ETI: OUT THERE AND/OR HERE?

This section features articles discussing the possibilities of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and the search for evidence of ETI in a wide variety of scentific-based methods.

ETI MESSAGES IN A COSMIC BOTTLE

On Observation and Introspection: "As we peer through the window of time and space provided by the radio antenna, the assumptions behind the search process reflect back on us, bringing home the truth that those assumptions are as much a function of the principle of human psychology as they are of engineering and physics." -- John C. Baird, Professor of Psychology and Mathematics/Social Science at Dartmouth College, in "The Inner Limits of Outer Space" (University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1987). In 1979 psychologist Baird participated in a NASA study group, which included astronomers, engineers and physicists, on the feasibility of detecting and understanding an extraterrestrial message. He concluded that introspection and a wider prespective is required first, putting aside many narrow earth-bound assumptions and mindsets, thus enhancing and improving SETI research.

SEARCHING FOR ETI PROBES IN EARTH'S NEIGHBORHOOD: "COSMIC FED-EXS" & AN "INTERSTELLAR INTERNET?"

By Harold Egeln

"Radio Days" is not only a Woody Allen movie but it could be the title of a SETI documentary, Woody Allen reprising his role from his "Sleeper" movie doing commentary. Instead of the old-time "The Shadow" and Big Band music shows of the Allen movie, the "radio stations" from distant worlds -- WETI, KETI or CETI -- seem to be silent, so far (with only a few tantalizing, fleeting blips and several apparent false alarms), when SETI's radio telescopes scan the heavens for a "WOW!" signal. While the noble SETI effort must continue, with persistence likely paying off with success in the long-run, there may be a better way to detect ETI signals, some scientists suggest.

Look for interstellar probes in or near the solar system, such as "cosmic Fed-Ex" packages of information or "an encyclopedia galactia," they say.

Among the first science papers to propose a search for ETI probes was "Interstellar Probes: A New Approach to SETI" by Robert A. Freitas Jr. in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1980, issue 33, pages 95-100. (Freitas has degrees in physics and psychology, and took part in a 1980 NASA feasibility study of self-repliating space factories.) Since Freitas published his paper 25 years ago, other proposals have been made, as we shall soon discuss here.

While speculating about ETI radio signals, Timothy Ferris (author of "Coming of Age in the Milky Way") in his 1999 PBS-TV film, "Life Beyond Earth" said this is the last of the four episodes about advanced ETI civilizations:

"Perhaps long ago they established a permanent network to link the inhabitated planets... If so, the first signal we receive can come from an Interstellar Internet, deployed over eons by robotic space craf. Such a network can bring libraries of information with relatively close reach of words."

THE MYSTERY SATELLITES

"Mysterious satellites" were officially reported six times in orbit around the Earth in the 1950s before the first Sputnik of October 4, 1957. Clyde Tombough, the discoverer of Pluto over 20 years before, studied two moonlets in orbit in 1954.

The radar detections were: April 1949, first reported by Naval Commander Robert McLaughlin, a rocket expert; 1953: one in a near-equitorial orbit 400-to-600 miles out, and the two at Lagrange Points, then calling the satellites "Toro moonlets"; 1954, an "Aviation Week" report ("Satellite Scare," Aug. 23, 1954) told of Dr. Lincoln La Paz (a government expert on meteors) announcement of a satellites orbiting at 400 and 600 miles out; a search by the Adler Planetarium in Chicago tracked one or two of these "moonlets"; in 1957, three months before the USSR launched the first Earth satellite in October, Italian astronomers tracked a large mystery satellite, also reported in the news, like the others had been.

Even in the Space Age, an unknown satellite, tracked by the Navy's Space Survelienance Radar and photograped by Grumman Aircraft Company's tracking camera, was seen in retrograde orbit from late 1959 to mid-1960, travelling east to west direction at a speed of 25,000 mph, the required velocity for such a satellite (none of this nature have been launched from Earth).

"The U.S, is trying hard to unravel a mystery which involved everybody in the world. A satellitte, clearly spotted on radar, was circling the Earth, but no one claimed it... It travels westwardly, whereas other satellites are launched eastwardly to take advantage of the Earth's spin." [LIFE Magazine, February 22, 1960.]

Having read and heard about this in the news and on TV, I, then a boy, and friends witnessed the strange satellite during one of its predicted passages over the New York metro area, moving much faster than any other satellite, such as Echo I visible that August. The strange satellite, giving off a bright red color, was an impressive, unforgettable sight! After a few weeks in orbit, it, like the "mystery satellites" of the early 1950s, vanished from orbit, suggesting that it disintegrated or was removed somehow from orbit.

