Aliens From Space

The Visit

In July 1997 the city of Roswell, New Mexico had a 50th year festival to mark the 1947 crash of a UFO outside the city, and the death of its four alien crew members. (Please bear with me. This will lead to meaningful topics).

Detail from “Peasant Wedding Dance” Pieter Breugel the Elder. 1566

And what a commemoration, festival, carnival it was! Thousands of people came from other states and other countries, Pictures and mockups of aliens decorated the streets, shops, billboards, and theatres. Aliens roamed the city. Missionaries scanned the skies, hoping for new souls to save. Women, who reported that they had been abducted by aliens, offered the penetrating insight that “it can be scary”. Roswell, it was noted, had become the Disney World of the alien environment.

(In viewing a video of the Roswell celebration, I found the festival to be contrived and banal. I then thought of the simple, natural, joyous celebrations by peasants, as in the painting).

The question has been raised as to why an alien ship would crash, after a successful navigation feat over some hundreds or thousands or millions of years. However, as most of us have experienced, a trip to a new location usually encounters problems only in the last few blocks when we are trying to find the address.

"You couldn't ask directions to Washington. Oh no! Asking directions wouldn't be manly!"

AIR FORCE STUDY

A UFO refers to an unidentified flying object Thousands of persons from different countries, including pilots of civilian and military aircraft, have reported seeing what appeared to be extraterrestrial vehicles.

By 1977 the Air Force decided to fund a study of UFOs, after having been notified of more than 10,000 sightings over the years. A highly-regarded physicist, Dr. Edward U. Condon of Denver University, was selected to head up a research team.

After two years of intensive study the committee decided that it did not find any useful results from the study of UFO reports, and it recommended that the government not do anything about future allegations of such sightings.

What people thought to be alien spacecraft was in reality a mixture of such things as weather balloons, marsh gases, mirages, optical illusions, fireworks, rockets, reflections, other misperceptions, and
hoaxes.

^*“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?”
“By th’ mass, and ‘tis like a camel indeed”.
“Methinks it is like a weasel”
“It is backed like a weasel”
“Or like a spaceship?”
“Very like a spaceship”
^* Hamlet to Polonius. (modified)

The conclusions of the Condon report drew a substantial amount of criticism. Peter A Sturrock of the Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, Stanford University, criticized the methodology used in the study, and pointed out that some dissenting members of the Condon staff had emphasized challenging cases and unanswered questions.

A different approach was that of the former astronaut, Maurice Minnifield, in a Northern Exposure episode, relating his encounter with a UFO. “There are things out there that we don’t or can’t understand. A reasonable, healthy, sane man, when he encounters the inexplicable, forgets about it”.

I recall a cartoon at the time, showing Dr. Condon being dragged by aliens toward their spaceship. Two of his colleagues are watching, and one calls out “Don’t worry, Dr. Condon, just tell them that you
don’t believe they exist!”

I promise that this material will morph into more serious stuff, such as: “extraordinary popular delusions”, the likelihood of ”human” life elsewhere, the nature of natural selection, culture conflict, the allocation of resources, and other heavy topics.

ABDUCTIONS BY SPACE ALIENS

"That's the last time we abduct Earthlings in the dark!"

This subject has become a thriving industry. Nova presented a program about it on PBS stations, with John Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning psychologist at Harvard, as a believer, and Carl Sagan, noted astronomer, as a disbeliever.

There was a five-day conference about abductions at MIT. The History and Discovery channels have taken to it. And it has become an area of interest for a goodly number of psychologists .

It appears that many of the purported abductions involved women of a certain age who stated that they had been required to have sexual involvements with aliens. (I’m not touching this one).

Perhaps the most complete and compelling analysis of this phenomenon appears in a book by Susan A. Clancy: “Abducted: How People Come to Believe They were Kidnapped by Aliens”. The people who believed that they had been abducted were the victims of sleep problems associated with hallucinations.

(I have not read this book. However, it is sufficient that it received a favorable review from Sharon Begley, who is a columnist with The Wall Street Journal)

INTELLIGENT LIFE

Life on earth developed from air, water, and the minerals in rocks.(1) In considering a "conservative" estimate of 70 million billion planets in the observable universe,(2) we can readily assume that there are some forms of life outside of the earth.

The presence of intelligent (human) life elsewhere is a more contentious matter. Carl Sagan believed it, as do many astronomers: impressed with the enormous number of planets. This seems to be a common sense approach. Hollywood actor Tom Cruise, when asked if he believed in aliens, replied: "Yes, of course. Are so really so arrogant as to believe we are alone in this universe? Millions of stars, and we're supposed to be the only living creatures?" (3).

Estimates of the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy range from zero to Carl Sagan's one million. Frank Drake, in his famous estimating equation, came up with a figure of 10,000. Considering that there are a hundred billion or more galaxies, having just one in our neighborhood would amount to quite a large number in the universe.

Evolutionary biologists tend to be skeptical that human life exists on other planets. They say that the evolution of intelligence is an extraordinarily improbable phenomenon. It took millions of years on our planet and occurred only once out of a billion species of animals (4).

(1) Scientific American. April 2001, p, 78).

