Scientists Discover... Krypton?

Have scientists discovered Krypton, the home planet of Superman?

No, not quite (although they have apparently discovered kryptonite). But it's fairly big news nonetheless.

Potentially Habitable Planet Found

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.

"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."

Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.

Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer.

But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

"I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet."

Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.

Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.

Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.

The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.

Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.

A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.

"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

Hawking should know better than to state that we haven't been visited by any "little green men" - we have no idea what alien life would look like, and it's pure hubris to imagine that we would be at the top of the intelligence chain when it comes to life and how advanced it might be. So, while it's true that we can't get to the stars yet, there's absolutely no proof that it can't be done - meaning they might have made their way here (key word? "might").

This news will probably provide a little boost for the ETH in the short term, and, as more and more potentially inhabitable planets are discovered nearby (relatively speaking, of course), the possibility that some UFOs may be ET will look more realistic, or at the very least be met with fewer howls of derision.

Which is a long way from proof positive - rather, it's just a shifting of the odds a bit.

Paul Kimball

Best Evidence - Canadian premiere

Best Evidence will premiere on Space: The Imagination Station on May 10th, at 10 pm AST / 9 pm EST. You can see the listing here.

The accompanying blurb reads as follows:

Best Evidence

Whether they believe or not, people all over the world are fascinated by the subject of UFOs. Best Evidence, a SPACE supported documentary, looks at the 10 best UFO cases to date. Many are unknown to the general public, who for years have been fed tales of crashed flying saucers and government cover-ups at the expense of real evidence that shows that there is something unexplained happening in the sky.

Warning: There are no crazy aliens in the film, and no goofy backdrops to interviewees, or anything like that. In fact, to the best of my recollection, aliens aren't mentioned once, at least not directly. There is animation, but it's of the Discovery-channel variety, i.e. serious, and not of the Plan 9 From Outer Space variety, i.e. not serious.

As some UFO researchers are busy these days bashing UFO documentaries and networks and producers at UFO Updates, I'd like to take a moment to thank the good folks at Space for giving me the opportunity to try something a bit different - a serious film about serious UFO cases. It's a risk for them, and they deserve all the credit in the world (and beyond) for taking it, especially Charlotte Engel, who heads up their independent production section, and greenlit the film over two years ago.

The next UFO-related film I make, assuming I ever make another, which is at best a 50 / 50 proposition, would probably focus on the tongue-in-cheek, weird and wacky world of ufology (where truth really is stranger than fiction). Something where I head out with my pals Nick Redfern, Mac Tonnies, Tim Binnall and Greg Bishop on a ufoological road trip across America maybe - definitely in an RV. Kris Lee Mcbride will be tagging along as well. At the end we meet the Court Jester of Ufoology, the one and only Jim Moseley. I've earned the right to look at the lighter side of it all.

But for the moment, I'm Mr. Serious, and if Best Evidence isn't quite Dick Hall's The UFO Evidence (and I never claimed it would be, knowing full well that no documentary can match a book for detail), Dick was still smart enough to see the merit in the project, and contribute, as were a lot of others.

And unlike Peter Jennings and his team, I was smart enough to recognize the contribution that Dick has and continues to make - he's in the film, along with Nick Pope, Stan Friedman, Bruce Maccabee, Mac Tonnies, Don Ledger, and our chief consultant and my good friend, Brad Sparks - as well as witnesses Colonel Charles Halt, Captain Robert Salas, and Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Bailey.

Is it the greatest film ever made? Hardly - that would be Lust for a Vampire.* But is it a film you're going to want to see?

I hope so.

You can keep an eye on developments at the Best Evidence blog site.

Paul Kimball

* Just kidding. The greatest film ever made is clearly Dying Fall.**

** Still kidding. Obviously, it's Do You Believe in Majic?***

*** Okay, okay... I'll be serious this time. The greatest film ever made was...

History and Ufology - The need to avoid ahistorical analysis

One of the most common things you'll see in ufology is ahistorical "reasoning". Some of it has popped up in the comments to the MJ-12 / Landry post a few days ago. Folks who make this error usually mean well, but what they're doing is taking historical events out of their proper context and trying to fit them into their own view of how the world works today.

An example would be something like:

"Well, George Bush did X, which means that a president fifty years before must have or probably also did X." Or words / meaning to that effect.

Or this (one of ufology's favourites):

"Our intel and military services act like X today, which means that they must have acted like X in 1947."

And so forth.

History students are taught from day one to avoid this kind of "reasoning", but even there it rears its head more than you might think (I marked enough undergrad history papers to know whereof I speak - indeed, I've been guilty of it in the past myself).

Ahistorical analysis can be difficult to detect sometimes, particularly when the time periods are relatively close to each other, as is usually the case when the conversation is about UFOs (the difference between 1947 and today, which spans the modern UFO era, is a drop in the temporal bucket).

But try it this way:

"Our intel and military services act like X today, which means that they must have acted like X in the Revolutionary War."

That doesn't make much sense, does it?

This does not mean that there are not common threads that run through history. But these are patterns / conclusions that are drawn from common facts, not the other way around.

When examining historical events, we always have to remember to view them in their proper context, and not view them through the prism of our own time and experiences. In other words, we should stick to the facts as they were, not as we would like them to be, or think they were, and draw our conclusions from that. We can still be wrong (facts often support more than one reasonable interpretation), but at least we'll have gone about the process in the proper fashion, which always decreases the chances for error.

Paul Kimball

Robert Landry and MJ-12

If Majestic-12 (or any other group like it) really existed in the wake of the crash of an alien spacecraft in Roswell, why would President Truman, who supposedly created this group, have asked his Air Force aide, Colonel (later Major General) Robert Landry, to keep an eye on the UFO phenomenon for him, and brief him quarterly?

This is how Major General Landry, who retired from the USAF in 1962, and died in 2000, described it in an addendum to a 1974 oral history interview (original here):

In this time period the UFO phenomenon was getting quite a bit of play in the press, radio, TV and from miscellaneous other sources. All manner of objects and things were being seen in the sky by people, including attempted UFO landings and UFO hoverings over isolated areas. There was even a report of seeing little men with big round heads getting in and out of a UFO. Well, the President, like any other citizen, is exposed to all these goings on, too.

In any case, I was called one afternoon to come to the Oval Office--the President wanted to see me. We talked about UFO reports and what might be the meaning for all these rather way-out reports of sightings, and the subject in general. The president said he hadn't give much serious thought to all these reports; but at the same time, he said, if there was any evidence of a strategic threat to the national security, the collection and evaluation of UFO data by Central Intelligence warranted more intense study and attention at the highest government level.

I was directed to report quarterly to the President after consulting with Central Intelligence people, as to whether or not any UFO incidents received by them could be considered as having any strategic threatening implications at all.

The report was to be made orally by me unless it was considered by intelligence to be so serious or alarming as to warrant a more detailed report in writing. During the four and one-half years in office there, all reports were made orally. Nothing of substance considered credible or threatening to the country was ever received from intelligence.

Note: the Air Force had been charged by the Department of Defense with the collection and evaluation of UFO data from all sources such as the other services, the National Weather Service, and any other reliable source.

