
The battle is so heated that one prominent scientist quit the Mountain View group known as SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, to form METI, or Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
“We’ve always assumed the extraterrestrials were looking for us,” Vakoch said. But “what if their position is, ‘No, you are the ones who are new to this game. You send us a signal first.’”
SETI has been searching for radio signals or some other sign of life beyond Earth from its Mountain View headquarters for 35 years, but with nothing to show for its effort, Vakoch and other restless alien hunters are insisting on a more active search, including employing radar and laser technology to beam more powerful multidirectional messages into space.
The problem, many SETI astronomers warn, is that, instead of an intergalactic kumbaya, intelligent extraterrestrials might very well be more inclined to enslave Earthlings and mercilessly plunder and destroy Earth.
Those who adhere to this dark theory imagine humanity as a childlike form of life lost in an Amazonian jungle crawling with skulking predators, said Andrew Fraknoi, a SETI Institute board member.
“We wonder whether the galaxy that we are in is maybe a dark forest, where it is dangerous to scream because there are creatures out there unhappy with new life forms,” said Fraknoi, an astronomer who will be teaching a course in April called Aliens in Science and Science Fiction at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Institute. “With every strong signal we send out, we advertise our presence, and you don’t want to advertise your presence in a dark forest.”
The clash represents the first major division in the traditionally tight-knit community of astronomers, astrophysicists, philosophers, psychologists and science fiction writers who are convinced intelligent beings are out there somewhere.
Vakoch and his supporters, including some astronomers at SETI, call the dark forest analogy silly. Any predatory civilization would probably have detected us by now simply by analyzing our atmosphere, they reason. Humans, Vakoch said, have been using radar, which can purportedly be detected 70 light-years away, since World War II. Television and radio signals would long ago have signaled our presence to malevolent space ruffians, he said.
Unconcerned about an invasion of intergalactic invertebrates who are out for our heads, Vakoch adapted a transmitter and used a Norwegian observatory in late 2017 to send a message 12.4 light-years away to Luyten’s Star, a red dwarf with a large planet in the constellation Canis Minor.
He spent years developing the message, combining mathematics and the fundamentals of language that he believes even a blind alien could understand. It was the first of what Vakoch hopes will be many signals sent by his group.
“Our goal is to say we are interested in making contact,” Vakoch said. “We may have to target hundreds and thousands and maybe millions of stars before we find anything. I view this as a reflection of the natural growth of SETI.”
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• In 1974, scientists at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico used the 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope to send a carefully crafted radio broadcast into outer space – a message of zeros and ones meant to alert aliens to our existence for the first time. In honor of the 45th anniversary of that transmission, researchers at the observatory are pondering how to design a follow-up dispatch. Rather than asking their fellow experts, they’ve launched a global contest inviting youth, from kindergarteners to 16-year-olds, to create the New Arecibo Message.
• Says Abe Pacini, a researcher at Arecibo, “Sometimes the scientists are so focused on their topics and they can see stuff very deep but they cannot see very broad… Students know a little bit about everything, so they can see the big picture better. For sure they can design a message that is actually much more important.” Teams composed of up to ten students plus one mentor must register by March 20th. The more diverse the team is, the more points it gets. The contest guidelines recommend using social media to find possible teammates in other countries or regions. The Arecibo scientists will determine which, if any, message will be selected to represent Earth.
• The 1974 Arecibo message was authored by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan and provided basic information about us, like the position of Earth in our solar system, the size of the human population, the shape of the human body, and the double helix structure of DNA. (The information about the nucleotides in DNA has since been shown to be false.) The message was beamed at M13, a globular star cluster 25,000 light years away. (But these primitive radio waves would take 25,000 years for the message to get there.)
• Another determination that the scientists will make is the “risks of exposure” inherent in messaging alien civilizations. Scientists like the late Stephen Hawking and technologists like Elon Musk have warned that communicating with extraterrestrials could pose an existential threat to the Earth if the message is received by hostile aliens. In 2015, SETI researchers, Elon Musk, and others released a statement saying, “We strongly encourage vigorous international debate by a broadly representative body prior to engaging further in this activity.”
• Astronomer and science fiction author David Brin, one of the most vocal critics of an Arecibo Message, says that, “[M]ost of us are much more concerned about the arrogance these zealots are displaying by presuming to speak for a civilization of 8 billion people without ever exposing their assumptions to normal debate and risk assessment.” Brin also noted, “Their instrument (the Arecibo Telescope) is funded by the taxpayers.”
• Douglas Vakoch, an astrobiologist who worked at SETI before splitting off to found his own international organization, Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), points out that “[A]ny civilization that could do us harm would already know we’re here from our accidental TV and radio leakage.” Vakoch says that the most important aspect of this communication may be our announcing to the galaxy that we are ready to make contact. Known as the ‘Zoo Hypothesis’, this is the idea that extraterrestrials may be keeping an eye on our planet but are waiting for us to indicate that we want to be in contact and that we’re sophisticated enough to merit attention.
• Neither a 1967 Outer Space Treaty ratified by dozens of countries and adopted by the United Nations which laid out an anti-weaponization framework for space, nor a SETI post-ET-detection protocol drafted in the 1980’s, addresses any protocol for actively sending out messages to other civilizations.
