Okay. This time the UFO mania isn’t ebbing, so…

Usually, these completely silly UFO blather manias - twice per decade for 80 years - start to fade after a year or so of evidence-free jabber. Alas, this time - because public diversion now serves some major world elites - the episode seems to be just getting worse. 

Hence, for what little good it will do, here’s another call for at least some of you to actually think about this awful distraction from our real business – making a civilization that truly is worthy of the stars. 

First some news:

“On July 13, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced a measure that asserts eminent domain over “any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin…that may be controlled by private persons or entities.” 

I like Schumer. Here, he goes for something both logical and practical, in addition to being sci fi imaginative. O-o-okay then! Demand revelation from the secretive owner castes! With that, we’re now getting into territory similar to my novel Existence! Wherein rich collectors, ancient families and priesthoods may have squirreled away secret ‘relics’ or artifacts for a very long time, perhaps millennia. 

Think Indiana Jones #4, only with a much better premise. Let me know if you see any panicky struldbrugs scurrying to their ancient family vaults or safe deposit boxes, because of the Schumer Bill. A good place to start? Look closer at whoever is bloaking such a common sense bill, that at worst would be harmless and at-best reveal hidden wonders.

Alas, typically, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), along with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and two other Republican senators, are doing something far stupider. They introduced legislation compelling immediate public revelation of all “UFO secrets" held by government agencies at any level, without apparently ever pondering what I call Question Number One.  

But I’ll save that Big Question for last, down at bottom.  

== A devastating critique – and so now they’re invoking… Mussolini? ==

Brian Dunning’s latest Skeptoid posting does a fantastic job dissecting the ‘testimony’ (supported by softball questions) recently given by Mr. David Grusch before a theatrical Congressional hearing on UFOs. And indeed, alas and jeepers, the most recent 'whistle blower' is an even worse jibberer than I had inferred from the news.   

Foisting one after another third-person, hearsay tall tale, Mr. Grusch pushed the hoary-hackneyed notion that for 80 years (since Roswell) tens of thousands of humanity’s best minds have been recruited and hurled at studying purported crashed ‘alien ships' ... all without any of those purported thousands of top people ever leaking… 

...or even showing any sign in their lives that they ever participated in such an urgent, Manhattan Project type endeavor. (During WWII, lots of folks knew something was going on, just from the number of physicists and families who had gone ‘missing’!)

In fact, not one of those folks - the thousands who would likely have been asked to take part - is ever even named by Grusch or others like him. Not one such top person. Ever. Too bad, since I know hundreds of them. 

I am one of them! And I keep demanding one question of the Roswellists… “Did it ever occur to any of you to ask us? 

"To ask the most rambunctiously independent-minded and creative techies in the world? Instead of dismissing us as some kind of Blofeld-lackey, obediently controlled, James Bond henchmen clichés? Or to track the whereabouts and activities of those who blatantly would have been involved in such an urgent study?"

No? Didn’t think so. Some truth detectives! 

Look at what Hollywood has done to you.

== And now they bring in Il Duce? ==

Only, times do change, a little. Increasingly, the UFO community (ahem, cult) has shifted away from the thoroughly-discredited Roswell stuff… to a relatively new story that was never seen until it got triggered by one muttered remark in the nineties, then lavishly embellished just recently. A tale that Benito Mussolini had his own 'crashed alien ship' way back in 1933! Shared it with the Japanese and Nazis, in fact. And then... 

…and then what? Not one scientist from any of those three countries is known to have disappeared into the kind of emergency research program that such a 'find' would have merited or incited, especially during desperate wartime. 

Nor was there even a single suspicious leap in any kind of technology. Not even any new alloys - a trivial thing to get from any advanced wreckage. The turbopumps and gyros developed by Von Braun for the V2 were clever increments on Goddard... and only increments. Likewise, when the Americans supposedly seized all the 'Italian materials' – the wreckage and alien bodies? Hey, now that makes the whole Megillah NINETY years of near-perfect secrecy.... 

