Showing posts with label Carl Sagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carl Sagan. Show all posts

Sunday, May 19, 2019

UFOs, Science and Pseudoscience



UFOs, Science and Pseudoscience

     How do the first UFO sightings of the modern era hold up when viewed through Carl Sagan's "baloney detection kit" from his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark?
By Marcia Wendorf
interestingengineering.com
5-19-19

[...]

In the book, Sagan described what he called his "baloney detection kit," which consisted of constructing a reasoned argument and recognizing a fallacious one. To identify a fallacious argument, Sagan suggested utilizing these six steps:
1. Independent confirmation of facts
2. Debate
3. Development of different hypotheses
4. Quantification
5. The possibility of falsehood
6. Occam's razor.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

The Threat of UFO Invasion

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Alien Invasion

"A communication disruption can only mean one thing: Invasion."
–Sio Bibble, Queen Amidala’s prime minister in Star Wars Episode I – Attack of the Clones

     Despite the sage courtier’s assertion in the first installment of George Lucas’s second round of space epics, we might sooner believe that a planet-wide interruption of communications, or a collapse of the power grid, was due to a Carrington-level event more than an alien attack. Unless cloaking technology really exists, an alien fleet would be visible to our telescopes and hopefully our orbiting satellites, unless
Scott Corrales
By Scott Corrales
Inexplicata
4-17-18
they too had been wiped out. Nevertheless, the opening rounds of an assault by hostile non-humans are the key moment of any science fiction movie. How would that translate into a real life event?

In November 1979, Thomas Muldoon, writing for the National Enquirer, published an article with the sensational headline: "Take UFOs Seriously or Be Prepared for Sneak Invasion by Space Aliens." Some may find it amusing to see this article included among the National Security Agency's cache of information on the subject of unidentified flying objects, but the Enquirer was at the forefront of much UFO journalism in those days, as evidenced by the sterling work of the late Bob Pratt. The NSA report - "obtained exclusively by The ENQUIRER", as we are reminded - was aimed at dispelling the notion that UFOs were unworthy of scrutiny by the military/scientific establishment.

"If America does not start taking the sightings seriously, we leaver ourselves wide open to the possibility of a Pearl Harbor-type UFO invasion. The very fact that UFO phenomena have been witnessed all over the world from ancient times, and by considerable numbers of reputable scientists in recent times, now indicates rather strongly that UFOs are not all hoaxes, and if anything, rather than diminishing, the modern trend is toward increased reports from all sources."

So far so good. The nameless report, allegedly prepared in 1968, then moves on to scorn the "leisurely scientific approach" and urge a more determined response to fight the perceived threat of an alien invasion.

Carl Sagan had issued his own thoughts on the matter just two years earlier. “One of the primary motivations for the exploration of the New World,” he wrote, “was to convert the inhabitants to Christianity – peacefully if possible, forcefully if necessary. Can we exclude the possibility of an extraterrestrial evangelism? Can we conclude even darker motives? Might an extraterrestrial society want to be alone at the summit of galactic power and make a careful effort to crush prospective contenders? Or might there even be the cockroach response – to stamp out an alien creature simply because it is different?”

The concept of an interplanetary war in our times, a thought which admittedly smacks of the Cold War's "flying saucer" scare, has been seriously invoked by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the 1950's and by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980's. NATO allegedly prepared a document evaluating the threat posed to existing conventional and military forces in the 1960's, conceding that "we virtually have no defense against their advanced technology." Serious researchers like the late Dr. Olavo Fontes analyzed the possibility that northern Brazil would be occupied by a UFO invasion force in the wake of the attack on the Itaipú garrison in 1965. in the Summer 1998 issue of the Samizdat newsletter, Brazilian researcher Oriel Farías told the world about the incredible and still little-known UFO wave that covered northeastern Brazil and which centered on the town of Guarabira. According to Farías, the outstanding characteristic of the '98 flap was the sheer variety of objects reported, ranging from standard disk-shaped craft to massive objects projecting powerful beams of light. "Lengths of 30 meters have been reported, the size of a 20-storey building," he writes. The Guarabira "invasion" began on March 3, 1998 and was spearheaded by 26 UFOs flying over the city at 6:45 p.m., when the lights went out in Guarabira, and lasting until 3:45 a.m., when power returned to the city. This blackout remains unexplained to this day.

