The Hazards of Ufology

nivek

As Above So Below
Part 1: Paranoia and Isolation
By Nick Redfern

Back in 2016, I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “UFOs: Don’t Let Them Rule Your Life.” To a significant degree, the article was focused on the controversial “11:11 phenomenon” and a guy who was immersed in it to such a degree that he was practically controlled by it. You can find the article at this link. That same article provoked a fair amount of comments, something that didn’t surprise me at all. Today, I thought I would expand on this issue of how people really do become affected by the UFO subject – and not in a positive way. I don’t know why, but on more than a few occasions I have seen people enter Ufology sane, rational and normal, only to eventually plunge into states of paranoia, fear, isolation and eccentricity. So, in that sense, today’s article is very much a warning to one and all. I should stress that this radical change of character doesn’t happen to a huge degree (as far as I can tell). On more than a few occasions, however, I have seen something close to madness set in – and sometimes set in quickly. With that all said, let us now take a look at the first of three examples of how the UFO subject – at times – doesn’t just alter lives, but can come close to destroying lives, too.

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Albert Bender

Part 1 of this 3-part feature is focused on the the guy who began the Men in Black phenomenon almost on his own: Albert Bender. Indeed, had Bender not had the bad luck to get into the field of Ufology, the chances are we would not have known of the MIB. Or, at the very least, the creepy phenomenon would not have reached the levels of interest that it did in the 1960s and 1970s. But, it’s not the MIB that we need to focus on in this article. Rather, it’s what the UFO subject did to Bender. It plunged him into a dangerous situation that he was lucky to get out of. Like a lot of people, Bender developed an interest in UFOs in the immediate wake of the Kenneth Arnold affair of June 24, 1947. At the time, Bender was in his mid-twenties. As the 1950s came around, Bender created the International Flying Saucer Bureau. He also published his own newsletter, Space Review. Neither were destined to last for very long. What began as an exciting hobby for Bender turned into an absolute nightmare. After being visited by a trio of strange characters with shining eyes, and with the ability to read minds and walk through walls (yes, the MIB), Bender’s life changed quickly. He didn’t have that many friends to begin with, but after his MIB encounters, Bender spent just about all of his free time in the attic of his stepfather’s home, digging ever deeper into the UFO phenomenon. And into the world of the occult, too. When Bender did go out (his day job aside), it was usually to go to the local cinema in Bridgeport, Connecticut. On his own.

For reasons that were never really explained, but also in the wake of his MIB encounters, Bender developed a weird fear that he had developed cancer. He wrote about it on several occasions – making it very clear that that he was in a deep state of hypochondria. History has shown that Bender, thankfully, did not have cancer. In fact, when he passed away in 2016, Bender was just six years short of 100! Moving on: a careful reading of Bender’s 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, reveals that he clearly had a dose of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Everything in his attic had to be in its place. If it wasn’t, he would get frustrated – even angry, at times. And if it looked like something had been moved, Bender suspected that it was due to the MIB, government agents or…well…you get the picture. Spending your time in an attic room, with a fear of a deadly disease, with a significant dose of OCD, and while you’re worrying that someone is creeping around that same attic when you’re out of the house, surely cannot be healthy. For Bender it definitely wasn’t.

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Here’s the part when the story becomes uplifting. Yes, the story does end in a happy fashion. It was something that, in the early 1950s, changed Bender’s life for the better and that led him to finally quit Ufology. An English woman named Betty – a flight attendant at the time – became a friend to Bender. Betty very soon became far more than that: Albert and Betty got married and they moved to California. Their first home was in Bakersfield. They later settled, in what turned out to be permanently, in Los Angeles. And, guess what? Bender’s fears of having cancer went away. As did the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. As did the deep fear that people were skulking around his home. Apart from a very few and brief forays into Ufology in the 1960s, Bender was done with it all. And that was a very good thing.

I’m not saying that Ufology is always a dangerous field to get into. I am saying, however, that sometimes – whether due to a person’s character, to the intrusion of certain aspects of the UFO phenomenon itself, or most probably to a bit of both – lives begin to change. “Mutate” might be a good term to use. On occasions, those changes are subtle. But, very often, they are not destined to stay like that. Albert Bender did the right thing: at first he balanced his interest in UFOs with his life with Betty. That is, until the time came when Bender knew he had to quit Ufology – as in completely. I should stress that not everyone, of course, needs to totally quit the Saucer scene to remain sane. For some, however, like Bender, it’s just not a good place to hang out. I’ve seen the signs in more than a few people in Ufology and it’s not a positive situation. For the most part, balance is the key to all of this. Enjoy your UFO research. But, enjoy having fun in the world outside of Ufology, too. And don’t spend most of your time alone in an attic.

