UFOs in the Desert, Part 4

Saturday was the fourth day of the International UFO Congress in Fountain Hills, Arizona, the largest UFO conference in the world. My previous Blog posting covers the third day.  Here is a link back to the first posting about the conference.

Ben McGee

The first speaker on Saturday morning was Ben McGee, speaking on "Galactic Deep Time, Xenoarchaeology, and the case for Physical Artifacts as 'First Contact.'" He is best known as the skeptic guy on National Geographic Channel's dreadful Chasing UFOs which, I am happy to report, will not be renewed for another season. He has his own spaceflight consulting company.

He began by noting that at present, we can only scientifically demonstrate one kind of life: that of earth. But 'extremophile' life abounds on earth, suggesting that life can exist in a wide range of conditions. He described the history of life on earth in terms of "galactic years," the time required for one full rotation of our galaxy (220 million years). Hence "deep time" is important to think about in terms of the prevalence of ETI. Earth has had five major extinction events in the last 2.5 galactic years, and two within the last G.Y. So how long would a civilization last in our galaxy? L, or lifetime, is a term in the famous Drake Equation for estimating ETI, and choosing a longer or shorter value drastically alters the result. Isaac Asimov estimated, using the Drake Equation, that there are only 10 planets in our galaxy now that have advanced civilizations.

If drastic extinction events are common, then an estimated 325 million planets would contain not an actual civilization, but the ruins of one. Hence, Xenoarchaeology, the study of artifacts from extraterrestrial civilizations, which would require different methods than conventional archaeology. He did not explain how we are supposed to get to the places where Xenoarchaeology will be performed, although we may possibly encounter such artifacts in our own solar system, the remains of ancient visitations.

Later in the day I had a chance to speak with Ben (we had already been in contact by email). A woman was excitedly telling him about supposed "orbs" that appear in some of her photos, and he explained to her, with infinite patience, how this was the result of close-up dust particles in the air being illuminated by the flash. I semi-apologized to him for having to write such unkind things about the National Geographic's Chasing UFOs (as did nearly everyone else). He said he was disappointed in the show, too. The show was originally presented to them as a 'sightings investigation' type of program, but different producers took over and made it into a 'ghost hunters' type of loopy action show. I asked him what was he working on now, and he told me about a new series on the Weather Channel called "Forecasting the end," which premieres March 21. It deals with issues in geology, astronomy, and radiation science. It should be interesting.

James Fox

The next speaker was the documentary film director James Fox, who also was one of the regulars on Chasing UFOs (he was "the believer," to Ben's "skeptic.") He describes his work as a UFO documentary film producer (Out of the Blue, I Know What I Saw) as promoting the fulfillment of the public's "right to know" what is going on. "If we can get Michael Shermer to agree that 'structured craft' are real, then we're getting somewhere." This apparently refers to Shermer's unfortunate endorsement of Out Of The Blue as "one of the very best films ever produced on this, one of the most interesting subjects in the history of science." I beg to disagree: it is a totally one-sided Crockumentary. Fox spent a great deal of time talking about and illustrating the news coverage that he has received, and he showed some examples of his "gorilla marketing" of his films (I suspect he meant "guerilla").

Fox explained that he had arranged to interview Buzz Aldrin about the UFOs that supposedly followed him to the moon, but Aldrin backed out at the last minute because he feared losing funding from Paul Allen for SETI. Here is a YouTube video where Fox makes this same claim.

I did not realize that former Arizona governor Fife Symington's belated confession that he, too, saw the big V-shaped UFO of the Phoenix lights, ten years after the fact, was made while Fox was interviewing him. Later I had an opportunity to talk to Fox, and told him that there is good reason to believe that Symington is lying about his me-too sighting. (Symington was, after all, convicted on seven felony counts of fraud, overturned on a technicality, then pardoned by the outgoing President Clinton.) The first UFO event of the evening, the V-shaped lights (actually five Air National Guard A-10s flying in formation from Las Vegas to Tucson; Tim Printy has more about this) occurred from just before 8:00 PM until 8:45. The second event, that Fox agreed was a flare drop from different Air National Guard planes, began at 10:00 and lasted at most ten minutes. I reminded Fox that Symington claimed to have seen news coverage of the lights on TV, then went outside to look. He says he walked down to where the news crews had been filming the lights (the flare drop), and then saw the V-shape fly over, big and mysterious. However, there was no news coverage of the sightings before the planes landed about 8:45, and there could have been nobody filming the "lights" prior to 10:00, because the flares had not yet been dropped. Therefore Symington's claimed sighting occurred after 10:00, probably well after, and hence is an obvious fabrication. "No, he saw it at 8:20. It was 8:20," Fox insisted. "How could he have seen news coverage of this by 8:20?", I asked. "Maybe he heard chatter on the radio or something," Fox said. "How could there have been news crews filming this by 8:20?", I asked? Fox was having no more of this conversation. "Why would Symington have made this up?", another man asked me. "Because of the news coverage it gave him, and feature stories in which he talks about his new business ventures. It would have cost a lot to buy the publicity he got for free by claiming a UFO sighting."

Fox announced that his next UFO Crockumentary project was under way: 701 - The Movie. This, he says, is the number that the government does not want you to know - the number of Blue Book "unknowns." What Fox does not realize is that this number has already shrunk upon further analysis, and is set to shrink still further (see Tim Printy's Sunlite for more details).