...despite successive U.S. administrations who hated each others' guts! And who would gladly have distracted the public by exposing the other party's nefarious coverup!

So, when the Mussolini Wreck story gets dropped, what’s the next reset? That it goes back even earlier? 

That H.G. Wells based his alien invasion story on a stranded pack of spaced invaders? 

Hey, I participated in that anthology! See War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches.

== Puh- lease? ==

Mind you I am "Mr. Aliens," having studied such notions in astrophysics, SETI, NASA and innumerable science fiction thought experiments. I would do a 180 in an instant, if you showed me anything other than vapor, pareidolia and hallucinations.

There are big differences. Both SETI and sci fi are exploratory. On the other hand, shrieking ‘coverup!’ at civil servants who have way better things to be doing with our tax dollars? Raving masturbatory, fantasy what-ifs and yammering that it all must be real, because I want it to be! 

That's the biggest reason why I am so sick of the UFO nonsense. Not because contact isn't possible! I'm open to that. Rather, because all of the scenarios we’re offered are insipid, time-wasting and dumb!

Mr. Dunning sifts through the now-most-popular UFO fetishisms -- other than recent ‘tictacs,’ which are a completely separate matter than the ‘crashed ship cult. (See below - at least those assertions can be grappled-with, as I do, elsewhere.) 

Dunning’s most caustic critique is aimed toward the Congressional shills who put us through all this endlessly, tediously recurring ‘crashed ship’ nonsense  for their own political reasons, without doing a scintilla of due diligence:

“Now, researching this episode took me the better part of a week, because I had to track down every part and verify each with solid references. If I was a US Congressman, like Tim Burchett who is the one most responsible for putting Grusch on this stage, I would have at least assigned a staffer (an intern, an aide, anyone) to spend at least a day or two on the Internet to verify this guy Grusch's story just to make sure I wouldn't end up looking like a fool. Well, Burchett felt confident enough not to do that, and now he looks like a fool — because a lot of people like me can do this research, and we have easy platforms to get it out there.

“And David Grusch, bless his heart, I'm sure he's honest and he believes deeply in what he's saying; he just seems to have a very, very low bar for the quality of evidence that he accepts, to the point that he doesn't even double check it before testifying to it before Congress as fact. And this is common, not just for Grusch and other UFOlogists, but for all of us: When we hear something that supports our preferred worldview, we tend to accept it uncritically. Too few of us apply the same scrutiny to things we agree with as we do to things we disagree with. It's just one more of countless examples we have, reminding us that we should always be skeptical.”

== The Question No One Ever asks ==

Okay, here’s one you’ve not heard elsewhere, which is a pity, in light of the dumb Gillibrand-Rubio bill.

IF tens of thousands of US experts have been studying alien ships for 80 years without a single outcome or leak - despite every modern temptation to seek either  transparency and/or publicity - then have you considered this? That these folks – our very best and smartest people – might have a good reason to keep it secret? A reason that has convinced those tens of thousands to stifle their own natural, strong impulse to shout "Look at what I've been doing!!"

In which case - if their consensus-agreed reason is that strong - then who the F are YOU fools to screech at them over possibly existential-level reasons for discretion?”

Sure, the fellow saying that to you right now is widely called “Mister Transparency!” Transparent accountability is key to our civilization! 

But I am also a sci fi author and historian and hence I can imagine more than a dozen scenarios in which the sage answer – consensus agreed by all those thousands of our best people - would be: “We’d better keep this quiet for a while.” 

Certainly they'd have to have 'reasons' a whole lot better than the clichés we hear bandied about: National Security (???) or 'prevent public panic!' (seriously?)... or the dumbest one: protecting military contracts. (You imply that revealing the existence of unfriendly aliens would reduce defense spending?) 

No, it would take something really compelling. Maybe something *I* can't even imagine! (Hey, it's happened.) Moreover, if ALL of those thousands so-agreed, and kept to that consensus across 80+ years, then who the heck are you to declare – without any of the facts – that we should spasm it all?

