"Disclosure' UFO cults get worse, even as we try to restore sane politics.

Yes, the coming U.S. elections are crucial - perhaps our Gettysburg in phase 8 of the recurring, 248 year Civil (culture) War that is always pro- vs. anti-modernity. And I'll be posting more about it, for the next week or so.  

This time I will conclude with some jpegs that ought to be persuasive for any residually sane Republicans you might know. 

Only now... there's another (alas) sadly-related cult that also infests - and helps to lobotomize - our scientific / logical civilization...

     == A 'harmless' obsession with UFO 'Disclosure'? ==

I wound up on a circ list for the Disclosure Foundation. And just like some MAGA/Kremlin spews, I chose not to ban or block them! Because you can’t properly fight crazy without facing it!   (Shame on those of you who just block anything you don’t like! Pick the most-cogent-sounding of your opponents. Read and try to understand their narratives! It empowers you much better to fight them. Or even - in rare cases - to resume negotiation.)

So. Why do I classify UFO nuttery with MAGA? First there’s the blatant overall goal: using X-Files to distract from Eps-Files....

     ...and also because the two share cult-like traits that start with asserting their members are smarter, braver and more honest than anyone in the smartypants science and fact professions! In this case, the tens of millions of fact professionals in every field of endeavor or expertise that would be involved in some purported “Undisclosed Alien Contact.”

What an arrogant stance! One that bears a substantial burden of proof. 

Recently, one member of the Disclosure Foundation actually displayed the sapient human trait of curiosity and asked me to summarize my objections. As if I haven’t been doing so, in both postings and also snarky, drive-by comments, for months?  And in this extensive review of Steven Spielberg’s recent film DISCLOSURE.

But sure. let’s start by asking why folks working day and night in one of the most urgent, emergency 'Manhattan' projects of all time -- numbering likely thousands or even tens of thousands of our best minds -- might also be utterly uniform in adhering, compliant, disciplined and unrelenting across 80 years to an absurd dictum of total secrecy... or why ‘the government*’ would clamp down with such ferocity. And with never-seen-elsewhere perfect competence… 

…when 'disclosure' to the sci-fi-loving public would blatantly not spread panic! What such an urgent revelation would do is make voters willing to double their taxes! 

        In the quoted words of one US Air Force officer: 

        "Why would WE cover it up. If we really DID find evidence of them, we'd spread the news and all us Majors would shortly be Colonels."

Amid these recurring manias… twice per decade, since I was ten… they never list the challenges that confront their movement:  Like the utter absence of even one top scientist from the last 80 years ever showing any sign of having been in such an urgent program. 

Name one! No seriously, name one top mind who’s been recruited into the most intensely important and interesting project of all time? I’ve been privileged to know bunches of the top minds the world ever saw, and not one of them was ever asked to join such a crucial endeavor. 

And there would be signs! Look at Area 51. Yes, it exists, developing incremental human flight technologies. We may not get to look inside the hangers. But the employees come and go in ways that are easily tracked. And sorry, while they are fine techies, none of humanity’s very top people work there. We would know.

But let’s drill into that core UFO premise. A huge, urgent Manhattan Project across eight decades. So, please explain the total absence of any spunky retirees -- or death bed confessions – blabbing, as old guys do? 

        A core conceit in the cult is to imply that humanity’s best minds are quivering-craven henchmen, terrified of violating an NDA? A Non-Disclosure Agreement? Of THAT they are terrified?

       Oh sure, every year the UFO folks trot out some ‘brave testifier’… some 3^rd-rate publicity seeker who yatters that ‘someone once hinted to me –’ or about 'some document I once saw’. Funny how it’s never, ever one of the thousands who would by now have worked actually hands-on.

But do tell? Show us the alien technologies that have been ‘reverse engineered’ after 80 years! Rather than tech developments that arose from incremental human genius! (Well, for the first time we do seem to have a tech that’s suspicious… Artificial Intelligence… See my book on it: AIlien Minds, which explores some unusual possibilities.)

In fact, there’s not a single aspect to the entire ‘UFO Disclosure’ edifice that qualifies as anything more than a faith-based religion… or else as a mélange of very bad sci fi movie clichés. (About which I know a thing or two! And why not at least mine good SciFi for some better plausible concepts about alien contact?)