Stanton Friedman

The next speaker was the inevitable Stanton T. Friedman, who promised "A New Look at the Cosmos," although very little in his talk was new. The rate of change in his presentation, if any, is glacial. He began talking about scientific mistakes of the past. To Friedman, rejecting UFOs is another of science's great mistakes. He presented the equations of fusion, without working out the actual results of those equations as did Dr. Edward M. Purcell, proving that interstellar travel using nuclear fusion is preposterous.

He termed SETI the "silly effort to investigate." After all, why look all across the cosmos for ETI when they're here right now? Friedman says that as part of a program on a cruise ship he debated two skeptics on the subject of UFOs. Against Seth Shostak, he claims he won the debate according to 58% of the audience, and against Michael Shermer by 80%.

People say that if the government had UFO secrets, they would have leaked out by now. Freidman claims that governments can keep secrets, and for his example he cites the Corona spy satellite program of the early 1960s, that supposedly was unknown until it was declassified in 1995. BZZZZT! Wrong-o, Stanton. In 1971 your good buddy Philip J. Klass, drawing upon what he learned in his work as Senior Avionics Editor at Aviation Leak magazine, wrote Secret Sentries in Space (Random House), which contains a detailed description of the then top-secret classified Corona program, explaining exactly what it is and how it works. Aviation Week magazine was the original Wikileaks. Klass always insisted that, if there were any government secrets about UFOs, he would have picked up on them long ago through his extensive network of sources. Friedman says that at least three out of over 100 supposedly leaked MJ-12 government UFO documents are authentic, meaning he concedes that some energetic hoaxer has produced the other 97%. I say it's 100%. We almost agree.

Interestingly, Friedman did not mention the Fish Map (a supposed extraterrestrial star map sketched by Betty Hill), but did go on about Zeta1 and Zeta2 Reticuli, the supposed home stars of the UFOnauts, according to that map. It was good to see that he seems to have finally capitulated to the facts, and abandoned, at least in part, the famous Fish Map. However, for reasons that make no sense, he still clings to Zeta1 and Zeta2 as stars allegedly being the home base of the UFOnauts. Of course, once you concede that the Fish Map pattern means nothing, then the Zetas mean nothing, as well. So we should applaud Friedman for having taken little baby steps in the direction of truth. Not surprisingly, in view of the above Friedman was not exactly happy to see me.

Here is more bad news for Friedman from astronomers: Far-infrared observations have revealed "A flattened, disk-like structure with a semi-major axis of~ 100 AU in size is detected around zeta^2 Ret. The resolved structure suggests the presence of an eccentric dust ring, which we interpret as an exo-Kuiper belt." Which suggests that there are no planets around Zeta2, or they would have swept away this dust ring through constant collisions with its particles. But wait, there's more: Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 are not Main Sequence stars at all, but sub-dwarf stars, Class VI (Main Sequence stars are Class V). The Fish Map was supposed to exclude all non Main Sequence stars. If you don't understand all these terms, don't worry. It just means that the two Zetas are not really solar-type stars, and should have been excluded from the Fish Map. Goodbye, Zeta Reticuli.

Alain Boudier

The next talk, by Alain Boudier, was potentially the most significant and newsworthy of the entire Congress. It is the only one that promises genuinely new and historically significant information. Boudier said that the 3AF is the most prestigious organization of its kind in France. It is an aerospace organization, not a government body, equivalent to the American AIAA (which had its own flirtation wqith UFOs over forty years ago, and thankfully not since). The UFO report of the 3AF Sigma Commission is set to be released in a few months. Until then, he said, he cannot discuss it, and then he proceeded to do just that.

This report, he promised, will be different than the “official” history of UFOs. It appears that the intent of the report is to push the entire UFO chronology back, before Arnold, to include the World War II era. He talked about foo fighters, the Battle of Los Angeles, and some pre-Arnold sightings in the Pacific before moving on to Roswell, which he accepts as a genuine alien crash.

The report’s conclusions were that the U.S. military made its first UFO crash retrievals in 1941 (by the Navy, off the coast of San Deigo), and on Feb. 26, 1942 (by the Army, in the San Bernardino mountains). Supposedly a document from FDR mentions the retrievals. The U.S. formed an “Interplanetary Phenomena Unit” to manage these retrievals. This allowed the development of otherwise-unknown technology, which he suggested was used to defeat Japan. You heard it right, folks: reverse-engineered alien technology was used to build the atomic bomb.

Alain Boudier and Antonio Huneeus

 A lot of people at the conference seem to have missed this bombshell announcement. Boudier was speaking in French, with Antonio Huneeus translating (who did extremely well considering that his native language was neither French nor English, but Spanish). Still, with the inevitable delays the talk was difficult to listen to, and many people left the auditorium. Based on what Boudier told us, when the 3AF UFO report is finally released, the 3AF will no longer be considered “prestigious,” but a laughingstock.

David Hatcher Childress

The final speaker of Saturday was David Hatcher Childress, whose talk was titled “Tesla, UFOs, and Atlantean Technology.” He was described as a “co-star” of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, and a “real-life Indiana Jones.” It looked to me like he had the biggest audience of any speaker, which tells you a lot about who is attending this conference.

He started talking about the ancients’ apparent levitation of heavy stones, and the use of power tools. At this point I left, having heard such stuff many times before on Ancient Aliens. I didn’t stay to find out if Tesla stole his discoveries from the Atlanteans, or vice versa.