Were these media-reported "mystery satellites" ETI space probes? We simply don't know. And they've been largely, even conviently perhaps, forgotten. Other unknown satellites have been tracked since the early days of satellites until now by the U.S. Space Command and NORAD, as reported in former New York Times reporter Howard Blum's book, "Out There" in 1989, and most or all could be secret satellites orbited for military purposes by Earth nations... or maybe not?

Today there are two or more science websites devoted to the search for ETI space probes, SETV [the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Vehicles) and Scott Stride's Intellerstellar Probes, and the Open SETI research website also looks into the issue (on links below).

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE ETI INTERSTELLAR PROBES KIND?

The Interstellar Probes Organization website, placed by Scott Stride, a NASA scientist who has worked at JPL; SETV, a website of OSR - the Organization for SETV Research, maintained by a contractor who has worked for NASA and JPL; Open SETI, maintained by Gerry Zeitlin; and Invitation to ETI, a website of Allen Tough, a Canadian psychology professor emeritus and SETI League member, are not UFO nor paranormal websites.

They are very serious scientific attempts to re-focus part of SETI's search for possible ETI space probes "closer to home," namely in the vicinity of our Solar System and in Earth's local cosmic neighborhood. They are not official NASA websites, but present the personal views of their own and those of others referred to on their fascinating, thought-provoking websites.

Stride's Interstellar Probes is dedicated to "the search for robotic interstellar probes or ETI probe visitations," according to an abstract introduction by Stride. It also considers Anomalistic Observational Phenomena - AOP - as defined by Robert Baker in the "Journal of Astronautical Sciences" a few decades ago. The AOP term is preferred over UFOs, and includes a wider range of reported unconvential phenomena.

There are two very interesting links below about Interstellar Probes. One is a SETI League editorial by Stride, "Probing for ETI Probes in the Solar System" from January 2003 expressing Stride's argument for such a search as complementing the work of radio SETI. The other link is of an interview with Stride, "Can SETI Probe for Probes?" which appeared in "Astrobiology Magazine" on April 12, 2004.

In these articles, Stride tells of his inspiration spurred by NASA's Sojourner rover on Mars, and a scientist's comment that "our probes are an extension of our senses," which got Stride thinking deeply about the possibilities of ETI-made probes.

HIP, HIP ARRAY!

The Interstellar Probes website (which is still under construction, FYI), among its thought-provoking scientific treasures, has a paper by scientist Bruce Cornett, "Contact In Context: Solar System SETI Using Radio Telescope Arrays. It's noted that between 1961 and 1982 there were eight groups of searches looking at the L5 site as a place for possible ETI probes; none were found.

Hope is being placed in the ATA, the Allen Telescope Array now under construction in Hat Creek, Californa, which will have, when completed within a year or so, 350 20-radio telescope antennae that could search for "Unidentified Radio Signals - URS" from afar or nearby ETI probes. The ATA, set for completion in 2008, is named after its chief financial backer, Paul Allen, who has also been involved in Burt Rutan's SpapeShip One suborbiter.

An earlier website overflowing with a wealth of resources, scientific papers, abstracts, articles and other venues of inquiry, is SETV, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Visitations, placed by OSR. "SETV should not be confused with UFOlogy!" states the introduction, making clear its framework of research.

The site contains the history of SETI, starting with the famous article in the "Nature" science journal back in 1959 by Philip Mossison (who just recently passed away) and Guiseppe Coconni, and the work of Frank Drake with Project Ozma in April 1960 at Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, bringing the state of SETI research up to the present time.

SETV provides "a new search model in the Quest for ETI" states its website's author. There is a tremendous amount of information on the SETV site, along with a section on creating probes from Earth to be launched to specifically search for ETI probes. It is truly an adventure, in itself, to read and to study the SETV site over time.

The Open SETI website, created by Gerry Zeitlin, complements both mentioned sites, and carries the discussions and research into other related areas, bravely doing a truly stellar job, looking at SETI in different perspectives and advocating a greater understandiing of other disciplines to widen the types of SETI searches.

Astrophysicist Dr. Rudy Schild, of the Smithsonian Observatory at Harvard University, known for his groundbreaking research into bayronic dark matter, has given talks for The Mindshit Institute, in New York City and Maine, about his own independent study of AOP close encounters.

He theorizes, based on his research, that advanced ETI civilizations may beam their "spaceships" to our solar system through advanced holographic-type means, transferring their information about the "craft" or "ETI probe" to our cosmic neighborhood, where it the "information" is re-assembled and where it takes on mass and energy in our physical frameworks.

Brilliant science-fiction Philip K. Dick, who died in the early 1980s at age 54, wrote about "ETI probes" (not his term) two decades ago in his VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System) book series, which included "Radio Free Ablemuth," with an ETI probe in Earth orbit transmitting to his brain. Was he on to something or in touch with the numinous while SETI was still a fledgeling science and before the shortsighted Senator William Proxmire awarded SETI his "Golden Fleece Award."

