Scientists and UFO Believers

wwkirk

Divine
Why scientists are starting to listen to UFO believers
More scientists open to applying grounded scientific theory, such as physics, to UFO ones.

ORLANDO, Fla. — He appeared as if a hologram at first — then solid — suddenly there and clear at the edge of the forest behind Trish Bishop’s home in Kissimmee in 2013.

When he turned around, it was his face, she remembers, that stopped her. Bulging eyes. Skin white as chalk. And massive jaw.

“I’ve got a freaking alien in my backyard,” she thought.

And then he was gone.

It would be four years before she told her story, before she’d discover the Mutual Unidentified Flying Objects Network, a nationwide organization 50 years old, and file her report under case number 84886.

But she worried: Who would believe her? These days, more people than you’d think.

Across U.S. restaurants and meeting rooms, MUFON groups gather every month with the enthusiasm that once gripped the nation during the Cold War. The Space Coast group, made up of some former NASA employees and engineers, has 118 members. Across the nation, they number 3,500, with additional offices in 42 countries.

For many years, they were alone entertaining UFO theories. No more.

In the past two years, scientists, politicians and professionals have increasingly been willing to touch the taboo subject and perhaps lend a little credence to believers.

In December 2017, the New York Times uncovered that the U.S. had funded a secret, $22 million, five-year project to study UFO claims.

What’s changed, said Robert Powell, an executive board member on the nonprofit Scientific Coalition for Ufology, is our understanding of the universe. As scientists have discovered more Earthlike exoplanets and begun to delve into the options for interstellar travel, the conversation has been shifting.

“We still think of ourselves, as a species, as the center of everything,” Powell said. “Once you at least start to discuss interstellar travel, you have to admit that, if there is intelligent life out there, then they have to be able to travel interstellar, too.”

The challenge with alien sightings has always been the lack of evidence. Psychologists say common explanations include a person projecting their unconscious desires onto something, or a predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories, said Alvin Wang, a psychology professor at the University of Central Florida. People who believe they witnessed something may seek out others who reaffirm that belief, like “being in an echo chamber,” he said.

In 1961, Kathleen Marden was 13 when she got the call: Her aunt and uncle — Betty and Barney Hill — said they’d seen a UFO in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Betty’s dress was torn and Barney’s shoes were scuffed. There were two hours they couldn’t account for and Barney Hill was sure he’d seen eight to 11 figures that were “somehow not human,” Marden said.

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In pursuit: Kathleen Marden has dedicated her life to her aunt and uncle’s story.
The Hills’ alleged alien abduction once gripped the nation.


It wasn’t until the Hills were put through a hypnosis session by Boston psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon that their story was revealed.

The Hills’ alleged UFO abduction was made public in 1965 — and the story gripped the nation. “Did They Seize Couple?” the Boston Traveler posited. “I Was Quizzed in ‘Space Ship,’ ” another headline said.

Marden has dedicated her life to uncovering the truth behind what she says was government tampering with the Hills’ case.

“I absolutely do think that there is a shift, that people are giving more credence to this,” she said, pointing to the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, revealed by the New York Times, as the turning point.

The program was run by military intelligence official Luis Elizondo in partnership with Bigelow Aerospace to study cases of U.S. military personnel observing unknown objects.

One case in particular garnered attention when it was declassified because videos showed a craft with no apparent propulsion moving at fast speeds. It was filmed in 2004 by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets off San Diego. Navy pilot Commander David Fravor said in late 2017 that it was “something not from Earth.”

Historically, NASA has not weighed in on the issue much. But scientist Silvano Colombano of NASA Ames Research Center argued in a March 2018 white paper that the scientific community should be more open to “consider the UFO phenomenon worthy of study” and engage in “speculative physics” grounded in solid scientific theories but with some “willingness to stretch possibilities as to the nature of space-time and energy.”

ows_155475252029229.jpg

Sighting: Trish Bishop said she was stunned to see a tall, muscular alien
lingering in her backyard. She waited four years to tell anyone.
 
Are they? I remain somewhat pessimistic.

If any of this is true and has something to do with the ETI, I think the scientific community in large will not pay this any attention until these things happen:

1. They find planets with life.
2. Someone invents a sound theory for a FTL drive or a system to otherwise travel through interstellar place.
3. Someone shows proof thats undeniable that strange things have been here.

Or

4. A mass landing or an undeniable show off thats recorded.

And even then it will not be a simple change, it will be a long and arduous one, thats paradigms shifts for you. Safe ground needs to be laid before these people get on board.

TTSA may convince some people with stories, but they need to bring a lot more than that if they want to convince the world.
 
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Are they? I remain somewhat pessimistic.

If any of this is true and has something to do with the ETI, I think the scientific community in large will not pay this any attention until these things happen:

1. They find planets with life.
We don't have the technology required to detect life on planets orbiting other stars yet, but we're moving that direction, and when we can detect life on planets orbiting other stars, I'm confident that we'll find that it's essentially ubiquitous.

