The movie Arrival illustrated the difficulties of communicating with an alien intelligence, but even that may have been an oversimplification of the real challenges. (credit: Paramount Pictures)

Stranger danger: Extraterrestrial first contact as a political problem

by John Hickman and Koby Boatright

The 2016 film Arrival is simultaneously smart science fiction and wildly optimistic about the outcome of first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Smart because the extraterrestrials appear credible as the products of an extraterrestrial evolutionary process; wildly optimistic both because the extraterrestrials are benign in the way humans have always wanted their gods to manifest themselves and because humans are ultimately able to decode their language.¹ Arrival’s heptapods sudden appear on Earth aboard interstellar spacecraft but then wait for humans to pass a difficult but not impossible language examination. Testing humans to determine their worth is a common trope in mythology and religion, and its presence in the film betrays an appeal to magical thinking.

The 2017 film Life is even smarter science fiction because it doesn’t require interstellar travel, benign extraterrestrials, or communication between species with symbolic language. Instead, it is brutally pessimistic about the outcome of human encounters contact with extraterrestrials, intelligent or otherwise. The test portrayed in Life—biological survival—is far more fundamental and far more plausible. Viewed in succession, Arrival and Life evoke the better angels of our nature and then challenge the reasonableness of our expectations. What follows is a thought experiment, an effort to “game” the test in the most probable presentation of a first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity, hereinafter referred to simply as First Contact.

If there is a consensus scholarum on the most probable scenario for First Contact, it would begin with human detection of a radio signal with sufficient structure to suggest symbolic language that had been broadcast from an exoplanet. Such an event would present the most formidable of language problems and confront national decision-makers with extraordinarily important choices, which would be made under extraordinary uncertainty.² Deciding to respond to such a radio signal would be tempting. Lacking all but the most basic information about the transmitting extraterrestrial entity, buffeted by intense public excitement about the discovery of an intelligent extraterrestrials, and fearing that rival national decision-makers might preempt their decision by being the first to respond, national decision-makers might feel compelled to act based on assumptions that are revealed as incorrect only after the momentous encounter has begun. Getting it wrong because decision-making was freighted with unreasonable expectations might result in consequences that range from the merely amusing to the deeply frustrating to the existentially threatening. So this thought experiment is justified under the cautionary principle.

We proceed by first assessing possible risks and benefits of First Contact. The daunting language problem serves as the linchpin between possible risks and benefits. We then examine the underlying political problem before offering some conclusions about optimal public policy making.

Possible risks

For First Contact pessimists, the Fermi Paradox captures a crucial observation: a universe that ought to be noisy with the radio evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations is instead utterly silent. Searches have yet to detect radio signals operating as distant beacons announcing “we’re here.”³ Silence can be given an optimistic interpretation: Douglas Vakoch suggests that reflects a norm of respect for the wishes of other creatures that requires a species to announce its desire to communicate by broadcasting their wish to do so and proposes broadcasting such an invitation. “Maybe it takes an audacious young civilization like ours to do that.”⁴

What worries pessimists is the possibility that silence is motivated by rational existential fear. A preference for survival as a species and extraordinary uncertainty about possible risks attending contact between different intelligent technological species may have persuaded most species to avoid alerting others to their own existence.⁵ Thus, David Brin rejects the idea of broadcasting an invitation as, “seeing my children’s destiny gambled with.”⁶ Clearly, that proposition must be qualified with “most” because humans have been violating the proposed norm for decades with radio and television broadcasts. Perhaps we have been fortunate that Earth’s atmosphere bounces back most radio transmissions and that mass communication is increasingly transmitted by means other than broadcasting.

When Stephen Hawking warned against alerting any extraterrestrial civilization to our existence he offered as a familiar cautionary example the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus.⁷The resulting series of first contacts resulted in population collapse of up to 90 percent of native populations across the Western Hemisphere, followed by brutal conquest and colonization by Europeans. The results of first contacts between Europeans and other peoples across the insular South Pacific were similarly tragic. Kathryn Denning critiques this and other historical analogies as a poor model for first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity and notes that the historical encounters of the early modern era may be perceived less negatively over the longer term because they resulted in vibrant hybrid societies of value in their own right.⁸ That there are no Guanches, Tasmanians, or members of many other extinct indigenous peoples available to dispute Denning’s blithe reassurance ought to give one pause before accepting it.⁹

Given that First Contact would occur between our species and another, as yet unknown, entity, there are analogies that merit consideration. For example, the fate of large animal species after the irruption of humans in virgin soil environments can be seen as tragic. Paleoindians exterminated most of the megafauna in the Americas, including mastodons, dire wolves, giant sloths, giant armadillos, giant beavers, and glyptodonts, soon after their arrival.¹⁰ The moose and bison alone survived. Polynesian ancestors of the Maori exterminated all 13 species of the Moa, giant flightless birds, soon after their arrival in New Zealand. The remorseless encounters between native and invasive non-human species competing for the same ecological niches is similarly tragic, at least from the perspective of those of us who prefer a biosphere with more species diversity. Pathogen transfer due to contact between previously isolated wild and commercial populations of the same non-human species has resulted in population crashes.

Examples of the resulting negative outcomes are displayed in Table 1.

Table 1. Tragic Encounters

That all of those encounters ended badly for one party, frequently involving population crashes and extinction, should not be ignored by policy makers. We note, however, that the analytic value of these analogies is constrained by three considerations. First, there are no data for the cell in the upper-right-hand corner of encounters between populations of intelligent but unrelated species, which would encompass First Contact. Second, all of the analogies involve encounters between terrestrial fauna. First Contact might be with a species that evolved amid much less aggressive life forms than those found on Earth. Indeed, First Contact might be with an entity that emerged in an entirely non-competitive environment. Third, all of the analogies involved physical contact between different populations. None were limited solely to long distance communication as is expected in First Contact.¹⁸

What matters here is that terrestrial analogies to encounters between populations offer the only empirical information for assessing the risks of First Contact. It follows that silence is thus a plausible strategy for a risk-averse species because the result for any other species that might be listening is indistinguishable from a universe empty of species with technological civilizations. Even if every intelligent entity would be benevolent towards other intelligent entity given the opportunity to interact, an implicit silence norm might be self-reinforcing as species choose to interpret the uncertainty inherent in the result as possible evidence of the rational behavior by other species. If you do not hear anyone else speaking, then either there is no one to talk to or they may know to be quiet for a very good reason.

Language

Before surveying possible benefits of First Contact, it is important to examine what is likely to be the most daunting aspect of the encounter. Will humans be able to do more than simply recognize that a radio signal is from an intelligent extraterrestrial entity and actually establish mutually intelligible communications?

When we conceive of extraterrestrial minds, they often inhabit entities with radically different body plans: planet-wide unitary organisms or populations of machine successors to biological organisms. Contrawise, similar body plans are expected to produce similar minds. Optimistic assessments of the possibility of communicating abstract ideas other than perhaps mathematics are typically premised on convergent evolution, as in Don Lincoln’s 2013 Alien Universe.¹⁹ John C. Baird’s 1987 The Inner Limits of Outer Space compared the problem of communicating with an intelligent extraterrestrial species with translating ancient hieroglyphics without benefit of a Rosetta Stone.²⁰

Even that may be much too optimistic. Egyptian hieroglyphics were the work of human minds, merely separated in time by five millennia.²¹ The problem is that even if intelligent extraterrestrials resemble humans, their minds may be radically different. Our current understanding is that humans possess an innate capacity for learning and using a language and associated culture.²² Although language and mind are inextricably linked in humans, they might not be so for an intelligent extraterrestrial entity, no matter how similar in appearance. Their minds may resemble the plastic Standard Social Science Model that dominated social science thinking during the last century and that continues to influence thinking about language among proponents of SETI.²³ Alternatively their minds might be organized with comparable but different innate capacities, perhaps even greater rigidity than our own.