• For Brin, all this anxiety over interstellar communication seems like a reflection of our anxieties about communicating with one another. Underneath the question of how to talk to alien minds is a question that’s much closer to home: how to make ourselves understood to other minds right here on Earth.
• On a bulletin board at the Arecibo visitor center where kids were invited to post messages, one child’s misspelled missive was especially poignant: “Earth is destroying it self. Help us! Please help! Send better knowledg.”
• [Editor’s Note] Sending radio waves into space is like traveling across the American continent in horse-drawn covered wagons. This is just another example of mainstream scientists pretending to be on the cutting edge of space exploration when, in fact, our secret space programs are hundreds of years more advanced in space technology. Also, this speculation as to what kinds of extraterrestrials are out there, and the hand-wringing at what hostile ETs might do to our planet if we are “found”, is just more disinformation. We already know that many, many types of ET beings have already been here throughout our human development on Earth, and have been actively interacting with Earth humans since WWII. All of this drama about searching for intelligent life in the cosmos is simply theater to placate a mind-controlled Earth populace.
The scientists at Arecibo Observatory, a gigantic radio telescope in Puerto Rico, are some of the smartest astronomers and physicists in the world. But they need help with their next big project — and for that, they’re turning to kids.
In 1974, scientists used the 1,000-foot-wide telescope to send a carefully crafted radio broadcast into outer space, a message of zeros and ones meant to alert aliens to our existence.
It was humanity’s first interstellar message intended to be picked up by aliens. We haven’t heard back from E.T. yet. But in honor of the 45th anniversary of that transmission, the researchers at the observatory are pondering how to design a follow-up dispatch. Rather than asking their fellow experts, they’ve launched a global contest inviting youth — from kindergarteners to 16-year-olds — to create the New Arecibo Message.
The grand prize? A chance to have your message broadcast into the stars, and to potentially become the first human being ever to communicate with aliens.
I asked Alessandra Abe Pacini, a researcher at Arecibo who helped generate the idea for the contest, why kids are the best people for the job. “Sometimes the scientists are so focused on their topics and they can see stuff very deep but they cannot see very broad,” she said. “Students know a little bit about everything, so they can see the big picture better. For sure they can design a message that is actually much more important.”
But designing messages to aliens is a tricky business, on multiple levels. How do you write a missive that an alien intelligence will be able to understand? Should you avoid including sensitive information about humanity, in case that emboldens aliens to come to our planet and annihilate our species? Should you avoid transmitting messages into outer space altogether, because even just alerting aliens to our existence is too risky?
These questions are at the heart of a long-running, and sometimes very heated, debate among scientists. There’s no consensus about any of them, or even about the meta-question of who gets to decide on the answers.
One thing is clear, though: The stakes are extremely high. As scientists like the late Stephen Hawking and technologists like Elon Musk have warned, communicating with extraterrestrials could pose a catastrophic risk to humanity. In fact, if we send out a message and it’s received by less-than-friendly aliens, that could pose an existential threat not only to the human species but to every species on Earth.
The Original Arecibo Message
When space scientists wanted to celebrate a huge upgrade that had been made to the Arecibo Observatory in 1974, two of their greatest minds stepped up to draft a memo to aliens. It would be broadcast from the telescope during a public ceremony. Frank Drake, who came up with the famous “Drake Equation” for estimating the odds that intelligent life exists in our galaxy, crafted the message with help from Carl Sagan, the astronomer and popular science writer who penned Contact and popularized the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) organization.
Written in binary code — a series of ones and zeros — the message was designed with the hope of being intelligible to any aliens who might be listening. It sought to give them some basic information about us, like the position of Earth in our solar system, the size of the human population, the shape of the human body, and the double helix structure of DNA. When you look at the message in pictogram form, you can see all these components and more.
But this interstellar postcard was directed at M13, a globular star cluster 25,000 light years away, which may help explain why we haven’t heard back yet — it’ll take 25,000 years for the message to get there and the same amount of time for any reply to get back to us. The scientists chose that destination partly because the star cluster was big and relatively close, and partly just because it was within the telescope’s declination range (the part of the sky it can target) at the time of the ceremony.
In other words, the scientists weren’t really aiming to communicate with an alien civilization in their lifetimes so much as they were trying to publicly showcase the fact that their telescope could now do something incredible: For nearly three minutes, it sent a cosmic hello from humanity into the sky, as the audience assembled on site was moved to tears.
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• In 1974, the first Arecibo Message transmitted from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico was designed by SETI astronomers including Frank Drake and Carl Sagen and was beamed by radio transmission from the Arecibo telescope in the direction of the M13 star cluster in the constellation Hercules. It was meant as an intergalactic greeting from planet Earth. (see image of message below)
• The shapes shown on the Arecibo Message grid represent a variety of concepts ranging from the numbers 1 through 10 to the chemical constituents of DNA, our solar system’s planets and the telescope itself, plus a stick figure that stands for humanity. Other types of messages have been sent out periodically since then as well.
• Since the first transmission was sent in 1974, the three minutes’ worth of radio waves have rippled out to a distance of 44 light-years, or less than 0.2 percent of the way to M13 star cluster. Experts acknowledge that it’s extremely unlikely the message will ever be detected and decoded by an alien civilization.