2. Someone invents a sound theory for a FTL drive or a system to otherwise travel through interstellar place.
The Alcubierre drive is a sound theory for FTL propulsion. The last fundamental objection to it was about the unphysicality of antigravity (aka the positive energy theorem), but the dark energy field is an antigravity field, so that objection has been trounced. Now the objections being raised amount to little more than trivial bitching about technicalities. In other words, we know theoretically that it's possible; we just don't know how to built one yet.

I think that most mainstreamers refuse to be convinced until we actually build such a device. But by then it'll be obvious that others have been exploiting the concept for ages, and in many cases, to visit our planet.

The best scientists who understand the inevitability of this propulsion concept already assume that some UFO sightings are evidence that others have achieved it; they're just not willing to publicly voice those thoughts because of the 70+ year government PsyOp that effectively silences dissenting voices by threatening their careers.

3. Someone shows proof thats undeniable that strange things have been here.
The government has this evidence already. The fact that they're withholding that evidence is as unsurprising as it is disappointing.
 
If we're talking about it here how effective could it have been?
You're asking the wrong question. The intelligence complex could care less if people like us talk about this subject seriously: we have zero impact on public perception.

What matters is the mainstream scientific consensus on the subject. And that has firmly remained one of denial and ridicule for the last 70 years - to the point where any PhD discussing the subject favorably in public is seriously risking their reputation and career.

So I'd say that it has been and continues to be extraordinarily effective.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
You're asking the wrong question. The intelligence complex could care less if people like us talk about this subject seriously: we have zero impact on public perception.

What matters is the mainstream scientific consensus on the subject. And that has firmly remained one of denial and ridicule for the last 70 years - to the point where any PhD discussing the subject favorably in public is seriously risking their reputation and career.

So I'd say that it has been and continues to be extraordinarily effective.

New ideas and those who come up with them are often the target of ridicule from whatever the mainstream consensus happen to be at the time: immunization (18th century flavor not the current evolution of stupidity), germ theory, etc. Certainly Galileo would have an opinion to render on the topic.

The conspiracy is to maintain the status quo. Is that the case with UFOs? Maybe. But one interesting facet of conspiracy is that more often than not they are found out in relatively short order, so for one to last all these decades it would be unusual to say the least.
 
New ideas and those who come up with them are often the target of ridicule from whatever the mainstream consensus happen to be at the time: immunization (18th century flavor not the current evolution of stupidity), germ theory, etc. Certainly Galileo would have an opinion to render on the topic.

The conspiracy is to maintain the status quo. Is that the case with UFOs? Maybe. But one interesting facet of conspiracy is that more often than not they are found out in relatively short order, so for one to last all these decades it would be unusual to say the least.
You're confusing "PsyOp" with "conspiracy." PsyOps are going on all around us all the time; RussiaGate is a very recent example. The Iraqi WMDs narrative was a PsyOp - they even got Colin Powell to lie to the UN to push that one. The "Arab Spring" was a PsyOp - that was actually a joint CIA/Saudi operation. Operation Timber Sycamore was an off-shoot of that project, and the PsyOp there was convincing the public that arming and training jihadist terrorists was a good thing because Assad was worse, they said. Those three false flag chemical weapons attacks in Syria were perpetrated to reinforce that narrative - Assad wasn't behind any of those; our jihadist terrorist allies were, and Turkish intelligence, but it was probably decided by the CIA and Saudi intelligence.

The PsyOp to marginalize and ridicule the topic of UFOs consisted of funding bogus studies like the Condon Report and Project Blue Book to put the academic stamp of ridicule and dismissal on the subject, and having some officials in the military tell the press that there's nothing to it and people who report them are either idiots misindentifying the planet Venus, or lunatics. This is all a matter of historical record now. Haven't you ever studied the early history of ufology?

From there the PsyOp took on a life of its own, which is why even today we only see a small handful of PhDs discussing this subject seriously, even though the arguments from a scientific vantage point have undergone a major revolution in the last 2o years with the Kepler Mission findings and major developments in astrophysics and theoretical physics.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
- CIA Director William Casey, 1981
 
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Some people who diss the UFO subject say that "science would have to be in on it" and it would be too big a conspiracy to work. Ive heard this in my country for one, when people talk about it dismissively. Heres the thing tough.

You dont need a grand conspiracy, fear is enough a motivation to silence people around this subject. Fear of losing ones social standing and finance by discussing whatever taboo subject there are. Social ridicule and saving ones face works surprisingly well, it can put huge walls around people. And as long as these walls exist, you will find people everywhere will be less inclined to talk about it.

I can still understand why UFOs remains as such, for it potentially threatens to throw our entire concept of reality on its head. And it has helped to spawn charlatans, hoaxers and nutty cults, that just make it all seem like some grand delusion.

Maybe tough as years progress, those walls around people get smaller and smaller...
 