The language problem is daunting in part because although linguists are reliable sources for questions about human language, the film Arrival notwithstanding, they are likely to have little to offer in translating messages from extraterrestrials. Experts in foreign tongues are likely to be flummoxed by efforts to communicate with entities without tongues. First Contact would present multiple “firsts,” at least in the annals of humanity. That newness means nothing should be taken for granted, and certainly not the intent to communicate simply because an extraterrestrial radio signal has been detected.

If extraterrestrials communicate via something similar to human language, it would be necessary to determine which, if either, of the two types of intentional, signification-based communication that we employ: ‘”natural language” like English, Italian, or Proto-Indo-European; or “code” like C++, syntax for expressing an architecture such as Zermelo-Fraenkel, or binary. There are several differences between a code and a natural language, but their similarities are often a source of confusion. An exacting description of these relationships is beyond the scope of this paper, so we will merely point to a few that shed light for the present strategic darkness.

First, a natural language is the product of unintentional evolutionary processes, much the same as the species that makes use of it. It is for this reason that most natural languages have irregularities in structure or spelling which have seemingly no rational basis—sometimes to the great frustration of those attempting to use such a language. A code, by contrast, is formed somewhat deliberately. This usually encourages uniformity in how it is presented and restricts its ad-libbed modification.

Second, natural language has ambiguities that codes do not. Sentence structure, tone, pitch, and a hundred other things all come together to provide variation in significance. Often, we have to simply say that it’s a matter of circumstance. These matters of circumstance cut down on the time it takes to communicate immensely. Codes are, by contrast and by design, unambiguous. A message is to be interpreted only one way, and the very grammar of the code is usually tailored in such a way that it can be deciphered purely mechanically—and let us not miss the importance of the term “decipher” here. This means that every relevant detail has to be spelled out, so if there are a lot of details, a message can quickly become enormous.

Third, along similar lines, natural language is multi-contextual. This means that it is conveyed in situations where more than one medium gives relevant information as to how the communication is to be interpreted. The ability to detect a tone of sarcasm or earnestness is immensely helpful to truly understanding each other, and it is in these areas of subtext that artificial intelligence interactions with humans find their great challenges. Codes, by contrast, contain everything in the letter. The form of the communication itself is expected to be sufficient to extract everything of relevance. This is necessary to program computers, or write out proofs of mathematical concepts that can be carried out by brute logical operation.

To sum up these differences, code operates in highly restricted circumstances on barebones prior information, making it unambiguous but not usually efficient. Natural language operates in situations where multiple external details can be taken into account to clarify, and whole separate channels of information are available, like gesturing or intoning. Humans are so accustomed to dealing with natural language situations that it is easy to mistake any communication with conscious beings for being just that simple. But with so much between us as whole star systems, and little more than a glorified two-way radio, this may be far from the case.

“To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.” This statement by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein illustrates partially why the cryptanalyst will likely be more useful to understanding far-flung communication than the linguist. There is little that can be said about the aliens’ “form of life” that isn’t assumption, and though they may have language, this will not be the artifact we pick up when our radios start squawking. We shall merely have a code.

Once we have our code, we may think that the problem is merely decryption. However, there is cause to think that the limitations we’ve just discussed not only render the situation more difficult, they may well put sharp boundaries on just what sort of information can be transmitted, and hence on what can be inferred for questions of strategy. The two problems, intertwined, are whether there is sufficient information for deciphering and whether worthwhile information can be transmitted.

The first problem doesn’t seem too difficult, because the message can be expected to provide clues to its interpretation by its form alone. Binary messages, either based on a dot-dash system or an on-off system, allows the transmission of sequences of numbers. Variation of tone around a baseline could simplify this into something like a hexadecimal system. Sequences of numbers that illustrate geometric ratios of importance could thus be a relatively simple matter to transmit and receive. Repeated series like so, replacing an element with a blank or nonsense value, might serve to indicate the variables and operations in equations.

The door of mathematics, it seems, is open to us, though interpreting even this enough to get at “interesting” information could take an incredibly long time. Such messages would not only be very long sequences as the operations became more advanced, but would take a long time to respond to indicating understanding. Further, the messages would likely have to be repeated more than once, and any part of the message that didn’t get through could seriously hamper the decryption process. Messages intended to be reinterpreted through another medium, such as pictures described dot by dot through binary, would both be immense, and a gamble, presuming that the far-flung interlocutor has a means of processing visual information.

Here is where the second difficulty comes in. Mathematical truths can be transmitted in this way because the form of the message itself bears some kind of direct relationship to the matters being conveyed, in the way that the structure of a code-message bears similarity to the structure of the “meaning.” The only comparative measurements that are needed are provided internally, and little reference to external standards, except perhaps the rules of logic, is needed. This is where the univocal nature of radio communication may put a damper on things.

Natural language requires context and the available context is likely to be very thin. Advances in astronomical observation might provide information about the gravity and composition of the atmosphere if a planet is the source of the radio signal. Beyond recognition that mathematics and the natural sciences are shared, radio signals might contain sufficient information to assemble images from binary code. Such communications, if they are to convey much detail, would also have to be quite large, potentially suffering the same difficulties as regards interference as the above-mentioned mathematical operations. After that, however, interpretation is likely to be slow going and perhaps prove impossible.

Those who are pessimistic about the possibility of establishing communication will find philosophic support in the work of the mature Ludwig Wittgenstein as it was articulated in his Philosophical Investigations. His general argument is that the meaning of words is derived from linguistic conventions that permit no external justification and are unconcerned with empirically verifiable reference points. What a word means is determined by what everyone who speaks the same language knows it to mean. Moreover, because our access to reality, facilitated by language, is overwhelmingly social in nature, the common sense meanings of words offer as firm a reflection of reality—what Richard Rorty called a “Mirror of Nature”—as is possible. If the view of the mature Wittgenstein is correct, we may be faced with an impassible barrier for translation between human and extraterrestrial languages because they simply cannot belong to the same type of society and therefore there exists no way to construct commonsense meanings.

Comparing Chinese with German, Christian Helmut Wenzel notes how the tendencies of (human) languages derived from their cultural evolution create habits of thought.²⁴ For example, Chinese language requires Chinese speakers to be more context sensitive than German language requires of German speakers, both in text and in speech. In another example, Chinese speakers use vertical spatial metaphors to reference time—for example the future is described as “down”—while German speakers use horizontal spatial metaphors to reference time.²⁵ The differences in such largely unconscious habits of thought between humans and any intelligent extraterrestrial entity are likely to have more causes deeper than culture. Physical sense-organs are likely to differ. One of the authors of this article is visually impaired and thus aware of the frequency with which visual metaphors are used to reference processes of cognition: “Do you now see what we mean?” The degree to which an intelligent extraterrestrial entity is social might differ. Human sociality lies midway on a spectrum between that typical of arachnids at one extreme and that typical of hymenoptera at the other extreme. The sociality of an intelligent extraterrestrial entity might lie elsewhere along that same spectrum. Thus their capacity for some affect that is equivalent to trust may be less or more than our own.