Now, this isn't some sort of scoop on my part. General Landry's remarks have been reasonably common knowledge in the UFO community for some time now. Indeed, some pro MJ-12 ufologists like Grant Cameron have used them to buttress their claims that Truman was interested in UFOs, without seeming to understand how Landry's statement undercuts their belief in the existence of MJ-12, or any other super-secret UFO committee. If MJ-12 did exist, and Truman wanted a report on what the CIA was up to, all he had to do was contact DCI Hillenkoetter, who was also supposedly a member of MJ-12. Of course, Truman would have been getting reasonably regular reports on UFOs from MJ-12 anyway, if such a committee had existed.

So, what conclusions can be drawn from Landry's statement, the accuracy of which has never been disputed?

First, President Truman was clearly interested, at least to a degree, in UFO reports. This shouldn't come as a surprise - lots of people, in and out of government, were interested in UFO reports in the late 1940s, for the very reasons that Landry mentioned.

Second, there was no super-secret group, whether MJ-12 or otherwise, set up by Truman to deal with UFOs. If there had been, there was no conceivable reason for him to ask Landry (shown above in WWII, as commander of the 56th Fighter Group) for quarterly reports on the UFO phenomenon.

Finally - and this follows from the second conclusion, although it is less certain than the first two - there was probably no crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell, or anywhere else prior to 1948. If there had been, the MJ-12 proponents are likely correct in their assertion that Truman would have established some sort of oversight group. If he had, however, he would not have asked Landry to give him regular reports, and check in with the CIA.

These are the logical conclusions that should have been drawn from Landry's statement a long time ago. And yet ufologists like Grant Cameron, and Stan Friedman ignored them.

Paul Kimball

The RB47 UFO Case(s)

Someone recently claimed to have solved the 1957 RB47 UFO case.

What they're obviously unaware of is that there was more than one RB47 case - although the 1957 one is the spectacular one, there were others. UFOs made a habit of playing tag with one of the most sophisticated electronic surveillance airplanes in the world.

One of the other incidents involved a plane in which Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Bailey was flying as an ECM officer. Bailey, pictured at the left with me in his home outside of Dallas, Texas, back in 2006, has served as the de facto historian for the RB47 since his retirement (his book We See All is a wonderful airman's memoir of what it was like to fly back then). He describes his crew's own incident in my just completed documentary, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases. Bailey (third from right in the photo at left, back in his USAF days) also describes the aftermath, not only of his incident, but of others involving RB47 crews, including the classic 1957 case. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time he had talked about his case on camera.

Critics like Phil Klass have had a hard time solving just one RB47 case. It gets even harder to solve several, all of which had the same general characteristics, and all of which were reported by the best crews the United States Air Force had flying back then, with the best equipment - guys who more than once came up wing-to-wing with the Soviets, and never backed down.

In short, the kind of men you could rely on to not get rattled by simple lights in the sky.

Paul Kimball

MJ-12 meeting?

Is this a photo of an MJ-12 meeting?

As it would be hard to find a photo of a meeting for a group that never existed, the answer is no.

However, this photo of a 1948 meeting of the National Security Council does show some alleged members of MJ-12 - Sidney Souers, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, and James Forrestal.

You can find the original at the ARC in the NARA - here.


It's a wonderful resource, with lots of old photos already digitally archived - like this one of Forrestal, looking grim as he walks down the street. Note the guy to his right in the background, filming him.


The ARC site makes history come alive, which is always a good thing. And who knows - maybe there are some UFO-related nuggets hidden in there somewhere, waiting for a diligent researcher?

Paul Kimball

The UFO Mystics

Those wacky UFO Mystics, Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, back during the New Frontiers Symposium in October, 2006.

I think Greg was singing some flying saucer tune.

Paul Kimball

Tim Binnall's take on Stan Friedman

Friedman has always been a lecturer, first and foremost. I highly suggest listening to the Xmas episode of BoA : Audio where we talk about his "early years". I agree that if you listen to a lot of Friedman, you'll hear a lot of stuff for the 2nd, 3rd, etc. time. But, considering he gives countless interviews a year, it's to be expected he'll have his set "routines". It's the job of the interviewer to (a) know those routines and avoid getting into them and (b) generate new, different and/or fresh material from him. (I can only hope I succeed w. the annual X-mas specials).

It's easy to look back now and consider him a great "researcher", because Roswell and MJ-12 got so huge. But he sort of lucked into Roswell and never knew it would become a cultural institution that it ended up being and the MJ-12 documents remain one of Ufology's more dubious stories, despite their fame.

I haven't heard him asked about alternative dimension hypothesis. As a matter of fact, I can't recall anyone really asking him his thoughts on all the various other theories. If you know of an interview, let me know, I'm sure it would be intersting to hear. I'll also keep that line of questioning in mind for next year's Xmas special.

I'll agree w. Paul Kimball in that Friedman will be (or at least should be) remembered by history as the great popularizer of the UFO phenomenon. By sheer longevity and dilligence, he's planted the UFO seed in the minds of countless people.

Original here (go to the "ufology" section, and then the "Stanton Friedman" thread).

Paul Kimball

Psi Factor

There seems to be an upsurge of interest in psychic phemomena in the last few years, particularly on television and in film, usually two pretty good barometers of what the public is fixated on.

But is there a scientific basic for Psi?

If that's a question that interests you (and frankly how could it not), then you should pick up The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena by Dr. Dean Radin, Director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Radin has done cutting edge psi research for Princeton University's department of psychology, the U.S government, AT&T, the University of Edinburgh, and other groups, agencies, and businesses. You might not buy everything he has to say (I'm not sure I do), but it's certainly thought-provoking stuff.

Here is an excerpt from chapter 1:

In science, the acceptance of new ideas follows a predictable, four-stage sequence. In Stage 1, skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea is impossible because it violates the Laws of Science. This stage can last from years to centuries, depending on how much the idea challenges conventional wisdom. In Stage 2, skeptics reluctantly concede that the idea is possible, but it is not very interesting and the claimed effects are extremely weak. Stage 3 begins when the mainstream realizes that the idea is not only important, but its effects are much stronger and more pervasive than previously imagined. Stage 4 is achieved when the same critics who used to disavow any interest in the idea begin to proclaim that they thought of it first. Eventually, no one remembers that the idea was once considered a dangerous heresy.

The idea discussed in this book is in the midst of the most important and the most difficult of the four transitions – from Stage 1 into Stage 2. While the idea itself is ancient, it has taken more than a century to conclusively demonstrate it in accordance with rigorous, scientific standards. This demonstration has accelerated Stage 2 acceptance, and Stage 3 can already be glimpsed on the horizon. The idea is that those compelling, perplexing and sometimes profound human experiences known as "psychic phenomena" are real.

This will come as no surprise to most of the world’s population, because the majority already believes in psychic phenomena. But over the past few years, something new has propelled us beyond old debates over personal beliefs. The reality of psychic phenomena is now no longer based solely upon faith, or wishful thinking, or absorbing anecdotes. It is not even based upon the results of a few scientific experiments. Instead, we know that these phenomena exist because of new ways of evaluating massive amounts of scientific evidence collected over a century by scores of researchers.

