The 2014 International UFO Congress, part 3

The third day, Friday Feb. 14, began with Robert Schroeder, a retired engineering manager, spoke on "How Modern Physics is Revealing the Technology of UFOs," a subject that might be more convincing if he were a physicist.

Robert Schroeder

He briefly reviewed modern quantum physics, especially the concept derived from String Theory about membranes, or separate universes. We live, he suggested, in a 4-D Membrane in a 5D Bulk (or aggregation of membranes); in our Bulk there is one other 4D membrane, the Gravity Membrane. That's the reason that gravity is so much weaker than the other three fundamental forces - most of it is over there, not here.

Schroeder's theory is that the UFOs have devised a way to get over to the Gravity Membrane, where gravity is 10¹⁶ times stronger. They generate KK Gravitons, which induces the creation of micro black holes, which somehow gets them over there. Why the UFOs don't get smushed by all that gravity, he did not explain. Because of the time and distance dilations associated with a powerful gravitational field (the same effects as acceleration), this reduces the distance to Alpha Centauri to just 25 miles. A nice trick, if you can make it work.

Patty Greer

Next up was Patty Greer (no relation to you-know-who), "a.k.a. the Croppie Girl." Her title was "Crop Circles & the Real Circlemakers." She is a film maker and crop circle researcher, who had her first UFO abduction back in 2001. "Patty Greer was a professional musician for decades, playing the harp and piano and singing with bands. In 2004 she trusted the wrong dentist and was poisoned severely by mercury fillings. For years she was seeking a healing miracle, and when everything failed she headed to the UK Crop Circles. Laying in Crop Circles day after day she developed (what appeared to be) a telepathic communication with the Circlemakers." With no previous training or experience in film making, she says that she became a filmmaker when she had an out-of-body experience in a crop circle in 2007, and she has visited over 100 crop circles. She later found out that the first Crop Circle she visited was fake, but she had extraordinary experiences in it, anyway.

She was "taken" from a Crop Circle in 2007, and her eyes were "re-calibrated" so that she could see "plasmas," which, it turns out, are everywhere. Crop Circles are made by orange orbs that fly around. They like that region of England because of the many Ley Lines there.

She says that the photos she takes in her home always show "orbs." Some people would call these orbs "reflections." 

Jeffrey Bennett

Next was astrophysicist and science educator Jeffrey Bennett, speaking on "Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for our Future."

He related how he once saw an extremely brilliant light suddenly appear in the sky, lasting only about ten seconds, then fading out. He believed it to be stationary, although his son who was with him thought it was moving to the right. It might have been an alien space ship, he said. Or possibly something else, like the rare case of a meteor heading straight toward him. Dr. Bennett, have you ever heard of an iridium flare, a brilliant reflection of the sun off the near-perfectly reflecting solar panel of an Iridium satellite? You've described one perfectly, and your son appears to be correct in that the satellite moves slowly while the flaring occurs. Don't go mystery-mongering about "alien spacecraft" when there exist much simpler and more likely explanations (although Stanton Friedman insisted that when you see an unexplained light in the sky, an alien spacecraft is the most likely explanation).

Bennett ran through the usual 'numbers game' concerning the number of stars in our galaxy, the number of galaxies in the universe, the percentage of stars having potentially habitable planets (apparently a large fraction, based on the findings of the late Kepler orbiting telescope), etc. Any intelligent beings capable of traveling here across interstellar distances must be far in advance of us, based solely on the fact that they can make the journey. Running some more numbers, he estimates they would be likely to be at least 50,000 years more advanced than us in term of technology.

Aaron Sagers

Next was Aaron Sagers speaking on "Celebrity UFO Encounters."  Sagers is "a TV personality, journalist and entertainment pundit who has covered everything from zombies, ghosts and aliens to geek culture for CNN, MTV and on his Travel Channel show “Paranormal Paparazzi,” where he serves as host and co-Executive Producer." He is a glib, fast-talking entertainer type of guy.

Sagers expressed concern that many claims about alleged Celebrity Encounters can not be verified, and that he was only interested in the authentic ones. However, he began with a few that he knew to be not confirmed, such as that alleged of Elvis and Jackie Gleason. Soon these celebrities were joined by Reinhold Messner, Christopher Columbus, Shirley Maclaine, Dennis Kucinich, Buzz Aldrin, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Muhammad Ali, and Sammy Hagar. While JFK was president, he was taking a group of friends out on a boat ride in Massachusetts to show off his new boat. Suddenly, a formation of daylight disks appeared, and everyone saw them. When they returned to land, Secret Service agents swarmed all over the boat, and the passengers were ordered not to reveal what they had seen. That's a great story, I hadn't heard that one before.

The afternoon ended with a panel on "Science and SETI," consisting of Richard Hoover, Jeffrey Bennett, and Ted Peters. Hoover speculated that life could exist on Mars in the water underneath a melting icecap. Life on earth, he said, may have arrived here on meteorites. The panelists generally agreed on the likelihood of plentiful extraterrestrial life, of panspermia (life spread from one planet to another), and of life existing, or even thriving, in what we would consider very difficult places.

Ben Hansen looking for UFOs with an image intensifier

In the evening was a demonstration, just like last year, of some very expensive low-light cameras and telescopes that use electronics to amplify very low light images. This allows you to see much fainter objects (but not as faint as the objects you can see using good binoculars!). Leading the demonstration, once again, was very tall guy Ben Hansen, host of the SyFy channel program Fact or Faked?

As was the case last year, no actual "UFOs" were seen. They did detect a stationary flashing object that appeared to flash about once every 80 seconds. Hansen suggested that it might be a defunct and tumbling geosynchronous satellite reflecting the sun, and this is probably correct. I set up a small and highly portable 76mm Celestron First Scope, and showed people the full moon that was rising. My  skeptical buddy James McGaha was there with a low-light camera and a monitor displaying the Orion nebula. It produced a clearer image than those image intensifiers. Both of these views were well-appreciated by visitors.