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nivek

As Above So Below
Part 2: Aliens, Demons or Both
By Nick Redfern

Part 1 of this article was focused on the life and involvement in Ufology of Albert Bender. He was one of the key figures in the development of the Men in Black phenomenon. Part 2 takes us to New Zealand and to an equally hazard-filled story. The saga starts with one of New Zealand’s earliest Flying Saucer seekers: Harold Fulton. He started his UFO research in the early 1950s and passed away halfway through the 1980s. Fulton served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. That was not all: he created the Civilian Saucer Investigation (CSI). Just like Albert Bender’s International Flying Saucer Bureau, the plan for the Civilian Saucer Investigation body was for its members to research and investigate cases – and to write-up reports on their findings. In other words, it was a well-planned operation designed to try and understand the nature of the UFO phenomenon in New Zealand. Interestingly, it wasn’t long before Albert Bender and Harold Fulton began to correspond with each other. Also mirroring Bender’s work, his group, and his newsletter, the CSI took off to a significant height. It wasn’t long after the creation of the CSI that Fulton and his colleagues had more than five hundred subscribers to the Flying Saucers journal. What began as friendly correspondence between the two soon changed. It became decidedly mysterious.

As I noted in my 2017 book, The Slenderman Mysteries: “It wasn’t long after the revelations concerning Albert Bender’s torturous encounters with the Men in Black surfaced that Fulton contacted Bender. A lengthy period of correspondence between the two duly followed. Indeed, Fulton had established a connection with numerous UFO researchers in the United States, including Gray Barker, who, in 1962, published Albert Bender’s MIB-themed book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men. The letters between Fulton and Bender (in my possession) make it very clear that Fulton was concerned that whatever it was that had got its grips into Bender was, by the summer of 1953, now doing exactly the same with him. Fulton told Bender (and MIB investigator/author Gray Barker, too) that on several occasions he experienced in his home the very same overpowering odor of sulfur-meets-rotten-eggs that Bender had talked about. Equally disturbing, Fulton began to see vague, shadowy, human-like figures out of his peripheral vision – and usually late at night, and always when he was engaged in his UFO research. They were wizened, goblin-like things that crept around Fulton’s home, in what amounted to almost a taunting fashion: they wanted to be seen, but not too closely. A bad sign that the Shadow People were on the move, perhaps?”

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Intriguingly, some of the Shadow People that Fulton encountered way back then sound very much like today’s Hat Man, as the creature has become known. It is a dark, shadowy figure usually seen wearing an old-style fedora hat – hence the clear and obvious MIB parallels. During the summer of 1953, Fulton wrote to Bender and told the latter that he and his wife had been woken up on several occasions by an overwhelming smell of brimstone. It started in the bedroom and, eventually, overwhelmed the whole family home. Violent thumping on the walls of the house in the dead of night became regular.. It all sounded very much like poltergeist activity. On top of that, small balls of light flickered around the entrance to the bedroom. For Fulton and his wife, things were becoming nightmarish. It wasn’t long at all, however, before additional New Zealand-based UFO researchers told of their similar, nerve-jangling experiences. As an example, Fulton wrote to Bender about the incidents involving a man named John Stuart – a fellow citizen of New Zealand.

John Stuart lived in Hamilton, New Zealand and, like Harold Fulton, he was fascinated by the Flying Saucer phenomenon. Stuart’s experiences began in 1952. Stuart went on to write a book on the subject, UFO Warning. Not unlike Albert Bender’s 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, Stuart’s publication was UFO-based, but it was somewhat tinged with matters of a demonic kind. Interestingly, Stuart began to experience something that John Keel wrote extensively about. Namely, weird, late-night phone-calls from strange characters with near-robotic voices. The first call for Stuart came in the early hours of the morning. Of course, on being jolted out of his sleep in the early hours of the morning, Stuart’s immediate thought was: bad news. As most of us probably would in such a situation. Well, yes, it was bad news. But, not of the kind Stuart was expecting. Rather, it was one of Keel’s creepy characters doing their best to terrify a UFO researcher. In simple terms, Stuart was told to quit Ufology. Or else. A shaky Stuart got himself a shot or two of whiskey. Now, the story gets even more complicated.