Psychic, or "psi" phenomena fall into two general categories. The first is perception of objects or events beyond the range of the ordinary senses. The second is mentally causing action at a distance. In both categories, it seems that intention, the mind’s will, can do things that – according to prevailing scientific theories – it isn’t supposed to be able to do. We wish to know what is happening to loved ones, and somehow, sometimes, that information is available even over large distances. We wish to speed the recovery of a loved one’s illness, and somehow they get better quicker, even at a distance. Mind willing, many interesting things appear to be possible. Understanding such experiences requires an expanded view of human consciousness.

Is the mind merely a mechanistic, information-processing bundle of neurons? Is it a "computer made of meat" as some cognitive scientists and neuroscientists believe? Or is it something more? The evidence suggests that while many aspects of mental functioning are undoubtedly related to brain structure and electrochemical activity, there is also something else happening, something very interesting.

This is for real?

When discussing the reality of psi phenomena, especially from the scientific perspective, one question always hovers in the background: You mean this is for real? In the midst of all the nonsense and excessive silliness proclaimed in the name of psychic phenomena, the misinformed use of the term parapsychology by self-proclaimed "paranormal investigators," the perennial laughing stock of magicians and conjurers … this is for real?

The short answer is, Yes.

A more elaborate answer is, psi has been shown to exist in thousands of experiments. There are disagreements over to how to interpret the evidence, but the fact is that virtually all scientists who have studied the evidence, including the hard-nosed skeptics, now agree that there is something interesting going on that merits serious scientific attention.

This isn't dull grade 10 introductory physical science here. This is "gee-whiz" stuff that could have a very real application in our day-to-day world, and could alter the way we look at ourselves and our universe (or is that "mulitiverse"?). For example, Radin speculates about some of the applications Psi might have for politics:

A society that consciously uses precognitive information to guide the future is one that is realizing true freedom. That is, the acts of billions of people seeing into their own futures, and acting on those visions, may result in fracturing undesirable, "fated" destinies set in motion long ago. This would allow us to create the future as we wish, rather than blindly follow a predetermined course thorugh our ignornace.

On the other hand, Radin points out the potential problems, which sound like something straight from a science-fiction novel, but which may be more real than we currently imagine:

If too many people begin to accurately peek at their possible futures, and they change behaviors as a result, the causal loops established between the future and the past may agitate the future from a few likely outcomes into a completely undetermined probabilistic mush.

If all of this sounds a bit too much like Minority Report for some, it's worth remembering that often science fiction authors have been better at predicting future events than so-called experts. In this case, however, Radin goes much further than science fiction, and provides a scientific framework around which we can discuss intelligently the possibilities of things that have fascinated humans, in one way or another, for thousands of years.

Radin concludes:

Future generations will undoubtedly look back upon the twentieth century with a certain poignancy. Our progeny will shake their heads with disbelief over the arrogance we displayed in our meager understanding of nature. It took three hundred years of hard-won scientific advances merely to verify the existence of something that people had been experiencing for millenia.

At the turn of the twentieth century, imaginative scientists were slowly becoming aware of radical new theories on the horizon about space, time, matter, and energy. Some sensed, correctly, that developments such as relativity and quantum theory would radically alter our understanding of reality itself. Almost a century later, the impact of those discoveries is still reverberating throughout science, technology, and society.

As the twenty-first century dawns, astounding new visions of reality are stirring.

One thing that Radin says above all others rings true with me. We are arrogant. We assume, in many respects, that we know all there is to know, and we have experienced all that there is to experience. In taking this attitude, we have allowed ourselves to stop progressing. The desire to challenge new frontiers has waned. We have become complacent.

It's time to change that, and to rediscover the essense of the human spirit - the desire to explore, and the ability to embrace change. Our journey shouldn't be based on belief, or faith, but rather on science, and logic, and reason - none of which precludes an examination of that which might be called "the paranormal".

After all, if history has shown us, one generation's "paranormal" can become another generation's relatively mundane fact-of-life.

Remember that the next time you get on an airplane, or use a computer, or talk on the telephone.

Paul Kimball

George Bush and the UFO Phenomenon

[ed. note - No, it's not quite what some of you might be thinking given the title...]

President George Bush the Younger has spent his entire term looking at the world in black and white, at least on the major issues of the day. This Manichean outlook on things (which is not unique to Bush - see Ted Kennedy) is one of the biggest single failings of the political leadership in the United States today (ditto in Canada, but to a slightly lesser extent), because it's just not an "us vs. them", "good vs. evil" world out there. Things are usually more complicated than that.

In many respects, ufology suffers from the same the same "you're either with us or agin' us" attitude. This is particularly true of die-hard ETH believers and disbelievers (the Bush and Kennedy, or vice versa, of what passes for ufological discourse).

As with modern politics, so too in ufology does the moderate centrist feel left out. There often seems to be no room for what Greg Bishop has called "The Excluded Middle".

What's this? You agree with Phil Klass on something?? Then you must be one of "them"!

Huh? You think that Stan Friedman made a good point? Then you must be one of "them"!

A pox on the Manichean outlook, I say. It's high time for "The Excluded Middle" in ufology to reassert itself, just as it is for "The Excluded Middle" in society as a whole to reassert itself.

People need to recognize that:

a. they're not always going to be right;

b. people make mistakes; and

c. reasonable people can disagree reasonably over just about any issue.

But it takes two to tango. So, if you run into someone who comes from an "us vs. them" perspective, my advice would be to ignore them (ed. note - in other words, do as Paul says, not as he always does). Find people who keep an open mind, and are willing to listen to what you have to say. Then, if they disagree with you, don't beat them over the head with a rhetorical bat (or any other kind) - counter their arguments, have a dialogue, and, if necessary at the end of it all, agree to disagree (preferably over a beer or several).

That's what Nick Redfern (Roswell theory - "boo, hiss"), Greg Bishop (remote viewing - "I don't buy it"), Mac Tonnies (Whitley Strieber - "Ugh") and I all manage to do on a regular basis. It's what Kevin Randle did recently with his balanced look at the controversy over Jesse Marcel's record, which isn't as cut-and-dried as either Marcel's detractors or his defenders would make out.

Kevin wrote:

... it seems that which ever side you decide to come down on, you’re going to run into some trouble. Marcel apparently embellished his record, though it seems only a single time and that he was who he said he was in July 1947. [Sheridan] Cavitt, it seems, changed his story on a number of occasions and then never explained why he’d never told Marcel or Blanchard it was a balloon if he knew the truth. So, as in so much of the Roswell case, you can look at the spin of the researchers and skeptics, look at the records of the soldiers, and still not know, for certain, where the truth lies.

None of this means that you can't have strongly held opinions, and express them just as strongly. Rather, it means that you should try not to label other people as "them" simply because they disagree with you, and you should always recognize that history may show that "they" were right and "you" were wrong... or, even more likely, you were both partly wrong and party right, and the truth was somewhere in the middle.

It's a valuable lesson I've learned from first-hand experience over the years, and try to always remember to put into practice.

Paul Kimball

The Human Factor

An interesting observation by "Skeptical", the moderator of the UFO forum at X-Planet (here):

The real constant in the paranormal is not the phenomenon itself - it is the human observer. Hydrogen is hydrogen, regardless of whether a person sees it. But what is a ghost if there isn't a person there to swear it's the shade of dear, departed Uncle Ned? What is a meandering light in the night sky if there is no person there to label it an interplanetary spaceship? Do paranormal events have any life beyond what is observed or interpreted by people?