As Table 2 shows, successful communication and Babelian confusion are not the only possibilities for attempted communication in First Contact. A great deal must be achieved by both parties to this encounter for successful communication to be achieved without frustration and suspicion by one or both of the two parties. The everyday human experience is that all that is necessary for communication between speakers of different languages to be moderately successful. Limited shared language may be sufficient to carry out important exchanges of information. That would not be true of communication between humans and an extraterrestrial entity. Instead, such exchanges would more closely resemble the negotiations between political or business decision-makers, who struggle to define their terminology in both languages so as to maximize value by avoiding future confusion or betrayal. Neither an intelligent extraterrestrial entity capable of calculated deception nor humans would be able to trust that they had properly understood the meaning of messages if they were unable to translate back from the language of the other. The inability to understand the language of the other would likely engender frustration and suspicion.

Table 2. Possible communications outcomes

Some consequences of unsuccessful communication in First Contact are foreseeable. Humans tend to interpret the “known unknown” with imagined forces and creatures, often elaborated from familiar myths.²⁶ Fantastic beliefs and desperate action based on those beliefs is a possible result. The urge to project theories of mind appropriate to humans onto non-human animals or natural phenomena is well known. That humans do so with the creatures that we know best—dogs—is telling. Across cultures, humans will attempt to reason with dogs using symbolic logic and dogs will mimic understanding because they are rewarded for doing so. This exchange is noteworthy because it may have begun between 15,000 and 150,000 years ago and might represent a form of co-evolution. What matters here is that incomplete understanding between two utterly familiar terrestrial species endures despite its significance for humans as the best possible opportunity to cultivate an ethical practice with “significant otherness.”²⁷ Given such failure, is it altogether reasonable to expect the successful exchange of information with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity that presents absolute otherness?

What does this mean for the possibility of successful communication between humans and an intelligent extraterrestrial entity? The human mind is designed for communicating with fellow humans. There is no guarantee that we would ever achieve more than the most rudimentary communication with creatures even very similar to ourselves. Perhaps we might succeed in checking our math but the possibility of exchanging much beyond that is limited. Moreover that might be fortunate if the intelligent extraterrestrial entity possesses ideas that might be released among our species as destructive memes.

Benefits

Carl Sagan, icon of the First Contact optimists, prophesied that humans might benefit immensely from access to the “scientific, logical, cultural and ethical knowledge to be gained from tuning into galactic transmissions.”²⁸ Sagan was confident that the consequent cultural shock would be relatively small and that the decoding of signals would be possible though perhaps requiring decades or centuries.²⁹ Albert A. Harrison anticipates encountering peaceful and cooperative intelligent extraterrestrial species flourishing in the interstellar equivalent to the Kantian Peace.³⁰ He pictures a Galactic Club of such species operating on broad principles with experience at enrolling new member species such as our own. Alas, several decades of searching now suggests that intelligent extraterrestrial entities broadcasting invitations to communicate by radio must be exceedingly rare or occur at distances so great from Earth as to be functionally non-existent.

What benefits might be derived from communicating with an extraterrestrial entity? We already know that intelligence has arisen multiple times on Earth but have yet to converse with any of the terrestrial species exhibiting intelligence about anything other than naming food, identifying predator threats, claiming territory, and expressing affection.³¹ To that extent humans already know they are not alone in the universe. Alas, we are unable to compare notes with any terrestrial intelligent species about more abstract matters. That is what we might achieve if we are able to translate messages from an intelligent extraterrestrial entity.

Proponents of attempting to communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial entities typically assume that our mathematics reflects something universal and would thus serve as the basis for the development of a common terminology. They might be mistaken. The mathematics we know might simply reflect the thinking of our species, centered on performing the sort of operation that is useful to us. Even ostensibly “pure” mathematics may simply be applied mathematics applied to itself, rendering the divide a case of degrees of removal rather than a difference in substance. An important benefit of First Contact would be to determine whether we know what we think we know about mathematics, both in content and scope. Discovering that mathematics is not shared might however foreclose use of the most promising means for achieving translation of messages. Not recognizing this, if it is so, may mean we toil in vain at an impossible task for a very long time.

Another benefit would be that we could “avoid re-inventing the wheel” by adopting much of the scientific and engineering advances made by other species. However we cannot assume that the science and engineering of an extraterrestrial entity would be of any practical use.³² Humans might also benefit from exposure to new examples and benefit by recognizing value in what we already possess. Thus we might be in a situation analogous to the pre-contact Inca, who were aware of the wheel but did not put it to use in transportation. An extraterrestrial entity might possess philosophic or spiritual insights as yet unimagined by our species.

Even if the extraterrestrial entity has nothing to offer that we do not already possess, would there be any benefit to communication? Donna Haraway argues that the relationships we develop with domesticated animals, creatures with different minds, is crucial to human moral development.³³Steven Pinker argues that mass communications, which has resulted in greater exposure to the minds of humans and other animals unlike ourselves, is in part responsible for our increasingly peaceful behavior.³⁴ So simply being exposed to different and radically alien minds might have a pacifying effect on our behavior by permitting further moral development. That effect is of course dependent on actually communicating in something close to natural language.

What do political decision-makers know about the benefits attending First Contact? The answer is that they know very little. Indeed, the claimed benefits appear to reflect wishful thinking.

The political problem

The search for radio signals from extraterrestrial entities has been ongoing for decades despite the absence of an unambiguous public policy consensus about the wisdom of doing so. Instead, enthusiasm about the possibility of detecting intelligent extraterrestrial life has been assiduously cultivated in popular culture. It sometimes seems as a means of inoculating the public against xenophobia about human Others.³⁵ Belief in the benign character of any extraterrestrial entity is sufficiently common among members of the attentive public that The Planetary Society uses it to raise money. Thus an August 15, 2014, fundraising e-mail message ends with the following promise: “If an alien civilization broadcasts our way, it would be a major discovery in human history. And you’d like to be part of it. Please help keep the search alive.” The appeal for contributions makes no mention of the risks attending detection or response to such a message. Nor is there a mass membership lobby comparable to The Planetary Society opposing the effort. There is dissent from this but it fails to resonate strongly in public opinion.³⁶

Scientific experts are divided about the advisability of responding to any detected entity and of unprompted signaling of our species’ existence as an intelligent technological entity.³⁷ Unfortunately, much of the public, which might be in opposition, ignores expert opinion in favor of more entertaining conspiracist narratives of the sort offered up by The Discovery Channel.

What do political decision-makers know about the risks attending First Contact? The answer is woefully little, and what they do know is decidedly woeful. The tragic encounters detailed in Table 1 do not bode well even for encounters confined to radio transmissions. Memes, in the original sense that Richard Dawkins coined the term, could be demoralizing and disruptive in the same manner as pandemics.³⁸ As we are discovering in the 21st century, information itself may be weaponized.

Given the worrisome “cat-killing” curiosity common to our species, some may be tempted to respond to a radio signal before it is deciphered and before it is determined whether humans are the intended audience. Mounting popular and scientific enthusiasm driven by curiosity might be difficult for political decision-makers to resist. Frustration at the inability to derive a message from the radio broadcast is likely to feed conspiracist suspicion that decision-makers are concealing information that they do not possess. The temptation to respond will probably be strengthened by what are, in human perception, very long time periods between sending and receiving radio messages. The time horizons for decision makers are typically much shorter. Long-term consequences of even the most momentous policy making may be discounted in favor of near-term advantages that can be reckoned in public opinion polls and election outcomes.