INVITING ETI... OR HAS ETI INVITED US?

The "Invitation to ETI" website, founded by Canadian Allen Tough, a psychology professor emeritus and SETI league member, is a horse of a different color but within the Emerald City of Ozma, so to speak. It is "a Web-based, scientifically credible SETI experiment," the site's introduction says, involving the input of "about 100 scientiists, artists and futurists."

"This invitation is issued in hopes of establishing a constructive dialogue between humanity and our cosmic cousins," explains the website, which has eight sections. The project invites ETI to communicate with it via the Internet, a cosmic e-mail from afar.

In the rationale for searching for ETI probes, the website cites an abstract by Professor Ray Norris, of the SIRO Australian Telescope Network Facility in Epping, Australia titled "How Old Is ET?"

In his conclusion, Norris said: "Any successful SETI detection will have detected a civilisation almost certainly at least a million years older than ours, and more probably of the order of a billion years."

Based on that extremely and incredibly long history, the website explains: "This means their science, technology, philosophy, goals, values and ethics have had a million years to develop, whereas ours has had only a few thousand. We envision civilizations that, during their million year period, have developed smart small probes (or some other means) for studying our civilization, including its worldwide computer network called the World Wide Web."

The website has a "Hello to ETI" invitation to communicate through the Internet and several excellent, highly recommended papers and resources, along with criteria on how to determine the validity of an ETI signal.

THE EMERALD CITY OF OZMA & THE COSMIC WONDERLAND INTERFACE

The "Invitation to ETI" premise is an innovative and smartly creative SETI-type proposal to "invite" ETI to make contact through the Internet. Given that Timothy Ferris, as mentioned in his PBS-TV series, postulated a possible ETI galactic-wide Internet-like system, it makes sense.

Then on the Ufology side, there is the famous author and gifted Whitley Strieber, whose first close encounter book, the courageous and best-seller "Communion: A True Story" in 1987 and subsequent books have attracted a wide and large readership. He basically has said that it is we who have been "invited" by an unknown hyper-intelligence.

What must be considered is that all SETI and AOP efforts have their plus and minus sides. Any such efforts, no matter by whom or by what sincere manner or honest motivation, must play fair in their peer review process to achieve an understanding of the incomprehensible, without censorship nor rancor when faced with compeling circumstantial evidence about apparent on-going "ETI-like communication." Such, for example, has been reported on a real-time basis in "The Project Wonderland Chronicles," a mostly obscure on-line documentation that combines and intermixes all aspects of the Contact experience as reported by S.P.A.C.E., chronicling an interacion coming about indirectly because of the World Wide Web.

Open minds and open hearts are required to do this otherworldly research. Unfortunately, in some cases, Ufology has an historical record of blunders and blinders when it comes to scientific peer review, doing the same job that debunkers and skeptics do, with no sense of the impact of their actions. Blinders are at their worst when trying to see through a Mirror in the Dark, which is what both SETI-ologists and UFO-ologists are researching.

Hopefully, blocking reports of apparent "ETI-human communication," however bizarre it may seem at first glance, will not happen in this grand Contact effort. We may, indeed, live in a well populated cosmic neighborhood, where the extraordinay may be encountered both Out There and here on Earth, as we shall now examine.