Almost 500 witnesses all over France reported seeing a veritable invasion force of giant black triangles on November 5, 1990. In an article translated by author George Andrews from OVNI-MAGAZINE, a publication of the Banque Internationale de Données Ufologiques, it was said that "...The flight path of this armada of over 70 ships (that is the minimal figure) was at an altitude of 1000 meters (some 320 feet), sometimes over the horizon, flying a horizontal course after rapidly descending from the skies, following parallel trajectories distant from each other by 5 to 25 kilometers...Considering the facts of the matter altogether implies that a non-human intelligence and technology were responsible for the phenomena." The French space agency, CNES, based in Toulouse, ascribed the sightings to the disintegration of the Soviet Gorizont booster in the upper atmosphere, using a telex received from NASA to substantiate their claim, in spite of the serious discrepancies between the booster reentry times and those of the sightings. The sightings recorded by OVNI-MAGAZINE appeared to indicate toward craft of the same nature as those seen in Belgium and the U.S.: spotlights on the underside of the vehicle' hull, strobes which swept the ground, simultaneous activation and deactivation of the spotlights were among the common characteristics. It is interesting to note that when UFOs were reported above the Pyrenees on March 31 1993, the CNES once again sought to dismiss the sightings as the reentry of another Russian space booster that had lifted the "Cosmos" 2238 satellite into orbit the previous evening.

In 1981, Colin A. Phillips of UFO Research had the following words to share in a meeting held in Adelaide, Australia: “Thirty years after the great UFO invasion of Earth occurred, because no physical war was fought, the battle of the mind was lost. Those who have knowledge of this event and dare speak of it, have been drowned out with laughter and ridicule or destroyed by character assassination. The world audience with its provincial view, narrow horizons and vested interests, is not ready for this new concept. However, those who talked about swamp gas and degraded facts to clues, are still "sifting carefully through the evidence", creating UFO jargon, statistics and methods of investigation, trying to make a science of what all the time was a major historical event. The UFO visitations to Earth of the 1950's have subsided now and the real work of UFO groups should be to use the best evidence to inform governments and citizens of the real significance of this event on our future civilization. We should have an informed public in readiness should the events of the 1950’s be repeated.”

Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Dear ET

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Math on Voyager's Golden Record Tells a Story

Voyager 1
Copies of the Golden Record, sent journeying into deep space on the sides of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes in 1977, carries the sounds and music of Earth as well as a series of images to help characterize it.

     The Voyager 1 probe, which launched 40 years ago today (Sept. 5), is humankind's most distant physical emissary, at almost 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) from Earth. Voyager 1 and its sister-spacecraft, Voyager 2, which launched two weeks earlier in 1977,
By Sarah Lewin
Space.com
9-5-17
gave scientists their first close-up views of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. And the spacecraft famously carried with them what could be aliens' first views of Earth, its inhabitants and their culture: copies of the Golden Record.

The astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan curated the record selections, and it carried sounds and music from Earth as well as greetings in 55 languages. But the record also contains encoded photos seeking to teach aliens the mathematics — or really, the measurements — needed to understand humans' lives and their place in the universe.

Saturday, August 05, 2017

A Russian UFO Commission, the CIA, Carl Sagan and Mystery Metal

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Low - Ratchford Letter 12-8-1967

     When you get a chance, I would appreciate it if you would let Art Lundahl know that I have been in contact with Carl Sagan about the establishment of the UFO commission in the USSR. While Sagan is very interested in the UFO problem and in what we're doing and also in the recent developments in Russia, he felt reluctant to contact Shklovskii. ...
By Robert Lowe
UFO Project Coordinator
Condon Committee
12-8-1967

There is also some follow-up to do with Lundahl on the meeting that Frank Rand called, in addition to the Sagan thing. Lundahl mentioned ... a report of an analysis that was made of a piece of metal discovered after falling through the atmosphere ....