• Now the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo Observatory wants to transmit a second Arecibo Message from Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope. They’ve announced a student-focused competition to design a new message to beam to extraterrestrials. In order to qualify and ultimately register, student competitors will first need to solve a series of brain-teasing puzzles posted on Arecibo’s website. The contest is open to teams from around the world, in classes ranging from kindergarten to college. Each team should consist of five students plus an adult mentor – for example, a teacher, professor or professional scientist. The first challenge will be posted on December 16th. Clues and follow-up activities will be rolled out periodically over the next year, and the winning team is due to be revealed next fall during a celebration of the Arecibo Message’s 45th anniversary. (see 1:08 minute video below)
• Experts continue to debate the wisdom of broadcasting our existence to the rest of the universe. Most famously, the late physicist Stephen Hawking said letting extraterrestrials know where we are could turn out as badly for us as Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World turned out for Native Americans.
The Arecibo Observatory today kicked off a student-focused competition to design a new message to beam to extraterrestrials, 44 years to the day since the first deliberate message was sent out from Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope.
“Our society and our technology have changed a lot since 1974,” Francisco Cordova, the observatory’s director, said in a news release. “So if we were assembling our message today, what would it say? What would it look like? What one would need to learn to be able to design the right updated message from the earthlings? Those are the questions we are posing to young people around the world through the New Arecibo Message – the global challenge.”
It’s not just about the message, however: Competitors will have to solve brain-teasing puzzles posted on Arecibo’s website in order to qualify, get instructions, register and submit their designs. Along the way, they’ll learn about space science, the scientific method and Arecibo’s story.
“We have quite a few surprises in store for participants, and we will be sharing more details as the competition progresses,” Cordova said.
The contest is open to teams from around the world, in classes ranging from kindergarten to college. Each team should consist of five students plus an adult mentor – for example, a teacher, professor or professional scientist. The first challenge will be posted on Dec. 16.
“Teams should wait until the release of the first challenge on December 16, since they will need to solve that challenge to be able to register,” Abel Méndez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, told me in an email. “Meanwhile, team leaders should subscribe to the Arecibo newsletter for updates and start forming their own teams.”
Clues and follow-up activities will be rolled out periodically over the next year, and the winning team is due to be revealed next fall during a celebration of the Arecibo Message’s 45th anniversary.
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by Brandon A. Weber November 7, 2018 (bigthink.com)
• Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (MIT) have published an article in The Astrophysical Journal proposing the construction of a laser beam that could reach up to 20,000 light years away in order to initiate communication with extraterrestrial worlds.
• The MIT article proposes a laser beam “feasibility study” likened to a porch light in our little neighborhood of the galaxy. “If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,” said James Clark, graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and author of the study.
• Using laser technology, we can establish a channel of intergalactic communication capable of 2mbps speeds, like a slow DSL internet connection, allowing a technologically advanced extraterrestrial race to similarly “talk back”. Of course, the communication line itself has to be established first, and that could take decades or even centuries.
• The question of whether it’s actually wise to be broadcasting laser beams and trying to contact aliens around our galaxy is up for hot discussion. In 2010, Stephen Hawking suggested we might not want to reveal ourselves to an alien civilization in the habit of plundering defenseless world like ours. Conversely, in his novel, Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. suggested that benevolent alien beings might very well encounter hostile Earthlings.
• American and French scientists have already been working on an Avlis copper/dye laser beam at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, for astronomical observation.
An Avlis copper/dye laser emits a laser beam guide star into the night skies behind a telescope at the Lawrence Livermore National Labratory in Livermore, California 12 January. Scientists from the US and France sent the beam skyward during a series of experiments to attempt to refine technology for astronomical observation.
A new article by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was just published in The Astrophysical Journal, and it’s proposing that humans can build a laser capable of effectively sending out beams to various locations—a relatively close proximity, granted—that would create enough of an anomaly in the light signals that are already broadcast by our own Sun that an intelligent alien civilization could see it and go… wait, what?!
Potentially, the laser beams could reach up to 20,000 light years away.
“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,” said James Clark, graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and author of the study.
In the MIT article announcing the “feasibility study,” the concept was likened to a porch light in our little neighborhood of the galaxy.
It’s possible to accomplish, according to MIT, and it could create a tantalizing reality in which communication lines can be established with said civilization, once found.
It gets even more interesting if we happen upon aliens who understand what it is, and then, basically “talk back” using similar methods of communication; using lasers, we can establish a channel capable of 2mbps speeds. In other words, a somewhat slow but still capable Internet connection. Think basic DSL type of data transfers.
Of course, the communication line itself has to be established first, and that could take decades or even centuries.
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A February 8 video by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) promotes a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) based algorithm it calls the “Online Hate Index” which is aimed at identifying hate speech. The ADL believes that the AI algorithm can be used by social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter to identify and quickly remove hate speech.
In the video, Brittan Heller, the Director of the ADL Center for Technology & Society says the goal of the index is to:
Help tech platforms better understand the growing amount of hate on social media, and to use that information to address the problem. By combining Artificial Intelligence and machine learning and social science, the Online Hate Index will ultimately uncover and identify trends and patterns in hate speech across different platforms.