But okay, what about this oldie? There are now ten million times as many active cameras on the Earth’s surface as the 1950s! Yes, I meant that number, think about it. And yet the ‘images’ keep getting fuzzier and fuzzier…

… and then there are those zippy little 'ships' whizzing about, violating every physical law! That is, unless they aren't physical ships at all, but what they appear to be! Massless plasma balls excited in the atmosphere by a 'cat laser'? One that’s being shot skyward by giggling DARPA putzes on a boat down below, in order to tease pilots. In which case voila! Laser-excited balls or dots can zip around like that! Physics is restored!

Heck I could do that -- make those recent "UAPs" -- if you give me 6$M and 6 months... try me? No, I mean it. I’ll make that zippy “UFO” cat laser. Give me the money.

 

Of course… they ignore politics and culture war. A 'government' conspiracy headed by successive administrations who hated each other yet never used this against each other? Right. Spielberg was savvy enough to bypass this with a clever line in DISCLOSURE.

 

Want more? Well there’s the invitation to make contact! If ‘they’ (the visitors) truly wanted peaceful niceness, don’t they already have the needed technology to say ‘hello’? 

 

For 40 years I have paused some radio interviews to croon a welcome message at the silver guys supposedly monitoring Earthling broadcasts. (Our primitive tech is ‘child’s play to them,’ right?) On the air (e.g. on Coast-to-Coast), I tell the purported visitors listening-in the phone numbers of JPL and the Seti Institute and the UN!  Go ahead and call! Be persistent and promise some display on the Moon tomorrow night, to prove you aren’t some human jerk doing a prank call!  

 

If so, if folks see your little stunt, they will pay attention next time you call! Want contact? You’ll get a HUGE welcoming party planned for you, before the Earth spins five more times! Anything for decent, open, truthful visitors. And not anal-probers or child-kidnapper-meddlers or any such evil.

I also invite them to drop by the oldest website devoted to Invitation to ETI.

Alas, all we get is space-crickets.

But then, there's "a religious impluse behind both cults," futurist Paull Saffo points out. And yes aiming beseachments skyward at all-powerful beings is nothing less than prayer.

There is of course, a rich literature on that aspect to UFO-obsession, especially “The Gods Have landed”, which came out in 1995.  That author devoted an entire chapter to the Heavens Gate founders, years before their suicide. (Which happened very near my own neighborhood. I felt bad because their obsesson with 'aliens' and with 'comets' overlapped with both of my professions and I might have given them some light, had I known.)

Mind you I do think there’s a chance that we’ll have alien contact during my kids’ lifetime! I display one such possibility here. But the Disclosurites aren’t interested in ‘plausible.’ What they want is the same thing that MAGA relishes. A masturbatory fantasy of being far more in-the-know than all the smart, fact-and-proof-oriented folks they envy

Okay though, sure. Some are sincere. So let’s test it. If they were honest, they'd accept some burden of proof and debate (with speaker's fee) a fellow like me, who has explored concepts of the 'alien' all my life, possibly more than anyone alive. 

Alas, arguing with a cult is pointless. So let me conclude with the evidence I do see! Something that is consistent with the kind of nasty, meddling interstellar jerks that UFO folks seem eager to adore. And that is the consistent way that human civilization appears to have sunk into jibbering buffoonery since the high point of the late 90s. 

       So. Could that be the silver bastards’ ‘gift’ to us? A lobotomy ray shining down on us, preventing us from moving forward with fair cooperation and competition? Perhaps to destroy us… or else to preserve the hit galactic reality show called Oh, Those Silly Humans?

Hm. Well, unlike every pillar of the ‘disclosure movement,’ this one at least is consistent with what we observe. And hence my repeated call, across the Internet and into interstellar space… for a galactic law firm to represent humanity, seeking damages in a justice system that must exist, if these ‘advanced beings’ truly are worthy of the slightest respect.

Only now I am just slumming. I waste my time. So, I’ll continue poking at this dismal religion that does so much real harm… X Files to distract from Eps Files. Without any expectation of getting through… but hoping some of YOU will be armed hereby to rescue a few cult members. Even if it is just one at a time.

 

Oh…  again… there’s more detail in that link about the DISCLOSURE flick… and here. 

And any loyal Americans out there amid phase 8 or 9 of the recurring US Civil (culture) War. Get out the vote.

==============================================

     == Some jpegs for the current fight ==

I hope a few of these might be useful against that other drooling-fecal-treasonous insanity-cult.

They are the commies... 

If any MAGAs could still read... 