An interesting question, along the lines of the old "if a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound" conundrum - to which I have always answered, "well, d'uh - of course it does", although I recognize that philosophy students need questions like this to justify the tuition that they've shelled out for their undergraduate degrees.

"Skeptical", who was inspired by a recent post at Kevin Randle's blog, concluded:

To quote Agent Mulder, I want to believe. But the vast majority of what I've seen lately actually leads me away from that conclusion. I've seen nothing but chicanery, muddled thinking and mysticism. It may be fun to think about, but at the end of the day, it appears that it is truly a tale told by an idiot - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

That seems to be an apt description of public ufology, but it isn't necessarily an apt description of the serious study of the UFO phenomenon, particularly the work which goes on sub rosa.

Still, I can understand and sympathize with Skeptical, with the caveat that I neither want to believe, nor disbelieve. I'm just curious.

Paul Kimball

A Prince Edward Island UFO case

I'm often referred to as a UFO investigator, which always makes me uncomfortable. Yes, I've done archival research, and yes, I've interviewed witnesses and experts for documentaries, so in a sense I suppose you could call me an investigator, but I'm not the guy who goes out in "the field" and starts an investigation from scratch.

With one exception, that I've kept under my hat so far.

A couple of years ago, I was told a story by some folks I know on Prince Edward Island, one of them a very nice and thoroughly honest lady in her late 80s at the time, and the other her son, who is in his 40s. Let's call them Mrs. X and Mr. Y.

One of my favourite UFO cases is the Vins-sur-Caramy case from France in 1957. Why? Because in many respects it mirrors exactly the story that these two people, who I know to be very credible, told me.

Mrs. X and other members of her family, including her husband, a civil servant of impeccable reputation who is, alas, deceased, saw an oval-shaped object descend down into their field one afternoon in the mid-1960s, which Mrs. X and her son, who related what he had been told by people who were there, described pretty much exactly the way the Vins-sur-Caramy witnesses described the object they saw in April, 1957.

The object seen by Mrs. X and other members of her family hovered over their field, perhaps a hundred yards away from their house, and then moved away at a high rate of speed (this part is a bit different from the Vins-sur-Caramy account). It had made what can only be described as a small crop circle in the field - my term for what Mrs. X described (she did not use this term to me, nor did her son).

Mr. Y said that this incident had a profound impact on their family over the years, which Mrs. X confirmed, as have others. Mrs. X, a religious woman, called it a "forerunner" - a sign from God that something was going to happen (indeed, someone they knew was killed in a car accident a couple of days later). But it's clear that what they saw was a UFO.

I have kept the details vague as to exact date, place and persons involved because I'm still looking into it. But when people ask me why UFOs interest me, one of the reasons is because of this story, which was told to me by credible people who did not want to talk about it until I pressed them. I need to stress - I heard about it second-hand, and then went to these folks to talk about it. They did not come to me.

At any rate, as more information becomes available, I'll post it here.

Paul Kimball

Seth Shostak, Bad Science, and UFOs

If you want to hear some bad science, tune into the December 20th, 2006 episode of Are We Alone, SETI's weekly radio program, with Seth Shostak, which is about UFOs.

If there are really aliens out there listening in, I hope they don't hear this. They'll think we're still stuck in pre-Enlightenment days.

Shostak et al manage the unholy trifecta of bad science - they distort facts, they ignore other facts, and they make mistakes about the facts. For example, at one point Shostak manages to conflate the MJ-12 documents with the legitimate CIA and NSA documents that Stan Friedman and others got through Freedom of Information Act requests. In the process, Shostak shows that he knows nothing about the subject he's chosen to bash.

Note also that Shostak et al tie the UFO phenomenon directly to the ETH, never once mentioning any other possibilities. The open mind that Dr. Michio Kaku urged people to keep with respect to the UFO phenomenon at the end of Seeing is Believing is nowhere to be found on Shostak's show.

In the meantime, SETI continues to search the skies for the ET equivalent of "I Love Lucy" or "The Honeymooners", while pumping out, in the form of radio shows like this, the scientific equivalent of bad pro wrestling - phony, derivative (nary a new thought pops up in this episode), and just plain boring.

I've finally figured it out - Seth Shostak is the Vince McMahon of ufology.

Which means it's time for... a head-to-head showdown with...

The Easter Bunny!

Who Has More Scientific Credibility on UFOs
	The Easter Bunny
	Dr. Seth Shostak
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Yet again, I find myself compelled to cast my vote for The Easter Bunny!



Look out Seth!

Paul Kimball

P.S. For some reason, this hilarious video reminds me of Easter during my fourth year at Acadia. Hmm...

Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter: Not MJ-12, but not completely honest either

The few remaining proponents of MJ-12 would have you believe that both Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter and Dr. Howard Menzel were members of that supposed super-secret UFO cover-up group.

As I, and many, many others have shown over the years, MJ-12 didn't exist, and the MJ-12 documents are bogus beyond any reasonable doubt (google MJ-12 in this blog's search engine to read past columns on this subject).

But that doesn't mean that Hillenkoetter and Menzel were unacquainted, or that Hillenkoetter wasn't playing games with members of the UFO community.

On 13 December, 1964, Major Donald Keyhoe, of NICAP, sent a letter to his old freind and former Annapolis classmate Hillenkoetter, who was a former member of NICAP's Board of Directors (1957 - 1962). In it, Keyhoe asked about information he had been given that Hillenkoetter, among other things, had discussed NICAP and UFOs with Menzel, and had commented favourably on one of Menzel's anti-UFO books.

Hillenkoetter replied on January 8, 1965, that Keyhoe had been misinformed. Hillenkoetter wrote:

I saw Dr. Menzel at a dinner in December but other than saying 'Good Evening - Merry Christmas' there was no conversation and I have never carried on any conversation with Menzel about NICAP or UFO. He did send me a copy of his book for which I thanked him but took no posiiton on the statements he made. (emphasis added - PK)

This was a lie.

On September 19, 1963, Hillenkoetter had written to Menzel:

Thank you very much for your book. To my mind, it was very well done and I enjoyed it and found it of great interest. I should say that you have effectively put to rest all surmises about flying saucers being from 'outer space'. You have done a thorough and praiseworthy job."

He continued:

As I told you at the last 'Ends of the Earth', I resigned from NICAP about 20 months ago feeling that it had degenerated from an organization honestly trying to find out something definite about possible unknowns, into a body bickering about personalities.

He concluded:

At all events, you have done a fine job and I am very grateful you were so kind as to send me your book Again with thanks and the hope of seeing you at the next 'Ends of the Earth'.

In this letter, Hillenkoetter does indeed discuss UFOs and NICAP with Menzel, and also offers high praise for his anti-UFO work.

One could say that there was a difference between "carrying on a conversation with Menzel", as Hillenkoetter stated in his letter to Keyhoe, and "writing him", but, all things considered, that is a distinction without a meaningful difference in this instance.

So, what can we glean from this?

First and perhaps foremost in the context of MJ-12, Hillenkoetter's letter to Menzel is not the kind of letter that one MJ-12 member would have written to another, as I noted here.

However, it does reveal a fair bit about Hillenkoetter's character, little of it good, and leads one to wonder just how sincere he was about his involvement with NICAP in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

After all, if he would lie to Keyhoe about matters as relatively trivial as this, what else might he have lied to him about?