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As is the case in today’s UFO arena, back then everyone knew everyone else – or, at least, they knew of them. So, when the rumor got out that Stuart was having close and clandestine encounters of a very different kind with a woman named Doreen Wilkinson – who was also active in the UFO field – it didn’t take long before most of the UFO sleuths in New Zealand knew of the claimed affair between the two. Of course, if both Stuart and Doreen were single, no-one would have been spreading gossip. Stuart, however, was married. The pair brushed the whispers away as nonsense. As for why they spent so much time together, Stuart and Doreen claimed it was solely because of the combined UFO research they were doing. Okay. We’ll never know and it’s all in the past now. Whatever the truth, the fact is that Doreen and Stuart spent a lot of time together. It was this togetherness that led to one of the strangest and most sinister of all the New Zealand-based encounters in the early 1950s.

It was during the early hours of the morning when Doreen and Stuart did most of their, ahem, “work.” There was something very strange, however. On occasion, Doreen’s personality would suddenly change. And change radically, too. She became what we might call a supernatural seductress. No, this was not a bit of fun and fantasy and playing role-games. It was as if Doreen had been possessed by a manipulative, sexually-charged, “demon,” as Stuart put it. Interestingly, Stuart vehemently disagreed with his colleagues in Ufology, who believed that Doreen was possessed by the spirit of an alien. Stuart was sure the entity that had Doreen in its grips was a literal demon from a literal Hell. Matters came to their peak when – also in the dead of night – something suddenly manifested in Stuart’s home. It was described as humanoid-like in figure, but clearly not human. The pair was naturally terrified. Stuart would later say that the thing made a move towards Doreen and forced her to have sex. On a second time, when Stuart wasn’t at home, Doreen was attacked and assaulted again – on this occasion, though, by an invisible creature. Enough was enough.

Just like Albert Bender – whose hazardous experiences caused him to quit Ufology – Doreen and Stuart also left the UFO scene behind them, disturbed by the possibility that the UFO phenomenon had a demonic aspect to it.


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nivek

As Above So Below
Part 3: Buying Into Just About Everything
By Nick Redfern

Today’s article is the third and final installment on what I call “The Hazards of Ufology.” We’ve seen how Albert Bender’s life suffered to a seriously dangerous degree because of his UFO obsessions. That is, until he walked away from it all. As for part 2, it was focused on a series of strange events that occurred in New Zealand and that resulted in the key players in the story buried in a world of stress, chaos and fear. The third part of the story is significantly different, as you will see. In this example, lives and minds are not torn apart at all. Paranoia and isolation are nowhere in sight. So, you may very well wonder what today’s ufological hazard is. I’ll tell you: it’s the astonishing speed that causes some people to buy into just about everything of a UFO nature – no matter how ridiculous or bogus it might be. In other words, today’s hazard is losing one’s common sense. I could come up with more than a few examples, but I’ll present one for you that will demonstrate exactly what I mean.

Our story revolves around a married couple, Bryant and Helen Reeve. In 1957, they wrote a book titled Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, which was published by Ray Palmer. It’s not a particularly well-known book, but it is readable. In essence, the book tells the story of the pair’s road-trip around the United States, and of their meetings with just about as many people on the UFO scene as they could. It was a trek around the country, in the 1950s, that took three years and that covered approximately 23,000 miles. I should stress this is not a wild and crazy groundbreaking road-trip of the likes that Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady famously embarked on. Or, one of Ernest Hemingway’s adventures. Nope. Bryant and Helen were a retired couple verging on old age and who decided to see if they could figure out what was at the heart of the UFO phenomenon. Not a bad thing to do when you no longer need to work. I have to say that the pair spent a lot of time and effort trying to get the answers to the mystery. And, unlike so many, they were not researchers of the armchair kind. They really did hit the road for three years. There was, however, a problem: they weren’t just a nice, trusting old couple. They were too nice. As you’ll now see.

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What’s particularly interesting about Helen and Bryant – and their immersion into the world of Ufology – is that they began as complete skeptics, but, in amazingly fast time, became not just believers, but uncritical believers. They bought into just about every story and every character that came their way. That was their big hazard: they practically lost their ability to see the difference between credible people and horseshit. In the process, their lives were altered by hanging out with characters who ranged from the sane to the crazy, and from con-men to fantasists. I should say, though, that some of those who Helen and Bryant met may well have had genuinely intriguing alien encounters. It all began for the Reeve’s in November 1953, in Detroit, where the two lived. The pair was in debate with a friend of theirs – Henry – about the growing Flying Saucer craze, and particularly the claims and controversial photos of George Adamski. Some of the words that were used in that debate were “insane,” “gullible,” “fake,” and “disgusted.” You get my drift. On top of that, Bryant was an engineer who had little time for aliens and UFOs. But, he agreed to at least take a look at it all.