Decision-makers are no less prone than anyone else to errors of misperception that are the product of a human proclivity to tell one another stories in which missing information is replaced with supposition. Several of the hypothesized misperceptions involved in nuclear deterrence identified by Robert Jervis are relevant here: the tendency to accept or reject new information based on existing beliefs or theory, the tendency to successfully assimilate new information only if it is received piecemeal, the tendency to believe that messages received are in response to messages sent, the tendency to overestimate the clarity of messages sent, and the tendency to believe that message recipients share common interests and perspectives.³⁹ These tendencies to misperception may be reinforced by both the “groupthink” syndrome identified by Irving Janis⁴⁰ and the competition between bureaucratic organizations even during existential crises identified by Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow.⁴¹

In his discussion of conceptualization in international relations, Robert Jervis notes that the most basic perceptual thresholds are also the most difficult to correct: whether or not decision-makers possess a concept for a category of thought.⁴² Thus the inaccurate image of the West employed by Chinese decision-makers in the mid-19th century delayed their learning about their challengers and rendered their response to those challenges inadequate. They thought they were interacting with a power comparable to 16th century Portugal when in reality they were dealing with 19th century Britain. One hundred years of violence and humiliation were the consequence.

The political problem is initially one of choosing between non response and delayed response. As displayed in Table 3, any response to the message should be delayed at least until the message has been deciphered and the intended recipient identified. Potential existential threats warrant decision making patience born of extreme caution.

Table 3: Optimal near-term decision-making

Non-response will require official messaging to dampen both public and scientific enthusiasm. As the experience of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War reveals, news audiences can be persuaded to accept the strategic logic of preparation coupled with inaction. What that is likely to require are periodic official reports on progress in deciphering the message together with a narrative emphasizing the possible existential threat. Although it rubs against the grain of thinking since the beginning of the Modern Era, humans are proficient at living in a state of fear. Indeed, traditional societies are characterized by hostility to strangers, finding in that antipathy a source of social unity.

The longer-term political problem involves decision making with respect to messages that have been sufficiently deciphered. The choices are displayed in Table 4.

Table 4: Optimal long-term decision-making assuming intended transmission

Unless the message can be determined to have been intentionally transmitted and that humanity is its intended recipient rather than some other extraterrestrial entity, then not responding remains the optimally rational decision. The value of not responding would be reduced, though not entirely eliminated, if it is determined that humanity is the intended recipient because that would indicate knowledge of our location in space and perhaps other information. Not responding to a message would deny the extraterrestrial entity additional information that might render humanity even more vulnerable. If the message evidenced some malign intent in the form of a threat or weaponized meme, then not responding remains the optimally rational decision.

There are possible advantages to listening in on communications between extraterrestrial entities without their knowledge. Given prophylactic measures to avoid releasing a weaponized meme, the intelligence collected through covert monitoring could be used in deciding whether and how best to respond to a message. Indeed, such monitoring might provide the benefits of First Contact without incurring the risks.

Conclusion

The relatively high probability of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has led to conversation about the possibility of prolonged communication with such distant intelligences. A number of logistical details beset and make problematic any attempt to engage in the communication between Earth and whatever lies in the great beyond that might speak back to us. That engaging in such communication will be advantageous is by no means a foregone conclusion. Indeed, there are good reasons to suspect that the encounter will be either non-advantageous or disadvantageous, and very possibly extraordinarily dangerous.

What a national political decision-maker is likely to seek upon encountering an extraterrestrial radio signal will depend on both their relative risk acceptance and on their willingness to act in concert with other national political decision-makers who are in possession of the same information. At present, the bureaucratic scientific apparatus for detecting such is still limited to a handful of countries, but as that number grows a coordinated response becomes more difficult, not the least because of the temptation to defect from a policy of restraint by seeking an advantage in establishing communication.

Endnotes

1. Marissa Martinelli. “All Your Questions About the Mindbending Plot of Arrival, Answered.”Slate. November 18, 2016.
2. Michael A.G. Michaud. “Ten Decisions That Could Shake the World.” Space Policy. (2003) 19, 2: 131-136.
3. Bruce Jakosky. The Search for Life on Other Planets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) pp. 289–290.
4. Stephen Battersby. “We’re From Earth. Hi There!” New Scientist (2010) 205, 2744: 29.
5. Stephen Webb. Where is Everybody: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life (New York: Copernicus Books, 2002) pp. 108–115; Richard A. Posner.Catastrophe: Risk and Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) pp. 40–41.
6. Stephen Battersby. “We’re From Earth. Hi There!” New Scientist. 205, 2744: 28–31; BBC News. “Hawking Warns Over Beings.” April 25, 2010.
7. BBC News. “Stephen Hawking warns over making contact with aliens.”
8. Kathryn Denning, Kathryn. “Impossible Predictions of the Unprecedented: Analogy, History, and the Work of Prognostication” in Douglas Vakoch, ed., Astrobiology, History and Society: Advances in Astrobiology and Biogeographics (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2013) pp. 301–312.
9. Alfred W. Crosby. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) pp. 71–94; Jared Diamond. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992) pp. 278–283.
10. Shepard Kech III. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999) pp. 33–34.
11. Henry F. Dobyns. “Disease Transfer at Contact.” Annual Review of Anthropology (1993) 22: 273–291.
12. Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee, pp. 51–52.
13. Paul Marchesi, et al., “Census and Distribution of Chimpanzees in Côte D’Ivoire.” Primates (1995) 36, 4: 591–604.
14. Krech, The Ecological Indian, pp. 29–43.
15. Sheila R. Colla, et al., “Plight of the Bumble Bee: Pathogen Spillover From Commercial to Wild Populations.” Biological Conservation (2006) 129, pp. 461–462; X.J. Meng, et al., “Wild Boars As Sources for Infectious Diseases in Livestock and Humans.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (2009) 364, 2697–2698.
16. Franck Courchamp, et al., “Mammal Invaders in Islands: Impact, Control and Control Impact.”Biological Review (2002) 78, p. 356.
17. Ibid.
18. John Hickman. “Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade.” Astropolitics (2008) 6:95–104.
19. Don Lincoln. Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos. (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2013).
20. John C. Baird. The Inner Limits of Outer Space. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), pp. 190–191.
21. Ancient Babylonian could be read for the first time in the modern era not only because of the discovery of inscriptions in three languages on a cliff face in Bisitun, Iran but also because the creatures who wrote it and who read it were both human.
22. Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Perennial Classics, 2000) pp. 419–448.
23. Ibid, pp. 421-422.
24. Christian Helmut Wenzel. “Chinese Language, Chinese Mind?” From ontos verlag: Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, New Series (2013) 1–18, 3.
25. Ibid.
26. David Gordon White. Myths of the Dog-Men. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).
27. Donna Haraway. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. (Chicago: Prickly Paragon Press, 2003).
28. Carl Sagan and Jerome Agel. The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. (New York: Anchor Press, 1973) p. 218.
29. Ibid, pp. 218–219.
30. Albert A. Harrison. After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life. (New York: Plenum, 1997) pp. 194–195.
31. Angela Dassow and Michael Coen. “Join the Conversation.” New Scientist (2015) 225, 3003: 1–5.
32. Nicholas Rescher. “Extraterrestrial Science,” in Edward Regis, ed., Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien Intelligence. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 83–116.
33. Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto.
34. Steven Pinker. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) pp. 588–592, 641–642.
35. Erich Goode. The Paranormal: Who Believes, Why They Believe and Why It Matters (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012) pp. 242–245.
36. Popular culture is instead rife with risible pseudo-scientific “ancient astronaut” conspiracy theories that are easily dismissed by national political decision-makers. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are not theories at all but collections of “questions, suspicions and allegations” that counter “conventionally available narratives.” See Jody Dean. How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002) p. 51.
37. Dan Falk. March 29, 2015. “Is This Thing On?” Slate.
38. Christian Enemark. Biosecurity Dilemmas: Dreaded Diseases, Ethical Responses, and the Health of Nations. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017) pp. 97–98.
39. Robert Jervis. “Hypotheses on Misperception.” World Politics (1968) 20, 3: 454–479.
40. Irving Janis. Victims of Groupthink. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).
41. Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd Ed. (New York: Longman, 1999).
42. Jervis, pp. 466–467.