"DEAR ETI..." In the September 2, 2004 issue of the prestigious scientific journal "Nature," a fascinating feature cover-story appeared titled "Dear ETI..." It was about a paper prepared by two mathematicians, Christopher Rose, of the Rutgers University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Gregory Wright, of Antiope Associates, both in New Jersey. Their science paper proposes the concept that a more sensible way for ETI civilizations to communicate would be in "message-in-a-bottle way of sending physical objects through space which are highly energy efficient, and we should search for artifacts in the solar system." Well-known science reporter Dennis Overbye penned a major news article on this paper in The New York Times, for which he frequently writes, calling these suggested ET probes "Cosmic Fed-Exs" as packages of information about the ETI civilization. It would be an advanced form of the now old-fashioned LP records aboard the 1977 Voyager spacecrafts, humanity's "slow boats to the stars" on an epic interstellar trip. Then, in the January-February 2005 edition of the prestiious "Journal of the British Interplanetary Society," a team of four scientists (astrophysicist Bernard Haisch and scientists James Deardorff, Bruce Maccabee and Harold Puthoff) suggested that the Earth is "embedded" in a huge galactic civlization, citing recent scientific discoveries and new theories to support their arguments. Their paper, "Inflation Theory Implications for Extra-Terrestrial Visitations" advanced the ETI interstellar probe concept further by the hypothesis that Earth is, in all probability, in the midst of highly advanced ETI civilizatiions in our section of the Milky Way. The team also called for serious scientific study of AOP (UFO) reports in connection with their proposal. Their paper was explained on the Space.com website in an article, "ET Visitations: Scientists See High Likelihood" by Leonard David, Space.com's senior space writer, appearing on January 14, 2005. All this material, with their full details, is available for your study on our links list below, so that our readers can draw their own conclusions about these ideas. THE CHALLENGE OF AOP (ANOMALISTIC OBSERVATIONAL PHENOMENA) Then what about the AOPs, more commonly called UFOs, reported not only in our times but throughout recorded history? Are they the more prevelent forms of "ETI space probes" here in the Earth environment and do they connect with and, perhaps, "download" information into the brains or minds of witnesses who experience close encounters? Can "ETI probe" visitations and the information they contain and even seemingly transmit, through unknown extraordinary means, to witnesses, be of an order that is beyond our concepts of technology, and be something far beyond a "techno-culture" as we know it, given that a so-called "ETI civilization" may be miillions or even a billion years ahead of us? Just imagine what they know that we don't (some great science fiction writers have)... We may have only a glimmer of the true fabric of reality and the AOPs, or the future detection of "ETI probes," may give us a tantalizing glimpse of their bizarre reality, and how they experience it and navigate through it. It seems, given the countless number of reports by credible witnesses, that there is something of an unknown source present in the Earth environment, playing hide-and-seek by nature or design, which is far beyond our current concepts of what constitutes advanced forms of life, intelligence, technology and civilization. And the human experience is one aspect of a grand expansive cosmic ecology filled with an incredible variety of "nonhuman hyper-intelligences" defying convential defination and interpertation beyond the psychological symmetry principle pattern-sensing of what is familiar and explainable to humans? For those of us who experience and research AOP, such as through the S.P.A.C.E network and other investigative means, it would appear that "contact" is happening here and now in a variety of extraordinary and unexpected ways to a large number of people, many of whom are puzzled, disturbed and/or enlighted by the interface. And that many AOPs, perhaps the most common, controversial and confusing form of theorized "ETI probes," are of an interactive, responsive nature and seem to emerge from deeply enigmatic sources. The study of this profound mystery, which should not be derided, dismissed nor censored (as noted in our last issue's article on the ABC News Peter Jennings UFO Report on ABC) could extend the ordinary knowledge paradigms of how the human mind, consciousness and intelligence can act and relate. THE "VOICE OF CONTACT" HERE & NOW? The AOP visitation enigma, widely experienced by both non-scientists and scientists alike (some of whom remain part of an "invisible college") may very well be the actual unrecognized and unacknowledged Voice of Contact communicating with a confused and misinterpretating humanity (as would be expected of true contact), bringing puzzlng messages and riddles because of the likely preposterous sources of the "contact." It is like a cosmic symphony or chorus out of tune with human expectations, a cosmic dance out of step with how SETI envisions contact. From serious scientifc studies of AOP and possible "ETI probes," so much may be learned that could possibly benefit and advance humanity, presenting a true scientific and cultural challenge. To investigate requires widening perspectives and engaging deep introspection while going down a enigmatic quantum rabbit hole and entering a "Cosmic Wonderland" beyond our wildest dreams and imaginations, taking us on an incredible space adventure through a "Looking-Glass Universe." ********************************************************* NOTE: The information on the "mystery satellites" is from the "Watchers II" (Wild Flower Press 1995, pages 225-231) by Raymond Fowler, an amateur astronomer, AOP-encounter author and retired U.S, Air Force Security Service and GTE Strategic Systems Division task manager and senior planner. He lives in New England and operates the Woodside Planetarium and Observatory, which he constructed. *********************************************************

SCHOOL GALACTIA: BUILDING A BRIDGE "Without the establishment of a shared communication format, one civilization's book of universal wisdom will be another's book of confusion.... Teachers of young children, in or out of the classroom, are well aware of the importance of building a bridge between the familiar and the novel. If new concepts are presented too quickly or on too lofty a plane, we won't get a word of it. In all likelihood this situation would trigger a worldwide rise in occult beliefs about aliens that would tend to displace the cooler tone of scientific logic. As noted, we mght be more technically able to mimic messages and might unconsciously feign comprehension without grasping the underlying meaning. Let's hope, therefore, that School Galactica eases us into the stream of things with a course of study we can master." -- psychologist and social scientiest John C. Baird, "The Inner Limits of Outer Space" University of New England Press, 1987, NASA SETI study group participant, pages 193 and 208.

ABC-TV's UFO SPECIAL ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN A "COSMIC QUANTUM CHESHIRE CAT"

EDITORIAL By Harold Egeln

MARCH 2005 --- The subject of UFO reports has been fiercely debated for almost 60 years, with no clear resolution nor definate answers.