UFOs In the Desert, Part 3.

Friday was the third day of the International UFO Congress in Fountain Hills, Arizona, the largest UFO conference in the world. My previous Blog posting covers the second day.  Here is a link back to the first posting about the conference.

Dr. Michael Dennin

The first speaker Friday morning was Dr. Michael Dennin, professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine. He explained many basic physics and astronomy concepts to the audience, such as light years, conservation of energy, general relativity, etc. Putting it all together, the prospect of interstellar travel looks pretty implausible for any society, no matter how advanced, so long as it must obey the laws of physics. Given how difficult interstellar travel is, Dennin said it is hard to imagine secret visits.

But he did throw a few bones to the pro-ET crowd, that he admits to be "pure speculation."

1. A "warped highway" might permanently warp the space between objects by putting mass between them. He didn't say how many solar masses this might require.

2. We might find a wormhole. (There is no evidence whatever that wormholes are real vs. merely theoretical, and a lot of good of physics to say they are virtually impossible.)

3. Some societies may become relativistic nomads, and take extremely long interstellar voyages at relatively low speeds. Such voyages would be measured in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years.

Richard Dolan

Next came UFO author  Richard Dolan, speaking on "UFOs for the 21st Century." He mused about the past twenty years that he has been investigating UFOs. The internet, he says, has raised the noise-to-signal ratio, and he also noted the rise of non-physical, non-ET theories. (I've been investigating UFO claims for over forty years, and I know that non-physical theories were popular back then - Vallee's Passport to Magonia, Jerome Clark, John Keel, etc.) UFO "Disclosure" would truly rock our world.

Dolan managed to bring in just about every loopy idea that has come up in recent years: ancient pyramids, crash retrievals, reverse-engineeered alien technology, a "secret space program," alien hybrids, telepathic alien contact, and mind control. Mention this the next time somebody refers to Dolan as a "conservative UFOlogist." The reason for the UFO cover up, he suggested, is because the secret of the UFOs' alien propulsion system threatens petroleum interests, the same claim that Steven Greer makes in the wild conspiracy movie Thrive.

Are you ready for another 'alien encounters' TV series?

Marc Dantonio

The next speaker was the very interesting Marc Dantonio on "Photo and Video Anomalies: 2013 Update." He is MUFON's chief photo/video analyst, and president of FX models. His company makes UFOs and other implausible things - for TV. Dantonio has upset some people in the UFO field, simply because his investigations of purported UFO photos and videos are so good. As an expert in special effects, it would be extremely difficult for a hoaxer to fool him. As I mentioned in Part 2 concerning the Thursday panel, Huffington Post Weird News reporter Lee Speigel receives many purported UFO photos and videos. He sends the interesting ones to Dantonio, who told Speigel that he had not yet sent over anything that's unidentified.

He showed us photos and videos that show lens flares, aircraft operation, solar balloons, the blinking lights on a vehicle, a reflection on a windshield, blowing snow, a flock of geese, digital skywriting, a butterfly, and views of a tower from Google Earth, directly above it.

Dantonio says that the testimony of the witnesses often does not match the submitted photo or video, so the witnesses often are unwilling to accept his analysis, insisting "I know what I saw!" He resolves the dilemma by explaining that his comments pertain to the photograph, not to the observation. "The purpose is not primarily to debunk the footage, but to illustrate that we must be very hard on the data in order to find the holy grail of UFOlogy." Amen, brother!

This might make it sound like Dantonio is a skeptic, but he is not. He said that about 15 years ago, he had a traumatic encounter event, in which he awoke at night, paralyzed, and was menaced by terrifying creatures. I regret that, when I spoke to him later, I forgot to mention the well-known phenomenon of sleep disorders and hallucinations, which his experience describes to a "T." Wikipedia says, "Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations are symptoms commonly experienced during episodes of sleep paralysis." However, we did discuss some other weird science ideas that he suggests make interstellar travel possible, like the Alcubierre Drive, that supposedly moves space out of the way, and pushes it behind the craft. This supposedly would enable us to effectively travel faster than light.

Dr. Roger Leir

Next were Dr. Roger Leir and Steven Colbern, on "Alien Implants: The Tip of the Iceberg." Leir spoke first. He has performed 16 surgeries to remove implants from alleged alien abductees. His Alien & Scalpel Research is incorporated as a 5013c company, and does not charge for any of the surgeries.

Leir described at length some weird events associated with surgery #15. The man had a small puncture wound on the underside of his toe, although this entry point is hardly necessary as aliens can "disassociate matter" and even move through walls. A&S went into full Ghost Hunter mode at the man's house, with radio frequency scanners, magnetometers, and radiation detectors. Many anomalies were discovered, including a magnetic monopole (something sought more eagerly even than unicorns), and magnetized wood and plastic. The man's wife was in a "constant state of denial" about all this.

During the man's surgery, his implant kept moving away from the scalpel. It broke into twelve pieces; one disappeared. 48 hours after their removal, the remaining pieces reassembled themselves.

Steve Colbern examines Leda Beluche  for alien markings at the Alien & Scalpel table.

Steve Colbern talked about the supposed alien implant removed during surgery #15. It is similar in appearance to a meteorite, and consists of carbon fiber nanotubes, a manufactured nanotechnology device of unknown purpose. 32 trace elements were detected, including iridium, and meteoric iron. One magnetic pole of the object is stronger than the other (which I think makes it a magnetic monopole, as well).