John Hickman (jhickman@berry.edu) is Professor of Political Science in the Berry College Department of Government and International Studies in Rome Georgia.

Koby Boatright (forallxthereexists@gmail.com) is an independent philosophy scholar living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

{ http://www.thespacereview.com/index.html }

17-05-2017 om 14:35 geschreven door peter  

Looking Back at the Varginha UFO Incident In Brazil

The Varginha town of Minas Gerais in Brazil is not particularly known for tourist attractions. It could be normal to expect the small town could very well cross history without ever being noticed by the rest of people in Brazil and the world. However, that situation suddenly changed on January 20, 1996, when the town became the center of attention as it staged one of the most famous Brazilian UFO incidents.

Three teenagers claimed they observed a strange, short creature with V-shaped feet, red eyes, and horns. They were certain that it was not a man or an animal as it was something different. All of the sudden the three young women put Varginha on the center stage.

Reports of strange creatures, UFOs, strange coincidences, military operations and even mysterious deaths followed the incident. In fact, many questions are still unanswered.

The UFO incident in Varginha started with two sisters and a friend seeing a strange being. The encounter had been followed by a series of events and hysteria as Brazilian media picked up mysterious happenings in the area. Even the Brazilian Army jumped into the case doing a costly operation to investigate it.

The Army operation did not help as more reports on UFOs were spreading. A couple of farmers claimed they spotted something like a gray spaceship flying above their cattle. One farmer said that the cows were running from the silent and no light UFO, which was surrounded by fog.

Furthermore, there were reports about the presence of a strange creature next to the city’s zoo. Mysteriously, the animals in that zoo started to die without explainable reason.

Brazilian ufologist Marco Petit said that the government cover-up operation has made all these incidents to remain unproven. Petit said that the case is more important and bigger than most people think.

There were reports that then the leading forensic expert in Brazil Doctor Badan Palhares examined the bodies of extraterrestrials that were recovered from the spaceship found by the military. However, Palhares has always denied the rumor, calling it utter nonsense.

While all the claims remain unproven, the event made the small town the focus of public attention.  Varginha is now described as the hot spot in the intergalactic search for the intelligent alien.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net }

17-05-2017 om 14:13 geschreven door peter  

Fast UFO fleet over Peru 8-May-2017

Here’s one new video of a UFO fleet that was filmed with infra-red technology over Peru in South America. This happened on 8th May 2017.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net }

17-05-2017 om 14:11 geschreven door peter  

U.S. Military Reveals Instructions On How To Photograph UFOs

The manual on how to snap UFOs was recently declassified in the U.S. Department of Defense files. The document “DoD Instruction 5040.6, Life-Cycle Management of DoD Visual Information (VI)” contains 27 pages, including data from 2002.

In Section 21 of Chapter 5, the document shows a table concerning imagery that records unidentified flying objects and other aerial phenomena not clearly identifiable as missiles or conventional aircraft. The table also shows a list of priority assigned to each category of imagery along with appropriate handling instructions. It instructs the military to make digital copies of the media and send them to the Defence Visual Information Center.

UFO researcher and blogger Paul Dean uncovered the document through the Freedom of Information Act. Dean said that the table of what to photograph and not to photograph lays out entirely both UFOs and aerial phenomena with descriptors.

The document proves that the U.S. did not stop documenting and researching UFOs after the 1960s, contrary to what is widely believe.

Dean notes that the files in the document don’t link UFOs to aliens. However, he adds that the government obviously keep a straight face on the UFO issue when they clearly state it in plain English for the military to digest.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net }

17-05-2017 om 14:09 geschreven door peter  

Witness says diamond-shaped object was ‘humongous’

A Pennsylvania witness at York reported watching a “humongous” object fly directly overhead after a smaller object was ejected from it at a distance, according to Testimony in Case 83329 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

York is about 26 miles southeast of Harrisburg, PA.

(Credit: Google)

The witness was inside watching television when two bright lights were noticed at a distance.

“I thought, oh, a new tower with two huge lights attached. But no tower,” the witness stated.“Went outside. The lights did not move at all and a light came off the top right corner and a small craft came off the light and hovered below.”

The larger object then moved toward the witness.

“The big UFO took off towards me and went right over my home extremely low. It was diamond-shaped and had a rectangular light underneath it. In that rectangle was a red light, then a white light, and then a green light. The lights were not flashing. The UFO was humongous, and made a humming noise.”

A smaller object was emitted from the larger object. Pictured: York, PA.

(Credit: Google)

Both object then began to move.

“When it took off, the small thing that came out of it went straight up. When the light came out of the right corner or what would have been the right corner (the only thing I could see at that point were the two huge lights) it seemed that the small thing came off that light. Almost like it was poured out of that light.”

The witness was afraid of the sighting.

“Anyway, it scared me a lot, and I have looked for a hovering jet picture on the net, but did not see any that looked like it. And why would a hovering jet be spitting out a small craft like that? Before it took off, it had stayed unmoving at least 10 minutes, maybe longer, before I noticed it. In relationship to its size, it was huge. I watch planes in the distance from my backyard and the little thing that came out of the big UFO would have been the size of a commercial airplane like I see all the time going toward Harrisburg Airport. So, the big UFO was really, really, big.”

The larger object then flew directly over the witness. Pictured: York, PA.

(Credit: Google)

Pennsylvania MUFON Field Investigator Larry Shaak is investigating. York is the city serving as the county seat of York County, Pennsylvania, population 43,718. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

17-05-2017 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious flashes of light above Earth captured by NASA satellite and ISS live feed camera

Parked in space a million miles from Earth, the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) captured hundreds of flashes of light in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Flashed of light captured by the Deep Space Climate Observatory.

In the 1990s astronomer Carl Sagan already reported this bizarre phenomenon which he noticed in images from the Galileo spacecraft.

These flashes of light not only appeared over oceans but over land as well and while scientists at first suggested that the lights seen over the ocean may be the reflection of sunlight off a part of the ocean the same couldn’t be said for the flashes seen over land.

After studying this phenomenon the scientists concluded that the source of the flashes is not on Earth’s surface but cirrus clouds up to five to eight kilometers high in the atmosphere where these flashes were seen whereby the cause of the flashes of light are most likely solar reflection off of horizontally ice particles, reports dailymail.

These kind of flashes of light are not only captured by the Deep Space Climate Observatory, parked in space a million miles from Earth but it seems the camera onboard the International Space Station which orbit the Earth at an altitude of between 330 and 435 km apparently also has the ability to capture the strange flashes of light above Earth.

Flashes of light captured by ISS live feed camera.

Streetcap1, who caught similar flashes of light on the ISS live feed on May 10, 2017, said: “What are these weird light ripple effect above Earth.”

Solar reflection off of horizontally ice particles again or is it a phenomenon that cannot be explained?  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.be/ }

17-05-2017 om 01:32 geschreven door peter  

UFO hunters spot a strange 'flying disc' speed past the International Space Station on a Nasa live feed

• Live footage from Nasa shows 'flying disc-like shaped UFO' near the ISS
• The object suddenly appears before getting closer and then fading away
• UFO hunters claim the disc is proof of the existence of extra terrestrials
• But one expert says the shape is more likely light playing on the camera lens

By Harry Pettit For Mailonline

A mysterious 'flying disc-like shaped UFO' has been captured on a live feed taken from the International Space Station, conspiracy theorists claim.

The creepy footage seems to show the disc hover by one of the ISS's large solar panels before quickly shooting off.