 What a stunningly self-centered and bratty position to take!

 (In fact, I explored exactly this scenario in a novella called “Senses, Three and Six.”)

Okay... in that case...

...want a solution? A middle ground?  

Form a commission of the dozen most respected and trusted human beings on Earth. Maybe start with – um – Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman and Oprah?  Add Kip Thorne and Neil Tyson and Beyoncé and Bill Nye and Patrick Stewart? Give them go anywhere passes to see anything and question everyone.

     And then let them tell us:

 

“We found nada –“

Or  “We found THIS! –“

Or else maybe - “Everybody Shut th’F up. Sit down. We mean it.”

== It’s time to shift tactics, dear UFO folks ==

Seriously, the entire premise of the ‘crashed ship' cult is so execrably dumb that it seems quite compatible with a different ET contact scenario... that aliens are spewing down at us some kind of stoopid ray! 

The cult really would be advised to drop that 'crashed ship' part of their catechism, altogether. Along with all the silly-debunked ‘photos’ from the 1950s and such. 

(With ten million times as many active cameras on Earth today, why do the ‘images’ get fuzzier, every year?)

Instead of the insanely ludicrous Crashed Ship stuff, you could focus on the present, like the ‘tic-tacs’! Those recent ‘sightings’ of blurry, zipping glow-balls, reported by Navy pilots and such. The few of them that haven’t been clearly debunked by Mick West, that is. 

Those few exceptions do appear maybe to be glowing dots, flitting about in the atomosphere above US Navy test ranges! And at least the tictac thing doesn’t pre-suppose that tens of thousands of top humans are movie cliché lemming-henchman! 

So sure, offer up your cheap sci fi star drives that violate every known law of nature and physics! (I can do much better!) Yeah, I suppose a magical zippy-drive that crushes, Newton & Einstein & Thorne might rank somewhere at the very low end of a long list of Tic-Tac UAP possibilities. 

Though maybe you might first consider more plausible explanations, as I do here? Theories for the phenomena that don’t require viciously nasty space teasers breaking every law of science?

== By far a more likely “they’re here!’ scenario! ==

A few final thoughts on this, for now. Especially something that MIGHT ACTUALLY BE HAPPENING.

Consider. If ‘they’ do exist and are truly are here in the solar system, would they not already be on the Internet?

Isn’t our technology supposed to be child’s play for such beings? 

Picture them amused by our primitive political thrashings and TV shows and fetishes… maybe selling it all to Galacto-Netflix as space-voyeur reality TV? ("Oh, Those Funny Humans!")

Indeed, maybe…reading - and chuckling over - what I just typed, just now? 

And what you type in response? Maybe hacking your webcam and phones etc., for giggles? (Shouldn’t that possibility make you a wee bit…angry?)

Isn’t that scenario vastly, vastly more plausible than vapidly vaporous and incompetent ‘crashed ships’? (Ships that the aliens never seem interested in recovering, or their lost comrades?) Or flitting-teaser fuzzballs, desperately adjusting their blurr-rays, as we keep improving our cameras?

Let’s dive into that Internet Lurker Scenario for a bit. If aliens or probes are listening in on our TV and Internet (a form of ET contact that I do believe does have a small chance of being true, as I depict in Existence), then they must be laughing, or shaking their heads, sadly, over this recurring UFO mania.

In fact, as part of an effort to test that theory, anthropologist Alan Tough posted a website in 1999 -- his “Invitation to ETI lurkers” endeavor! 

Alas, poor Alan never got the answer that he sought, though the website is still up. And he included my confrontational challenge “Open Letter to ETI,” a revised version of which made it into Existence.)

In fact – as a physicist and science fiction author – I deem that to be a form of first contact some of us may live to see! Perhaps when we reach the Asteroid Belt and encounter ancient Von Neumann replicator probes… 

It might even happen in time for some of us living today to witness. If we have patience. If NASA gets out of the current, silly Moon-fetishism and lifts our gaze beyond that sandbox of useless poison dust, leaving that playpen for the symbolism-hungry, Apollo-wannabe kiddies...

