UFO researcher Shepherd Johnson of Virginia was researching Carl Sagan's
papers at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
He found a fascinating attempt by Laurance Rockefeller to draw Sagan into his pro-UFO advocacy (Johnson posted this to the Facebook group UFO Updates). The American billionaire Laurance Rockefeller (1910 - 2004) was the son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the brother of Nelson Rockefeller. His UFO "disclosure initiative" is well-known in UFO circles. According to Wikipedia,
In 1993, along with his niece, Anne Bartley, the stepdaughter of Winthrop Rockefeller and the then-president of the Rockefeller Family Fund, he established the UFO Disclosure Initiative to the Clinton White House. They asked for all UFO information held by the government, including from the CIA and the US Air Force, to be declassified and released to the public. The first and most important test case where declassification had to apply, according to Rockefeller, was the Roswell UFO incident. In September 1994, the Air Force categorically denied the incident was UFO-related. Rockefeller briefed Clinton on the results of his initiative in 1995. Clinton did produce an Executive Order in late 1994 to declassify numerous documents in the National Archives, but this did not specifically refer to UFO-related files.
In addition to funding UFO research, Laurance Rockefeller also funded research into Crop Circles, and ESP.
SETI has no data, says Rockefeller's argument, but UFOlogy does. Sagan's reply was brief and pointed:
"A million reports that the Earth is flat has no veridical value on the shape of the Earth." - Carl Sagan.
Sagan was certainly a UFO skeptic, though not quite in the hard skeptical class of, say, Menzel, Klass and Patrick Moore. I believe he kept the door slightly ajar pending the arrival of positive, physical evidence. He also did go to some lengths to research Velikovsky's ideas, far from dismissing him entirely.
ReplyDeleteNo, Sagan was as skeptical of UFOs as Klass, Menzel, Moore, Sheaffer, etc. He knew it was and is a pseudoscience and was completely separate from the real science of SETI.
DeleteSagan started off as sort of a wishy-washy skeptic, positioning himself between the believers and the skeptics camp. In testimony to the 1968 hearings before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Carl Sagan said: "I might mention that, on this symposium, there are no individuals who strongly disbelieve in the extraterrestrial origin of UFO's and therefore there is a certain view, not necessarily one I strongly agree with -- but there is a certain view this committee is not hearing today, along those lines." In other words, Sagan was saying that there were no strong skeptics on that panel. Since Sagan was himself on the panel, it's obvious that Sagan did not himself "strongly disbelieve" in the ETH at this time. Frank Stalter posted a comment with another weasel-worded statement from Sagan from this same hearing. Philip J. Klass never trusted Sagan, he always felt that Sagan would adopt whatever position concerning UFOs that he felt would help his SETI.
DeleteBy the 1990s, Sagan had migrated to a position of quite a hard skeptic on UFOs.
""Philip J. Klass never trusted Sagan"" this implies that Klass was worried Sagan might reveal some "secret".
DeleteKlass originally worked for General Electric, as an engineer.Coined the term Avionics, & obviously had an extreme interest in this field.It is well known GE are heavily involved with cutting edge tech & military advancements/black ops programs.
Why does an engineer suddenly want to become a writer?
Did Klass's superiors recognize his zealous,opinionated,arrogant & "pushing what is RIGHT" philosophy might be better used to PUSH their agenda? The skeptical UFO & foundation of CSICOP?
His modis operandi of sending letters to peoples employers or govt officials to slander them is pretty Low & Nasty Robert.
An engineer would jump at the chance to investigate & research new & foreign technology, where ever it came from,alien tech would be a definate. Corso has often stated that fibreoptics,nightvision,silicon chips, electronic circuitry etc, all got a big boost from the Roswell Crash> it fits the timeline as well.
I think Klass knew a lot more than he ever revealed to you, but was kept in the loop , so his Science & Aviation reviews would be accepted by colleagues as the cutting edge of "American Knowhow". The FBI investigation seems to suggest he may have revealed a bit too much,too soon, but they could hardly replace him because of what he did know. Trust?
Who exactly made the "leap" from computers the size of rooms full of valves, to a handheld calculator that could do 10 times as much? OR, guidance systems that can fit into the nosecone of a fighter jet?
I bet Klass, was the first to enlighten the public on such advances......
Deano, you're using Corso to support your wild speculations about Klass?
DeleteDo you really believe anything you say? Or are your comments some kind of performance art wherein you try to make the least credible argument possible?