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Some people who diss the UFO subject say that "science would have to be in on it" and it would be too big a conspiracy to work. Ive heard this in my country for one, when people talk about it dismissively. Heres the thing tough.

You dont need a grand conspiracy, fear is enough a motivation to silence people around this subject. Fear of losing ones social standing and finance by discussing whatever taboo subject there are. Social ridicule and saving ones face works surprisingly well, it can put huge walls around people. And as long as these walls exist, you will find people everywhere will be less inclined to talk about it.

I can still understand why UFOs remains as such, for it potentially threatens to throw our entire concept of reality on its head. And it has helped to spawn charlatans, hoaxers and nutty cults, that just make it all seem like some grand delusion.

Maybe tough as years progress, those walls around people get smaller and smaller...

if scientists were more engaging in ufology we wouldn't have charlatans like lazar, goode, icke muddying the waters.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
You're confusing "PsyOp" with "conspiracy." PsyOps are going on all around us all the time; RussiaGate is a very recent example. The Iraqi WMDs narrative was a PsyOp - they even got Colin Powell to lie to the UN to push that one. The "Arab Spring" was a PsyOp - that was actually a joint CIA/Saudi operation. Operation Timber Sycamore was an off-shoot of that project, and the PsyOp there was convincing the public that arming and training jihadist terrorists was a good thing because Assad was worse, they said. Those three false flag chemical weapons attacks in Syria were perpetrated to reinforce that narrative - Assad wasn't behind any of those; our jihadist terrorist allies were, and Turkish intelligence, but it was probably decided by the CIA and Saudi intelligence.

The PsyOp to marginalize and ridicule the topic of UFOs consisted of funding bogus studies like the Condon Report and Project Blue Book to put the academic stamp of ridicule and dismissal on the subject, and having some officials in the military tell the press that there's nothing to it and people who report them are either idiots misindentifying the planet Venus, or lunatics. This is all a matter of historical record now. Haven't you ever studied the early history of ufology?

From there the PsyOp took on a life of its own, which is why even today we only see a small handful of PhDs discussing this subject seriously, even though the arguments from a scientific vantage point have undergone a major revolution in the last 2o years with the Kepler Mission findings and major developments in astrophysics and theoretical physics.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
- CIA Director William Casey, 1981

Nooooo, I'm asking the questions I want to and I'm not confused. Difference is our world view, and in that we are very far apart.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
We don't have the technology required to detect life on planets orbiting other stars yet, but we're moving that direction, and when we can detect life on planets orbiting other stars, I'm confident that we'll find that it's essentially ubiquitous.

It will be spectacular when that time period arrives in which we will be able to conclusively detect plant, animal, and 'other' types of life existing on other planets, that along with the knowledge we are being visited by life from other planets...They may turn out to be just some people doing something, but they have our attention lol...

...
 
Nooooo, I'm asking the questions I want to and I'm not confused. Difference is our world view, and in that we are very far apart.
Well, I was talking about PsyOps and you started talking about conspiracies and then applied those parameters to the topic at hand, so yes it looks like you're confusing the two: PsyOps aren't conspiracies, they're official covert intelligence operations - and they frequently have long-ranging effects on public perception. For example, nearly 20 years later, some people are still convinced that Iraq had a WMD program even though the country was scoured for evidence of this and nothing was ever found.

And I don't really have a world view; I just take the facts as I find them. When you peel back the thick layers of propaganda that spew forth from all corporate news media outlets 24/7, what you find is that nearly everything contemporary Americans believe (on both the "left" and the "right" and everywhere in-between) is a BS work of fiction dreamed up by the psychopaths who control our country. It doesn't take much work to do this, btw, but most people are "corporate news consumers" who never make any effort whatsoever to check the narratives being spoon-fed to them by the elite class and their sycophantic courtiers throughout the media establishment.

The UFO subject is an excellent and instructive example of how the intelligence apparatus can manufacture a public consensus about an entire topic, with just a little bit of effort and money - and how once that narrative takes root it keeps rolling under its own cultural momentum. Once you see how the ridicule factor is very effectively deployed against a topic or an ideology that the government wants to marginalize, you can see how they use it constantly against a wide variety of ideas.

It will be spectacular when that time period arrives in which we will be able to conclusively detect plant, animal, and 'other' types of life existing on other planets, that along with the knowledge we are being visited by life from other planets...They may turn out to be just some people doing something, but they have our attention lol...
It seems inevitable that this benchmark will be upon us within another decade or two, because it comes down to spectroscopic resolution. One possibility is that we'll be able to detect the atmospheric composition of exosolar planets, which will give us strong indicators for organic processes going on.

But my favorite idea is to detect the signature of artificial light on the dark side of inhabitable technological planets. Because pretty much any advanced civilization is going to produce a lot of artificial light at night, for all kinds of reasons. When we can detect that, it'll be a smoking gun for the presence of technological civilization. I can hardly wait. I think people are going to be shocked by the prevalence of civilizations in this galaxy (and by extension, most others)..
 
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