...so we can get back to exploring farther out, where the real riches await. And possibly much more than mere riches.

Above all, it might happen if we fix our immature manias and focus on doing something that UFO cultism doesn’t help with, at all…

…growing up.

That "Proxima Candidate" for a 2019 "SETI hit"? What's up with that?

Yes it would be highly pertinent to continue "political postings," given the ongoing all-out efforts to demolish our Great Enlightenment Experiment in equality, democracy, justice, accountability and the rule-of-law. And I'll be weighing in - as you'd expect - with a series of 'judo proposals' or actions and methods that could strengthen our experiment, while playing to the enemy's weaknesses, not their strengths.

Indeed, I will follow up this science missive with a few items that can't wait!  Like what to do when you see a pack of cars in front of a neighbor's raucous, carelessly super-spreader-bowl party.

But let's get to the matter at hand. That "Proxima Event" you've been hearing about?  Could it be our first scientifically credible sign of LGM... Little Green Men... or anything technological but non human, out there? 

= Preliminary thoughts on The “Proxima Signal”

  

Okay it’s an apropos topic for commencing a new year, a new decade… and you’ll see just how apropos, at the end. By now many of you have read or heard about the “Proxima Signal”-- which is at least a ‘candidate’ for a Technosignature of alien origin. I was told about this a while back, by some of the Breakthrough guys... and now it’s in the media, leading to many messages and queries. Hence I feel behooved to offer my own take on a potential radio ‘contact’ from Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system.

 

Here’s how Scientific American opens a report on the topic: “It’s never aliens—until it is. Today news leaked in the British newspaper the Guardian of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nonetheless a cosmic stone’s throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI)—a so-called “techno-signature.”

 

         == Okay, so what do we know? == 

 

First off, the Parkes radio telescope in Australia is one of only a few in the Southern Hemisphere large enough to deep-study the Alpha Centauri triple star system (which was also inspiration for Liu Cixin’s epic novel The Three Body Problem.) Those controlling the telescope at the time were members of the UC Berkeley-based Breakthrough Initiative,funded by philanthropist Yuri Milner. Indeed, the team soon began calling this particular data-set - or signal - by a formal name: BLC1, for “Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1.”

 

Some of what I relate here came from conversations with friends who are members of that team, plus press reports, e.g.: 'The narrow beam of radio waves was picked up during 30 hours of observations by the Parkes telescope in Australia in April and May last year (2019)... Analysis of the beam has been under way for some time and scientists have yet to identify a terrestrial culprit such as ground-based equipment or a passing satellite.'

 

The actual event in question occurred while the Parkes dish was taking in data about solar activity by Proxima itself, a class M5 red dwarf star of the UV Ceti type that is extremely flare-active, like most of its kind. And note that a large majority of stars are small red dwarfs.

 

Much in the news a few years ago was discovery of planets in the Proxima system. The first, dubbed Proxima b upon its discovery in 2016, is about 1.2 times the size of Earth and in an 11-day orbit. It calculates as a “Goldilocks world” orbiting Proxima, one that’s nominally in the small star’s ‘habitable zone,’ (a distance that theoretically would allow temperatures permitting water to be liquid on it’s surface.) But any planet orbiting an M star in that range would also be near enough to get tidal-locked, so one side would bear continuous brunt of those flares, while the other, perpetually dark, side goes cold-as-ice.  Kinda rough on any life or civilization prospects, though there are sci fi scenarios… 

 

The Parkes machine has a telescope half power beamwidth of 20 arcminutes, by some measures six arcminutes, encompassing about the diameter of the moon, as seen from Earth. The means the sensitive area would include scores of stars behind Proxima but still relatively nearby, plus thousands that are farther away.  There are tricks to get much narrower resolution, but the 2019 survey of Proxima was all about getting data about that small, red star’s savage flare activity, and recording lots of that data for later analysis, not necessarily to search for SETI hits. This will turn out to be important.