Gday Terry. FYI I have not read Corso's book , only caught glimpses of his technology claims from various other sources. So I decided to do a little research into the inventors & timeframes. This was all just a few hours research on Wikipedia, not CT sites or the like, so you can check if you like:
DeleteTransistor 1947 Bardeen & Shockley at Bell Labs
Integrated Circuit 1958 Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce(student of Shockley)
LED 1962 Nick Holonyak at General Electric(student of Bardeen)
Single chip microprocessor 1968 Ted Hoff (working at Noyce's Intel)
So as you can see, the basic fundamentals of modern electronics all started with the Transistor which replaced the huge valves,invented in Dec 1947 (Roswell June) by Shockley & Bardeen whose students/assistants Holonyak & Noyce made other breakthroughs. Lasers & Fibre Optics were also developed at the same time but took longer to create working models, because manufacturing methods of glass werent good enough.
Bell Labs & General Electric were the cutting edge of Research & Development at the time, but R & D takes time through experimenting. These were radical new concepts that developed at incredible speeds taking physcicists to understand & write theories to explain the technology in scientific terms. It was the manufacturing of the materials used to create these tiny components that had to catch up to scratch.
Its like, the first bicycles were made of steel. The designer didnt say I need carbon-fibre to make a bicycle.
Anyway Terry, thats the facts.If Bell Labs & GE were given these components from a UFO at Roswell, only a handful of men were privy to this, & all received Nobels & awards for their "inventions" & kickstarted the electronics industry as we know it today.
Did Klass know? We wont find out now.
P.S. Talking of performance art. You still havent explained to me how WTC 2, with the top 20storeys leaning at a 15deg angle,breaks all the laws of physics & gravity by falling back the other way & its reinforced concrete structure "vapourises" into dust. A powerful laser that can atomize things to their molecular size, or thermite explosives would.
A Duralium fuselage & Kerosene ? Not a credible argument........
He doesn't do irony, Terry, or else you might have been on to something.
Deletedeano:
Delete"So I decided to do a little research into the inventors & timeframes. This was all just a few hours research on Wikipedia, not CT sites or the like, so you can check if you like:
Transistor 1947 Bardeen & Shockley at Bell Labs"
That's funny... The Wikipedia article on the transistor also mentions the patents filed by Lilienfeld for solid-state field-effect transistors in the 1920s. And he was not the only one:
Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed a patent for a field-effect transistor (FET) in Canada in 1925, which was intended to be a solid-state replacement for the triode.[1][2] Lilienfeld also filed identical patents in the United States in 1926[3] and 1928.[4][5] However, Lilienfeld did not publish any research articles about his devices nor did his patents cite any specific examples of a working prototype. Because the production of high-quality semiconductor materials was still decades away, Lilienfeld's solid-state amplifier ideas would not have found practical use in the 1920s and 1930s, even if such a device had been built.[6] In 1934, German inventor Oskar Heil patented a similar device.[7] [Wikipedia]
Nor where Bell Labs alone in building the first solid-state transistors:
In 1948, the point-contact transistor was independently invented by German physicists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker while working at the Compagnie des Freins et Signaux, a Westinghouse subsidiary located in Paris. Mataré had previous experience in developing crystal rectifiers from silicon and germanium in the German radar effort during World War II. Using this knowledge, he began researching the phenomenon of "interference" in 1947. By witnessing currents flowing through point-contacts, similar to what Bardeen and Brattain had accomplished earlier in December 1947, Mataré by June 1948, was able to produce consistent results by using samples of germanium produced by Welker. Realizing that Bell Labs' scientists had already invented the transistor before them, the company rushed to get its "transistron" into production for amplified use in France's telephone network.[12] [Wikipedia]
Why didn't you share this information with us?
Not to mention that the theoretical foundations for our understanding of semiconductors where also developed in the 1920s.
"A million Conspiracy Theories from deano has no veridical value on Reality."
DeletePapageno. This just confirms what I summized in a very brief explanation to Terry. That the production of the materials was decades away.
DeleteFiling for a patent when you have no working prototype or can even produce research articles/plans/theories is hardly being the inventor.
Jules Verne science-fiction books speculated on submarines,flying machines & trips to the moon but he didnt "invent" the protoypes.
WWII had scientists engaged on every possible advancement to gain a technological edge over the enemy. The "FACT" they were still using valves in radar proves this is mere speculation of the knowledge of transistor technology.
So, Shockley & Bardeen suddenly invented the transistor while working at Bell Labs > a working prototype!
Its science papa, not philosophy, try reading it again........
deano (April 15, 2014 at 5:28 PM):
Delete"Papageno. This just confirms what I summized in a very brief explanation to Terry. That the production of the materials was decades away.
Filing for a patent when you have no working prototype or can even produce research articles/plans/theories is hardly being the inventor."