Saturday, May 06, 2017

Unusual Structures on the Far Side of the Moon | Image Analysis

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Unusual structures in Crater Paracelsus C

Abstract

     The authors present an analysis of Apollo 15 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of two unusual features in the crater Paracelsus C on the far side of the moon. At first glance these structures appear to be walls or towers on the lunar surface. By combining multiple images, we show the larger feature, oriented in a northeast/southwest direction, is not simply a wall but two walls on either side of a narrow valley or “passageway”. Using single image shape from shading and 3D terrain visualization we show in a
By Mark J Carlotto
, Francis L Ridge and Ananda L Sirisena
Journal of Space Exploration
9-30-16
computer-generated perspective view looking northeast that the southwest end appears to be the entrance to the passageway. A reverse angle view looking southwest shows the passageway ending at a rise of terrain at the other end, possibly leading underground. The terrain surrounding the two structures is not flat but appears “excavated” by some unknown mechanism, natural or artificial. It is shown that these objects are visually different from the lunar background because their underlying structure is different.

Introduction

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) began in the 1960s with radio-telescopes and has, to date, produced no positive evidence of its existence. During these early years of SETI, Sagan [1] spoke about the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation, “It is not out of the question that artifacts of these visits still exist, or even that some kind of base is maintained
(possibly automatically) within the solar system to provide continuity for successive expeditions. Because of weathering and the possibility of detection and interference by the inhabitants of the Earth, it would be preferable not to erect such a base on the Earth’s surface. The Moon seems one reasonable alternative. Forthcoming high resolution photographic reconnaissance of the Moon from space vehicles – particularly of the back side – might bear these possibilities in mind.”

Sunday, December 06, 2015

Scientists Searching for Extraterrestrial Life – A Brief History

Scientists Searching for Extraterrestrial Life

By Daniel Oberhaus
Vice
12-4-15

      In 1960, renowned astronomer Frank Drake spent 150 hours holed up in the Green Bank Observatory, using a giant radio telescope to look for aliens. The experiment, known as Project Ozma, focused on two nearby stars—Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani—which Drake had selected for observation. But at the end of the project, he had little to show for his efforts: He hadn't found any signs of intelligent life.

Though he didn't know it at the time, Drake's experiment had paved the way for the modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, in shorthand. Drake's pioneering use of radio waves would change the way scientists scanned the cosmos for signs of life, meaning his expensive and embarrassing failure had actually revolutionized the search for aliens, and would inspire SETI programs at institutions like Harvard, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

But in 1961, Drake couldn't have known any of this. So he called an informal conference of 12 men—among them, a handful of Nobel laureates and a young Carl Sagan—to come to Green Bank Observatory and decide if it were financially and scientifically justifiable to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Not only did the group decide that SETI was a worthwhile venture, but they began working on concrete research methods. One of these methods was the Drake equation [...]

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | VIDEO

NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - 1987

By Geoff Haines-Stiles Productions
NASA/Life Sciences
1987

    [Originally published in 1987] This video details the history and current efforts of NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program. The video explains the use of radiotelescopes to monitor electromagnetic frequencies reaching the Earth, and the analysis of this data for patterns or signals that have no natural origin. The video presents an overview of Frank Drake's 1960 'Ozma' experiment, the current META experiment, and planned efforts incorporating an international Deep Space Network of radio telescopes that will be trained on over 800 stars

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

(Another) Message for Aliens To Be Carried on NASA Spacecraft


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(Another) Message for Aliens To Be Carried on NASA Spacecraft

By Nola Taylor Redd
Space.com
6-23-14

      A NASA probe that's expected to leave the solar system after it finishes its mission at Pluto and beyond will carry a message intended for any alien life-form that comes across it in the far future.

When NASA's New Horizons mission completes its study of Pluto in the summer of 2015, data from Earth will stream to the spacecraft to create a digital record that it will carry with it beyond the solar system. The record echoes the Golden Record carried by NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft in the 1970s and the plaques onboard the Pioneer spacecraft.