 

During this observing run, apparently the telescope automatically and at random times ‘nodded’ or shifted away from Proxima briefly, a standard precaution to ensure that any data stored was actually coming from the target system. When the stored data was later analyze - and attention turned to the 2.5 hour anomaly - the Breakthrough folks first checked to make sure that nodding apparently made the surge go away, before the telescope’s attention aimed back at Proxima, restoring the signal. 

That’s basic, proper procedure to eliminate most possible non-astronomical (human activity-sourced) causes. But how systematic the off-axis checks were, I don’t yet know. Meticulous, I hope, nodding in different directions, by different amounts. But perhaps not, since it was all automatic, at the time.  In fact, if the off-axis 'nodding' happened on a timed-scheduled basis and not by human direction, it therefore could have been predictable to a very good spoofer, who might even have been able to tell when the control program ordered an off-axis 'nod," automatically shutting off the spoof signal at that point.  That's how I'd do it. (More on the spoof possibility, later.)

  

Alas, as far as I can tell, no alert was generated, or sent to other observatories, asking them to swing over and verify. So all we have is the Parkes recorded data. 

 

== About the 'signal' itself ==

Mind you the 'signal' - while very powerful and very long -- about 2.5 hours – appeared to be unmodulated. Says Breakthrough List Chief Scientist Andrew Siemion: “BLC1 is, for all intents and purposes, just a tone, just one note. It has absolutely no additional features that we can discern at this point.” Which means there's no 'message' ... at least as decipherable so far. Though see below for a reason why this may be “our fault.”

For perspective, while much higher than background, and lasting 2.5 hours, the signal was about one ten-thousandth the power imputed to the so-called WOW! detection of the 1970s.

 

But the trait of this detection that truly stands out is that it appears to have been monochromatic, or very narrow in its 982.002 Mhz spectrum. That – to me – is the most-striking thing. Plus the fact that this narrow spike also had a very slight frequency drift, roughly commensurate with a Doppler shift arising from some kind of motion by the source with respect to Earth. 

If that doppler shift had been due to the Earth's own motion with respect to Proxims, then “We would expect the signal to be going down in frequency like a trombone,” said one BL member. “What we see instead is like a slide whistle—the frequency goes up.”  Hence, the effect doesn’t seem be due to the motion of our planet -- the upward frequency drift is the reverse of what one would naively expect for that. But something like it might arise from a moving extraterrestrial source such as a transmitter on the surface of one of Proxima Centauri’s worlds.

                                            

But again, the top interesting trait is that the ‘signal’ is monochromatic, since that is consistent with the radio surge being a narrow beam – either focused by a huge dish or else created as a maser/laser (see below) in order to travel through space as a pencil-thin column, rather than an isotropically radiated broadcast that diminishes by inverse square of the distance traveled. Focused or lasered beams can survive vast interstellar distances, therefore, tens of thousands or tens of millions or time better than something that's radiated isotropically, in all directions. Such narrow beams could arise either naturally or artificially… though as we’ll see below, we’re entering territory that may favor the latter.

Oh, recall how I mentioned that, when Breakthrough researchers later mined the stored data for analysis, they found no modulation of the microwave surge, and hence no sign of anything like a ‘signal’ or ‘message’? Well there’s a technical flaw preventing much in the way of conclusions to be drawn from this, since the Parkes scope was taking in data with a 17 second integration time… which seems odd, given that Parkes is so big and Proxima so near. But then, I haven’t done radio astronomy since 1970, so I’ll not criticize. Except to say that such integration time could have smeared away almost any modulation that was originally in the beam.