Alien hunters claim that the bizarre footage is proof that extra terrestrials exist, but one UFO expert says the shape is simply light playing on the camera lens.

Scroll down for video

A mysterious 'flying disc-like shaped UFO' has been captured on a live feed taken from the International Space Station, conspiracy theorists claim. The creepy footage seems to show the disc hover by one of the ISS's large solar panels before quickly shooting off

A video discussing the disc was uploaded to YouTube this week by UFO Hunters Secure Team 10.

Tyler Glockner from the Secure Team channel, which has almost a million subscribers, said: 'It can only be described as some sort of flying disc-like shaped UFO, that was spotted hovering in the distance behind the international space station before darting away at a very high rate of speed.

'This is one of the most commonly seen and spoken about craft by hundreds and thousands of people over Earth, in space and above the moon. 

'This thing moves as if it knew the camera was watching it and it was in the frame before it picks up speed before finally shrinking due to the law of perspective before blasting backwards.' 

But not everyone is convinced that the strange shape is an extra terrestrial craft.

Nigel Watson, UFO expert and author of the UFO Investigations Manual, told MailOnline: 'This looks like the reflection of a light source inside the camera lens rather than an extraterrestrial spaceship zipping past the ISS.

'Adding music and a bit of editing is used by Secure Team 10 to add a bit of mystery to it, but there is no supporting information or evidence to say it is an alien spacecraft.'

 One UFO expert says the shape is simply a reflection of a light source inside the camera lens

This isn't the first time an ISS live stream has caused a stir among conspiracy theorists.

Last month a strange object floating past the ISS had UFO hunters claiming visitors from other worlds have developed cloaking technology.

The footage appeared to show the object suddenly appearing near the space station, before starting to approach it. 

UFO hunters discover 'flying disk' on NASA space station

This is not the first time that evidence of aliens has been spotted near the International Space Station (pictured). Some believe Nasa is actively covering up evidence of alien life

CLOAKING DEVICES 

According to the Institute of Physics, metamaterials which can bend electromagnetic radiation such as light around an object to give the appearance that it isn't there.

To date some researchers have used such properties of metamaterials to create devices that can bend certain forms of radiation, such as near-infrared radiation.

So far, however, producing the same effect with visible light has proved more of a challenge.

Part of the cylinder is then seen to disappear, which the UFO spotter who shared the footage believed was evidence of a cloaking device.

Speaking on his blog UFO Sightings Daily, astro-biologist Scott C Waring said: 'I noticed a UFO in the distance that was coming closer and closer to the space station.

'The UFO was partially cloaked, which made it look transparent.

'In the deep blackness of spaces, blending into the environment means you will be safer from other alien species that may not be so friendly.  

A live feed taken from the International Space Station last month appeared to show a strange cylindrical UFO approaching the station, before fading away. The UFO spotter who shared the footage believed it was evidence of cloaking technology 

Strange object spotted flying past the International Space Station

DO YOU BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES?

People who doubt the moon landings are more likely to be selfish and attention-seeking, according to a study earlier this year.

Over the course of three online-based studies, researchers at the University of Kent showed strong links between the belief in conspiracy theories and negative psychological traits.

Writing in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, the team explained: 'Previous research linked the endorsement of conspiracy theories to low self-esteem.'

In the first study, a total of 202 participants completed questionnaires on conspiracy beliefs, asking how strongly they agreed with specific statements, such as whether governments carried out acts of terrorism on their own soil.

Alongside this, they were asked to complete a narcissist scale and a self-esteem assessment.

The results showed that those people who rated highly on the narcissism scale and who had low self-esteem were more likely to be conspiracy believers. 

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

17-05-2017 om 01:07 geschreven door peter  

UFO hunters spot a strange 'flying disc' speed past the International Space Station on a Nasa live feed

• Live footage from Nasa shows 'flying disc-like shaped UFO' near the ISS
• The object suddenly appears before getting closer and then fading away
• UFO hunters claim the disc is proof of the existence of extra terrestrials
• But one expert says the shape is more likely light playing on the camera lens

By Harry Pettit For Mailonline

A mysterious 'flying disc-like shaped UFO' has been captured on a live feed taken from the International Space Station, conspiracy theorists claim.

The creepy footage seems to show the disc hover by one of the ISS's large solar panels before quickly shooting off.

Alien hunters claim that the bizarre footage is proof that extra terrestrials exist, but one UFO expert says the shape is simply light playing on the camera lens.

Scroll down for video

A mysterious 'flying disc-like shaped UFO' has been captured on a live feed taken from the International Space Station, conspiracy theorists claim. The creepy footage seems to show the disc hover by one of the ISS's large solar panels before quickly shooting off

A video discussing the disc was uploaded to YouTube this week by UFO Hunters Secure Team 10.

Tyler Glockner from the Secure Team channel, which has almost a million subscribers, said: 'It can only be described as some sort of flying disc-like shaped UFO, that was spotted hovering in the distance behind the international space station before darting away at a very high rate of speed.

'This is one of the most commonly seen and spoken about craft by hundreds and thousands of people over Earth, in space and above the moon. 

'This thing moves as if it knew the camera was watching it and it was in the frame before it picks up speed before finally shrinking due to the law of perspective before blasting backwards.' 

But not everyone is convinced that the strange shape is an extra terrestrial craft.

Nigel Watson, UFO expert and author of the UFO Investigations Manual, told MailOnline: 'This looks like the reflection of a light source inside the camera lens rather than an extraterrestrial spaceship zipping past the ISS.

'Adding music and a bit of editing is used by Secure Team 10 to add a bit of mystery to it, but there is no supporting information or evidence to say it is an alien spacecraft.'

 One UFO expert says the shape is simply a reflection of a light source inside the camera lens

This isn't the first time an ISS live stream has caused a stir among conspiracy theorists.

Last month a strange object floating past the ISS had UFO hunters claiming visitors from other worlds have developed cloaking technology.

The footage appeared to show the object suddenly appearing near the space station, before starting to approach it. 

{

17-05-2017 om 00:58 geschreven door peter  

MARIA ORSIC, THE VRIL & UFOS - NAZI GERMANY SECRETS

{ https://www.gaia.com/ }

17-05-2017 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Ga mee op een reis door de toekomst: zo zullen aarde en mensheid de komende miljard jaar evolueren - HLN.be

Bron: RealLifeLore

© Screenshot YouTube RealLifeLore.

VIDEO Hoe zien de wereld en de mensheid er over één miljard jaar uit? Het YouTubekanaal 'RealLifeLore' (RLL) wil een antwoord vinden op die vraag en probeert een realistische toekomstvoorspelling te doen. En wat leert ons dat? Er komt een tijd aan waar vmeer zal zijn. En talen zoals we ze nu kennen, zullen niet meer bestaan. Ga mee op een reian rassen geen sprake s door de toekomst.

Over 10.000 jaar voorspelt RLL een nieuwe milleniumbug, met computers die problemen hebben met de overgang naar een jaartal met vijf cijfers. Daarnaast zal de mensheid zo genetisch gemixt zijn, dat we geen specifieke rassen meer zullen kennen, zo voorspelt de video. Over 20.000 jaar zijn de talen die we nu kennen zo sterk geëvolueerd, dat er nog slechts één procent van de huidige woorden overblijft. De huidige talen worden dus volledig onherkenbaar. 

Wat het effect van de opwarming van de aarde ook wordt, over 50.000 jaar zou er een nieuwe ijstijd komen, volgens de makers van het filmpje. Ook verdwijnen heel wat meren in Canada, net als de bekende Niagara Falls. Bovendien zullen we elk jaar een schrikkelseconde bij onze jaartelling moeten toevoegen. Over 100.000 jaar zal het sterrenstelsel er volledig anders uitzien dan vandaag. En zal de mensheid van planeet Mars een bewoonbare planeet hebben gemaakt. 