A recent major network TV special did not clear up that debate, but may have muddled it by not doing a thorough investigative job, even apparenly ignoring findings presented to the producers by UFO report supporters. That shows the need for a much deeper look at the UFO enigma, which seems far more complex than the "skimming the surface" approach shown in the program.

To dramatize the issue involving SETI and UFOs through the performing arts, in November and December of 2000 a play called "Space" played at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre here in New York City. Written and directed by Tina Landau, the play was compared to an "Alice in Wonderland set against an ever changing universe."

The play featured two prime performers: a female SETI scientist, "Dr. Bernadette Jump Cannon," somewhat like Dr. Jill Tarter, and a university neuropsychiatrist, "Dr. Allen Saunders," modeled after the late psychiatrist Dr. John Mack of the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mack, who was killed by a car in London last September 27 at age 74 after giving a lecture on T.E. Lawrence, not only wrote "A Prince of Our Disorder" about Lawrence of Arabia, which garnered him a 1977 Pultizer Prize, but he wrote two controversial books: "Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens" (1994) and "Passport to the Cosmos" (1999), about close enounters. By doing so, he bravely risked his reputation and almost lost his post at Harvard after an in-house investigation.

Scenes from "Space" could have been interspersed occassionally during the February 24th two-hour program on the ABC-TV network, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs - Seeing Is Believing."

The program was a mixed bag (as is the nature of the UFO mystery itself!) of conflicting and contradictory viewpoints, with UFO witnesses and skeptics at odds over the question of UFO reality. That is a necessary and natural dynamic of the scientific process when science is confronted by new phenomena that do not fit usual pathways of inquiry and defies familiar patterns. But it can also cause a "Us and Them" conflicting point-of-views.

The program was viewed by 11.6 million households, according to the ratings... February is a big TV sweeps month.

Throughout the program, there seemed to be evidence from some tantilizing "high quality" UFO reports deserving further serious scientific study, as urged in the program, such as a well-witnessed and well-documented UFO incident at Minot Missile Base in North Dakota on October 24,1968, and a low-flying UFO witnessed by police in southern Illinois towns in January 2000.

But other close encounter reports, specifically the famous 1947 Roswell incident and UFO abduction accounts as highlighted by the research of Budd Hopkins, a New York City artist and author of three books on the topic, seemed to merit undeserved dismissal, as presented in the program. This segment, with comments by people working with Hopkins who felt victimized by their personal UFO encounters, was poorly edited and seemed skewed.

As counterpoint to Hopkins, there were two Harvard academics relegating UFO abductions to being a production of sleep paralysis effects, ineffectual hypnotic techniques by UFO-believers and over-active imaginations. It seemed to be a shaky attempt at an objective balancing act for the program's producers, however valiant their motives were.

What the producers brushed aside were reports that many UFO stealth encounters do not take place in bedrooms but in a variety of places and circumstances, with a fully awakened consciousness, as reported by the witnesses. That was ignored in the abduction segment and it simply cannot be ignored as a matter of media fairness and accuracy.

However, the Jennings UFO Report was still a bold step for ABC News anchorman Jennings, with the exits of NBC's Brokow and CBS's Rather, to present this issue.

UFO reports have been the topic of several past network TV specials, such as Nova's "Kidnapped By UFOs?" program on PBS in 1996 [there's a link to that NOVA site below] and a CBS News special hosted by Walter Cronkite back in the late 1960s.

There was also a recent major non-UFO special on TV about SETI, "Naked Science: Alien Contact," a Pioneer Productions program shown on the National Geographic Channel this past November.

The big issue, as SETI researchers and astronomers asked in the Jennings UFO Report is: Where is the hard evidence and solid proof? "Where's the pen from the dashboard?" asked Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute. What eyewitness testimony is accepted as evidence in a court of law does not apply in the court of science, as claimed by Director Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

The UFO enigma, by its very nature or even by design, seems to have a built-in penchant for self-sabotaging itself, negating its own displays and "evidence." But that characteristic is what makes it all the more so intriquing, whether one is a healthy skeptic, an outright debunker or a "believer," as the program labels mystified UFO witnesses, the latter who are obviously sincerely affected by what they saw.

That makes for a profound dilemma for both the SETI and the UFO folk. And answers may await, not solely with one nor the other, but in an unknown borderland between the two, as dramatized by the "Space" play at the Public Theatre.

"We don't have UFOs, only UFO reports. The patterns and contents of these reports constitute the UFO phenomenon. The phenomenon says nothing about little green men. Belief or disbelief in UFOs is irrelevant." -- the late astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek in an interview in "OMNI" magazine, February 1985.