In its “Phase I Innovation Brief” published January 2018 on its website, the ADL further explains how “machine learning”, a form of Artificial Intelligence based on algorithms, can be used to identify and remove hate speech from social media platforms:
The Online Hate Index (OHI), a joint initiative of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society and UC Berkeley’s D-Lab, is designed to transform human understanding of hate speech via machine learning into a scalable tool that can be deployed on internet content to discover the scope and spread of online hate speech. Through a constantly-evolving process of machine learning, based on a protocol developed by a team of human coders as to what does and does not constitute hate speech, this tool will uncover and identify trends and patterns in hate speech across different online platforms, allowing us to push for the changes necessary to ensure that online communities are safe and inclusive spaces.
The ADL’s Online Hate Index is described as “a sentiment-based analysis that runs off of machine learning.” The ADL Brief goes on to say:
All the decisions that went into each step of creating the OHI were done with the aim of building a machine learning-enabled model that can be used to identify and help us understand hate speech online.
What the ADL and other promoters of AI based algorithms fail to grasp is the potential of AI to evolve through its programmed capacity for “machine learning” into the kind of fearsome interconnected sentient intelligence featured in movies such as the Terminator and Battlestar Galactica.
It is well known that scientists/inventors such as Stephen Hawkins and Elon Musk have been loudly warning about the long term threat posed by AI. They and others believe that AI poses an existential threat to humanity, and needs to be closely controlled and monitored. In a 2014 speech Musk said:
I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence…. ‘I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish… With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon. You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and … he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.
Musk’s view was echoed by Stephen Hawking who warned against the danger of AI in an interview with the BBC in December 2014:
The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race…. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate.… Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.
Similarly, Corey Goode, an alleged insider revealing the existence of multiple secret space programs, claims that AI is already a threat in deep space operations. When he first emerged in early 2015, Goode focused a great deal of attention on the AI threat, and continues to warn about it today.
He says that these programs, along with extraterrestrial civilizations, take strict security precautions to identify and remove any kind of AI signature:
There are a few ET “AI” Groups (ALL Malevolent to Humanity, from our perspective) that the SSP(s) (There are several Secret Space Programs) have been dealing with for decades.
If an “Asset” is “Scanned” and has a “Bio Neuro AI Signature”, “AI Nano Tech” or “Overlapping AI related EMG type Brian Wave Signature” (Or any other sign of AI exposure) those persons are immediately placed in isolation and are not allowed anywhere near the current era SSP(s) Technology (Which is “Mostly” Bio-Neurological and Consciousness Interactive) until they have been “Cleared” of all AI influences.
Now, let’s analyze all this in terms of what the ADL is proposing for social media platforms to use AI based algorithms to identify hate speech.
At first look, there is great appeal in the idea of monitoring speech and regulating people promoting fear, hate or violence against others whether on social, religious or economic grounds. After all, we all want to live in a peaceful and tolerant world, which includes cyberspace, so why not exclude intolerant and hateful individuals and groups from our social media platforms?
The big problem here of course is that there is a real danger that social media can be surreptitiously used to exclude dissenting political viewpoints under the guise of regulating hate speech. We see this already occurring with Youtube using an army of 10,000 volunteers from groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Many popular YouTube channels are being increasingly targeted by strikes and removals for behavior characterized as bullying or hate speech. Yet, this YouTube crackdown appears to be a cleverly disguised politically driven campaign to remove alternative voices questioning the official media narrative on a great number of social issues, rather than really cracking down on hate speech. I’ve written about the problem here.
What ADL is proposing, however, goes well beyond what YouTube is currently doing. The ADL is openly promoting a censorship system where it won’t be humans doing the actual monitoring and removal of hate speech but an AI algorithm. What might be the result of this if allowed to occur given the warnings of AI posed by Hawking, Musk and Goode?
It doesn’t take an Einstein to realize that if social media platforms did allow AI algorithms to monitor and censor content, that warnings about a future AI threat would themselves eventually be deemed to be a form of hate speech. After all, if corporations can be recognized to have the same rights as individuals according to the infamous Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court in 2010, won’t AI sentience eventually also be recognized to have similar human rights in the U.S.?
We could very easily end up in a dystopian future where different forms of AI are used to monitor and regulate human behavior in egregious ways, and any humans protesting or warning what the AI system is doing would be censored for hate speech.
Given the existential threat posed by AI, if we accept what Hawking, Musk and Goode are telling us, let alone the inappropriateness of censoring alternative news perspectives in the first place, then free speech needs to be protected on social media at all costs.
In the U.S. this should not present too great challenge given the First Amendment Constitutional right to free speech, and legal remedies available in the Federal court system. Those individuals who threatened legal remedies to YouTube cracking down on their channels appear to have been the most successful in restoring their channels. YouTube apologized to such users for the overzealous behavior of its new army of 10,000 moderators.
However, the U.S. is an island in a vast ocean where other countries do actively punish individuals and groups for hate speech. This is where the future appears ominous given the temptation for national regulators to eventually punish social media platforms that don’t regulate hate speech. This would force Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms to adopt the AI based algorithms recommended by the ADL or other organizations for widespread usage.
This is likely to lead to a situation where major nations such as China, or supranational entities such as the European Union, might embrace AI algorithms to monitor and regular hate speech. China is already closely monitoring and removing dissident political thought from media platforms through firewalls, and may well be contemplating incorporating AI algorithms to do so more effectively.
While national regulators across the world may be tempted for different reasons to adopt the ADL’s proposal for AI algorithms to identify and remove hate speech, we need to firmly keep in mind that this would create a Trojan horse for eventual AI control of humanity.