It's a question worth asking, even without the bogus MJ-12 connection.

Paul Kimball

An Interview With Mac Tonnies

Mac Tonnies interviewed here.

An excerpt:

I’ve never seen a UFO or made contact with aliens — although I have an incredibly rich dream life, which perhaps amounts to the same thing.

Ouch - that ought to get a few people's dander up!

Paul Kimball

P.S. Mac - you can have your cake and eat it too.

Jacques Vallee on "Abductionology"

In his book Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact, Dr. Jacques Vallee had some eminently sensible things to say about research into the alien abduction phenomenon. While pointing out that blanket dismissals like those of the late Phil Klass go too far, he was extremely critical of the "methodology" of leading abductionologists like Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs.

I recommend that anyone who has not read Confrontations find a copy somewhere and read it. In the meantime, I'll provide a few well-thought out excerpts which should resonate today more than ever.

First, Vallee on the usefulness of lie detectors tests:

As for lie detector tests, which are routinely used by ufologists and the media to "prove" that UFO abductees are "telling the truth," their effectiveness is practically nil, as a long list of scientific references would show... A recent Harvard Medical School study has shown that truthful people flunked polygraph tests more often than actual liars. A possible explanation is that innocent people react to the stress of the test, while the guilty do everything in their power to remain calm. (p. 158)

Vallee went on to talk about the need to understand the overall context of the abduction phenomenon:

There is another very important aspect to the entire abduction problem that has never been considered seriously by American ufology, obsessed as it is with immediate facts and first-order explanations. By ignoring this other aspect, we reduce considerably our chances of understanding the entire question. What I am referring to is the simple fact that abduction stories are not specific to the UFO phenomenon and certainly did not begin with Betty and Barney Hill in 1961. I pointed out in Invisible College that the structure of abduction stories was identical to that of occult initiation rituals. Several years before, I had shown in Passport to Magonia that contact with ufonauts was only a modern extension of the age-old tradition of contact with nonhuman consciousness in the form of angels, demons, elves, and sylphs. Such contact includes abduction, ordeal (including surgical operations), and sexual intercourse with the aliens. It often leaves marks and scars on the body and the mind, as do UFO abductions. Reaction to the publication of these facts was curious. In the United States, many ufologists simply denied them or ignored them. As late as 1988 Budd Hopkins summarily rejected the Magonia data as "folklore of obviously uncertain authenticity." (pp. 159 - 160)

It should be noted that not all American ufologists ignored these facts - Kevin Randle details them in his excellent study The Abduction Enigma, which he co-wrote with Russ Estes and Dr. William Cone. But Kevin is in the minority.

As noted above, Vallee discusses the problems with the use of hypnosis (something I've talked about here in the past - see The Alien Abduction Cult and The Abduction Phenomenon and Hypnosis), but does he dismiss it out of hand? No. Instead, what he does is point out that the real problem is with the use of hypnosis by untrained ufologists like Hopkins and Jacobs who have an agenda to pursue. Vallee's recommendation?

Can help be provided to the traumatized witness who has experienced a close encounter and possibly an abduction? Absolutely. He or she should be directed to a qualified, professional hypnotherapist who is open-minded on the question of the UFO reality and who has reached no personal conclusion regarding the nature and origin of the phenomenon. And the ufologist should only be in the room at the request of, and under the control of, the therapist. Any other procedure, in my opinion, is unethical and unprofessional. Besides, it runs the risk of polluting the delicate, complex abduction database with fantastic and spurious material. It can drive UFO research over a very dangerous cliff. (p. 159)

Vallee wrote this is 1990. Alas, few in ufology listened, and ufology was driven over that dangerous cliff, with predictable consequences: further marginalization by the legitimate scientific community, a withering of public interest as the stories of abductions (and crashed flying saucers, abductionology's evil twin) became commonplace (see Robert Fulford on Abductions for a recent sample of media reaction), and more often outrageous, all of which has led to a loss, as Vallee said elsewhere, of the true "signal" amidst the "noise", while most ufologists in the United States either openly embraced the very things Vallee warned them against, or through their silence signalled tacit acceptance.

Which, unfortunately, for the most part remains the status quo today.

Paul Kimball

Sagan on the Hill Abduction case

And now, the real Carl Sagan, as he discusses the alleged abduction of Betty and Barney Hill by aliens.



Regardless of what one thinks of Sagan's analysis of the Hill case (and that should be the subject of some interesting comments here over the next few days), there are things he says here that ring true in a more general sense, and with which I wholeheartedly agree.

For example, when talking about lights seen in the night sky, Sagan states:

"If we can't identify a light, that doesn't make it a spaceship."

Exactly so. Brad Sparks made the same sensible comment to me a while back.

Sagan was cautious, and skeptical, and that's a good thing. To believers, he was too cautious; to disbelievers, he was too willing to consider "weird" possibilities, even if he rejected them in the end. I look at Sagan as one of the good guys - yes, maybe he ducked some of the harder questions about the UFO phenomenon (to my knowledge, he never looked into the RB47 case, and certainly never explained it), but he also kept an open mind, and I always got the impression when I was younger that he left the door open to the possibility that there was "magic" in the world, or beyond it. He just hadn't seen the proof that he needed, but he went further in looking for it than most scientists have.

If that isn't enough for the ETH believers, and too much for the disbelievers, it rings true to me, even when I disagree with his conclusions.

Paul Kimball

UFOs: Wave Babies?

There is no question that UFO sightings over the decades seem to have come in what are known as "waves", which is to say that focused periods, usually several months to perhaps a year or two, yield more reports than at other periods of time. Some commentators in the UFO enthusiast community are suggesting that we are in the midst of one of these "waves" now.

Which leaves us with the question - if "waves" do exist, as they seem to, why do they exist?

Jacques and Janine Vallee addressed this question many years ago, in Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma:

The development of a wave in any given country generally occurs independent of the happenings recorded elsewhere, news of which reaches the public of the country in question only much later. The newspapers are filled with reports once the interest of public opinion has been triggered by the first important cases, but it does not appear that there is any psychological influence of one country over another in this aspect. Frequently, as a wave develops, it is accompanied by an unusual occurrence, something of a "phenomenon" itself, in the press; the subject appears later and last longer in the newspapers than in reality; at first the press is slow to admit it; then it seeks to prolong its existence. (p. 105)

Looking at this analysis, one can examine the current "wave" (if indeed we are in the midst of one), and point squarely at the O'Hare airport sighting in November of 2006 as the trigger event. As the Vallees noted, at first the press (even the Internet UFO community) was slow to latch on to the case, but then it exploded in the mainstream media in January, where it lingered for a week or two. The ripple effects are still being felt, and there will probably be some sort of renewed interest when the NARCAP report is released.

Add to this the fact that 2007 is the major anniversary year for two very famous cases, Roswell (1947) and The Phoenix Lights (1997), which have already triggered media attention (as has the re-appearance of former Governor Fife Symington III), and you can see that we might be headed not just for a "wave", but a UFO tsunami in 2007. The advent of the Internet has added an extra level of exposure to these events that was not present when the Vallees wrote Challenge to Science.