Lee Speigel, David H. Childress, Antonio Huneeus, Dr. Michael Dennin

The last session of Friday was a panel on "Ancient Aliens" with David Hatcher Childress, Dr. Michael Dennin, and Open Minds reporter Antonio Huneeus substituting for Jason Martel. If you've watched Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, you've seen Childress many times. He talked about out-of-place artifacts in rock strata millions of years old. But he said that they might have been planted by time travelers. Huneeus suggested that life on earth may have been seeded from space - deliberately. Dr. Dennin cautioned that round objects in the sky seen in old drawings and paintings are simply "generic" shapes. They are not structured, complex shapes - that would be more significant.

In the evening there was a free Skywatch, hosted by Ben Hansen of SyFy's Fact or Faked?, and sponsored by Night Optics USA, a Bushnell company. Their hope was to sell some very expensive night vision equipment to UFO enthusiasts (their products cost thousands of dollars each). I suspect that they were disappointed.

John Rao, the founder of Open Minds, drives his UFO spotting vehicle to the evening skywatch.

The vehicle has two cameras. One is infrared, the other isn't.

I have written before about the new fad for night-vision devices among UFO enthusiasts. Let's just say that many people are using devices they do not understand, and are making incorrect conclusions about what they are seeing. A good pair of binoculars will show you at least as many objects, and at far better resolution, than a night vision device.

The audience watching Night Optics' displays, hoping to see UFOs.

People stood in line for their turn to personally look through the different night vision devices. Meanwhile James McGaha and I had brought our portable telescopes, and offered views of Jupiter, the Pleiades, and the Orion nebula. On the big screen, a satellite or something was briefly noted but nothing of UFOlogical significance was seen all night.

The cameras of the UFO spotting vehicles was pointed to the south. This ATV has been customized with dual cameras in the back. However, I am given to understand that these are not astronomical cameras, but instead are security cameras as are used by the Border Patrol to look for illegal border crossers, and do not have the resolution that is typical of astronomical cameras.

Electronics in the UFO-spotting vehicle. Note "orb" on the screen.

 In the photo you can see the round object that Rao suggested was an "orb." It slowly drifted from left to right across the screen, and he would repeatedly bring it back to the left side again. It was obviously an out-of-focus star image, moving from east to west because the camera does not have celestial tracking to compensate for the rotation of the earth. Orbs don't usually last this long, he remarked, they disappear quickly. I had a green laser pointer, and laid it against the edge of the camera. The beam pointed exactly to Epsilon Canis Majoris (Adhara), a star of magnitude 1.5 (brighter than the stars in the Big Dipper) due south about 25 degrees up. This was his orb. James McGaha came by, and tried to show him how to focus the image. When that was done, the "orb" shrank down to a pinpoint size.

UFOs In the Desert, Part 2

Thursday was the second day of the International UFO Congress in Fountain Hills, Arizona, the largest UFO conference in the world. My previous Blog posting covers the first day.

The first speaker of the day was Micah Hanks, author and researcher and another very glib speaker, talking about "The UFO Singularity." Futurists like to talk about the coming "singularity," meaning that as our machines' artificial intelligence continues to increase, for precisely one moment of time their intelligence will equal ours - and then forever afterward, theirs will be greater. Intelligent machines will then be the dominant force on this planet, and this may lead to a heaven on earth, or perhaps a hell (as in the movie The Matrix). This, of course, has nothing to do with UFOs.

Micah Hanks

Or does it? Hanks suggests that UFOs may represent a "post-singularity technology," probably originating here on earth, that somehow "transcends temporality." Sounds fancy. Micah says, "I'm known as the guy who says UFOs come from earth." This somehow ties in with Nazi saucers and other World War II developments, by way of a very circuitous path. He acknowledges, however, that UFOs might also represent a post-singularity extraterrestrial technology.

A Post-Singularity technology might know how to "reverse entropy," and then there is no telling what they might be able to do. They may have a technology that "evades temporality altogether," which might be easier than it sounds since time does not exist, it is an illusion.

Dr. Leo Sprinkle

The next speaker was the venerable Dr. Leo Sprinkle, psychologist and pioneering UFO abductionist,. His talk was titled "Memories of an ET Experiencer and Spiritual Pigtailer." Sprinkle has been hypnotically regressing supposed ET experiencers for over forty years, and still looks vigorous and spry at age 82. Only in recent years did Sprinkle reveal that he believes he is an ET experiencer himself.

Sprinkle had his first UFO sighting in 1949. He told about some childhood experiences that he now interprets in terms of ET abduction. He said you can analyze the "meaning" of any UFO sighting you might have by looking into your soul, by evaluating your feelings about it. The UFO is a "sign" for you. He talked a good bit about reincarnation. He believes he had a past life as a woman, who was not allowed to read books. His proof of reincarnation is in his feelings; he talked a lot about feelings. Perhaps, he suggested, these paranormal experiences herald the end of Partiarchy and of the male God.

one of Jaime Maussan's presentations in Mexico

Jason Martell had been scheduled to speak next about Ancient Astronauts. However, he was injured in some sort of accident (I don't have any more information about that), so the also-venerable Jaime Maussan was pressed into service. Maussan is the best-known UFO personality in Mexico, and is famous for his blockbuster videos and photos that are extremely remarkable, if true. 