You went all *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* about how "sudden" the invention of the transistor was, when in reality scientists and engineers had been looking for solid-state replacements of vacuum-tubes for over two decades. It was not a radical new idea.
Whether Lilienfeld had a working prototype or not, does not change the fact that the principle of the field-effect transistor was developed already in the 1920s. And if you read the patent, he does make proposals for the fabrication.
And Lilienfeld's patent was not the only one. The patent of Heil contains the basic schematic of a modern-day field effect transistor.
Rectifying contacts in solid state, the ingredient of Bell Labs' bipolar transistor of 1947, had been known and studied already for over thirty years. And so were semiconducting materials.
The fact that the same device was built by another group only a short time later, is a sign that several group were working along the same lines at the same time. Which is not surprising, because scientists tend to share information.
That the production of the materials was decades away is a platitude in science and engineering. Better materials and better tools, which are not yet available, are always necessary to improve our technology, but it does not prove or imply that we need to wait for magic alien technology to fall from the sky to be able to produce such materials.
deano (April 15, 2014 at 5:28 PM):
"WWII had scientists engaged on every possible advancement to gain a technological edge over the enemy. The "FACT" they were still using valves in radar proves this is mere speculation of the knowledge of transistor technology.
So, Shockley & Bardeen suddenly invented the transistor while working at Bell Labs > a working prototype!
Its science papa, not philosophy, try reading it again........
If you read it carefully, without leaving out inconvenient parts, you can see that it was not so sudden.
I can see this will be a tit for tat argument that will head nowhere papa.But field effect, is different from point contact, so I cant see how the earlier patents are relevant, if they were,Lilienfield & Heil would have received the accolades & Nobels.
DeleteYou can sidestep all you like, but Shockley & Bardeen will go down in history as the Inventors. Likewise, their former students & assistants, Noyce is credited with the integrated circuit, & Holonyak with the L.E.D. Holonyak worked at General Electric which I thought was interesting because thats where Klass worked.
Thus, modern electronic revolution, can be attributed to 4 men who will go down in history as the inventors.
You would be nieve if you think US military wasnt interested in these developments. Missile guidance & the term Avionics being named by Klass - the most zealous UFO denier known.
Fibre Optics were classified on the APOLLO missions.
Most of this tech was developd in the 60s. The military releasing it to the private companies to make profits on consumer goods once it became known or declassifed, like the transistor radio & computers. Secrecy was paramount, so competitors couldnt steal the lead- No, the scientists didnt share information!
I couldnt find any history of the inventor of the laser. Yes they are used by private firms for pointers,cutting tools, medicine/surgical,communication entertainment, etc.
But there is no doubt these discoveries were after military experiments which developed targeting & now used as actual weapons like the new Navy systems for missile defence.
LASERS
Delete1960 : Maiman > First Ruby laser ( Hughes Research Labs)
1961 : Javan,Bennet,Heriot > First Gas laser ( Bell Labs)
1961 : Theory of optical resonators ( Bell Labs)
1962 : Hall > First semi-conductor laser ( General Electric Labs)
I suppose papa, you will say I "omitted" Townes, the inventor of the MASER & who suggested the Laser idea.
Guess what? He too worked for Bell Labs, on valve radars in WWII, & eventually as Director of Research for Defence Analysis in Washington.
So Corso's allegation that Roswell tech was given to physicists at Bell & G. E . Labs is highly plausible. Only a handful knowing the tech that might have inspired them was of a "foreign" nature.
The transistor,silicon chip microprocessor,integrated circuits,laser & fibre optics all developed within 20yrs of 1947, mainly delayed by better manufacturing of purer & smaller component materials.
Maybe ROBERT can enlighten us on what Klass actually worked on while at G.E., & why the sudden career change to become a journalist & staunch UFO skeptic?
OH, & yes Terry. Now that I have looked into the history of electronics, I do believe Lt Col Corso. His position in the military is FACT, & far higher than Klass ever achieved.
It is a known fact that Klass was the first to make "wild speculations" about anyone leaning towards UFOs.
eg Ball lightening/plasma explanation , Robert Valentich missing in plane because he was a drug runner, Watchout Canadian govt> Stanton Friedman's coming.....
deano (April 17, 2014 at 1:11 AM):
Delete"I can see this will be a tit for tat argument that will head nowhere papa.But field effect, is different from point contact, so I cant see how the earlier patents are relevant, if they were,Lilienfield & Heil would have received the accolades & Nobels."
They are relevant, because they refute your claim that the invention of the solid-state transistor was sudden. In reality, the idea of solid-state amplifiers and switches had been around for decades and the relevant research was very active and competitive.