SCIENCE & UFOs Among the scientists on the program were astronomer Dr. Frank Drake, famous for launching the pioneer SETI in April 1960 at Green Bank Observatory with Project Ozma; Director Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium in New York; NASA planetary scientist Dr. Chris McKaye, known for his Mars studies; SETI Institute Director Dr. Seth Shostak; astronomer James McGaha of the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona; SETI researcher Dr. Jill Tarter; Harvard psychiatry professors Dr. Susan Clancy and Dr. Richard McNaly; and Dr. John Gibbons, former President Clinton's Science Advisor. All skeptics of UFO reports. Scientists open to investigating UFO reports included Dr. Michio Kaku, a world-famous theoritical physicist at CUNY and author of "Beyond Einstein," "HyperSpace" and the new "Parallel Worlds" (he was featured in a major segment where he calls for more scientific studies of high quality UFO cases and to look at what a millions-year-old spacefaring civilization can achieve); Dr. Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist famed for his Roswell UFO studies and books (the Roswell UFO scenario was trashed by the program, backed by compeling arguments); and the late astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, shown in archival clips first as a skeptic in the 1960s working as Project Blue Book's science UFO investigator and then in 1983, in a turn-about, as the director/founder of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). Also shown from CUFOS were Dr. Mark Rodingher and author Jerome Clarke, along with others such as Dr. Robert Goldberg, a Western Michigan University professor. Two outright skeptics, the anti-UFO Michael Shermer, publisher of "Skeptic Magazine," and former CIA operative Karl Pflock, a UFO researcher who debunks the Roswell UFO crash story and works for the "Saucer Smear" publication, were interviewed. There was truly impressive and compelling accounts by UFO and close encounter witnesses interviewed in our time, recounting the Minot and Illinois sightings, and witnesses of "the Phoenix Lights" of 1997 in Arizona, and of military and commercial pilots who had astounding UFO sightings. These sightings were recreated using realistic animation, sanctioned and approved by the eyewitnesses. Their testimony was sincere and showed how a UFO sighting can affect skilled witnesses. The Jennings UFO Report recreated with archival film clips the early UFO craze of the late 1940s and early 1950s, culminating with the UFO sightings over Washington, DC in July 1952. This was accompanied by entertaining clips of sci-fi movie classics such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), "War of the Worlds" (1953), and "Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers" (1956). Then Peter Jennings made it clear that it wasn't the UFOs themselves that were a threat, but the high volume of UFO reports from the public back then. The program explained that the Air Force, in 1953, launched a a strategy to debunk, dismiss and ridicule UFO reports in an attempt to discourage such reports. That was a dishonest move by the military. The ABC News program was not a thorough investigative job, but it still suggested a reality to some excellent UFO reports and discounted UFO abduction reports. The program relegated a large part of "Ufology" to be a matter of faith and belief, like a religion, rather than of fact and scentific results. "I see it as a shadow of the work I do," said NASA's McKaye. Being very familiar with all aspects of the UFO problem from many years of active research with other people through the S.P.A.C.E. Group and by personal experiences, I must note that there is an impressive list of scientists who have already seriously studied UFO reports who were not mentioned in the ABC Special. Among many, they include: 1) The late Dr. James McDonald, an atmospheric scientist in the 1960s and 1970s, known for his studies of the effects of jet exhaust on the upper atmosphere, and who was ridiculed and even hounded for his UFO report studies, ruining and ending his life. 2) Astronomer and information technology specialist Jacques Vallee, author of several thoughtful UFO books offering other theories aside from "spacecraft" for UFO reality. He was the model for the "Lacombe" role in Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters." 3) Dr. Harley Rutledge, an astrophysics professor at the University of Missouri whose fieldwork studies, in the 1970s, of UFOs in flight using triangulation measurements, were published in his book "Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena" 25 years ago. 4) The late naturalist and scientists Ivan T. Sanderson, author of "Invisible Residents" (1970). 5) The late NASA scientist Paul Hill, whose detailed technical studies of UFOs flight behavior and propulsion theories were published postumously, by his request, a decade ago in his book "Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis;" for 25 years he acted as "NASA's unofficial clearing-house" for studying quality UFO cases. 6) Dr. Rudy Schild, an astrophysicist at Harvard University's Smithsonian Observatory known for his groundbreaking research on baryonic "dark matter," has occassionly spoken on the UFO subject and has done his own research, calling for a wider scientific investigation. 7) Astrophysicist Dr. Bernard Haisch, director of the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics and editor of the "Astrophysics Journal," who is a co-author of a new science paper, "Inflation Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation," featured in the Jan.-Feb. 2005 issue of the "Journal of the British Interplanetary Society," seeing ETI visitation now as highly likely. UFOS: A COSMIC QUANTUM CHESHIRE CAT GRINS No matter if it is matter of "alien vsitations from outer space" or, more likely, something far more profound suggesting the interface with a possible trickster-like non-human hyper-intelligence source way beyond our present comprehension, UFO reports will not go away. A solution for cooperative scientific research and true peer review, which needs to include other academic disciplines, is desperately needed, without preconceptions and biases, whatever the outcome of the studies. What the UFO Enigma offers is a Challenge to Science. It is like a Schrondinger's Cheshire Cat (rather than live or dead? it's a question of real or unreal?), filled with truly baffling, bizarre riddles, and whose Cheshire Cat Smile may tell more about the phenomenon than anything else. (That "Cheshire Cat Smile" term is used by scientists for a component of SETI software - NASA's SETI Multi-Channel Spectrum Analyzer - to detect fleeting ETI radio signals.) The UFO Enigma deserves better than the Jennings UFO Report, however valiant its producers tried to define what seems to be the undefinable. *******************************

