Earth Day may fall later this week, but as far as former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell and other UFO enthusiasts are concerned, the real story is happening elsewhere.
Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the U.S. and other governments.
He delivered his remarks during an appearance at the National Press Club following the conclusion of the fifth annual X-Conference, a meeting of UFO activists and researchers studying the possibility of alien life forms.
Mankind has long wondered if we’re “alone in the universe. [But] only in our period do we really have evidence. No, we’re not alone,” Mitchell said.
“Our destiny, in my opinion, and we might as well get started with it, is [to] become a part of the planetary community. … We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there.”
On a vaguely unrelated topic, check out these spectacular photos of Saturn.
Yes yes yes… of course UFO’s exist, there a lot of people with poor eyesight in the world. Why do you think making eyeglasses is such a good business?
Of all the millions of species which have evolved on *this* planet over the last several billion years, only one of them is capable of extraterrestrial communication. Now, of that one isolated species, only a tiny percentage are even vaguely interested in science or space exploration or the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Even that tiny percentage of interest drops precipitously when they learn that science costs money! Why should we think that space aliens would be any different?
Besides, if these space aliens are so darned advanced, wouldn’t they just send nano-craft which we wouldn’t even notice?
“Klaatu barada nikto”
Most everyone has a mobile phone camera in their pocket now. Yet the number of UFO photos drops off to almost nothing compared to the 70’s. Strange….
In the 70’s, those few people who filmed unexplained events were using FILM. Even crappy 8mm film is megapixel quality by today’s measurements. Even fairly good modern analog video is pretty crappy (i.e. not much you can do to blow it up or enhance it) not to mention all the noise inherent in the process. Digital images are even worse. Noisy and piss-poor resolution. Which is a long way of saying when you filmed something in the 70’s, you had a pretty decent record of it. Record it now, ESPECIALLY with an ultra-shitty cellphone camera, and you have nothing… the UFO can’t be distinguished from the noise. Ergo, nobody even bothers to show it around knowing that the first 30 comments are going to be “PHOTOSHOP!!!”
Sort of like the old sorta-funny joke about why aliens only show themselves to backwoods hicks. Well, probably not. But aside from the fact that backwoods hicks tend to, well, live in the backwoods away from civilization (which we might presume stealthy visitors might avoid) they, unlike the big city sophisticates we find on this web site, are naiive enough to tell someone.
If JCD got an anal probe this morning, do you think he’s going to tell ANYBODY? Much less his blog? I damn sure wouldn’t.
#42. So you think all “extraterrestrials” are actually demonic forces sent from hell to wreak havoc on mankind?
And people think UFO believers are loon bats?
Sheesh.
Any alien race advanced enough to come here would no doubt have time travel technology, in order to make traveling across the vast gulfs of space easier. Which begs the question; are they concerned about what we are, or what we might become? Given our current course, I’d say that we have a greater chance of becoming a scourge on the galaxy, like the Daleks from Dr. Who, than some mostly-peaceful Federation.
Changing our history might be the way that they have chosen to save their future. Given how easy it would be to simply wipe us out, I tend to think that they have chosen a peaceful path.
As far as digital cameras go, and their prevalence, any race advanced enough to get here could easily manipulate electronics at a distance. A mechano-optical camera, on the other hand wouldn’t be so easy to turn off from a distance without causing damage that would be, itself, evidence. Of course, despite this, many many UFO pictures are taken, even by the google maps trucks!
Another point, about test aircraft; if the UFO I saw was a secret aircraft, then I want my Jetson’s car, my flying city, and my free energy device now, because that would mean that we have conquered gravity and inertia, and keeping such technology secret would be a horrible crime against humanity.
Let’s take it a step further, Alfred1. Suppose the aliens could show you incontrovertible proof that they created mankind. Perhaps even create a human being in front of you. Show you how and where they did it on earth.
Actually, that isn’t proof. It shouldn’t be too many more decades before we can create humans from raw materials.