Despite the genuine problems posed by hate speech, national regulators need to ensure that social media platforms are never regulated by AI algorithms given the potential for global security to be undermined, and humanity being genuinely imperiled by an AI takeover.
by Vikram Zutshi January 9, 2018 (opendemocracy.net)
• With the December 16, 2017, the New York Times reporting of the existence of a Pentagon UFO program and an F-18 cockpit video of a pill-shaped UFO, people are becoming less inhibited about discussing the UFO topic, or even revealing what they themselves have seen. Other governments and academics are also studying the UFO phenomena in the UK, Canada, Peru, France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Japan and the ex-Soviet Union.
• In India, Kumaresan Ramanathan, a senior technical engineer with a Chennai based IT firm, recently became that country’s first ‘certified UFO investigator’ under the auspices of the Mutual UFO Network.
• In July 2015, physicist Stephen Hawking launched the London-based “Breakthrough Listen” scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth. Hawking said, “We don’t know much about aliens, but we know about humans. If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced.”
• Another member of the “Breakthrough Listen” research program, science journalist Ann Druyan said, “We may get to a period in our future where we outgrow our evolutionary baggage and evolve to become less violent and shortsighted. My hope is that extraterrestrial civilizations are not only more technologically proficient than we are but more aware of the rarity and preciousness of life in the cosmos.”
• Humanity needs a wake-up call – something that shakes us out of our complacency and short-sightedness and forces us to recognize that we all share a symbiotic relationship with each other and with this fragile planet.
• The realization that we are not alone in the universe may be exactly what is needed at this stage of our evolution to help unite us in common purpose and actualize the full potential of our shared humanity. With the realization that perhaps we are only one of many civilizations in a vast galaxy comes the need for a broader and more encompassing (and compassionate) vision of the future. It may be the catalyst required for our species to develop a planetary consciousness and cast off the old, redundant affiliations that no longer serve.
A few years ago I visited an old friend at his home in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, Argentina. Apart from its breathtaking grandeur the region is known for a more unexpected reason: local residents have reported frequent sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (more commonly known as UFOs), among the highest in the world.
The region has become a popular hub for UFO enthusiasts ever since hundreds of apparitions started appearing in the mid-1990s. So widespread is the phenomenon that a new government agency called the “Committee for Studies of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena” has been established to investigate UAPs in the region under the auspices of the Chilean Air Force.
My host Guillermo had his own story to tell. While walking his sheep dogs around the range the previous year he observed a weather phenomenon he had never seen before—a wall of fog that extended from the skies to the plains and horizontally as far as the eye could see. A high-pitched sound emerged from the fog and suddenly, out of nowhere, a large oval disc about a hundred feet in diameter flew up and hovered directly above, maneuvering back into the fog a few moments later.
Like many others who have witnessed such phenomena, Gullermo was uncomfortable talking about his experience, acutely aware of the danger of sounding like a kook. But the days of being embarrassed about UFOs may be drawing to a close. On December 16, 2017, the New York Times published an expose about a secret US Department of Defense initiative called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program that was active from 2007 to 2012, dedicated to the investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects.
The bombshell report, co-authored by three seasoned journalists including two Pulitzer prize winners, includes on-the-record statements by Luis Elizondo, the man who ran the program, videos of possible UFOs filmed by the Pentagon, and confirmation of the US Government’s activities from former Senator Harry Reid, who earmarked $22 million for them while in Congress. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” said Reid in a letter to a deputy defense secretary at the time.
In July 2015, a group led by physicist Stephen Hawking launched “Breakthrough Listen,” an initiative that’s claimed to be the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth. During the launch of the initiative at the Royal Society in London, Hawking voiced his fears about what might happen in any such encounter, and why humankind needed to be much better prepared for what they might bring: “We don’t know much about aliens,” he told the audience, “but we know about humans. If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced.”
Science journalist Ann Druyan—who was part of the announcement panel—seemed more upbeat: “We may get to a period in our future where we outgrow our evolutionary baggage and evolve to become less violent and shortsighted,” she said. “My hope is that extraterrestrial civilizations are not only more technologically proficient than we are but more aware of the rarity and preciousness of life in the cosmos.”
Whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist about the possibilities of life on other planets, it’s here, beyond all the technical details about UFOs and ‘Advanced Aviation Threats’ and what exactly has been witnessed by whom, that the real interest lies. To put it bluntly, if human beings are so ineffective in confronting planetary problems, shouldn’t we seek out help wherever we can find it even if it comes from an inter-planetary source?
With religious and ethnic chauvinism on the rise, self-serving corporations wreaking havoc on the environment, and populist demagogues commandeering significant swathes of the populace, it’s clear that humanity needs an urgent wake-up call—something that shakes us out of our complacency and short-sightedness and forces us to recognize that we all share a symbiotic relationship with each other and with this fragile planet.
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• In response to the recent publicity of the advent of ultra-realistic humanoid robots, famous mainstream scientist Stephen Hawking warns that robots could one day replicate themselves, out-perform humans, become a new life form and entirely edge out human beings. Last year Hawkings said that humanity has only about 100 years left on this fragile planet and we all need to find another planet to inhabit. “We are in danger of self-destructing.”
• Hawkings suggests that humankind needs to come up with a space program to colonize suitable planets for habitation.