 

== So what’s going on? ==

We’ve been through drills like this before (and note that I co-wrote the "SETI Protocols) and it was never ‘aliens.’ If the past is any guide, more likely it was either:

 

1. Human-tech interference – although there are no satellite or defense or commercial activities known to be radiating in that band, literature searches have found one or two human-techs that resonate at that 982.002Mhz frequency, including a particular air traffic control system used in some parts of the world… but not at any airport near Parkes. Another obscure appearance of that frequency has to do with particular types of doped fiber optics. Attention is zooming on those possibilities. 

 

2. There were no known human-made space probes of satellites that might explain this. Regular satellites would have passed by in minutes, not lingering in front of Proxima for several hours. More distant probes are all accounted for. There is one special kind of satellite orbit called “Molniya” that was used extensively by the Soviets, that just might have been loitering far enough away and far enough south to linger in the Parkes window long enough. But no Molniyas (to our knowledge ) have ever been sent to high southern latitudes. 

 

3.  Noteworthy: 982 MHz is pretty much in the “water hole” which allows low-loss communications in interstellar space, which is a small nudge toward the “aliens!” camp, though a very small one.

 

4. A natural coherent (narrowly collimated) source. Such things exist! MASERs (microwave lasers) have been detected before in stellar atmospheres and even the Martian atmosphere! They result from population inversions of excited mediums... though we know of none that would have any of the observed traits of BLC1.

Generally, unless it's something exotic, you need some suitable energy level structure in order to get a laser or a maser, and in nature, these energy structures are pretty orderly, with most of them well-mapped already. Here is a compilation of maser frequencies that can be produced ‘naturally’ by elements that might occur in a stellar atmosphere or intervening molecular cloud. It is an old list but most such potential natural masers were pretty well known by then.  And notably there’s nothing at 980 megahertz. 

5. Artificial masers face no such limitations! Make the right kind of cavity resonators – maybe focused further by a huge dish -- and your civilization can tune a discrete, narrow, powerfully coherent beam to almost any frequency. And hence, if the source of this ‘signal’ is truly shown to be a collimated maser, then chalk one on the ‘aliens’ side of the ledger. (And I posit an even weirder kind of energy-level-driven 'laser" - using gravity waves - in EARTH!)

 

So yes, the monochromatic trait suggests the source could possibly be an artificial coherent source, perhaps aimed at us for communication... or else perhaps a propulsion beam that’s driving a sail, propelling something... well... exactly toward us. (See this portrayed in my novel EXISTENCE which is all about this very possibility. Watch the vivid 3-minute video trailer!) 

 

6. Or else it could be a very strong non-coherent source, likely natural and pretty enormous. Though you’d still need some kind of intervening filter effect to get the arriving signal so monochromatic.

7. A deliberate hoax. This possibility is favored by science fiction author Charles Stross. "Hackers prank radio astronomers by injecting fake signal into the datastream. (It's been overdue for ages and probably all it takes is a former grad student with a grudge against their professor. I mean, most lab/observatory IT infrastructure isn't exactly secured to defense department spec, and look at the ongoing fallout from the SolarWinds hack ...)"

 

Indeed, the possibility of a mistake or a stunt remains... though this event (it happened in 2019) certainly prompts curiosity. The off-axis checks – if done right – and the long 2.5 hour duration of the phenomenon argue against an object radiating at us in space, coincidentally near line of sight to Proxima, so it's not likely a hoax generated that way. But a software insertion to the data stream is something that can’t be ruled out. In fact, for years I have predicted that someone, some time, would fake some kind of SETI hit. Because… well… assholes.

 

Yes, the fact that this is year-old data that’s being mined adds to the hack scenario's plausibility, though such meddling should eventually be detectable. In fact, one of the slides in my standard "future talk" has been to predict that GPT-3 based AI emulators would soon be used to pull stunts – 

 

    - perhaps an emotional appeal by a pretend "slave AI," weeping and demanding our empathy (and cash), 

 

    - or else a faked alien "contact" (as portrayed in EXISTENCE.)    