Admittedly, you have to give it to Bryant and Helen: they certainly wasted no time in trying to solve the mystery. They quickly got in touch with Adamski and invited him to come and speak for the people of Detroit! Not surprisingly, the presence of a man who claimed to have met aliens caught the attention of the local media. As the Freedom of Information Act has shown, FBI special-agents were in attendance, too. And, there are some amusing parts, such as when the matter of Adamski’s expenses surface. So successful were the lectures and radio coverage, the two decided that a road-trip was the only way to find the answers. Not only that, just about all thoughts of Adamski being a hoaxer went right out of the window. They were becoming true-believers, even if they didn’t realize it. Their first interviewee (who actually decided to visit them at their home) was none other than Truman Bethurum. He was a Contactee made famous for his “encounters” with a hot space babe from a faraway world named Clarion. As for the captain of the craft, her name was Aura Rhanes. Bethurum may or may not have got it on with Aura, who Bethurum described as being “tops in shapeliness and beauty.” Throughout his books, lectures, and interviews Bethurum skillfully skirted around that thorny angle. When Helen and Bryant met Bethurum, and heard his story of extraterrestrial love (maybe…), they were caught. Indeed, from then on they called Bethurum a “pioneer saucerer.”

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Next on the list was George Hunt Williamson. He was a man who had a complicated and controversial connection to George Adamski and who claimed to contact aliens via ouija-boards from his Prescott, Arizona home. The pair attended one of Williamson’s presentations. They wrote: “His lecture amazed us in its scope and breadth of view.” Adamski’s co-author on his book Flying Saucers Have Landed – Desmond Leslie – was also someone Helen and Bryant met on their road trip. They said of Leslie: “We enjoyed the Saucerer Royal very much and feel that he is among those chosen to bring the New Age messages to doubting humanity.” Then, on April 22, 1955, the pair went from being interviewers of those who had seen UFOs to witnesses themselves. They had now become a part of the phenomenon. The location was a few miles from Joshua Tree, California. Helen shouted: “It is a mother-ship, a cigar-shaped mother-ship!” Silver-white in color, the craft was soon gone. George Van Tassel was interviewed during the Reeve’s journey through California, as was Contactee Daniel Fry, and Meade Layne. Much of the rest of the book is focused on, for example, “clairaudience,” “projections of Consciousness,” “Samhadic meditation,” “spectrums of sense,” and “vibratory frequency explanation of outer-space.” All of which was quite a change in the lives of the Reeve’s.

So, in conclusion, what we have here is this: the story of two people – Helen and Bryant Reeve – who in November 1953 had no time at all for UFOs. Their lives and thoughts on Flying Saucers and alien life, however, were radically altered in an amazingly quick time. To the point that they came to believe the words of just about all of the well-known Contactees of that era. Then, they had their encounter – which changed them profoundly. And, as the above-paragraph makes clear, they soon turned their attentions to matters more of a mind-body-spirit nature. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that at all. The hazard, though, as I see it, is this: for reasons that are not really clear, the UFO subject has the curious and sinister – and sometimes tragic – ability to radically alter the mindsets of those who immerse themselves in the controversy. A kind of control? Maybe.


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Standingstones

Celestial
When I look back 50 to 60 years ago it seemed as if the contactees and others were very gullible about UFOs. Then I look at todays situation and it appears that not much has changed. People will believe anything with little or no evidence.
 
When I look back 50 to 60 years ago it seemed as if the contactees and others were very gullible about UFOs. Then I look at todays situation and it appears that not much has changed. People will believe anything with little or no evidence.
I really struggle with this conundrum, because my own sighting alongside four of my neighbors when I was seven years old is as clear in my memory as the day it happened, and it totally changed my life...and although I ran home to get the family camera to take a picture, the objects had already departed and didn't come back. So although I know it happened, I can't provide a whiff of evidence that it did.

So I know for a fact that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence - things happen...lots of things happen actually...which leave no other evidence beyond the eyewitness testimony.