DR. J. ALLEN HYNEK ON SETI, UFOs & SCIENCE: "Some wag has said that the ultimate aim of the SETI program is to have the not yet born talking to the long since dead, and vice versa. In essence, SETI scientists are currently listening for radio messages from distant civilizations many light-years away. If the scientists did find a message, it would be philosophically important. But I don't think it's good policy to spend millions of dollars on the SETI program and not spend even one cent to consider the possibility that the UFO phenomenon might have some bearing on the issue. It would be a tragic joke if all this money were spent searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in far places when that evidence might be under our very noses." -- -- the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek in a cover feature story interview from "OMNI" magazine, February 1985: "UFOS - CONVERTING THE DISBELIEVERS WITH SCIENCE -- The question is, Can UFOs and other so-called phenomenon be explained by the present scientific paradigm? One astronomer answers with a resounding no." by Pamela Weintraub, "Omni" senior editor, beginning on page 70.

POWERING THE EARTH WHILE LOOKING FOR E.T.

By Harold Egeln

[NOTE: This article originally appeared three years ago in the New York NSS Chapter's Newsletter (on-line and print). The speaker mentioned, Robert DeBaise, was set for a return engagement on January 22, 2005 at the NY Space Society's meeting at NYU for an update on his topic, but his talk was cancelled due to a blizzard and may be re-scheduled for March. The topic is a perfect fit for our theme of Earth-Space. Here's a brief "retro-preview" of his talk; if you're in NYC for his upcoming talk,drop by the NSS meeting and get many more details!]

New York City, February 4, 2001 -- While looking for E.T.I. leaking signals into space, how about giving clean energy solar power to Earthlings at the same time?

That's the premise of "Powering the Earth While Looking for E.T.: Beyond the Square Kilometer Array" by Robert DeBiase, an independent technologist from Staten Island, speaking at a seminar sponsored by the National Space Society's New York City chapter, held at New York University.

"How do we find signals from other worlds? My answer is: build a leakage detector," said DeBiase. The challenge is a technical one and he found what he says is a cost-effective way to do it.

Through a modular units probe placed away from the noise polluted Earth, such as on the Moon's far side or at the stable Lagrange Point Two 1,500,000 kilometers from the Earth, but still in Earth's orbital plane, the array of modular detectors would be equipped to detect planetary signal leakage.

Rather than looking for deliberately intentonal beamed signals from other worlds, if they are any, as SETI radio telescopes such as the one-kilometer array or Arecibo do, this probe would be able to search for worlds filled with their own radio-TV-electronic chatter, -- exo-planetary chatterboxes which naturally leak into space.

"Our I Love Lucy TV shows are now in a 100-light-year-wide diameter signal bubble expanding outward from our world. That's a lot of Fred and Ethel Mertz," DeBiase said, noting that since 1920 our radio, and after the mid-1930's, TV signals have been leaking into space, and anyone in that expanding bubble could detect that leakage. The movie "Contact" based on Carl Sagan's 1980's book used this fact to build its story on ETI contact.
"The chance of hooking up with a directed beam signal from another world is one in a million," DeBiase said of SETI programs looking for intentionally beamed signals from otherworldly signals.

With his proposed "omni-directional array," its modular array would be searching for "a casually produced hodge-podge," the internal chatter of an alien civilization. "It would appear as a steady hum going on in all directions," DeBase said.

"As technical civilizations evolve, do they become undectable?" asked a questioner, posing the idea that they may use an Internet type system or some other unknown means of communication that does not use radio or TV type signals.

The SETI Institute has looked into the assumption, DeBiase replied. SETI radio telescopes focus largely on "the water hole, the magic frequencies," he said. where TV and radio signals may be easier to find, away from the other much more active background microwave radio noise of the entire electronic spectrum.

DeBiase's proposed array would be able to look beyond "the water hole" of microwaves, he noted, and into the whole range of cosmic noise.