Over 500.000 jaar is het erg waarschijnlijk dat de aarde geraakt is door een asteroïde van een kilometer diameter, tenzij de mensheid de impact van de asteroïde kan stoppen. Daar tegenover staat dat de meteorietkrater in het Amerikaanse Arizona over 950.000 jaar volledig geërodeerd en verdwenen is. En wie dacht dat we met vulkaan Eyjafjallajokull al wat gezien hadden, wacht beter nog een miljoen jaar. Want tegen die tijd is de kans groot dat de aarde een supervulkaanuitbarsting heeft ervaren, met een uitstoot van 3.200 kubieke meter assen (lees verder onder de afbeelding).

Lees ook

• "Was meteoriet 30 seconden later ingeslagen, hadden dinosaurussen nu misschien nog geleefd"
• NASA ontdekt nabij planetenstelsel dat lijkt op ons zonnestelsel

© Screenshot YouTube RealLifeLore.

Over twee miljoen jaar zal de bekende Grand Canyon tot een grote, weidse vallei geërodeerd zijn. Nog tegen dan zal de mensheid verschillende planeten gekoloniseerd hebben. Op die verschillende planeten zullen zich nieuwe mensachtige soorten ontwikkelen, die zich hebben aangepast aan de omstandigheden op die planeten. 

Op onze aarde zal over zo'n 10 miljoen jaar een deel van het continent Afrika loskomen van de rest van het continent. Nog even later, over 50 miljoen jaar, zal de rest van Afrika opgeschoven zijn en de Middellandse Zee volledig overbrugd hebben. De botsing tussen Afrika en het Euro-Aziatische continent zal een nieuwe bergketen doen ontstaan, met mogelijk hogere bergen dan de Mount Everest (lees verder onder de afbeelding).

© Screenshot YouTube RealLifeLore.

Hawaï zal over 80 miljoen jaar volledig onder water verdwenen zijn, voorspellen de makers van het filmpje nog. En over 100 miljoen jaar zal de aarde vermoedelijk geraakt zijn door een asteroïde zo groot als die verantwoordelijk was voor de uitroeiing van de dinosaurussen (lees verder onder de afbeelding).

© Screenshot YouTube RealLifeLore.

Over 250 miljoen jaar zullen alle continenten op aarde opnieuw tegen elkaar aan liggen en één supercontinent vormen, zoals Pangea. Over 500 tot 600 miljoen jaar zal de aarde bedreigd worden door een uitbarsting van Gamma-stralen die de ozonlaag sterk zullen beschadigen, een grote bedreiging voor het leven op aarde. Nog verder in de toekomst, over zo'n 800 miljoen jaar, zal fotosynthese niet langer mogelijk zijn op aarde door het gebrek aan CO² (lees verder onder de afbeelding).

© Screenshot YouTube RealLifeLore.

16-05-2017 om 23:53 geschreven door peter  

UK’s Latest Triangle UFO Sighting Caught on Video

 Brett Tingley

Something is afoot in southern England. Scores of reports of UFOs, black helicopters, and other anomalous aerial phenomena have poured in over the last year. Many of these sightings have had multiple witnesses and/or photographic evidence. Interestingly, many of these sightings involve slow-moving triangle-shaped aircraft or triangular groupings of lights. There is a joint USAF/RAF base in the area, making military testing of secretive spy aircraft a likely explanation. However, there could also be a social or psychological element to the spate of sightings; as more individuals report sightings and receive publicity, more and more residents might be watching the skies with cameras ready to film any odd sights.

Zoomed image taken from the footage.

Whatever the cause of the rash of sightings is, a new video of strange lights in the sky shot in Exmouth, England appears eerily similar to other recent sightings of triangular aircraft. The footage was shot on the evening of April 17, 2017 by an on-duty bus driver and shows a trio of lights hovering slowly in the distance.

According to the report filed by MUFON, the bus driver spotted the lights while planning his wedding on the phone with his best man, a call he quickly ended to film the event:

I was just kind of walking about near the leisure center, where my bus stops, when I looked randomly over in the direction of the river, which is when I saw the three lights in a triangle pattern rotating on its axis and wobbling slightly. I have been interested in the subject of UFOs since I was about 10. I told my mate I’d ring him back and started filming the lights with my phone. Due to the street lights my camera was having a hard time focusing on the formation. so I moved closer to the river to get a better view. It’s at this point I really had to go back to the bus stop to get my bus.

Hmm… prior interest in UFOs, out-of-focus camera – all the trappings of a dubious sighting. However, given the relatively clear footage and the high number of similar sightings in southern England, the sighting is a bit conspicuous.

The lights in the footage hover far in the distance beyond the capabilities of the witness’s camera. Naturally.

Similar triangle UFOs have been a regular sight in the skies over England for decades. Our own Nick Redfern recently wrote a summary of the UK and U.S. militaries’ acknowledgment of the flying triangle (FT) phenomenon in which Redfern cites former UK Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope. According to Pope, both the American and British governments initially suspected that the other side might be responsible, but discovered that neither nation’s military could explain the sightings:

[T]here was an interesting little hint that the Americans, too, were seeing these Flying Triangles over their territory. As we were making our inquiries, they turned the question around and wanted to know if our Royal Air Force had a triangular-shaped, hypersonic prototype aircraft of some sort. So, presumably, the Americans were having Flying Triangle sightings, too.

Triangle UFOs aren’t just an English phenomenon, however. Flying triangles have been spotted around the world with increasing frequency lately. Recently declassified documents show that even the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has documented sightings of similar triangle UFOs which appeared to monitor American nuclear facilities. While many of us would love for these two be proof of visitors from another world, most theories suggest that these flying triangles are likely a form of undisclosed aircraft.

Dozens of witnesses across Belgium reported sightings of the same triangle-shaped craft throughout 1989 and 1990.

Whatever they are, one thing is for sure: the triangle is the new saucer.

 TAGS: 

Flying Triangle, Flying Triangles, mufon, Mutual UFO Network, mysterious lights, Triangle UFO, UFO footage, ufo sightings, UFOs

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

16-05-2017 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

16-05-2017 om 23:29 geschreven door peter  

What is this Enormous Hexagon in the Australian Desert?

{  https://www.youtube.com/ }

16-05-2017 om 23:22 geschreven door peter  

16-05-2017 om 22:48 geschreven door peter  

16-05-2017 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

16-05-2017 om 22:40 geschreven door peter  

'THEY MADE CONTACT': Author who investigated alien abductions says ETs now speak to HIM

AN AUTHOR who has investigated alleged alien interactions with humans on Earth says he is now being contacted by extraterrestrials.

{ http://www.express.co.uk/ }

16-05-2017 om 22:27 geschreven door peter  

UFO HUNTER MYSTERY: Questions after 'man who found life on Mars' goes silent

A PROLIFIC UFO hunter who claimed on numerous occasions to have found evidence of life on Mars has sparked a mystery after suddenly axing one of the world's biggest UFO websites.

16-05-2017 om 22:11 geschreven door peter  

Popular UFO Sightings Daily website to go dormant

By Craig Hlavaty, Chron.com

The man behind one of the most popular UFO sightings websites has decided to call it quits after seven years of exposing the strangest images that have been found. 

Site owner Scott C. Waring said in a farewell post on UFO Sightings Dailythat he began the site in 2010 to give an outlet for people who had allegedly seen UFOs but didn't have an outlet to show off their images. 