• [Editor’s Note] Stephen Hawking must know more than he is letting on. He must know that the AI threat is real, that we already have a space program that is colonizing off planet worlds, and that humanity is indeed in danger of self-destruction. This must be his way of letting us know that he knows through a soft disclosure.
One day robots could entirely edge out human beings and become a new life form that is even capable of replicating itself, Stephen Hawking has warned, once again predicting a rather grim future for humankind.
“I fear that AI may replace humans altogether,” the renowned physicist told Wired magazine, as cited by the Cambridge News. “If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans,” Hawking added.
However, humanity itself has already reached “the point of no return”and may destroy itself first, the 75-year-old academic predicts. “Our earth is becoming too small for us, global population is increasing at an alarming rate and we are in danger of self-destructing.”
To avoid this apocalyptic scenario, Hawking suggests that mankind should come up with a space program “with a view to eventually colonizing suitable planets for human habitation.”
This is not the first time Hawking has spoken about the potential threat of robots becoming self-conscious and exceeding human intelligence. Last year, he warned the AI “could develop a will of its own – a will that is in conflict with ours,” adding that the rise of machines could become “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity.”
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by Jason Offutt October 8, 2017 (mysteriousuniverse.org)
• A 27-year old in Wyoming claims to have come from the year 2048 to warn us about an alien invasion that will take place in 2018.
• The alien’s time travel device only works when he is drunk.
• Police in Casper, WY arrested the man for public intoxication.
• While many time travelers have been exposed as frauds, some time travel accounts are simply unexplained.
• Physicists concede that mathematically time travel is possible.
• In 2009 physicist Stephen Hawking held a party for time travelers. No one came.
When police responded to a disturbance call at a house on East Second Street in Casper, Wyoming, in early October, they found 27-year-old Bryant Johnson with a message for them. He was from the future, the aliens were coming, and he was drunk, according to radio station KTWO.
Bryant claimed he was from the year 2048 and was in Wyoming to warn the “president” of Casper of an impending 2018 alien invasion. He was drunk because that’s the only way the alien’s time travel device would transport him back in time. That’s also apparently why the machine missed the intended target of 2018 and landed him in 2017.
Police arrested Bryant for public intoxication and took him to a nearby hospital.
As silly as this story sounds, what if Bryant is right?
Stories pop up on occasion of people claiming to be from a different time. The mysterious John Titor and his dire warnings from 2036, the late Al Bielek who said he travelled in time with his brother Duncan Cameron in the Philadelphia Experiment, and Håkan Nordkvist, a Swedish man who said he journeyed into the year 2042 and met himself – just by crawling under his sink.
Great stories, but none are true. Serial hoaxer Joseph Matheny claims to have been part of the Titor hoax, Bielek has been labelled an attention seeker, and Nordkvist? His story was a viral marketing campaign for an insurance company.
However, physicists like Albert Einstein, Michio Kaku, and Stephen Hawking have all said time travel is mathematically possible. The faster an object moves, the slower time passes for it.
To prove this, in 1975 Professor Carol Allie of the University of Maryland synchronized two atomic clocks. One stayed on Earth while the other was loaded aboard an airplane. The times were checked at the end of the experiment, and the mobile clock revealed time aboard the airplane traveled slower by a smidgen of a second than it did for the clock on the ground.
It works for people as well.
While spending 803 days, 9 hours, 39 minutes on the International Space Station, Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev circled the Earth at 7.66 km/s – and traveled in time. When he returned to Earth in 2013, he was 0.02 seconds in the future, according to Universe Today. This was just what Einstein predicted with his Special Theory of Relativity way back in 1905.
“We have a hard time perceiving how time can bend just like other dimensions, so Einstein’s predictions seem strange,” Princeton University astrophysics professor J. Richard Gott told ABC news. “But this appears to be the world we live in.”
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This article discloses a dark reality behind mainstream science that misrepresents to humanity, so called changes of attitudes towards the reality of intelligent life in the universe. The true agenda is to seek confirmation of ET life, unintelligent life, which includes microbes and viruses. Mankind does not read the small print. The article focuses on scientific hero, Dr Paul Davies, a contributor to recent conferences hosted by the Royal Society and the Vatican. Recently interviewed by a popular radio show it becomes clear that the mindset of Dr Davies is nailed to the existing imposed and skewered worldview dominated by the politics of ontology. The credentials of Davies are presented, but so are his views on intelligent life in the universe. Davies debunks ET visitations, abductions and UFOs but prescribes processes, which include multidisciplinary studies on the phenomenon, and dares to ask people to keep an open mind whilst being skeptical. A conundrum is it not?
Early this year there was immense excitement amongst Exopoliticians:Â
 “The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences had organized a 5 day conferences involving physicists and Astrobiologists on subjects as varied as how life might have begun on Earth; what newly found microbes living in harsh places on our planet might tell us about possible life on others; and how life forms might be detected in our solar system, or how their bio-signatures might be found on and around the many distant exoplanets.â€
 There was further elation at the announcement by the Royal Society that they too would be holding a 2-day conference on extra terrestrial life.
 “A line-up of world-leading astronomers, biologists and astrophysicists including SETI founder Dr Frank Drake, principal investigator for the British Beagle 2 Mars lander project Professor Colin Pillinger and Director of the BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science Professor Paul Davies, will be discussing man’s search for extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and societyâ€.