The Vallees continued their analysis:

Naturally, both on the local and the global scene, a big story disturbs the law of variation; it encourages the witnesses of recent sightings to make their reports public, and, of course, it creates an ideal market for hoaxes of all kinds. (p. 105)

This effect can be expected to more pronounced in the modern era than it was when the Vallees wrote Challenge to Science, simply because the Internet makes the distribution of both witness accounts and hoaxes and frauds much easier (see the Serpo hoax, which achieved meme status quickly, and which some people still think was either real, or some form of disinformation).

The key, as the Vallees were quick to point out, is to distinguish the "signal" from the "noise".

For example, while one might think at first blush that UFOs "waves" are important events, and point to them as a sign of an impending "revelation" (as Whitley Strieber has recently done), they are giving in to the "noise" when they do so.

To use a sports analogy, hockey became much more popular in Los Angeles when Wayne Gretzky was traded there back in the 1990s. Suddenly there was a true superstar in the city, and the media took notice. However, when Gretzky left, things went back to normal - a small fan base, and apathetic media, and a team that was going nowhere fast.

Gretzky was the NHL equivalent in Los Angeles of an O'Hare-type sighting - an event that triggers a paroxysm of interest that builds upon itself, but which cannot possibly sustain itself indefinitely. When memory of that incident fades, or has played out (or, as in Gretzky's case, moves on to another team), things go back to the status quo.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, at least as far as the UFO phenomenon in concerned, because the sudden interest of the media can detract from the real research being done, usually behind the scenes by dedicated researchers and investigators most people of whom the vast majority of people are unaware, even within "ufology". They don't get distracted by the "noise" (which is - thanks to the Internet and radio shows like Coast 2 Coast more like tinnitus these days) because they understand that it is the "signal" itself which is really important - and the "signal" is there, year in and year out, regardless of whether a major case spawns a "wave" that captures the attention of the general public and the mainstream media for a short while.

After all, there's still NHL hockey in Los Angeles, years after Gretzky moved on. It might not be great hockey these days (the Kings had a lousy year in 2006-07), but its still there, with a small but loyal group of fans, and some good young players, working away at building a team that may one day make another run for the Stanley Cup.

And they still have the memories of the day when the plucky Kings, through hard work, grit and determination to not give up, came back from a 5 - 0 deficit after two periods in the Stanley Cup playoffs to beat... Wayne Gretzky and the mighty Edmonton Oilers!



So too the serious study of the UFO phenomenon.

Paul Kimball

Where Have You Gone, Jacques Vallee?

Paul Simon wrote:

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you,
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away."

In the context of the study of the UFO phenomenon, I would paraphrase that as follows:

"Where have you gone, Jacques Vallee?
Ufology turns its lonely eyes to you."

Why does Jacques Vallee, who hasn't been involved, at least publicly, in "ufology" for years now (notwithstanding one conference appearance a year ago), still inspire a great deal of respect and admiration amongst people who take the UFO phenomenon seriously, and engage their imagination?

Because he took it seriously, because he was thoughtful, because he was articulate, and because he always kept an open mind. He was - indeed, is - one of the "giants", along with Hynek, McDonald, Friedman and Keyhoe.

In Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma (the title says it all) he wrote:

The "UFO Phenomenon," with all its disturbing aspects, presents a most unwelcome challenge to the physical and philosophical conception of the universe painstakingly formed in the course of many centuries of civilization on this planet. But it is there; we cannot forever refuse to study it. And it could well be that, in the final analysis, our own existence will be dependent upon the sincerity with which we conduct this research.

He's been described as a "heretic amongst heretics." I asked him to participate in Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases, because I have a tremendous amount of respect for his work and his insights, but, alas, he very politely declined, although he provided some keen insight to a couple of questions I had.

If Vallee would ever agree, I would love to do a documentary on his life and times, much like Stanton T. Friedman is Real. That's one UFO-related film that would still interest me.

Until that far-off, probably-never-going-to-happen day, I, like many others interested in the UFO phenomenon, wish that "Joltin' Jacques" would come back, and engage our imaginations once again.

Because the serious study of the UFO phenomenon needs more "heretics" like him, and is poorer for his public absence.

Paul Kimball

The Shag Harbour UFO Incident - Sui generis?

As I was putting together the segment on Shag Harbour for the Best Evidence film (yes, there's another case that made the cut), this statement by Don Ledger really made me think:

What’s different about the Shag Harbour incident, the UFO incident, is that the witnesses, the laypeople, claimed they saw an airplane crashing into the harbour. They thought it was an airplane. And it was the military who classified it as a UFO. Usually it’s the other way around, the laypeople call it in and say they saw a UFO, and the military will say, “well, it’s just a misinterpretation of a prosaic object in the sky. It could be an airplane, or a planet, or a star, or something like that.” So this was different – it was completely switched around from the usual concept.

Unlike most, if not all, other so-called crashed UFO cases, Shag Harbour has a multitude of credible witnesses, and an investigation by two governments (Canadian and American) that is officially documented in the public record, and freely available.

And, as Don said, it wasn't the witnesses who said it was a UFO - it was the military, after investigation ruled out (as the CAF memo above shows) the more prosaic explanations on offer.

If Shag isn't quite sui generis in the annals of UFO cases, it's pretty darn close.

Paul Kimball

The UFO Phenomenon - ETH, CTH, EDH, TDH, NH??

Whenever I do an interview on radio, or when I'm talking to someone about UFOs, the question always comes up - what do I think they are?

Extraterrestrial in origin?

Extradimensional?

Are they time travelers?

How about cryptoterrestrials (i.e. another race that inhabits Earth) as Mac Tonnies speculates?

Or, can they all be explained away in relatively mundane, terrestrial terms (hoaxes, atmospheric phenomena, misidentifications, etc. etc.) - the "null hypothesis"?

I asked that question over at "The Other Side of Truth" discussion area on Facebook, which can be found here. (you have to join Facebook to join the group).

One of the members of the group replied:

Perhaps we should ask ourselves what it is that we know about them. It maybe very little but it would be the place to start. What can we gather from the credible sightings and encounters that have taken place? What are the things these cases have in common?

A good question.

Here is my answer:

Here are a couple of commonalities I have noticed in what I would consider the best cases:

1. The witnesses are usually military, often pilots, and always highly credible (i.e. not likely to be making up a tall tale).

2. The military is made aware of the cases, and the witnesses are always debriefed, usually by people they do not recognize (i.e. not their regular debriefers).

1 & 2 indicates to me that:

a. The military is aware of something strange in the skies

b. They don't know what it is (otherwise they wouldn't be asking so many questions).

Now, as to the UFOs themselves, again, from the minority of excellent cases out there, we almost always see the following reported:

1. The UFO moves in ways that no conventional aircraft can move (at least none that the witnesses are aware of, and considering that in some cases the witnesses are top aerospace engineers and designers, and test pilots, that's good enough for me).

2. It is often observed as a bright light, or series of lights (the 1957 RB47 case, for example, or Rendlesham, or Malmstrom, or Shag Harbour... the list goes on).

3. The UFO often seems to be "playing" (for lack of a better word), i.e. "showing off" (as Mac Tonnies has said) for the witnesses. A display of some sort.

4. There is almost no form of recognizable communication, unless you consider the colours and movements a form of communication (the RB47 case is a notable exception - here some sort of signals were allegedly received from the UFO).