BACK IN TIME: UFO can be seen in 16th Century painting from era of Dracula's Castle

According to Waring, the site had moved away from education and enlightenment and was heading towards entertainment. 

"This is serious stuff that has depths that even I can't fathom," he wrote on the site late last week. "It deserves serious thought and research, not contempt and ridicule." 

Over the years the site has been the go-to for photos of strange images on Mars and the Moon, plus UFO sightings from all over world, even here in Houston. 

TOURIST ATTRACTION: UFO in Houston? Mysterious li ght spotted in Houston sky over 'Be Someone' sign

Here at Chron.com the work of Waring and his team of contributors have offered up a unique diversion for readers wanting to see squirrels and groundhogs on Mars or UFOs flying by the "BE SOMEONE" graffiti on I-45. 

Click through the slideshow above to see some of the best UFO Sightings Daily stories shared by Chron.com... 

{ http://www.chron.com/ }

16-05-2017 om 14:31 geschreven door peter  

Artist's representation of a Dyson ring, orbiting a star at a distance of 1 AU. Credit: WIkipedia Commons/Falcorian

Astronomy, Extraterrestrial

FINDING ALIEN MEGASTRUCTURES AROUND NEARBY PULSARS

  

by Matt Williams

During the 1960s, Freeman Dyson and Nikolai Kardashev captured the imaginations of people everywhere by making some radical proposals. Whereas Dyson proposed that intelligent species could eventually create megastructures to harness the energy of their stars, Kardashev offered a three-tiered classification system for intelligent species based on their ability to harness the energy of their planet, solar system and galaxy, respectively.

With missions that are now capable of locating extra-solar planets (i.e. the Kepler Space Observatory) scientists have been on the lookout for signs of possible alien megastructures. Unfortunately, aside from some very arguable results, no concrete evidence has yet come to light. Lucky for us, in a study from the Free University of Tbilisi, Professor Zaza Osmanov offers some new insight on why megastructures may have eluded us so far.

While fascinating, the idea of alien megastructures invariably suffers from the same problem as all other attempts to find signs of intelligent life in our Universe. Basically, if intelligent life exists, why have we consistently failed to find any evidence of it? This conundrum, which was summed up by Enrico Fermi in the 1950s (thereafter known as the Fermi Paradox), has hung like a shadow over all our efforts.

Artist’s impression of an orbiting swarm of dusty comet fragments around Tabby’s Star.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

For example, in the summer of 2015, a team of astronomers announced that they found what might be an indication of an alien megastructure around Tabby’s Star (KIC 8462852). However, they were quick to point out that any number of possibilities could explain the strange dimming pattern coming from the star, and subsequent studies offered even more plausible explanations – such as the star having consumed a planet at some point in its past.

To this, Osmanov has argued that the problem is that we are looking in the wrong places. Last year, he wrote a research paper in which he ventured that an alien super civilization – i.e. one that was consistent with a Level II Kardashev civilization – would likely use ring-like megastructures to harness the power of their stars. This is in contrast to the traditional concept of a “Dyson’s Sphere”, which would consist of a spherical shell.

Furthermore, he argued that these Dyson Rings would likely be built around pulsars rather than stars, and offered estimates on their dimensions which were dependent on the rotational speed of the pulsar. According to Osmanov’s latest study, titled “Are the Dyson rings around pulsars detectable?“, Osmanov extends the problem of spotting alien megastructures to the observational realm.

Specifically, he addressed how alien megastructures could be spotted by identifying their infrared energy signatures, and at what kinds of distances. By examining how such structures would vary in terms of the amount of IR radiation they would emit, he believes that they could be spotted within our local Universe using existing instruments.

Artist’s impression of the exotic double object that consists of a tiny neutron star orbited every two and a half hours by a white dwarf star. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Once again, it comes down to the diameter of the structures, which would in turn depend on the type of pulsar they orbit. As he states in the paper:

“A couple of years earlier before publishing the paper of Kardashev, the prominent physicist Freeman Dyson has suggested that if such superadvanced (in the terminology of Kardashev, Level-II) extraterrestrials exist, for increasing efficiency of energy consumption they can construct a thin spherical shell with radius ?1AU surrounding a host star (Dyson 1960).It has been argued that for such distances the sphere will be in the so-called habitable zone (HZ) and therefore the sphere will have the temperature of the order of (200 – 300 K), making this object visible in the infrared spectrum.”

Extending this to pulsars, Osmanov estimates that the habitable zone around a relatively slowly-rotating pulsar (with a period of about half a second) would be on the order of 0.1 AU. According to his calculations, a ring-like megastructure that orbited a pulsar at this distance would emit temperatures on the order of 390 K (116.85 °C; 242.33 °F), which means that the megastructure would be visible in the IR band.

From this, Osmanov concludes that modern IR telescopes – such as the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) – would have the necessary capacity to monitor nearby pulsars for signs of alien megastructures. He further concludes that for this purpose, these telescopes would have an effective range of up to 200 parsecs (~652 light years).

Ever since it was first announced in 2015, there has been speculation as to what could account for the dimming of KIC 8462852.

Credit: Eburacum45/SentientDevelopments.com

In addition, he goes on to state that within this volume of space, multiple candidates could be found and examined using these same existing instruments:

“We have considered the sensitivity of VLTI and by taking into account its higher possible angular resolution, 0.001 mas, it has been shown that the maximum distance ~0.2 kpc leads to the IR spectral density of the order of 7.4 mJy, which in turn, can be detected by the VLTI. We have argued that by monitoring the nearby zone of the Solar System approximately 64 pulsars are expected to be located inside it.”

Beyond these distances, up to the kiloparsec range (about 3260 light years), the angular resolution of these telescopes would not be enough to detect the structure of any rings. As such, finding megastructures at this distance would require telescopes that can conduct surveys in the UV band – which corresponds to the surface temperatures of neutron stars (7000 K). However, this would have to wait upon the development of more sensitive instruments.

“As we see, the search of infrared rings is quite promising for distances up to -0.2 kpc, where one will be able to monitor potentially 64 ± 21 pulsars by using the IR instruments,” he concluded. “Observation of distant pulsars (up to -1kpc), although will significantly increase the total number of potential objects – to 1600 ± 530, but at this moment the UV instruments cannot provide such a level of sensitivity.”

There are Dyson rings and spheres and this, an illustration of a Dyson swarm. Could this or a variation of it be what we’re detecting around KIC? Not likely, but a fun thought experiment.

Credit: Falcorian/Wikipedia Commons

So while the range would be limited, the opportunities for testing this hypothesis would not. All told, between 43 and 85 candidates exist within the observable volume of space, according to Osmanov’s estimates. And with existing IR telescopes – and next-generation telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescopes – up to the task, some surveys could be conducted that would yield valuable information either way.

The concept of alien megastructures remains a controversial one, and for good reason. For one, the potential evidence for such structures – i.e. the periodic dimming of a star – can easily be explained by other means. Second, there is an undeniable degree of wishful thinking when it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, which means that any findings could be subject to bias.

Nevertheless, the search for intelligent life remains a very fascinating field of study, and a necessary one at that. Not only would finding other examples of life in our Universe put to rest one of the most burning existential questions of all time – are we alone? – it would also allow us to learn a great deal about what other forms life could take. Is all life carbon based, are there other possibilities, etc? We would like to know!

In the end, the Fermi Paradox will only be resolved when we find definitive evidence that there is intelligent life out there other than our own. In the meantime, we can expect that we will keep searching until we find something. And anything that make this easier by telling us where we should (and what specifically to look for) is sure to help.

Further Reading: arXiv

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16-05-2017 om 01:18 geschreven door peter