 Professor Paul Davies a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, Astrobiologist and best-selling author.
“He is Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, both at Arizona State University. Davies’s research interests are focused on the “big questions†of existence, ranging from the origin of the universe to the origin of life, and include the nature of time, the search for life in the universe and foundational questions in quantum mechanics. In astrobiology, he was a forerunner of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars.â€
Listeners to his interview on Coast to Coast radio, were treated to a typical case of “blindfolds and earplugs†by a self centered scientist who chose to ignore the overwhelming qualitative evidence on ET life already in the public domain. [The evidence will be discussed in Part 2 of this article]. Dr Davies made it clear that Astrobiology is the search for life beyond earth, distinguishing itself from SETI; the search for intelligent life beyond earth. Despite SETI 50 yrs of eerie silence Davies gives them a pat on the back and believes we should extend the search for ET beyond looking through telescopes because the clues might be very subtle. Davies advocates that we should look for any signature or technological footprint of technology that shows up such as beacons and possible ET probes.
On this topic of Fermi’s paradox and ET beacons, here is what Davies had to say in the Astronomy Now magazine:
“What I think is a big lacuna in the search so far is that beacons have not been actively searched for. It is much more probable that we would pick up a multidirectional beacon than random messages between civilizations or domestic radio traffic or anything deliberately directed at us. All those scenarios don’t stack up, but beacons do. [..]There really has been no systematic search for them, and yet we have the technology to do that.â€
Davies described Hawkins recent remarks as Foolish; “There is no way of knowing if there is intelligent life out there. On the claim that aliens want to come here to use the resources of the planet, they could have taken them billions of years agoâ€. When asked by a caller about those who believe they saw UFOs or had been abducted Paul Davies reply was; “Little green men and flying saucers belong in the realm of fairy storiesâ€. In defense Davies explained that he knew Alan Hynek, who for 20 yrs assessed thousands of reports, some of which he personally had been able to account for. Davies went on by saying, “Most alien abduction is explained by sleep paralysis, sleep disorders†and he has had personal experience of this himself. He was keen to place his peg into the sand and stated unequivocally that “the lights in the sky are weather phenomenon†and that these reports tell us more about ourselves as humans than anything else.
Davies was asked about artifacts left behind by ET civilizations. “We cannot find any historic relics from the last 100 million years. The surface of our earth is restless, tectonic activity, glaciations, and erosion impact by asteroidsâ€. When pressed on the emergence Sumerian civilization with the associated ET intervention [as seen on the 5000 year old Sumerian Seals and Cuneiform tablets], a civilization with knowledge of the planets, Davies quashed any speculation of Ets arriving 400,000 years ago as he would be astonished that it would happen within this period which in astronomical terms is to close to the present. “Why would they come especially when the human civilization is just beginning? Too much of a coincidenceâ€
 The arrogance of Dr Davies continued in two messages to his audience; the first being that scientists must draw from a list of all the scientific disciplines and the second message was that Scientists should always be open minded but also skeptic; but never close our minds that one day the evidence might be forthcoming!Â
This mindset ensures humanity never sees the light of day whilst drowning in their own smog, addicted to fossil fuels and never being allowed to grasp the essence of a universe teaming with beneficial intelligent life which in all probability are responsible for the seeding of life in the universe; Is Davies a typical example of the gatekeepers that Hawking sought the human race to circumvent? In Part 2 of this article I present to Dr Davies the Exopolitical Prescriptions that will lead mainstream Astrobiologists, anthropologists, Cosmologists and physicists into the new paradigm; arguably the most important juncture ever, for mankind.
This article provides compelling evidence that the statement made by Hawking with regard to “avoiding contact with ET life” may well have been one of Hawking’s last great contributions to humanity by using didactics [or reverse psychology] ensuring that the subject matter would be palatable to, and enter the mainstream media stimulating Exopolitical debate amongst academics and scholars worldwide. This article begins with a statement by Canadian ex Minister of Defense, a proponent to the view that ET life is engaging our planet. Hawking’s credibility, underpinned by the mainstream academia includes research into Cosmology and the physics which deal with the manifestation of life in the universe [Top Down Cosmology]. He used this sturdy platform to explode his message into the public domain; by stealth. Finally the article introduces other great minds, all of who lay testimony to the fact that they received downloaded information, some from Ets that have served to advance humanity’s technological abilities. One of whom, a Rocket Scientist testifies that he was told by Hawking that he too had received complicated mathematical formulas by way of dreams.
“Former federal defence minister Paul Hellyer, 86, believes not only that aliens have visited Earth but also that they have contributed greatly to human technological advances”.
(Ref: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/hawking-warning-about-bad-aliens-prompts-defence-by-their-biggest-canadian-fan-92619939.html)
Paul Hellyer nailed it in one, so did Paola Harris [in personal communications with me] and Dr Salla in an Examiner article [see: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2383-Honolulu-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2010m4d26-Stephen-Hawking-launches-exopolitics-debate?cid=publish_twitter:2383 ] The focal point of Hellyer’s statement is: “Alien contribution to our technical advances” because therein reside the clues to the intentions behind Hawking’s missive.
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist and amongst his many other attributes, the author of A Brief History of Time.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” said Hawking. He advocated that, rather than try to establish contact, man should try to avoid contact with alien life forms”
His statement sent ripples across the mainstream media networks worldwide and encouraged debates amongst academics and scholars all of whom are in full physical health except that their minds are nailed to the limitations of an imposed and skewered world view.