Those are the things that the "best" cases of which I am aware seem to have in common.

What conclusion do I draw from this?

Well, I certainly can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, but it seems that if 1 - 4 above are true, then there is some sign of intelligence present. That is as far as one can go, I think.

Which leaves us with the original question, although it makes the null hypothesis less likely for at least a few UFO cases, unless they are some sort of psychological experiment being run by someone down here to observe people's reactions to things like this, or to distract attention away from top secret programs, which I don't think we can completely rule out.

I still think that the vast majority of UFO cases have prosaic explanations (whether we have figured them out yet or not is another story). But there remain enough truly anomalous cases that the "null hypothesis" seems untenable as an explanation for the entire UFO phenomenon - which leads me to conclude that at least some cases have a paranormal, i.e. beyond our experience, explanation.

And that's as far as I'll go, because at the moment that's the only conclusion one can make based on the available evidence (and even this conclusion is one I make on the balance of probabilities, not beyond a reasonable doubt).

In the past, some have accused me, and others, of "cowardice" for only going this far.

To them I would say that the real courage lies not in accepting as a proven fact something in which you want to believe, but in having the intellectual honesty to admit that you don't know the answer, and the curiosity to keep looking.

Paul Kimball

Roy Wimmer Passes Away

I just learned from Brad Sparks that Roy Wimmer, one of the key witnesses from the 1953 Santa Barbara Channel case, passed away last week (on the 12th, I believe).

I may be wrong, but I think he was the last surviving witness.

The info on the case can be found here.

In his report on the incident for Lockheed, Wimmer, a top test pilot, wrote:

I was watching it all the time so I was able to see it for several seconds after the rest of the crew had lost sight of it. Right up until the time it disappeared it maintained its sharp outline and definite shape so I know it was not a cloud that dissolved... I am convinced this was a large object some distance away.

Of course, the United States Air Force, in one of their most bone-headed explanations ever (and that's saying something), concluded that what Wimmer and other top Lockheed personnel (including Kelly Johnson) saw that day was a lenticular cloud.

Yeah, right.

My condolences to Mr. Wimmer's family.

Paul Kimball

How is it that we can "see" Extraterrestrials?

While one can argue endlessly in favor of a literal extraterrestrial interpretation, a holistic approach leads us to consider that the UFO intelligence not only wants to perpetuate itself via dramatic encounters with ostensible "occupants," but intends to discredit its own machinations: it stages exciting UFO events that infect both the research community and the popular imagination, knowing that the phenomenon's inherent absurdity will eventually undermine attempts to arrive at an indictment.

Interesting stuff as always from Mac Tonnies.

One question that doesn't get asked enough by ufology is this: if the UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin, with all of the advanced technology that this would involve (memo to the ETHers: it isn't as easy as you think it is to travel between the stars), why do they allow themselves to be seen, as surely they must, given their technological prowess?

Are we the equivalent of rats in a lab experiment, with our reactions being studied by alien scientists? If so, how long does this experiment last? Shouldn't they be done with it at some point or another?

The typical answer - Stan Friedman uses it all the time - is that "they're aliens, so we can't presume to know why they're here, or why they do the things they do."

Which is no different than a religious person who, when asked why God lets good people die in horrible ways, answers, "well, it's God, so we can't possibly understand His will. We must just accept it."

The more you look at the various aspects of the Extraterrestrial hypothesis, the less likely it seems - both technologically and, perhaps more important, sociologically and anthropologically. Like the traditional mainstream view of God (i.e. the one drilled into the heads of kids at "Jesus camps"), the ETHers view of extraterrestrial life is more a reflection of their view of themselves than the potential reality - and complexity - of an extraterrestrial visitation.

Of course, as Jason Gammon and others maintain, ET could really be a form of AI. In that case, all bets are off, because who knows how sentient machines would behave.

Unless you think that human beings are really just meat-based machines... which brings us back to Mac, and his idea that the explanation for the UFO phenomenon may lie closer to home (like many other, non-ETH explanations). Who knows - it may well lie inside of us.

Paul Kimball

Best Evidence - The 1967 Malmstrom AFB Case

Clips from interviews I conducted about the Malmstrom AFB UFO case for the upcoming documentary "Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases", which ... all » premieres in Canada on Space on May 10, 2007.

Featured here are ufologists Stan Friedman and Richard Hall and Captain Robert Salas (ret'd), one of the USAF officers involved in the incident forty years ago, and co-author (with Jim Klotz) of Faded Giant.

Malmstrom is indeed on the top 10 list. Where? Well, you know how that works... :-)

Paul Kimball

Best Evidence - The 1980 Rendlesham Forest Case

Some clips from interviews I conducted for the 1980 Rendlesham Forest case for "Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases", which premieres on Space in Canada on May 10, 2007.

Included are UFO Review publisher Stuart Miller, UFO researcher / author / lecturer Stan Friedman, former UK Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope, and UFO researcher / author Richard Hall.

And yes, Rendlesham is somewhere in the Top 10.

"Where?" you ask.

You'll have to watch the film to find out!

Paul Kimball

Kaku: The Science of Sci-Fi

Great stuff!

Paul Kimball

Carl Sagan explains the Drake Equation

Part 1



Part 2



Fascinating stuff from a great communicator.

I'm not nearly as anti-SETI as most ufologists are - what's the harm in looking for radio signals? It's not like it costs that much money, and, as I said in a radio interview once, I think ufologists are just jealous that SETI has been more successful in engaging science and the public than ufology has.

But, whether you like Sagan or SETI or you don't, watching him do the calculations is interesting, especially if you accept the possibility that there may be millions of technological civilizations in the galaxy (a number that seems way too high to me; I would always go with a more conservative estimate, based on the principle that it's better to be pleasantly surprised than rudely awakened). It stands to reason, if that's the case, and if they manage to survive what Sagan calls their "adolescence", that they could - indeed, almost certainly would - develop the ability to travel between the stars, if not in person then at least in the form of advanced probes, probably using some form of artificial intelligence. From there it isn't a giant leap of logic to conclude that one or more of those probes, or perhaps even crews, made its way to Earth at some point, and took a look around. Perhaps they're still here. One can't prove that on the available evidence, but it's not an unreasonable hypothesis, even if there had never been a single UFO sighting.

Ironically, given that he was not a supporter of the ETH, Sagan's reasoning, using Drake's equation, should give comfort to those who are supporters of the ETH, and should give pause for thought to those who would dismiss the ETH out of hand.

Paul Kimball

To the Moon... and Beyond!

Pretty cool stuff. I hope I'm still around to see us get back out there!

Paul Kimball

Mac Tonnies: CTH or ETH... Which Makes More Sense?

Mac Tonnies explains why he thinks the CTH makes as much sense - or maybe even more sense - than the ETH

Here's the funny thing about the CTH brouhaha as it concerns the ardent ETHers - all of the criticisms they level against Mac's hypothesis are the same ones that can be levelled against the ETH, and have been for decades by mainstream science.

For example:

Average CTH critic - "The CTH is preposterous, because there's no evidence of this civilization, and there would surely be some because to become that technologically advanced they would have to leave signs, traces, and they would have travelled to the stars and established bases,etc., etc."