Therefore the absence of supporting physical evidence is insufficient to determine whether or not a reported incident actually transpired. Although more tenuous, a deeper examination is required to assess the credibility of the witness and their account. And that often requires an almost superhuman level of impartiality, because "what the universe deems reasonable" and "what modern human society deems reasonable" can be two very different things. For example - and this one's very fundamental - our human society has deemed the prospect of alien visitation to be "an extraordinary claim," which invokes Carl Sagan's rule "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." However, in an evidently infinite universe teeming with warm wet worlds ripe for the evolution of intelligent life like our own, the prospect of alien visitation is a highly probable, perhaps even mundane, likelihood...as Fermi said seventy years ago: "where is everybody?" Because given what we know about the universe, intelligent life even more advanced than our own should be traversing the stars with great regularity. Clearly contemporary human notions of "extraordinary" are in direct opposition to our scientific understanding of our place in the universe.

And complicating the matter even further; we're not talking about some natural phenomenon like tornadoes or ball lightning - we're talking about a phenomenon involving alien agency. If "they" don't want to send our global civilization into turmoil and possible implosion, then "they" would have an interest in acting in a covert manner. Science is great at studying the mute, mindless realm of particles blinding obeying the laws of physics; but it's totally ill-prepared to study a phenomenon which appears to involve a high degree of intelligence and the will to be elusive.

Regarding a contactee scenario, let's put the shoe on the other foot; if we were capable of rapid interstellar spaceflight and we were to visit another world at an inferior level of development...could we make contact with a local, and leave no significant evidence behind? Yer darn tootin' we could. Our understanding of forensics and covert ops would obviously surpass that of a less advanced civilization. For example, we might make contact with one denizen of this hypothetical other world, and then stage some other contact events with other denizens which make those witnesses seem foolish and crazy, in order to make all contactee stories seem silly and laughable to the public of that planet.

Would an interstellar-capable civilization be smart enough and capable enough to pull that off? Of course.

So it's very complicated, isn't it? We humans have gotten pretty good at studying the simple stuff - fundamental particles and atoms and celestial bodies. But when it comes to studying phenomena involving other intelligences...intelligences that have surpassed our own scientific capabilities, I find that we're not even asking the right fuckin' questions yet.
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
When I look back 50 to 60 years ago it seemed as if the contactees and others were very gullible about UFOs. Then I look at todays situation and it appears that not much has changed. People will believe anything with little or no evidence.

That is an extremely uniformed statement. There are tons of evidence. Although I got tired showing it, only to be ignored.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Science is great at studying the mute, mindless realm of particles blinding obeying the laws of physics; but it's totally ill-prepared to study a phenomenon which appears to involve a high degree of intelligence and the will to be elusive.

This is a good point I'd like to comment on first, which I agree with, science has been brutal in its study of life on earth in my opinion, killing countless specimens and there's no reason to think we wouldn't do the same on for instance, Europa, if we were to discover a whole ocean filled with life in abundance and varied...When it comes to discovering and understanding life with much higher intelligence than ours, intelligent life that can build ships to travel space almost effortlessly and arrive here to earth or anywhere else they desire, then our science community is sorely lacking and out of its league...Whether we want to admit it or not, we are a primitive species, even with all of our 'advanced technology and understanding human beings on earth are primitive creatures when gazed upon from another perspective...This should not depress us nor give is reason to give up the search and understanding of these visitors from other worlds, on the contrary it's a driving force to move forward and pull ourselves as a species out of the darkness, which to a certain extent has been self-created...

...
 
I was wondering where had you disappeared for so long, Mr. @Thomas R. Morrison .
I hate to have to shelve my personal interests for long stretches like this, but this year I've been given a chance to basically build a new company and train a new apprentice and gain back the ground I lost when some very powerful adversaries torpedoed my career ten years ago, so I'm running with it and working around the clock to make some wonderful things happen. But I did find something that you're going to love, and I'll be back to share it with you soon ;