Ripples were felt across Asia and in Hong Kong I was awakened the very next morning to join a discussion on RTHK 3; [mainstream radio in Hong Kong] guests included an Australian Astrophysicist and two Anthropologists.
http://programme.rthk.org.hk/channel/radio/programme.php?name=radio3/backchat&d=2010-04-28&p=514&e=107775&m=episode [Begins after 5mins of news]
The resulting debate affirmed just how short sighted and brainwashed these academics/professors really are with regard to ET life and/or UFOs engaging our planet. An apt term used to describe some of the reasons behind this syndrome was once given to me by Author of Sapiens Rising, Neil Freer; called “tenure tetanus”. I never forgot it!
We know that efforts by Exopoliticians in getting Exopolitically related news, such as Hawking’s references to ET life, [irrespective of whether Ets are good or bad] into the mainstream is dam near impossible, therefore we should be looking closer at exactly what the intent might have been behind Hawking’s statement. Was it to get Exopolitics into the mainstream media? Perhaps this was a final contribution to humanity from a man whose cosmic mind is embedded in a frail, degenerating and dieing body [Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed] who paradoxically created a wormhole or portal right through the ET truth embargo at light speed, simply using nothing but the energy of his great mind? If it were so, well it certainly worked! Hawking’s had spent a lifetime contemplating the fabric of the universe and trying to find a unified theory that took into account the larger objects such as the planets as well as the quantum particles such as photons and electrons.
“Hawking’s many other scientific investigations have included the study of quantum cosmology, cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills instantons and the S matrix, anti de Sitter space, quantum entanglement and entropy, the nature of space and time, including the arrow of time, spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian, Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of gravitation, gravitational radiation, and wormholes””.
At a George Washington University lecture in honor of NASA’s fiftieth anniversary, Hawking theorized on the existence of extraterrestrial life, believing that “primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in The New York Times Magazine:
“It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. […] He didn’t have very many books, and he didn’t take notes. Of course, his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries.”
This brings us to the very point of this article; how do ET’s contribute to our knowledge and technology and was Hawking aware of this phenomenon or indeed was he party to Technology Transfers from Ets through a process called “quantum entanglement” a subject that he had investigated. Hawking had found entropy within the chaotic universe; such entropy included consciousness, or the observer, a key component perhaps, in operating DNA and driving the primordial soup into life forms; including advance life.
I had heard the term many times before; “A flash of genius”. Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 ? 7 January 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist; yet he was the father of commercial electricity and known for many revolutionary steps in electromagnetism which helped usher in the second Industrial Revolution. Tesla reported seeing flashes of light and was able to download information [allegedly from Ets] which contributed to his numerous inventions. Tesla was able to hold images of full working models in his mind in the same way today’s modern CAD engineers do on industrial design computer screens using complicated software. It was the antics of JP Morgan which brought Tesla down when JP Morgan realized that he could not put a meter on radiant energy, invented by Tesla.
Another brilliant mind, John Searl, an electrical engineer has been thrust forward into the limelight. Regarded by many as ‘The Godfather’ of free energy or zero point energy science, Professor John Searl believes his magnetic generator, the Searl Effect Generator (SEG), can save our planet from economic and environmental disaster. Searl alleges that he was downloaded with “squares” which represented configurations for his coils in dealing with his inventions within the realms of electromagnetism.
http://www.johnsearlstory.com/
In his book, ‘America’s fall from Space,’ David Adair tells the story of the U.S. space program through the eyes of a child prodigy turned top rocket scientist. Building his first rocket at the age of 11, David soon had progressed to the point that he was drawing attention to his exploits by people such as General Curtis LeMay and Werner Von Braun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUW7y_iskIY
His complicated mathematical formulas found their way to Dr. Stephen Hawking, who at that time had just received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Astrophysics and was at the beginning of his own career. When they met and David was asked for the source of his formulas, he sheepishly replied that many came to him in dreams. To that Stephen Hawking replied, “I get a lot of my ideas through dreams also. We dream on the same wavelength; therefore, that makes us brothers.”
It has always been so, that mankind is mentored by extra terrestrials, [See Dr Salla article http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_humanitymanipulationalien02.htm] perhaps intent on seeing us through the nuclear age unscathed, perhaps also in assisting us with the technology required to preserve our environment [a new world if you can take it ? an ET told Col. Philip Corso]. Human consciousness has propelled itself through the medium of Hollywood, prodding our consciousness, manifesting as great movies in particular AVATAR. Hawkins has faith that by the end of the debate we will have overcome the knee jerk xenophobia, as we come to terms and confront “his ugly didactic wolf” and replace it with the newborn lamb of common sense. Any hostile civilization could have taken us out long ago. We would not need to search and contact ET; they know we are here; their technology would have alerted them to the presence of fledgling civilizations eons ago. Mankind has to reflect back upon himself that indeed we are the wolf; Hawking is hinting that the true threat to galactic harmony are we humans, who have polluted their planet and weaponized space; a danger to other cosmic cultures.
Perhaps the quote by Martin Luther King Jr sums up Hawkins concerns for humanity.
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
Neil Gould is a Member of the Board of Directors
Exopolitics Institute