Maussan said that worldwide UFO sightings have increased dramatically recently because of December 21, 2012, and aliens are now sending us messages by creating meteorological formations in the sky. He showed what were supposedly "vortexes" in meteorological charts, "messages" he says of "the new time."

He showed many blurry photos and videos. There was a huge black sphere sucking energy out of the sun - probably a Mothership, he suggested. NASA's Spirit rover photographed a human figure on Mars, and also a "little house." We saw objects (probably satellites in nlow earth orbit) crossing the face of the moon. Russia, he says, now has the greatest number of UFO sightings of any country, and he showed Russian videos of supposed "motherships." He also played videos having very low-pitch "unexplained" sounds or hums. Maussan's talk was loony, but the audience loved it.

Dolores Cannon

The next speaker was Dolores Cannon, another hypnotherapist, with over 50 years' experience. "She is also a published author of many books composed in part of transcripts from past life regression sessions." She knows a great deal about our spirit guides, "The Watchers." They help us arrange each of our lives. ETs created us by manipulating the genes of the ape. ETs are not trying to take over the earth - they already own it.

You probably know, she suggests, that Star Trek is not fiction - it is real. The ETs try not to interfere in a civilization unless it gets too violent, which is what happened to the Atlanteans. And it is always the men who mess things up by getting too violent. This forces the ETs to step in and wipe them out.

The final session of the day was a panel, "Investigating UFOs," with James Fox, Nick Pope, Marc Dantonio, hosted by Lee Speigel. If you have been reading Speigel's articles in The Huffington Post, you know that he has been receiving quite a few purported UFO photos and videos, and he has been sending them to Dantonio for analysis. Marc Dantonio is MUFON's chief photo/video analyst, and president of FX Models, a model making and special effects company. His company makes UFOs - for TV and movies. While Dantonio believes that some UFO cases are authentic, he is actually a very skeptical guy. We must remove all of the possible 'knowns,' he said, if it's a close correlation to something we already know, he concludes it is that. And he said something that amazed me: "Lee, you haven't yet given me anything 'unknown.'" He says, "I am harsh on the data," even though witnesses insist "I know what I saw!" But Dantonio tells them that my comments are directed toward the data - the photo or video - not toward what you saw.

Lee Speigel, James Fox, Nick Pope, Marc Dantonio

Pope said that people give more credence to sightings by pilots, and that is proper, but we should not dismiss sightings by ordinary folk. Fox said he had offered some commercial pilots who had UFO sightings $10,000 to come forward and tell their stories; they declined, saying they would lose their jobs. Speigel related how skeptic James Oberg had said to him that pilots actually make rather poor witnesses, which he felt was wrong; Pope pronounced Oberg to be "dead-pan wrong." I had a chance during the Q&A to point out that Oberg did not originate that idea: it was actually stated by J. Allen Hynek (which seemed to take the entire panel by surprise). On p. 271 of the 1977 book The Hynek UFO Report, the former Blue Book scientific consultant said, "Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses."

Fox claimed that NASA's photos of Mars are all pretty clear, except when the camera points toward the Cydona area (which supposedly contains a Face on Mars). In that case, the photos are all blurred.

In the evening, I attended the U.S. Premiere of a film called Solar Evolution. It suggested that the December solstice in 2012 (which had not yet happened) would usher in certain great changes, and somehow the sun would play a role in all this evolutionare New Age stuff. Beware of the coming Solar Maximum, it warned - even though the current solar cycle is the feeblest in about a century!

UFOs In the Desert, Part 1

For the second year in a row, I find myself at the International UFO Congress near Phoenix, Arizona. Last year I wrote a detailed five-part account of the conference. I told myself I wouldn't write as much this year, but it looks like this resolution may be broken.

Lee Speigel

When I arrived Tuesday evening, February 26, I ran into Lee Speigel in the restaurant, the 'weird news' reporter for AOL/Huffington post, who is the Host of this Conference, and who I have known for years. I would call Speigel a "skeptical believer," meaning that while he thinks some UFO cases may be beyond our present knowledge, he realizes that the great majority of UFO claims are frankly not worth much. Speigel was with Ben Hansen of Fact or Faked on the SyFy Channel, who was the first speaker Wednesday morning, and who takes a similar position.

Ben Hansen

The next morning, after Speigel's introduction, Ben Hansen spoke on "Profiling the Hoaxers." He explained that his background in law enforcement prepares him well for forensic evidence of UFO and other 'paranormal' evidence. He describes himself as neither a believer or skeptic, but a "verifier." He explains that hoaxes abound in UFOlogy, and that there can be big money in making bogus ET claims, although he will not name any names. He set forth the following "Hoaxer Subtypes," based on his experience in law enforcement and with paranormal claims:

1. Clinical Con Artist. Charismatic, lacks conscience. Claims of persecution by federal agencies - a red flag, there is so much red tape for intelligence actions that these claims are not at all credible. Some of these people have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The mentally disordered tend to gravitate to "our field," i.e. UFOlogy.

2. Legendizers, seeking fame and/or financial gain. May have had a legitimate experience, but you can only tell the same story so many times, so they add more and more 'excitement' each time it is told.

3. Commercial Campaigners. Publicity stunts. They are not in it for the long-haul, the hoax usually only lasts a few weeks. This damages the credibility of the UFO field, it makes people dismiss legitimate cases.

4. Self-amused pranksters. Motivated by the challenge of pulling it off.

5. Disinformation agents, the rarest type. The government changed its story on Roswell, repeatedly. The 1956 documentary movie UFO was part of a debunking contingency plan. (This category sounds dubious to me).