Average ETH critic - "The ETH is preposterous, because there's no evidence to support it, and the problems of interstellar space travel are insurmountable, or for all practical purposes insurmountable. Further, any civilization advanced enough to get here would have colonized the galazy by now, yet we see absolutely no sign of this, etc., etc."

Average CTH or ETH proponent's answer?

"Well, they're obviously more advanced than we are, so they can do things we can't understand, and that explains everything."

I'm not saying either hypothesis is right - indeed, the ETH still makes more sense to me than the CTH, at least what I've seen of it so far (I remain open-minded, however), and any discussion of just the two of them ignores all of the other possibilities. What I am pointing out is the inherent hypocrisy and irony of much of the knee-jerk criticism of the CTH by the ETHers, at least at this stage.

Paul Kimball

Four Rules for Ufologists

Here are the four major rules for many ufologists (not all, thank goodness, but an ever increasing majority):

1. What the public doesn't know, we certainly won't tell them.

2. Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up.

3. If one can't attack the data, attack the people. It's easier.

4. Do one's research by proclamation rather than investigation. It's much easier, and nobody will know the difference anyway.

Rules #2 and #3 are collectively referred to as "The Jerry Clark Stratagem".

In terms of #4, you can count the number of ufologists who do actual research - you know, the kind that grad students would be required to undertake (as just one example) - on two hands. And I'm being charitable.

And no, searching Wikipedia doesn't count.

Meanwhile, speaking of Sir Jerome Snark, in a post at UFO Updates today he referred derisively to certain "self-identified ufologists", which is hilarious - are there any other kind, or is there some sort of accrediting body, like lawyers and doctors have, that hands out official "Ufologist" certificates? I must have missed that, in the same way that poor old Jerry consistently misses the boat these days.

Sir Snark, in a comment clearly directed at moi, also states:

"I realized that some nadir had been reached when I was attacked recently for being too concerned about the requirements of science and scientific inquiry."

Just to set the record straight, Sir Snark, you were called out for being too overeager to be seen as respectable by the scientific establishment. That's different than saying you're too concerned about the requirements of science and scientific inquiry, which, need I remind you (ed. - yes, you must), should be about keeping an open mind, i.e. not shouting down a hypothesis (er... perhaps like cryptoterrestrials) without actually having read the author's book, which has yet to be even published (and, for the record, I doubt Mac will convince me, but I'm willing to at least listen to what he has to say before I offer a critique).


Mac Tonnies briefly outlines his CTH in the clip above; somewhere Sir Snark is shaking his head in complete and utter disbelief at the effrontery of this midwestern hick.

I often wonder why guys like Sir Snark give a fig about what the scientific community thinks about them, because they've already established their own elitist ivory tower, with appeals to authority and calls from on high the currency of the realm. It reminds me of some of the dialogue that I wrote for Marat:

"We look up from the street
at the towers of the other estates
watching them as they reach
to the boundaries of Heaven’s Gate
All the gods and the goddesses
look down from inside
they spit
and it rains
they shit
and we stain."

Alas, in the case of most Ufological "gods and goddesses", they're impostors, who have been writing intellectual cheques that their talent just can't cover. They have the egos of the Gods, but that's it. Again, there are exceptions that prove the rule - and, again, you can probably count them on those same ten fingers, give or take.

The people really worth your time are the ones who will admit that they're just marking time, and that what the study of the UFO phenomenon truly needs to move forward are some of those Nobel Prize calibre folks that Brad Sparks is always on about (properly so, in my opinion).


Brad Sparks dishes out some hard truths for ufologists

Because the amateurs - myself included - have taken things as far as they can. From hereon in, we're just hamsters running around a wheel, getting nowhere (although it may be fun to keep on running). One could argue that it's been that way for years, decades even.

The goal should be to convince people further up the intellectual food chain to take a real interest, but it isn't, at least not with ufology, which is the poster child for the "big fish in a small pond" syndrome.

So long as the likes of Jerry Clark rule the roost, that will never happen (ahh... the irony).

Which is why the future study of the UFO phenomenon will have nothing to do with "ufology".

Paul Kimball

Paul Kimball: Deluded Fool, or Visionary?

Re: the title above - I'm neither.

Still, those were the broad strokes of the two stark choices on display today at the first session of the NSFDC's Business Issues forum, which I'm moderating today and tomorrow.

This morning, one of the speakers, who is far more successful than I am (although, to be fair, he had a 20 year head start), was bemoaning - in about as pessimistic a way as possible - the future of the Canadian film and television industry. Beware, he warned - technology is only going to concentrate power in fewer and fewer hands (is that possible??), and if you think the small and mid-sized producer will be able to compete, you're deluded.

Now, as moderator, I'm not really supposed to get into it with the featured speakers. But, if you're a regular reader of The Other Side of Truth, you know that I'm not afraid to state my opinion, especially when the other guy is so egregiously, one-sidedly, wrong.

So I did.

Needless to say, Ray Kurzweil got his moment, as I replicated his graph about technological progress and the exponential advances of the last fifty years, and the even more exponential advances likely to come in the next fifty. As I was winging it, I had to go old school, i.e. draw it on a poster board with a marker, but I got it right. Then I said something to the effect of "human history has never seen this kind of exponential change, so fast. It's changing everything." I then added a remark about how, when machines achieve self-awareness in fifty years (which I noted on the graph), we're all screwed anyway, so what does it really matter in terms of foreign markets and distribution deals (that got a pretty good laugh).

Anyway, being a historian, I returned to the podium, and used my bully-pulpit to put things in what I see as perspective. I reminded folks that, prior to the invention of the printing press, the Western world was basically run by the Catholic Church and the monarchial and noble elite. After that - because it made the dissemination of knowledge more accessible - the walls came crumbling down. Sure, perhaps not all the way - the Catholic Church still exists, and elites still exist - but within four hundred years (a drop in the universal time bucket), we had the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions, and the Industrial Revolution, changes that would have been unimagineable prior to the printing press, and the Gutenberg Bible.

Of course, I said, those changes are coming much faster this time, and the mechanism of change is the computer, and all that goes with it. It's changing the way that people communicate, and create, and think, in ways we barely compehend right now. It's definitely changing the industry I'm in, which is, after all, all about disseminating information of various kinds.

Oh, sure, the big conglomerates will no doubt adapt, and survive, just like the Catholic Church did, but they won't be able to dicate content, and conversation, anymore. Rather than something to be feared by small and mid-sized producers, the technological revolution were in the midst of these days is something to be embraced. It's liberating. It's the opportunity for new players to step up to the plate, and carve out their niche.

The people who understand this are the ones who will make their mark in the years to come, in ways and places that the establishment don't fully understand yet - indeed, they may never completely get it. Given the "vox populi" potential of new technologies (just check out YouTube, for crying out loud!), they may not want to get it.

But they won't be able to stop the increasing democratization of human thought, dialogue, and creativity. Some see that as "deluded" - I see it as a fact of life, and I'm not afraid to say so.

After I was done my amusing little rant (Kimball's Law - "If you're going to rant, always do so with tongue at least partially planted in your cheek"), things went back to normal, until the end, when, as moderator, I got the final word. I quoted one of my favourite "philosophers", Stan Friedman:

"Technological progress comes from doing things in different and unpredictable ways."

The same is true of business - including mine.

I welcome it, because where others see threats to the established order, I see opportunities.

Paul Kimball