Jon Lomberg, who served as design director for NASA's Voyager Golden Record, worked with late astronomer Carl Sagan and four others to select a series of sounds and images that were combined on a gramophone record as representative of Earth. When Lomberg realized that New Horizons would become the next object to leave the solar system, he launched an online petition to include a similar message for New Horizons, called the One Earth Message. . . .

Monday, March 17, 2014

Who Was Carl Sagan?


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Carl Sagan

By Dan Vergano
news.nationalgeographic.com
3-16-14

     . . . The death threats partly derived from Sagan's work on the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, which investigated UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s. "He started out with an open mind, but came to the conclusion that there wasn't any evidence for aliens visiting Earth," Poundstone says. Sagan was a big proponent of the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the universe, however.

Sagan also waded into one of the wellsprings of today's global warming debate, as the senior author on a 1983 Science journal study of "nuclear winter." The group's climate model found worldwide subzero temperatures an inevitable consequence of the dust clouds resulting from a nuclear exchange between the superpowers.

He had angered both UFO fans and belligerent critics of the nuclear winter report. Morrison recalls that after Sagan received threats, "they hid his office number at Cornell and he used a back door to get to work." In the era of the "Unabomber" mailing explosives to professors, the threats were taken seriously.

"Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility," Sagan said in his last, 1996 interview with PBS's Charlie Rose. He died that same year from cancer. . . .

Monday, March 10, 2014

"Joshua Lederbeg, ... Carl Sagan Helped Pioneer the Search for Extraterrestrial Life"


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"Joshua Lederbeg, ... Carl Sagan Helped Pioneer the Search for Extraterrestrial Life"

Sputnik’s spawn: How the Cold War created astrobiology

By Caleb Scharf
www.salon.com
3-9-14

     Astronomy and biology have been circling each other with timid infatuation since the first time a human thought about the possibility of other worlds and other suns. But the melding of the two into the modern field of astrobiology really began on Oct. 4, 1957, when a 23-inch aluminum sphere called Sputnik 1 lofted into low Earth orbit from the desert steppe of the Kazakh Republic. Over the following weeks its gently beeping radio signal heralded a new and very uncertain world. Three months later it came tumbling back through the atmosphere, and humanity’s small evolutionary bump was set on a trajectory never before seen in 4 billion years of terrestrial history.

At the time of the ascent of Sputnik, a 32-year-old American called Joshua Lederberg was working in Australia as a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne. Born in 1925 to immigrant parents in New Jersey, Lederberg was a prodigy. Quick-witted, generous, and with an incredible ability to retain information, he blazed through high school and was enrolled at Columbia University by the time he was 15. Earning a degree in zoology and moving on to medical studies, his research interests diverted him to Yale. There, at age 21, he helped research the nascent field of microbial genetics, with work on bacterial gene transfer that would later earn him a share of the 1958 Nobel Prize.1,2

Like the rest of the planet, Australia was transfixed by the Soviet launch; as much for the show of technological prowess as for the fact that a superpower was now also capable of easily lobbing thermonuclear warheads across continents. But, unlike the people around him, Lederberg’s thoughts were galvanized in a different direction. He immediately knew that another type of invisible wall had been breached, a wall that might be keeping even more deadly things at bay, as well as incredible scientific opportunities.

If humans were about to travel in space, we were also about to spread terrestrial organisms to other planets, and conceivably bring alien pathogens back to Earth. As Lederberg saw it, either we were poised to destroy indigenous life-forms across our solar system, or ourselves. Neither was an acceptable option. When he returned to the United States he quickly threw himself into learning all he could about astronomy and rocketry, and began writing urgent letters to the National Academy of Sciences, alerting his colleagues to the imminent danger. . . .

. . . Lederberg wasn’t finished though. He and the young Carl Sagan had become friends in the early 1960s, and together they helped define the emerging fields of solar system exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life. . . .

Monday, January 27, 2014

“Statistical Likelihood that Earth was Visited by ET," Argued Carl Sagan


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“Statistical Likelihood that Earth was Visited by ET," Argued Carl Sagan

Archaeology | No evidence of aliens helping ancient cultures

By Bradley T. Lepper
www.dispatch.com
1-26-14

     Did aliens visit Earth in ancient times? It’s possible.

