UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Malcolm Lees enlisted in the British Royal Air Force in the early 1950s and retired in the late 1960s. In 1962 he received a posting to a RAF station in the county of Wiltshire, which he declined to name, and worked in the prestigious and secretive world of intelligence gathering. Most of the work, Lees explained, was routine and even mundane and he laughed heartily at the idea, spouted by many, that intelligence work was a glamorous one full of James Bond-style escapades. Nevertheless, Lees said, there was one aspect of his career that really was stranger than fiction. Early one September morning in 1962, a call came into the base from someone who had seen a UFO hovering in the vicinity of the ancient standing-stones in the historic English village of Avebury, Wiltshire.

UFO reports reached the base from time to time, said Lees. They were always handled by the RAF’s Provost and Security Services. For the most part they were mind-numbing and mundane, and related to little more than sightings of unidentified lights in the sky that could, in reality, have been anything or nothing. Invariably, he said, the reports were a week, or even more, old by the time they were received. And so, they were simply filed and passed up the chain of command – that was then at Government Buildings, Acton, and which relocated to Royal Air Force Rudloe Manor in 1977 (Note: for years, there were rumors that Rudloe Manor was some kind of “secret base” where dead aliens were held). But this particular case was a little different, said Lees.

The witness was a middle-aged lady who had lived in Avebury all of her adult life and who was fascinated by archaeological history. A “spinster,” (as the files describe her) she would often stroll among the formations at night, marveling at their creation and musing upon their history. It was on the night in question that she had been out walking at around 10:30 p.m. when she was both startled and amazed to see a small ball of light, perhaps two-feet in diameter, gliding slowly through the stones. Transfixed and rooted to the spot, she watched as it closed in on her at a height of about twelve feet. The ball then stopped fifteen feet or so from her, and small amounts of what looked like liquid metal slowly and silently dripped from it to the ground. Then, in an instant, the ball exploded in a bright, white flash. For a moment she was blinded by its intensity and instinctively fell to her knees. When her eyes cleared, however, she was faced with a horrific sight. The ball of light had gone, but on the ground in front of her was what she could only describe as a monstrous, writhing worm.

The creature, she said, was about five feet long, perhaps eight or nine inches thick, and its skin was milk-white. As she slowly rose to her feet, the creature’s head turned suddenly in her direction and two bulging eyes opened. When it began to move unsteadily towards her in a caterpillar-like fashion, she emitted a hysterical scream and fled the scene. Rushing back home, she slammed the door shut and frantically called the airbase, after having been directed to them by the less-than-impressed local police. The Provost and Security Services were used to dealing with UFO reports, said Lees, and a friend of his in the P&SS was dispatched early the next day to interview the woman – amid much hilarity on the part of his colleagues, all of whom thought that the story was someone’s idea of a joke. On returning, however, Lees’ friend and colleague had a very serious and grim look on his face, and informed him guardedly that whatever had taken place, it was definitely no hoax.

The woman, he said, had practically barricaded herself in her home, was almost incoherent with fear, and only agreed to return to the scene after lengthy coaxing. Lees’ colleague said that he found no evidence of the UFO. The worm, or whatever it was, was clearly long gone. On the ground near the standing stone, however, was a three-foot long trail of a slime-like substance, not unlike that left by a snail. Lees’ colleague quickly improvised and, after racing back to the woman’s house, scooped some of the material onto a spoon and into a drinking glass.

After assuring the woman that her case would be taken very seriously, and requesting that she discuss the events with no one, he headed back to the base, the slimy substance in hand. A report was duly prepared and dispatched up the chain of command – along with the unidentified slime. For more than a week, said Lees, plainclothes military personnel wandered casually among the stones, seeking out evidence of anything unusual. Nothing else was ever found, however. Lees said that he was fascinated by this incident because it was one of the few UFO-related cases he heard about that was taken very seriously at an official level and that had some form of material evidence in support of it. He did not know the outcome of the investigation, but he never forgot about it. Which is hardly surprising!

I’ve never wanted to end something so bad as when I stepped into the grocery store and saw, for the first time, Marty the robot. I know, I know, property destruction is wrong. I didn’t act on it, but seeing those googly eyes peek over the mangoes filled me with a deep and primal blood lust (oil lust?) that’s been locked up in my DNA since before the flood. I saw Marty the robot and I saw that it must not be. So I left before I made a scene. I’m no freedom fighter.

There seems to be a very real and very deep repulsion inherent in humans’ feelings towards robots. We don’t like robots, as evidenced by the growing trend of people acting on that atavistic urge to murder them. But we also aren’t creeped out by all robots equally. There’s a concept called the “uncanny valley” which shows the point of maximum creepiness. A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience has found the part of the brain responsible for the uncanny valley effect and what’s going on in our primitive monkey brains as we meet our replacements.

The uncanny valley was first described by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. It’s where something, in this case a robot, is made to look like a human but falls a bit short. People tend to like robots more as they become more humanoid, but at a certain point there is a dramatic dip in likability, the so-called valley, before becoming more likable again as they get closer to a perfect facsimile of a human. According to a new study that has located the part of the brain responsible for the uncanny valley, different people may react to the uncanny valley with varied intensity. This may explain why a robot that’s essentially a rolling traffic cone almost landed me in jail. I blame the googly eyes.

Whoever thought the googly eyes were a good idea is a grade-a psychopath.

To figure out the physical location in the brain of the uncanny valley, researchers hooked up 21 volunteers to MRI machines and gave them some tests that involved pictures of various kinds of robots and humans combined with likability decisions. In one experiment, the volunteers were shown pictures of humans, artificial humans, android robots, humanoid robots and mechanoid robots, and were asked to assign values to how likable each was. Then they were asked to pick one of these humans or robots to complete a task: selecting a gift that a hypothetical human may like. The volunteers chose either real humans or human-like robots, but they did not choose the robots in which the difference between human and robot was the hardest to make out.

According to the study, researchers found a link between the uncanny valley and both the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. The prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain that is the most different from other primates. It’s the part that makes executive decisions that go against our primal urges. It was my prefrontal cortex that weighed the risk-reward balance for murdering Marty the robot. The amygdala is a very primitive part of our brain responsible for the “fight-or-flight” response, fear, anxiety, all those fun things. It was my amygdala that made me want to do a robot murder.

“I want you to quietly accept the inevitable.”

The prefrontal cortex showed a dip in activity when volunteers were shown robots in the uncanny valley, and conversely the amygdala seemed to show more of a reaction to the robots in the uncanny valley.

The researchers think that understanding how humans react to the uncanny valley is key to a future where humans and robots coexist peacefully. According to Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten, from the RWTH Aachen University in German:

“This is the first study to show individual differences in the strength of the uncanny valley effect, meaning that some individuals react overly and others less sensitively to human-like artificial agents. This means there is no one robot design that fits – or scares – all users. In my view, smart robot behaviour is of great importance, because users will abandon robots that do not prove to be smart and useful.”

So regardless of our repulsion, they hope to be able to make robots that even stubborn cranks like myself will tolerate. To that I say: good luck.