These generals, admirals and top sergeants - shown here grimly silent while makeup-slathered harlequins screeched at them "Your too fat & woke to fight!" - are the most fiercely fact-centered and loyal men and women on Earth. And they are now Hegseth's enemies, to be destroyed. Stand up for them!  

It shouldn't be just the economy. But you want the economy? Economy, deficits, jobs, inflation, entrepreneurship, startups, science and even military readiness! And especially crime. ALL do better across Democratic administrations than Republican ones. Step up now with escrowed wager stakes. 

And reiterate... DT hates dogs and all pets!  Because they smell the brimstone. Do what you can. And if they try to pull something... hit the streets shouting REICHSTAG FIRE! Making clear that they have roused a sleeping giant and filled us with a terrible resolve.

And ... the Great Silence persists: More on the Fermi Paradox: Where is Everyone?

Before diving into the Biggest Question - Are we alone in the universe? - I'm pleased to announce new volumes in my Out of Time series of novels for teen readers who love adventure laced with history, science and other cool stuff.

New books include Boondoggle by SF Legend Tom Easton & newcomer Torion Oey plus Raising the Roof by R. James Doyle! All new titles are released by Amazing Stories.

Meanwhile, Open Road republished the earlier five novels, including great tales by Nancy Kress, Sheila Finch, and Roger Allen. Plus The Archimedes Gambit and Storm's Eye!

The shared motif... teens from across time are pulled into the 24th Century and asked to use their unique skills to help a future that's in peril!  Past characters who get 'yanked' into tomorrow include a young Arthur Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, Joan of Arc's page and maybe... you!

All of the Out of Time books can be accessed (and assessed) here. 

* With coming authors including SF legend Allen Steele and newcomer Robin Hansen.

And now to the Great Big Question.

== Because there's bugger-all (intelligence) down here on Earth! ==

In "A History of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence," a cogent overview of 200+ years of SETI (in various forms), John Michael Godier starts by citing one of the great sages of our era and goes on to illuminate the abiding question: "Are we alone?" Godier is among the best of all science podcasters. 

I also highly recommend YouTube channels by Isaac Arthur and Anton Petrov as well as the PBS series EONS.

Joe Scott runs a popular Science and future YouTube Channel that is generally informative and entertaining. And much more popular than anything I do. This episode is divertingly about what the year 2100 might be like. 

== Anyone Out There? ==

Hmmm. Over the years, I’ve collected ‘fermis’ … or hypotheses to explain the absence of visible alien tech-civilizations. In fact, I was arguably the first to attempt an organized catalogue in my “Great Silence” paper in 1983, way-preceding popular use of ‘the Fermi Paradox.” 

See Isaac Arthur’s almost-thorough rundown of most of the current notions, including a few (e.g. water-land ratio) that I made up first. Still, new ones occasionally crop up. Even now!

Here’s one about an oxygen bottleneck: “"To create advanced technology, a species would likely require the capability to increase the temperature of the materials used in its production. Oxygen's role in enabling open-air combustion has been critical in the evolution of human technology, particularly in metallurgy. Exoplanets whose atmospheres contain less than 18% oxygen would likely not allow open-air combustion, suggesting a threshold that alien worlds must cross if life on them is to develop advanced technology." 

Hence my call to chemists out there!  Is it true that “an atmosphere with anything less than 18% oxygen would not allow open-air combustion”?  That assertion implies that only the most recent 500 million years of Earth history offered those conditions. And hence industrial civilization might be rare, even if life pervades the cosmos. 

My own response: It seems likely that vegetation on a lower-oxygen world would evolve in ways that are less fire resistant. After all, there is evidence of fires back in our own Carboniferous etc.

== This time the mania just isn't ebbing (sigh) ==

The latest US Government report on UFO/UAP phenomena finds – as expected – no plausible evidence that either elements of the government or anyone else on Earth has truly encountered aliens. 

Alas, it will convince none of the fervid believers, whose lifelong Hollywood indoctrination in Suspicion of Authority (SoA) is only reinforced by any denial! No matter how many intelligent and dedicated civil servants get pulled into these twice-per-decade manias. 

I don’t call this latest 'investigation' a waste of taxpayer money!  Millions wanted this and hence it was right to do it!  Even if none of those millions of True Believers will credit that anything but malign motives drive all those civil servants and fellow Americans.

Shame on you, Hollywood. For more on this, especially the SoA propaganda campaign that (when moderate) keeps us free and that (when toxically over-wrought) might kill our unique civilization. For more, see Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood.