To finance his array once at L-2, the backside of each modular on the probe would store solar power and then beam it back towards the Earth, where the power could be collected and used for power supplies on the Earth.

"We can't do it today," DeBiase admitted. However, with the rapid advances in Photonics, -- the technology of light --, within the near-future, it should be possible one day. The energy could be beamed via one-watt lasers to collectors on the Earth's surface or to satellies in Earth orbit.

"It would give us a return on our investment from the very start. These detectors have to be profitable," he explained. "And, because the array is modular, it can produce data from the very first transmissions."

The Terrestrial Planet Finder, to be launched by NASA in the next decade, will be a precurser of his technology, as DeBiase now looks for financial backing for his concept.

The famous Drake Equation to estimate the number of technical civilizations in our galaxy, formulated by Frank Drake when he launched the first SETI search, Project Ozma in 1960 in West Virginia, was also discussed at the seminar, along with Carl Sagan's modifed version of that system.

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IS EARTH EMBEDDED IN A VAST ETI CIVILIZATION?

By Harold Egeln

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2005 --- Most scientists and astronomers dismiss or deride UFO reports as nonsense, impossibilties and misidentifications of natural phenomena (the last happens an awful lot). But not all scientists are dismissive, and for good reason, as stated in a major feature journal of the Jan.-Feb. 2005 issue of the "The Space Science Journal" of the British Interplanetary Society" (pages 43-50).

The British Interplanetary Society, founded in 1933, is a prestigious and reputable scientific organization with a long lifespan. And Space.com Senior Editor Leonard David features the JBIS's report in an article headlined "ET Visitors: Scientists See High Likelihood." This deserves our critical attention here, even though the subject of what is popularly called UFOs is highly controversial and divisive.

The journal article, "Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitations," was written by a team of scientists: astrophysicist Bernard Haisch and physicists James Deardorf (the chief writer), Bruce Maccabee and Harold Puthoff. Haisch is the director of of the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics and the scientific editor of the "Astrophysical Journal." His team includes Puthoff, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas and known for his controversial "zero-point energy" research; Maccabbee, a physicist known in the UFO field for photographic study of UFO photos; and Deardorff, also known for his work related to unusual study.

What they report is "somewhat of a breakthrough," Haisch is quoted in David's Space.com article. What the scientists do is to compile and organize the current findings of superstring theory, wormholes, and the nature of spacetime itself, with concepts of parallel dimensions suggesting a possible multitude of other universes, possibil habitable, co-existing adjacent to our own, and look at the implications.

"We have pulled together various recent discoveries and theoritical issues that collectively point to the strong probability that we sould be in the midst of one or more huge extraterrestrial civilizations," Haisch says in the JBIS article.

They combine this all with a discovery announced last year by Australian astronomers of "a galactic habitable zone" in our Milky Way Galaxy," a bio-friendly region in which the Sun and its Earth is in the midst of; only old Sol is about a billion years younger than other Sun-like stars in this Zone. Maybe then, Space.com's David says of the Journal report, "our world is immersed in a much larger extraterrestrial civilization." Then he asks, referring to the Journal article, "Given a billion-year advanced physics, might not buzzing around the galaxy be possible?"

Within their speculation, they suggest that there may be "some genuine ET signature in the data" of truly high quality close encounter research, once the "signal" is sifted from all the "noise" produced by UFO reports. These reports, they say, need to be approached with natural critical caution but with the best of true scientific curiousity.

Are we embedded within an incomprehensibly advanced galactic civilization(s) and is its "signature," as the JBIS article authors' suggest, somewhere in the close encounter phenomena, which is a complex enigma that may present humanity with some ETI evidence far beyond comprehension and experienced by many people in forms that may hint and give riddle-like clues to its awesome existence? Furthermore, would be we able to understand and dicpher its "messages" if there is "communication?"

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FINDING WONDERLAND

This information is offered for our newsletter readers to draw their own conclusions. The topic often raises more questions than it gives answers. It is a subject that this writer is intimately familiar with, through a lifetime of study and experience, shared with many other people. You will find those extensive studies embedded within this newsletter.

"WHERE ARE THEY?" -- Enrico Fermi, early 1950s

"The FERMI PARADOX" is what famed physicist Enrico Fermi raised about the apparent absence of evidence of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence in the solar system and space a half-century ago. In April 1960 astronomer Dr. Frank Drake launched the first SETI project, Project Ozma, at Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia. The S.P.A.C.E. Website [Search Project for Aspects of Close Encounters] intensively examines, with an open-minded, proactive approach based on actual extraordinary enigmatic experiences, the Fermi Paradox, discovering not definate answers but far more questions. It is truly a journey through the Looking Glass into a Wonderland.