Terraforming worlds, creating life from the chemical building blocks, etc. Just as so much of our technology would have seemed magical to someone from a few hundred years ago, so will what we can do before the end of the century seem so to us today. God-like powers to recreate our world elsewhere should be easy by then given we’re doing the groundwork today. It’s a matter of figuring out the rest of the details.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
–Dr. Carl Sagan
So, where is it?
On an unrelated note, thanks much for the Saturn pix Uncle Dave, they are extraordinary. More at the NASA Cassini site.
Like Molly Wood said a little while ago on some other netcast, the UFO’s are probably just alien teenagers having a little fun buzzing our backward little planet.
I sure hope this isn’t the same astronaut Edgar Mitchell who spent time on the moon attempting to contact Earthlings by ESP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell
RBG
The real question here is should we allow Al Gore to tell the aliens about the changes occurring on their planet?
#48 Millions of witnesses, thousands of pictures and videos, and physical evidence would be truly extraordinary amounts of evidence by any rational measure.
Or will you not be satisfied until you can strap an alien down to a table and dissect it? Well, get in line for that one. . .
#47 Uncle Dave
“Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to us to be magic.”
– Arthur C. Clarke
Looks like both of you are on the same wavelength.
Here is a good quote on the subject:
“It can therefore be reasoned that if any other civilization such as ours does now exist in our galaxy, it must be many times older than ours, just as any one-day-old infant must recognize that most living people are many times older than he is. We can speculate on the present the capabilities of a technology that is, say, 50,000 years head of ours only in terms of what our own might be capable of 50,000 years from now. About all that can be said of such a possibility is that it would be largely incomprehensible to us, and, as Arthur C. Clarke has said, it would appear to us to be magic, since it would violate the laws of physical science as we know them today. We are consequently in no position to assert what is or is not possible for some extraterrestrial technology vastly older than our own. ”
It’s a pretty good paper, for those who are interested.
http://project1947.com/shg/articles/hooven.html
For those that missed it, the reference to “stealing the space cash” is from a recent South Park episode.
In it, the world’s first contact with an alien species is with an interplanetary bank robber with a ship full of space cash. The humans killed the alien, stole the cash, and built water slides with the loot.
Kinda silly. But, hey, its South Park
Found it, here you go:
http://tinyurl.com/dfxb3p
#52, Sorry, “millions of witnesses” and a bunch of faked photos and videos won’t cut it. Show me a real photo (which can’t be done today, because of photoshop). Show me something better than a crop circle. There is no extraordinary evidence. It’s a bunch of BS. Sheesh!
I’ve seen Mars “explode” in a telescope. Answer? Atmospheric phenomenon, still not explained, but Mars is still there. Les Cowley of Atmospheric Optics (a renowned resource) and Dr. J.C. LoPresto, solar physicist, helped me out with that one. It was one cool ride.
IF you believe that offworlders would traverse vast distances of space to come to effectively the boonies of the galaxy to leave crop circles, take bovine ovaries and anally probe hominids; then I have some prime farm land in Antarctica.
History is rife with ‘visitations’.
Demons, angels, fairies, elves, gnomes and on and on and on.
Bored people with overactive imaginations and predisposition to overuse fermented beverages.
Cursor_
If you want a more logical (yet fantastical) explanation for flying saucers then read “The Hunt for Zero Point” by Nick Cook. This is an aerospace journalist’s (Jane’s, no less) investigation of the plausibility that anti-gravity research was taken out of post-war Germany liberated from top secret Nazi weapons development facilities. This would certainly explain a crash of a flying disc outside of a military nuclear weapons research base in 1947, only two years after the end of WWII.
Although there is little hard evidence to back it all up, it is infinitely more credible than little green men.
If this is what is being denied and covered up then the implications of the technology are monumental. The upside is the potential for limitless energy and Jetsons type vehicles. The downside is the total economic chaos it would create for the energy, automobile, aircraft, and airline industries.
Besides, the government can barely control automobile traffic as it is today. What would happen if millions of Jetsons vehicles were whizzing overhead at breakneck speeds. Every family vehicle could become a potential missile. The FAA could not handle it and the government would not allow it to happen.