"You can sidestep all you like, but Shockley & Bardeen will go down in history as the Inventors. Likewise, their former students & assistants, Noyce is credited with the integrated circuit, & Holonyak with the L.E.D. Holonyak worked at General Electric which I thought was interesting because thats where Klass worked.
Thus, modern electronic revolution, can be attributed to 4 men who will go down in history as the inventors."
None of this changes the fact that they were not working in a vacuum and that there were many other scientists and engineers working in this field.
So, the invention of the first working solid-state transistor was not the result of magic alien technology falling from the sky.
"You would be nieve if you think US military wasnt interested in these developments. Missile guidance & the term Avionics being named by Klass - the most zealous UFO denier known.
Fibre Optics were classified on the APOLLO missions."
And, apparently, the US military was also interested in men staring at goats.
"Most of this tech was developd in the 60s. The military releasing it to the private companies to make profits on consumer goods once it became known or declassifed, like the transistor radio & computers. Secrecy was paramount, so competitors couldnt steal the lead- No, the scientists didnt share information!"
That's funny... The Nobel lectures from 1956 seem to have quite a lot of information...
"I couldnt find any history of the inventor of the laser. Yes they are used by private firms for pointers,cutting tools, medicine/surgical,communication entertainment, etc.
DeleteBut there is no doubt these discoveries were after military experiments which developed targeting & now used as actual weapons like the new Navy systems for missile defence."
Please, read the Wikipedia article with more attention:
Foundations
In 1917, Albert Einstein established the theoretical foundations for the laser and the maser in the paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation); via a re-derivation of Max Planck's law of radiation, conceptually based upon probability coefficients (Einstein coefficients) for the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation; in 1928, Rudolf W. Ladenburg confirmed the existences of the phenomena of stimulated emission and negative absorption;[11] in 1939, Valentin A. Fabrikant predicted the use of stimulated emission to amplify "short" waves;[12] in 1947, Willis E. Lamb and R. C. Retherford found apparent stimulated emission in hydrogen spectra and effected the first demonstration of stimulated emission;[11] in 1950, Alfred Kastler (Nobel Prize for Physics 1966) proposed the method of optical pumping, experimentally confirmed, two years later, by Brossel, Kastler, and Winter.[13] [Wikipedia]
Not to mention a Nobel Prize for lasers, masers and semiconductor lasers in 1964...
So, the idea was developed over a time of a few decades.
deano (April 17, 2014 at 3:16 AM):
"LASERS
1960 : Maiman > First Ruby laser ( Hughes Research Labs)
1961 : Javan,Bennet,Heriot > First Gas laser ( Bell Labs)
1961 : Theory of optical resonators ( Bell Labs)
1962 : Hall > First semi-conductor laser ( General Electric Labs)
I suppose papa, you will say I "omitted" Townes, the inventor of the MASER & who suggested the Laser idea.
Guess what? He too worked for Bell Labs, on valve radars in WWII, & eventually as Director of Research for Defence Analysis in Washington."
All this *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* does not change the fact that the research was not really hidden.
"So Corso's allegation that Roswell tech was given to physicists at Bell & G. E . Labs is highly plausible. Only a handful knowing the tech that might have inspired them was of a "foreign" nature.
The transistor,silicon chip microprocessor,integrated circuits,laser & fibre optics all developed within 20yrs of 1947, mainly delayed by better manufacturing of purer & smaller component materials."
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the inventions you mentioned are the result of magic alien technology fallen from the sky.
In reality, if you look at the history of the inventions, you can trace ideas and research back to a few decades before 1947 and you can see that these ideas and research were not exclusively held by a few people in a couple of places.
"A million Conspiracy Theories from deano has no veridical value on Reality."
DeleteGood one! Similarly, many times I've asked individual Believers in the myth to consider the utter inconsequence of "UFO" reports--innumerable, unverifiable, insubstantial and utterly inconsequential reports.
Recently Bill Clinton has said that as President he looked into the Roswell and Area 51 cases and concluded: no aliens. http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/bill-clinton-phones-home-on-aliens-105337.html
ReplyDeleteEven in Carl Sagan's autobiography it is known that he worked & had contact with intelligence services, even revealing info to further his career.
ReplyDeleteAs you all know, I question who is making cropcircles, & obviously Rockefeller had an interest too.
The ARECIBO Message
For those that dont know, this was a binary-code message sent out into space in 1974 via the Arecibo Radio Telescope, drafted by Sagan & Drake of SETI fame.
In 2001, a reply was received at the Chibolton Radio Telescope in the UK, in the form of a cropcircle(glyph/pictogram) which seemed to be an alien answer.