When a story or a video is crafted to capture emotion, this is a sign of a hoax. You have to think like a movie director, if the crafting of a video appears to be planned out to demonstrate credibility, this is dubious as a real video would be taken without preparation or warning. Also, cerftain technical errors in the creation of a video reveal a hoax. Bigfoot videos tend to show the creature moving left-to-right much more than the opposite. Either Bigfoot walks in circles, or else it is staged to look this way. But he believes that some Bigfoot sightings are valid, as are some UFO sightings. 

It's obvious that Hansen is a bright guy. I think that "verifiers" and "skeptics" can work well together.

The second talk was "UFOs Over Native American Land," by Stanley Milford and John Dover, who are current or retired law enforcement (respectively) for the Navajo Nation, an area that mostly lies between the Grand Canyon and Four Corners, and is larger than ten states. (The UFO Congress takes place on an Indian Reservation, hence the attached Casino.) They spent the first part of their talk illustrating the work they normally do: performing rescues, battling wildfires, assisting with accidents, etc. But these two officers headed up the Rangers' Special Projects Unit, which "managed the investigation of those cases that would be deemed 'paranormal,' such as witchcraft, Bigfoot sightings, hauntings, and UFO sightings," although these are only about 1-2% of the cases of Special Projects.

In the "Ol'Man Case," an elderly Navajo claimed that a brilliantly-illuminated UFO circled his remote desert house. He then saw, looking out the window, four aliens walking around with flashlights. The Rangers also received reports of Bigfoot sightings and tracks, witchcraft, and Shapeshifters (similar to werewolves). Such beliefs, they explained, are very prevalent on the Reservation. If there's something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Navajo Rangers!

With the passing of Budd Hopkins and John Mack, that leaves Barbara Lamb, licensed psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, and regression therapist,  as one of the leading 'UFO Abduction researchers' in the world. She has performed more than 2,100 "regressions" on hundreds of individuals, "regarding details of encounters they have had with a variety of extraterrestrial beings." In fact, says Lamb, there are many different alien species abducting Earthlings. Her talk was about ET/Human Hybrids, and it was essentially the same talk I heard her give to the MUFON Symposium in 2011.

Many women, says Lamb, have "missing pregnancies" where the fetus is extracted by aliens, up to 3 months' term. Many of these alien races are dying out, including the Zeta Reticulans (that abducted Betty and Barney Hill), and must pilfer our breeding stock to replenish theirs. She seems not to realize that our DNA is much closer to that of a dandelion than it would be to whatever genetic code might have been evolved by beings on a completely alien world. It's worse than trying to rebuild a Chevy engine using Ford parts - much, much worse.

One man came into therapy because he was no longer able to have sex with his wife. Ms. Lamb determined the cause of his problem to be that during a UFO abduction, he had been tricked into having sex with a particularly repulsive Reptilian female. Some women, she asserts, have a long-term companion who is an 'extraterrestrial husband,' in addition to a normal earthly one. Many of them are pleased with this arrangement. She showed drawings of supposed ET/human hybrids, in various stages of integration into the human genome, as well as photos of persons alleged to be late-stage hybrids who are (mostly) successful at passing for human. Some are fashion models, whose gaunt, angled face is said to demonstrate alien ancestry, although anorexia and heroin might produce the same effect. A few people actually claim to be human/ET hybrids; apparently it gives them a certain notoriety.

Nick Pope

The next speaker was Nick Pope, who supposedly ran "the British Government's UFO Project," although in reality he didn't run anything, and worked part-time on the UFO Project from 1991 to 1994. He began his talk on the defensive, emphasizing that he did not actually predict an alien invasion, as many news stories and blogs reported last summer. I was, he said, merely promoting a space war type of video game, and reporters took my comments out of context. I wrote a Blog entry about this last August 22. Comments like, "The government must - and has planned - for the worst-case scenario: alien attack and alien invasion. Space shuttles, lasers and directed-energy weapons are all committed via the Alien Invasion War Plan to defence against any alien ships in orbit." Sorry Nick, that excuse doesn't work, as anyone can tell if they Google "Nick Pope Alien Invasion," which also brings up a story from October 12, 2012, "Britain has alien-war weapons, says former government adviser," and even "Aliens Could Attack at Any Time" from 2006. Stop trying to fool us, Nick, and admit you said these things.

Pope promised to discuss some of the most interesting cases in the MOD files, but mostly used the time relating anecdotes of the UFO Project. There are "interesting gems," he said, hidden among thousands of pages of mostly worthless stuff. He hinted at the destruction of military records pertaining to UFO sightings. He warned several times that UFOs are a potential hazard to aviation.

Grant Cameron

Grant Cameron has been active in UFO and paranormal research for almost forty years. He has become something of an expert at digging up documentation that has greatly assisted our understanding of many UFO cases, especially "presidential UFOs." He spoke on "Consciousness and UFOs." He explained that he is convinced that no real progress in knowledge about UFOs will be made until we successfully contact the beings involved, which he is sure is possible. He noted that one person claiming mental contact was the former Democratic Congressman, Dennis Kucinich, who not only had a sighting that lasted several hours [how can you watch something like that for hours without getting cameras, binoculars, the neighbors, the news crew, the police, etc?], but also said that he "felt a connection" with the UFO that he and the others sighted. "You have to make contact, you can't watch from a distance," says Cameron. He feels that the idea of UFO contact has been made disreputable because of certain people whose famous claims of contact are not credible. He showed photos of three persons he was implying to be phonies: Billy Meier, George Adamski, and Steven Greer. (No argument there!)