The military potential of this type of technology is unfathomable. If it is real, which I am far from convinced that it is (see previous posts about needing some kind of evidence), the government would almost certainly stamp this “Above Top Secret”. You and I will likely never see it come “out of the black” in our lifetimes.
The Bubbleheads (they wore bubble helmets), B1 and B2, were live animated entities. They sat on silver bars or containers of weight and guided them to a predetermined spot. It appeared they did this by means of psychic control. Jacque Vallee, in DIMENSIONS, delves in the history of mythical beings, such as gnomes, elves, dwarfs, nymphs and fairies. I felt my senses were deceiving me as I watched a smallish figure with wings, literally, a cherub,ascending up to the side of the dirt. The small one , I called Bubblehead appeared to be the guiding force. Would a human mind privilege Bubblehead as the ultimate in charge? A shy entity that disappears when confronted by a human? Is B1’s mask the repetitive formation of a playful,harmless, good-spirited entity whose tasks are thought to be benevolent?B1’s face did not show any emotion except playful exuberance. It is difficult to come to terms with an entity I always thought to be mythical…the childish stories of fairies tales. And then to encounter such an entity. Not only are the small ones real but hey are other-dimentional or extra-terrestrial.How long have they been on earth that they have penetrated the minds of myth makers and populated the minds of children? Their civilizing influence must have been enormous. Yet, as centuries wore on, they became motifs in story tales. In essence, they became talisman and amulets…good luck charms. Were their power of bewitchment so powerful that they could erase their presence from the minds of all they encountered? I saw their presence and then I had no memory of them.
Whoever posted above about fairy tales… now you know how they originated.
Alfred,
Put out three bowls.
Pray for food in one.
Ask the government to fill the other.
Pick the fruit and put it in the third.
Which one fills up the fastest?
Jesus can’t hit a curve ball!
There’s something more to UFOs than idiot witnesses making outlandish excuses for their swollen rectal areas.
There have been numerous incidents where credible witnesses, whose professions would suggest they were well experienced in the art of observation, have made visual contact with flying objects displaying capabilities far exceeding those of any known aircraft (even to this day). In many cases, those same extraordinary aircraft were simultaneously tracked on both ground and air radar, fully corroborating the witnesses’ visual observations. Some of these incidents have involved enough UFOs spotted concurrently to effectively nullify any claim that they were U.S. experimental aircraft, for obvious reasons.
There’s a group called “The Disclosure Project” that claims to have collected 400-some witnesses, many with civilian and military aviation backgrounds. There are areas where the project founder seems to be overreaching in his claims, but his most fundamental goal is to convince Congress to have public hearings in which credible UFO witnesses can testify under oath and be questioned for all to see. That sounds like a good idea. I’ve watched some video of a few of their eyewitnesses telling their stories, and their credibility seems rather compelling.
None of them made the claims of anal probing that always bring my suspicions to a state of high alert 😉
#65, “Jesus can’t hit a curve ball”
Wasn’t this from “Major League?” Good one! “Jeez Cerrano, don’t start a holy war!”
#66, Cite references, I don’t remember any “credible witnesses” doing exactly that, along with corroboration from ATC. Sounds like less than extraordinary evidence to me.
Too much History Channel.
Your Honor, BubbaRay, I’d like to call Lt. Col. Charles Brown to the witness stand…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Oe05349o72k
[Removed – duplicate. Ed.]
Is there a secret to posting explicit links?
[Ed. Just get rid of the “www”, the link will work]
Gary, try using TinyURL.com.
The aliens will land in New York City and their space craft will be up on blocks and the radio will be gone.
#68, Gary, I fixed your link. But I still see no extraordinary evidence, just the “testimony” of one man who collected evidence for Project Blue Book. Since his accounts are all hearsay, the court rules “not admissible – hearsay.”
Just because he’s convinced doesn’t convince me. Where’s the evidence? Some people are as religious about this as Christians are about Christ.
I’ll have to go with BubbaRay and Dr. Carl Sagan on this one.
Muchas gracias to the editor who rehabilitated my link, and to Mark T for suggesting an alternative.
[Ed. You’re welcome, just remember to ditch the www — KD]