Apart from the changes, that only a very scientific mind could understand, let alone recreate in a field of wheat at night, by "pixallation" of the crop with standing tufts & swirled compressions; take note of the bottom image > it is a depiction of their "radio telescope" completely different to ours.
I know a lot of you think cropcircles are the work of pranksters,hoaxes,Team Satan/Circlemakers but these larrikins must have ESP as well, because the year before, in 2000, was a cropcircle of "their" radio telescope in front of the Chibolton telescope. At the time, it was just another weird geometric pattern.
How does someone "hoax" an image of their radio telescope, a year before its actual relevant meaning is shown by being incorparated in the Arecibo Reply Message?
To date, no one has claimed ownership of "making" this cropcircle, & security saw nothing. 2001 saw the start of "pixallated images" similar to that of newspaper images & TV screens. How one would create these at night in a field of wheat has not been reproduced for the cameras.
Drake has been interviewed on this trying to laugh it off, by stating why would they reply using a cropcircle as the method.
My take on that is "Would they tell us?". I cant access the Radio Telescope .If their is a cover-up( as MI5 & military helicopters presence suggest), isnt a cropcircle a "large living canvass/noticeboard" that the public will see & the secrecy exposed?
To find out more, look at
#Arecibo Reply/Response> explains all differences & Sagans input
#Drakes interview> laughter, ridicule then uneasyness
#Circlemakers> MI5 sponsored hoaxers that even have images of Balls of Light & a UFO craft on their own website
P.S. Really Transpower? Is this the same Bill Clinton that originally denied having "relations" with Monica Lewinsky?
Seems Bill has a knack of getting people to "Swallow" things!
One thing that I am definitely not swallowing: I don't think that any advanced extra terrestrial civilization would travel at least tens, if not hundreds of thousands of light years to get here, then spend their time drawing pictures in the crops and kidnapping drunk fishermen and sexually frustrated housewives. If they want to communicate, I don't think they'd have any particular difficulty finding a less ambiguous way to do it.
DeleteIt is well known about the "ramifications" of simply arriving & saying we are here. USAF Blue Book was to stop public panic.
DeleteBut doesnt slowly showing their craft in the skies, & making the cropcircles , say hello, we are here, in a non-threatening subtle way.
The mere fact they can produce cropcircles without damaging the crop,unlike pranksters stomper boards, so that it grows to ripen is confirmation of this> a point lost by most skeptics.
Agriculture is explained as the reason for civilization. Wheat itself has been genetically altered from its wild ancestors around 12-10 000yrs ago.With todays advances in genetic biology(Carl Sagan took high interest), are they pointing to this fact?
Abductions highlight their interest in genetic material.
If you look into their reply to Sagan's message, they highlighted Silicon as part of anatomy, & showed a different version of the DNA chain & number(correcting Sagan's approximate) that was known in the 70s.
As Robert points out, Sagan sat on the fence for a long time.
The skeptic push when funds were needed.
How does a scientist aligned to SETI(search for extraterrestial intelligence) NOT believe in it?
This is what I cant swallow.
The only reason we know that this was a response to Sagan's Arecibo Message is the fact it was displayed in a field so the public could actually see it, & "public" scientists could actually analyze the data!
"A million denials of aliens has no veridical value on Clinton's horniness."
Delete"How does a scientist aligned to SETI...NOT believe in it?"
DeleteThere's a big difference between the reasonable probability of ETI--however plentiful or rare--and irrationally believing that ET spacecraft are visiting Earth.
Deano, Bill Clinton does prevaricate when it's in his self-interest, but I don't see how that would be the case with denying aliens. I also recently saw Dan Quayle (former VP) also deny finding any evidence of aliens (after a concerted search). As for crop circles, I agree that the more complex ones cannot be created by a couple of pranksters at night. The images must first be designed on computer, and then somehow the design is created in the field from above. But I don't know the engineering details yet, and--no--I don't think aliens are involved, just some smart human engineering students!
ReplyDelete"I do not think the evidence is at all persuasive, that UFO's are of intelligent extraterrestrial origin, nor do I think the evidence is convincing that no UFO's are of intelligent extraterrestrial origin." -Carl Sagan
ReplyDeletehttp://www.project1947.com/shg/symposium/sagan.html
Here Sagan tries to position himself between the believers and the skeptics camp. This statement violates Occam's Razor. It is not necessary for anyone to produce evidence that no UFO is from ETI, indeed nobody claims to have such proof. The burden is for the proponents to prove that UFOs are from ETI. The opposite is simply the Null Hypothesis: nothing new to see here.
Delete