(2) http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Extraterrestrial%20life.htm

(3) CNN. June 29, 2005

(4) "Rare Earth". P. Ward and D. Brownlee

WHY COME HERE?

"Travel Warning: The State Department recommends that residents of Andromeda galaxy avoid travel to planet Earth because of unsettled and dangerous conditions."

Considering the many billions of planets and the vast distances involved, the possibility that Earth would be chosen for a visit seems most unlikely. However, it might help a bit if these beings were to have life spans of thousands of years.

"Eight hundred light years! That would eat up most of my accrued vacation!"

ALIEN VISITORS

In books and movies there have been few instances of benign visitors to this planet; and those were individuals. For large groups of alien visitors, however, the arrivals have been intent on destruction and domination. (There was also the case in which Earth was in the way of another planet’s intended route for interplanetary travel, and therefore had to be removed. Douglas Adams: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”).

It is understandable that aliens would be portrayed as intending to destroy our civilization. It is difficult to create a widespread sense of terror in the advice of aliens on how to smooth out our currency fluctuations.

There is another approach to alien visitations, mentioned by a visitor to the Roswell festivities in 1997. He was concerned about aliens setting up businesses in the United States, but not permitting McDonald’s on other planets. This concern suggests to me that our country might face economic domination from a galactic China, taking advantage of its vastly superior productive capabilities, and requiring that we freely admit its products and investments.*

"Just can't compete with the low wages of third-galaxy worlds!"

I do want to be on record, inconsequential though it is, of favoring free and unsubsidized trade (with some exceptions for poor countries). My motto is: "Fromages Sans Frontieres".

COMMUNICATIONS

Considering that there is a very low expectancy of a visit by aliens, it leaves the possibility of our receiving messages. Radio searches for extra-terrestrial life have been proceeding for more than fifteen years. This project, SETI (Search for extraterrestrial Intelligence) enlists the idle time on computers of some three million volunteers. No signals have yet been identified.

Even if another civilization were to send signals to our earth, it is possible that they might not be recognized as such. Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at SETI, refers to Carl Sagan in this connection. Sagan “used to talk about the inhabitants of Borneo communicating with runnersand drums. Meanwhile there are radio shows going right through their bodies and their villages, of which they’re totally unaware”.

Mr. Shostak explains that a message across space has to be a tightly focused beam, and that to cover the whole sky would require 100,000 trillion points to aim at.

There had better be some billions of civilizations out yonder, constantly probing the universe, for earth to have any meaningful chance of being contacted.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are” The Guardian. Aug. 25, 2005

National Geographic News. April 1,2003. Shostak believes that aliens “absolutely” exist.

Ernst Mayr in “Extraterrestrials”. Edited by Edward Regis Jr. Cambridge University Press. 1985.

DIGRESSION

Some Aspects Of Evolution

“Darwin…recognized that existence and survival were only means to an end. That end was reproduction” (“The Blind Watchmaker”. Richard Dawkins). Life has no other plan or purpose.

An indication that life is directed simply toward reproduction, is the observation that evolution could have done a far better job with our physical structure had it seen any reason to do. “If a body plan allows individuals to survive long enough to reproduce [and raise their young where necessary] that plan will be selected”. (Scientific American. March 2001, page 51)

Not all people are content with the reference to a “life force” that has no purpose other than to maintain its existence. In 1988 Bill Moyers had a series of interviews on Public Television with Joseph Campbell who was a preeminent authority on mythology. A part of their conversation went:

CAMPBELL: I don’t believe life has a real purpose. I mean, when you really see what life is, it’s a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being.

MOYERS: Not true. That’s not true, you—

Campbell replies that we are the products of an evolution that has no purpose in mind. Humans, however, have potentials, and the purpose of each life should be to live that potential.

But Suppose That They Do Come Here

Gordon Moore (of "Moore's Law") regarding integrated circuits stated in an interview:

"My view is statistically it's likely that there is intelligent life someplace else in the universe….You could argue that anybody out there that we happen to find has probably been around at the level that they could communicate much longer than we have. So they're probably significantly more advanced. Presumably, that intelligence could be transmitted from whomever we find to Earth. We might be able to make huge leaps in a shorter period of time." (Technology Review. May 2001. P.65).
.
In the Star Trek episode "Return To Tomorrow", the starship Enterprise is investigating a planet that appears to be lifeless. However, far beneath the surface are the minds (that are pure energy) of three survivors from a culture that has been extinct for half a million years. The leader of this trio asks Kirk for the temporary loan of three bodies so that the minds can create robots to travel the universe and dispense their advanced knowledge.

The physical transfer is known to be extremely hazardous, but Captain Kirk, Dr. Spock, and Dr. Mullhall are willing to chance it for the possibility of moving their planet's civilization ahead technologically by 10,000 years. Scotty is entranced at the prospect of developing Starfleet engines that are no bigger than a walnut.

Would we, should we have that attitude? Suppose that we were visited by representatives of a friendly, cooperative civilization that is far more advanced technologically than ours. Assume that the visitors would offer to show us how to cure and prevent all of our major illnesses, substantially prolong our life spans, introduce remarkable industrial processes, products, and wonderfully improved methods of communications, and provide prescriptions for harmonious modes of behavior and utopia in governance.

If we accepted their offer, it would create serious problems for us.

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