Cameron spoke at length about a well-known but still somewhat mysterious figure in the early history of UFOlogy: Wilbert Smith, a Canadian radio engineer. In 1953 Smith somehow convinced Canadian authorities to allow him to set up a small project to investigate flying saucers, having supposedly determined that the American government considers the subject of the highest priority and secrecy. Smith was among those who supposedly experienced 'contact' with the extraterrestrials.

Cameron's argument is: If you can show that the idea of mental contact with UFOs predates the earliest contactee, Adamski, then you have shown that it is not derivative from them. This argument is quite correct, even ingenious, and indeed he demonstrates his claim. But the problem is, you still haven't proven that the "contact" is real; all you've proved is that Adamski didn't make it up. Cameron is a dynamic speaker and obviously sincere; he brought the audience to its feet.

Ingo Swann (1933-2013) - Psychic Astronaut

Ingo Swann, remote viewer and psychic astronaut, died on February 1 at the age of 79. Many skeptics today probably won't even recognize the name, but Swann played a major role in several "classic" parapsychology experiments, including the Pentagon's "Remote Viewing." His "accomplishments" are mentioned in the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson. (A book I highly recommend! You can't imagine the crazy stuff that went on.) In the 1970s Swann worked extensively with Targ and Puthoff at SRI International, the team whose loosey-goosey 'validation' of Uri Geller's magic powers has been soundly criticized. Swann was always considered among the the "best" of the Remote Viewers.

Ingo Swann awes J. Allen Hynek (The National Enquirer, Sept. 9, 1975).

Swann's best-known parapsychological feats were when he and psychic Harold Sherman took Psychic Voyages to Mercury and Jupiter (just ahead of the Pioneer 10 probe). The Enquirer reporter interviewed the most famous UFOlogist in the world, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, former scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, who said "These are things that Mr. Swann couldn't have guessed or read about. His impressions of Mercury and Jupiter cannot be dismissed... I  was fascinated by the Jupiter findings of Pioneer 10 when I compared them with Mr. Swann's. His impressions of Jupiter, along with his experience with Mercury, most certainly point the way to more experimentation." (For more about Hynek's weird beliefs, see "The Secret Life of J. Allen Hynek" by John Franch in the January/February 2013 issue of The Skeptical Inquirer. Also see my earlier Blog entry, Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek, and the "Pentacle Memorandum." )

Carl Sagan's evaluation of Ingo Swann's "Psychic Voyages"

However, another astronomer looked at the results of Swann's psychic space travel, and came to a very different conclusion: Carl Sagan. Philip J. Klass sent Sagan a copy of this National Enquirer article - Sagan's reply is above. He calls the results "dreadful - sort of vague remembrances of sixth-grade general science." In the "little book" to which he refers, Sagan writes of "two courageous American mystics" who made an "astral projection" trip to Jupiter. "If their reports had been submitted in my elementary astronomy course, they would have received grades of "D" .... they were filled with the most obvious misunderstandings both about Jupiter and about Pioneer 10."

Sagan's comments in his book Other Worlds.

In 1975 Swann wrote To Kiss Earth Good-Bye, which contains some really fascinating stuff. He makes the usual predictions of an impending ecological disaster. (The exact nature of the disaster changes from time to time, but that ecological disaster is always there in the near future, waiting for us.)  Swann tells how he first established an ESP connection with one of his houseplants, asking it what was wrong when it was not doing well. The plant replied by projecting mental images to him.

Later Swann got together with Clive Backster, the man who discovered the "Backster effect": ESP with plants hooked up to a polygraph. (When "UFO abductee" Travis Walton and his pals were trying to set up a mutually-agreed upon polygraph test for them with Philip J. Klass, Backster was their choice.) They hooked the polygraph to a philodendron, but had poor results because, according to Swann, the plant was too strong-minded. They later tried hooking the equipment up to a piece of "rubberized graphite." They found it had no mind at all, but Swann gave himself headaches trying to communicate with it, anyway. The book is filled with all kinds of wild psychic visions and experiences.

Swann's website is still up at http://biomindsuperpowers.com/ .

"Psychic Vibrations" Now Available as an e-Book from JREF!

Good news! My latest book Psychic Vibrations, taken from my columns of that name published in The Skeptical Inquirer, is now available as an E-Book from JREF, the James Randi Educational Foundation.

The E-Book is available in all three major E-Book formats: Kindle, Nook, and I-books. The cost of the E-Book is $7.99. For more information, see  http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/1414-ebooks.html

You can, of course, still get the paperback edition of the book. Follow the book icon at the top right of this page, and be sure to include the discount code SPK8R6GT to get 25% off. Your cost will be $14.96. Plus shipping  of course: unlike electrons, books made of paper cannot be shipped for free!

More Physics vs. UFOs

Let's continue the theme of two recent postings, the clash between what we know about physics, and UFO claims and beliefs.

In Is there a Warp Drive In your Future? (December 2), UCSD physics professor Tom Murphy examines the claim,  "If it can be imagined, it can be done." He reports, "It took me all of two seconds to violate this dictum as I imagined myself jumping straight up to the Moon... I wondered how pervasive this attitude was among physics students and faculty. So I put together a survey. The overriding theme: experts say don't count on a Star Trek future."