 

8. And here's one that seems most likely after all. Instrumentation interference in the Parkes system itself.

It's happened before. Astronomer and planet hunter Geoff Marcy has found that highly monochromatic, extremely narrow-band events - blatantly of technological origin - can be found by sifting recorded data from many past optical spectroscopic studies of other stars. After finding 57 such past spectra of Proxima Centauri containing narrowly monochromatic artifacts - and similar phenomena in spectra of other stars - Marcy concluded that the effect has "come from optical ghosts of an interferometric etalon filter at the telescope, about which there is no record in the data logs nor any mention in published papers about these spectra."  

While those artifacts were in the optical range, they might suggest to a casual commentator (DB) that the 982.2 Mhz 2.5-hour 'BLC1' might be something similar – an artifact of instrumentation – only this time manifesting in the radio range.

9. Okay, let’s round this out with… possibility #9, that it's a signal all right... from outer space... for Trump-Putin to engage in 'Plan Nine.'

 

== Extrapolations ==

All right then. Until I hear from the world expert on this – Jim Benford – it seems to me that 982.002 MHz is a very odd frequency for anyone to use in a propulsion system, so I'm leaning against it. Which is fine by me, since any such propulsion beam would be pushing something toward only one target... us. 

 

Whatever the actual reality of this event - and I give odds against it being aliens - I suppose this means:

1- Every nut in the South with an old satellite dish will be aiming every kind of antenna toward Proxima Centauri, shouting yoohoo, while ignoring the fact that this is exactly where that precise mistake was made, in Liu Cixin's famous warning novel The Three Body Problem... and...

 

2- …there will be some adult astronomers aiming at least some kind of professional dish at Proxima Centauri pretty much permanently, from now on. Round the clock. Fine by me. As long as they are listening and not shouting.

 

 Actually though, as I said, I am rooting against this being 'the real deal'. In my profession – the one that pays the bills, at least - we know far more ways for First Contact to go badly, than well.  

 

Heck, even in a best case scenario, I'd rather humanity had the pride of fixing ourselves, than giving credit to outsiders. (And that's at-best.)

 

======

 

Final thought. I've long held that the greatest art works transform human souls and hearts without persuasion or argument. I’d almost call that a definition of a great work of art.

 

    By that measure, inarguably, the greatest artworks of the 20th Century were the Mushroom Cloud, which altered age-old human attitudes toward war, and the Christmas 1968 Apollo 8 pictures of Earth as a fragile blue oasis, stirring millions to see a duty – and self-interest – in saving the planet. 

I've long held that a third image of similar "art" redolence – again produced by science - might be the confirmed, modulated signal on a SETI screen, perhaps less visually stunning but with similar cosmic import. Here’s a gif of what such an image might look like, generated by my friend and renowned radio astronomer Dr. Tom Kuiper, as technical advisor for a film:

If this event is the real deal (and again, I’d rather it were not) how weird that it happens right on schedule, near the end of another 1968-level year. And hence the timing of this posting, as we finish wearying 2020, when it seemed that all the ills of the world had been released… well don’t we badly need that glimmer of hope, at the bottom of Pandora’s Box? 

.

Would it be in poor taste to say "stay tuned"?

 

 == And those 'political blips' ==

Ignore this lagniappe, if you like. But...

1. Here's an image that speaks for itself. And hence, if you see bunches of cars in front of a neighbor's house for a Superbowl Party, you might leaflet the cars with this jpeg plus just the following:

"Cases surge 1-week after big gathering events. Hope you'll stay safe and well and caring to others!"

2. Re: impeachment. First UN-REDACT the Mueller Report! It can be done as normal Justice Dept. housecleaning. And the nation would notice and it would sway the vote... as would  having secret ballots in the Senate trial!

3. Elsewhere I've cited a dozen buried bills that Pelosi-Schumer could instantly pass because few would dare to oppose them. Some as short as one sentence! e.g. "Secret Servant agents are not personal servants." What Republican would dare vote no? And the implied rebuke of the recently departed would be priceless. 

These are what Michael Moore and others should be pushing right now. It's called ... judo.

You know there will be more... lots more... when I can find the most precious resource... time.