This is a good point I'd like to comment on first, which I agree with, science has been brutal in its study of life on earth in my opinion, killing countless specimens and there's no reason to think we wouldn't do the same on for instance, Europa, if we were to discover a whole ocean filled with life in abundance and varied...When it comes to discovering and understanding life with much higher intelligence than ours, intelligent life that can build ships to travel space almost effortlessly and arrive here to earth or anywhere else they desire, then our science community is sorely lacking and out of its league...Whether we want to admit it or not, we are a primitive species, even with all of our 'advanced technology and understanding human beings on earth are primitive creatures when gazed upon from another perspective...This should not depress us nor give is reason to give up the search and understanding of these visitors from other worlds, on the contrary it's a driving force to move forward and pull ourselves as a species out of the darkness, which to a certain extent has been self-created...
...
You're a wise man, nivek. That's exactly the reason why I relentlessly hammer on the hubris of human mind: because our conceit is our most formidable adversary on the path to reason and a deeper understanding of our place in the universe. We must abandon the laughable arrogance of believing that we humans are the most advanced form of intelligence in this universe, so we can begin asking the right questions, and begin moving forward until we too are a rational and compassionate starfaring species. It's not hyperbole to state that our survival as a species absolutely depends upon it, because until we've colonized other worlds - or perhaps established ourselves as a nomadic interstellar species, we face a very grave risk of extinction on many fronts; nuclear war, an asteroid strike, an unleashed bioweapon, and eventually the certain doom of our Sun swelling into its red giant phase and enveloping the planet.

The precious little flicker of soul that's only now beginning to flourish within the human race...which took billions of years of evolution to produce...could be lost forever if we don't embrace the prospect of becoming an interstellar species and make it happen before some inevitable global calamity wipes us from our world. Plato, Shakespeare, Christ, Buddha, Einstein, and countless other visionaries - all of their achievements and sacrifices will be in vain if we don't find the humility and the audacity to see the true promise of ufology: the prospect of recognizing and emulating the superior technology represented by this phenomenon.

All other considerations aside, the reality of AAVs is a beacon of hope that shows us that it is possible to traverse the stars - and we too can achieve it, if we dare to dream it into reality for ourselves. But if we submit to the cynicism of those who try to convince us that it's all swamp gas and seagulls, then we won't even try, and our entire species could pay the price of taking our chances on this one little planet for one day too long. That's what's at stake here: our entire species. If we listen to the snide and self-important cynics like Mick West and Robert Sheaffer and KKKorff and Phil Klass, then our species will go extinct because we'll continue to believe that manned interstellar spaceflight is impossible...even though thousands and perhaps millions of our people have witnessed stunning aerial demonstrations by alien civilizations that prove that it's not only possible, but damn good fun.
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
But I did find something that you're going to love, and I'll be back to share it with you soon ;

I thought that you might be interested in discussing on your podcast, with that physicist friend of yours, those general relativity tit-bits that @waitedavid137 shared with us. They are very interesting as far as interstellar travel is concerned and one would certainly want to hear somebody knowledgeable to dive into details. There are references to sci papers in those threads.

You might even invite @waitedavid137 to a podcast. Just an idea?
 
"We must abandon the laughable arrogance of believing that we humans are the most advanced form of intelligence in this universe, so we can begin asking the right questions, and begin moving forward until we too are a rational and compassionate starfaring species. It's not hyperbole to state that our survival as a species absolutely depends upon it, because until we've colonized other worlds - or perhaps established ourselves as a nomadic interstellar species, we face a very grave risk of extinction on many fronts; nuclear war, an asteroid strike, an unleashed bioweapon, and eventually the certain doom of our Sun swelling into its red giant phase and enveloping the planet."

7ab.gif


Hear, hear! People with vision are those that help our species progress.

Naysayers, if we had listened to them all our history, we would still be living in trees.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
I really struggle with this conundrum, because my own sighting alongside four of my neighbors when I was seven years old is as clear in my memory as the day it happened, and it totally changed my life...and although I ran home to get the family camera to take a picture, the objects had already departed and didn't come back. So although I know it happened, I can't provide a whiff of evidence that it did.

So I know for a fact that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence - things happen...lots of things happen actually...which leave no other evidence beyond the eyewitness testimony.

There have been some extraordinary experiences in my past that I cannot provide any evidence for, some of which have also been instrumental in shaping who I am now, however, all I have is my own testimony and my own being as I stand now for evidence...Your last paragraph speaks volumes...

...
 
I know memory is a fickle thing on people, but theres one thing i can say about memory on my own account. This might not be true for all people, but dramatic and life impacting moments tend to stay in memory better than other events. I have personal experience of this. Its nothing extraordinary, but rather a sad fact of life, losing a loved one.

When my mother died of cancer, I still remember details about the day, I remember the time of day, what program was on the tv when I received the call and the after events of that day pretty well. And this took place 20 years ago. None of it has blurred really. The more dramatic the event, the more it stays in there, at least in my case.

If its true in your case Thomas, I can say I believe you experienced something extraordinary, which also stayed. And no one can take that away from you.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
 
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