Then in Is Interstellar Travel 'Preposterous'? (December 29), we examine three "classic" papers written by physicists in the 1960s, discussing the feasibility of interstellar travel. Nobel laureate Edward M. Purcell examines the difficulties posed not by technological limitations, but by fundamental laws of physics, and pronounces the idea "preposterous."

E-Skeptic's illustration accompanying the Gainer article (by Nancy White)

Another article in this same vein recently appeared in E-Skeptic, the email newsletter from the Skeptics Society. It is titled The Physics of UFOs - How Realistic is it for spacecraft to travel interstellar distances to earth? Its author is Dr. Michael K. Gainer,  Emeritus Professor of Physics and former chair of the Department of Physics at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA.

Echoing the points made fifty years ago by Purcell, Von Hoerner, and Markowitz, Gainer reminds us

The basic principles of physics are applicable independently of where in the galaxy a stellar system is located and will not change over time. Newton’s three laws of motion and the conservation of energy are descriptions of the manner in which different parts of a physical system interact. Consequently, a model based on an exploratory expedition leaving Earth would apply equally to all planetary systems in our galaxy. Any culture, no matter how advanced in technology, would face the same constraints imposed by physics.

He starts with the assumption that a vessel to make such a trip would need to have a mass at least about 100 times that of America's late Space Shuttle, with its living quarters, life support, nuclear fusion reactor, etc. Assume we want to travel to a star system 10 light years away at 0.5c, a trip that would take about 20 years, "For propulsion of the hypothetical spacecraft the blast energy would have to be converted, with near 100% efficiency, to a constrained unidirectional particle beam with thrust pulses of 1.8 megatons per second for 174 days." But here is the rub (and here is what upsets the Star Trek Skeptics crowd): "There is no possible material construction that can constrain and direct the thermal and blast energy of the nuclear fusion rate required for interstellar travel. Consequently, I conclude that alien spacecraft cannot exist." This agrees exactly with what the physics Nobel Laureate Edward M. Purcell explained to us fifty years ago.

But some people who self-identify as skeptics don't want to hear anything like this. Immediately following Gainer's E-Skeptic article is a "rebuttal" to Gainer by Peter Huston, whose degree is not in the physical sciences, but in Asian Studies. Huston objects,

To a non-physicist such as myself, the obvious questions are “Why is such a material impossible?” and “Why is thermonuclear power the only feasible power source?”

To answer these questions, he turned to science fiction writer Carl Fredrick, who is also a retired physics professor. Summarizing Fredrick's response, Huston writes:

First, to assume that something is impossible because current technology, as opposed to the known laws of physics, doesn’t allow it is “silly.” Other points were that there is a great deal of research being done into controlled fusion and that might considerably change the way in which a thermonuclear spacecraft engine might work. Furthermore, as there are now indications that quantum physics might allow a spacecraft to draw energy from the vacuum as it travels, the thermonuclear engines might not be the only source of fuel. Additionally, Frederick said that the Gainer assumed that nuclear fusion is the best form of energy. He disagreed saying that particle / anti-particle annihilation was a better alternative. Finally, he said, there’s no reason one couldn’t go slower and use less fuel, if you, for instance, freeze the crew.

If Dr. Fredrick knows how to obtain antimatter to use as fuel, and how to control and constrain it, we would be very interested to know this. "Zero point" quantum energy from space is a common woo-physics claim (see, for example, Dr. Harold Puthoff), but is not accepted by mainstream physics.

Huston adds a few more lame suggestions, such as "Couldn’t it use solar sails catching photons and the gravitational forces of planets and other astronomical objects to help slow itself?" He obviously doesn't have a clue concerning the magnitude mass and the momentum of the craft. One could much more easily use solar sails to stop a speeding freight train than a massive spaceship traveling at half the speed of light. Huston concludes, "We [skeptics] are supposed to be the people who read, question and think—not the ones who blindly repeat assertions that fit our pre-conceived notions. I think we, as skeptics, need to be more careful of such statements and false conclusions. They only hurt us in the end." As if the need to obey the laws of physics were a 'pre-conceived notion.'

Gainer's response to Huston is in the following issue of E-Skeptic, and begins by noting the difference between "belief systems and science... A belief system need not concern itself with objective reality. This contrasts with science in which theories are subject to objective evaluation by repeated experiment and measurement. Science assumes a priori the existence of a measurable objective reality. Indeed, science is the delineation of this reality." He continues, "any spacecraft, whether from present or future technology, would have a significant inertial mass. Ten thousand years from now conservation of energy will apply anywhere in the galaxy as well as it does today." 

As for the objection that magical future technologies could somehow  build substances that can be used to constrain fusion reactions, "because of the maximum cohesive force that electrons can create between protons no substance will remain solid above 5000ºC. " The temperature of a nuclear fusion reaction is on the order of 10,000,000 degrees C. That has nothing to do with present-day, or future technologies. It is because the energy of the strong nuclear force released in the fusion reaction is overwhelmingly more powerful than the weak electromagnetic bonds that hold atoms and molecules together. But the Star Trek Skeptics don't want to hear this. They want to believe that some future technological wizard will invent a super-glue whose atomic binding is even stronger than the strong nuclear force. Gainer concludes, "It is not present or future technology that negates interstellar travel—it is the nature and structure of matter and the universe."