…or my own highly unusual take on UAP phenomena. I promise fresh thoughts.

And here John Michael Godier offers an interesting riff on a possible explanation for the infamous WOW signal detected by a SETI program in 1977. 

== on the Frontier ==

Mining helium-3 on the Moon has been talked about forever—now a company will try. "There are so many investments that we could be making, but there are also Moonshots."

Yeah, yeah, sure. “Helium Three” (in Gothic letters?) is (I am 90% sure) one of the biggest scams to support the unjustifiable and silly “Artemis” rush to send US astronauts to perform another ritual footprint stunt on that useless plain of poison dust.  

Prove me wrong? Great?  I don’t mind some investment in robotic surveys.  But a larger chunk of $$$ should go to asteroids, where we know -absolutely – the real treasures lie.

Meanwhile, far more practically needed… and reminiscent of the very first chapter of my novel Existence…  Astroscale is one of several groups demonstrating methods to remove debris from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Though we gotta hope that a desperate world ‘leader’ doesn’t decide to spasm wreck LEO, as his final gift to the world.

== Dive to the Sun! ==

The Parker Solar Probe – (the team named me an informal ‘mascot’ on account of my first novel) has discovered lots about how solar magnetic fields churn and merge and flow outward to snap and heat the solar corona to incredible temperatures.

(I am also a co-author on a longer range effort to plan swooping sailcraft, that plunge just past our star and then get propelled to incredible speed. The endeavor’s name? Project Sundiver! Stay (loosely) tuned.)

== Physics and Universal Fate ==

I well recall when physicists Freeman Dyson and Frank Tipler were competing for the informal title of “Theologian of the 20th Century” with their predictions for the ultimate fate of intelligent life. In a universe that would either 

(1) expand forever and eventually dissipate with the decay of all baryons, or else 

(2) fall back inward to a Big Crunch, offering Tipler a chance to envision a God era in the final million years, in his marvelous tome The Physics of Immortality.

 I never met Tipler. Freeman was a friend. In any event, it sure looks as if Freeman won the title. 

Only... how sure are we of the Great Dissipation? Its details and influences and evidence and boundary conditions? Those aspects have been in flux. This essay cogently summarizes the competing models and most recent evidence. Definitely only for the genuinely physics minded!

A final note about this. Roger Penrose - also a friend of mine - came up with a brilliant hybrid that unites the Endless Dissipation model and Tipler's Big Crunch. His Conformal Cosmology is simply wonderful. (I even made teensy contributions.) 

And if it ain't true... well... it oughta be!

And finally... shifting perspective: this ‘official’ Chinese world map has gotta be shared. Quite a dig on the Americas! Gotta admit it is fresh perspective. Like that view of the Pacific Ocean as nearly all of a visible earth globe.   A reminder how truly big Africa is, tho the projection inflates to left and right. And putting India in the center actually diminishes its size.

===

PS... Okay... ONE TEENSY POLITICAL POINT?

When they justify their cult's all-out war against science and every single fact-centered profession - (including the US military officer corps) - one of the magical incantations yammered by Foxites concerns the Appeal- to-Authority Fallacy.

Oh sure, we should all look up and scan posted lists and definitions of the myriad logical fallacies that are misused in arguments even by very intelligent folks. (And overcoming them is one reason why law procedures can get tediously exacting.) Furthermore, Appeal to Authority is one of them. Indeed, citing Aristotle instead of doing experiments held back science for 2000 years!

Still, step back and notice how it is now used to discredit and deter anyone from citing facts determined by scientists and other experts, through vetted, peer-reviewed and heavily scrutinized validation. 

Sure. "Do your own research' if you like. Come with me on a boat to measure Ocean Acidification*, for example! With cash wager stakes on the line. But for most of us, most of the time, it is about comparing credibility of those out there who claim to deliver facts. And yes, bona fide scientists with good reputations are where any such process should start, and not cable TV yammer-heads. 

The way to avoid "Appeal to Authority" falacy is not to reflexively discredit 'authorities,' but to INTERROGATE authorities with sincerely curious questions... and to interrogate their rivals. Ideally back and forth in reciprocally competitive criticism. But with the proviso that maybe someone who has studied a topic all her life may, actually know something that you don't.

*Ocean acidification all by itself utterly proves CO2-driven climate change is a lethal threat to our kids.  And I invite those wager stakes!