The late Carl Sagan once argued that there was a “statistical likelihood that Earth was visited by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization at least once during historical times.”

A statistical likelihood is one thing. Is there any reliable evidence that any such thing ever actually happened?

None whatsoever.

So why do 2 out of 4 Americans believe there are signs that aliens have visited Earth in the past? I think there are two reasons. First and most fundamentally, when most people see a wonder of the ancient world, such as the Egyptian pyramids, they can’t imagine how our so-called primitive ancestors possibly could have built it. . . .

Monday, December 16, 2013

Astronomer Carl Sagan in His Last Interview Makes Dire Warning | VIDEO

Carl Sagan's Last Intervierw on Charlie Rose - 12-20-1996 - www.theufochronicles.com

By Frank Warren
The UFO Chronicles
12-15-13

     Rajiv Narayan alerts us to the dire warning that famed astronomer Carl Sagan made in his last interview done with none other then the incomparable Charlie Rose.

Sagan died (17 years ago) of pneumonia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He had been battling a bone-marrow disease called myelodysplasia for the previous two years.

In listening to the pertinent snippet, I couldn’t help but recall another ominous warning issued by then President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address (1961). In that now renowned speech Eisenhower warned of increasing power of the military-industrial complex and further stated:
“. . . we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Like Eisenhower, Sagan offered a similar warning in saying:
“. . . this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces . . . science is more then a body of knowledge it's a way of thinking . . . if we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs, for the next charlatan, political or religious who comes ambling along. It's a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on; there wasn't enough he said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a bill of rights; the people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education, otherwise we don't run the government, the government runs us.”

Friday, September 13, 2013

Aliens Visited Earth; Base On Moon Probable, said Carl Sagan


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Aliens Visited Earth; Base On Moon Probable, said Carl Sagan
- click on image(s) to enlarge -

By The Stars and Stripes
11-26-62


See Also:

Earth Has Had Space Visitors – a Mathmatical Probability, says Young Carl Sagan

Sagan said 'ET Was Here?'

Superspacemen May Have Visited Earth, Said Carl Sagan





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Saturday, August 31, 2013

Earth Has Had Space Visitors – a Mathmatical Probability, says Young Carl Sagan


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Earth Has Had Space Visitors - The New Mexican 11-16-1962
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Earth Has Had Space Visitors

By The New Mexican
11-16-1962


See Also:

Sagan said 'ET Was Here?'

Superspacemen May Have Visited Earth, Said Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan Center Opens





SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Thursday, July 05, 2012

VIDEO | Alan Alda is Trying to Find the Next Carl Sagan


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By MILES O'BRIEN
www.pbs.org
7-1-12
Miles O'Brien reports on a contest created by actor Alan Alda, which challenges scientists to flex their communication muscles by answering the seemingly simple question, "What is a flame?" Thousands of 11-year-olds serve as judges.

      Any parent can remember the moment when their child asks one of those seemingly simple, yet devilishly hard questions: you know, “why is the sky blue?”… “why are plants green?”…and “where do babies come from?”

One of the toughest in this category is “what is a flame?” In 1947, an 11-year old Alan Alda asked his teacher that question and got a non-response: “oxidation” – thus ensuring young Alan would continue on his career path of acting instead of taking a turn toward science. . . .

Thursday, December 22, 2011

UFO CHRONICLE | VIDEO | Carl Sagan Cites 'Flying Saucer [UFO] Cultists' in Interview with Walter Cronkite


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Carl Sagan



See Also:

Carl Sagan Center Open

Superspacemen May Have Visited Earth, Said Carl Sagan

Frank Drake—Evidence/Data Methodologies In Ufology

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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Superspacemen May Have Visited Earth, Said Carl Sagan


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Did Superspacemen Visit Earth Once - Daily News 4-3-1966- click on image(s) to enlarge -

By Daily News
4-3-1966



See Also:

Sagan said 'ET Was Here?'

NEW SETI INSTITUTE OPENS IN MOUNTAIN VIEW

Frank Drake—Evidence/Data Methodologies In Ufology




SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE