What's really up with UAPs / UFOs?

Okay so what’s up with the whole UAP/UFO thing? While the most recent wave of reports and commentaries appears to have ebbed - for now - I’ve mostly held back in order to distill… not answers, but badly-needed questions.

Indeed, I've explored notions of the "alien" all my life, in both fiction and science. I helped write the "SETI Protocols" and have been deeply involved in debates over METI or "messaging" extraterrestrials*…  and my novel Existence** takes on the most likely kind of visitors to our solar system: long-lived observation probes, robots which might even now  'lurk' in corners like the Asteroid Belt. Indeed, I give a small chance that the much discussed "UAP" phenomena could - conceivably - be expendable drones or beam spots sent by such lurkers. Make that a VERY small chance... and none at all that these phenomena are "ships" bearing organic interstellar travelers who behave stupidly and with stunning rudeness, while flitting about in violation of every law of physics. (A notion I rant about here in my short story Those Eyes.)

(The SETI Institute has issued a carefully evasive position paper on the topic, essentially saying "we'll stay in our lane.")

Sure, a majority have already been explained by careful analyses of receding jet engine exhausts or balloons etc., viewed by rapidly swinging optics. Still, there remain a fair number of mysterious dots and “tic-tacs” and wildly-rapidly moving ball-thingies. And so, let’s see if we can bypass the execrably dumb and myopic ‘discussion,’ so far, by first stepping back to ask some really fundamental questions, like:

a) Why do UFO images keep getting fuzzier, when there are about a million times as many cameras than in the 1950s? (And legendary science pundit John Gribbin asks how many of these claims involve observers viewing from multiple directions?)

b) A whole lot depends on whether these sighted 'UAPs' are actually opaque physical objects that affect their surroundings and block passage of light from behind them! Or else, are they glowing spots of excited air that pass through light from the background behind them (translucent)? I have not seen this question even posed by any of the sides in this topic and it is crucial!  In fact, is there any verification that these ‘objects’ are actually 'objects' at all, and not simply balls of moving energetic phenomena? There’s a huge difference! Moreover, image analysis ought to answer this crucial question.

That one question would help settle whether they actually possess their own continuous mass and solidity and inertia for the supposed magical propulsion systems to miraculously overcome.  If not, then we have an explanation for how they can behave in apparently non-newtonian, non-inertial and even non-einsteinian ways, which is permissible to 'objects' that have no mass. (We'll come back to this.)

c) Heck, while we are listing observable traits that have neither been reported on nor asked about by any of the pundits or experts I have seen: …. are these glowing patches, blobs or “tic-tacs” radiating in just one or two colors?

If so, monochromatic emission lines would be a huge tell.  Especially if it just happens to be an excited state of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon-dioxide, neon or water vapor.  (ASIDE: The great science fiction author Liu Cixin is fascinated by ball lightning, which phenomenologically overlaps, somewhat, with UAPs.)

d) There are other traits one never sees either described or even posed as questions, except by just one of my blogmunity members: “I've never seen shock waves or ionization trails coming off them. Space aliens may have fancy tech, but the atmosphere has basic physics to abide. If physical devices, they should be leaving ionized tails of superheated air while zipping around like meteors. Same with those flying dots that seem to hurtle mere meters over the surface of the ocean. There should be huge plumes of water from the shock waves. I don’t care what kind of magic tech shields the ‘ship’ itself has. It’s still displacing a whole lot of air, vastly quicker than the speed of sound. What? No acoustic booms? No cloaking system can mask the shoving aside of air by sudden, massive forces.”

e) Why do the vast majority of recent sightings appear to happen at US military training areas? (See an exceptionally good piece speculating cogently on why the Pentagon is now encouraging service members to file UAP sightings… in order to get practical, useful error reports on electronic warfare gear! Which is of course consistent with my long-hinted theory about the real source of all these sightings. )

f) Getting back to fundamentals of motive and behavior: Why should we pay the slightest attention to "visitors" who behave like rude jerks? (Again, I say snub-em!)

Now, polymath Prof. Robin Hanson proposes they might have a reason for behaving this way. "To induce our cooperation, their plan is put themselves at the top of our status ladder. After all, social animals consistently have status ladders, with low status animals tending to emulate the higher. So if these aliens hang out close to us for a long time, show us their very impressive abilities, but don’t act overtly hostile, then we may well come to see them as very high status members of our tribe. Not powerful hostile outsiders."

I deem that to be pretty hard a stretch, since our natural response to nasty tricks is with hostility and determination to get smarter/stronger, fast. Anyway, it’s clear from the history of colonialism on Earth that Robin’s proposed method was never, even once, used to dazzle and cow native peoples. The Portuguese did not conquer Indonesia by coating their ships in glitter and sailing quickly by, while shouting “ooga booga!” for 80 years without making actual contact. Instead, the classic approach used by conquerers back to Chinese and Persian and African dynasties - and especially European colonizers - was to co-opt and suborn the local tribe or nation's top, leadership clade. Use power and wealth and blackmail and targeted assassinations to install your puppets and help them overcome local rivals. Superior aliens? No need for stunts if you have sufficient computational ability to learn our language and do those same things. And one can argue that recent US history is… well… compatible. (Especially the blackmail part!)

Which of course leads us back to listing and comparing alien-probe scenarios, as I did in Existence.  And yes, I still say, let’s get mighty and scientific and get OUT there… and if the lurkers do exist, corner and grill em… but till then, if they are pulling “UFO” crap, snub em!

Back to questions I’ve not seen elsewhere:

g) Why haven’t successive U.S. administrations who hated each other used "the truth" as a political weapon against the other party? (You think ‘mature consensus’ explains it?) Or else tell us why 80 years of our BEST scientists and engineers would have studied this stuff - thousands of our best - and not one first-rater has ever offered a scintilla of tangible or useful proof. Or why we’ve seen no great tech leaps to explode out of such research? 

Sure, there may be reasons for secrecy so compelling that all of the tens of thousands of humans who are in-the-know agree to keep silent. (As portrayed in my story “Senses, Three and Six.”) But in that case, who are YOU to over-rule such a consensus by tens of thousands of our best, who know vastly more than you do? What stunningly conceited, self-indulgent arrogance!

h) Above all, I never cease wondering why so many of our neighbors obsess on so-called "events" and UFO scenarios that are so infuriatingly unimaginative, ill-informed and just plain DULL, when the actual universe that is unfolding before science is so much more interesting… and the cogent speculations of higher-order science fiction are even better, still! ;-)

== Cat lasers ==

My own hypothesis for what’s going on?  Well, it needs to be consistent with all of the above, while also offering a reason why the US defense establishment is suddenly so complacent about allowing UFO speculation to go wild, with smiles and shrugs and even encouragement!  And yes, all of that combines with the following.

First, wanna make a bright dot zip around at unbelievably high “gee” accelerations and even faster than light? Get a very strong laser pointer. Go somewhere you can clearly see a wall many miles away. Like the Grand Canyon. Swipe left or right. If your wrist-flick was quick enough, that dot moved faster than the speed of light!  (Better yet, flick your beam across the visible face of the Moon; you’ll need a strong laser! You may not see it, but calculate the arc and clearly you can exceed “c’ with that dot, without even flicking hard!)

Now zigzag it around across that wall. If it were physical, your laser dot'd be accelerating at some ridiculous crush, say 900gees. Work it out. 

How can such a ‘cat laser,’ (messing with our heads the way we do with our pets) move faster than the speed of light, and zigging with impossible accelerations? See the answer below. But first, is it even possible that aliens - or giggling humans - could make ‘cat laser’ dots or tic-tacs or balls appear in mid-air, rather than merely against a wall?

Well, start with military laser systems for ionizing streaks of air and painting fake objects in the sky to serve as decoys. Here's an excellent article. And what's described is is impressively close! But it’s still missing the actual secret sauce.

Even closer, see a version of the likely tech displayed here in the creation of luminous illusions in a patch of atmosphere.  And another here.

All right, we’re almost there, and all based on unclassified material. Yeah, but suppose you want the exciting beams to be entirely INVISIBLE? Necessary if you want to maintain the illusion of a discrete object. Well, you might have them excite infrared shell states that add up to the one you want to glow…. which brings us back to my first few questions, above, hm?

Some of you have put it all together by now. How the simplest hypothesis for these ‘sightings’ does not have to be the one calling for magical tech used by nasty, illogical aliens. 

== Final thought on cat-teasers ==

Okay, back to that last question: how does that cat-laser dot move at incredible gee accelerations and possibly exceed light-speed? After all that I said up to this point, you may be surprised to learn it's not because the light beam has no mass!  No, the reason is entirely different.

 It is because each individual, momentary spot that makes up that streak on the other side of the Grand Canyon or the face of the Moon - or your nearby, cat-clawed couch - departed from your hand laser separately. (If you are having trouble visualizing, try this with a garden hose; the droplets or splooshes are distinct. The wet streak on the fence only appears to be a connected thing.) 

Each very-brief dot your laser made on that wall - or the moon - was a separate phenomenon, adding together to offer the illusion of a continuing object. In fact, each transitory dot has nothing to do with the spots that came before or after, each of which traveled from your pointer to the wall at the speed of light (in air.)

This is very well-known. Astronomers can point at countless phenomena in space that seem to move faster than light. Phenomena - like the Searchlight Effect - can do that. Physical objects cannot. 

Got it?

== Aliens or not, stop falling for this malarkey ==

And yes, my biggest complaint about UFO nuttery is not that I am sure it’s not aliens! 

I am not certain of that! Though I know the range of possibilities about the alien as well as any living human. Heck, I’ll speculate about aliens at the drop of a molecule! 

No, my complaint, again, is that UFO nuttery is boring! Leaping to clutch the dumbest, most stereotypical and mystically primitive ‘theory,’ slathering on a voluptuous splatter of "I'm such a rebel" anti-authority pretentiousness, and then smacking in happy smugness like those French castle guards in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

Whether these are dumb distracto-theories or actual space-jerks messing with us, both are just lazy farts sent in our general direction.

Ask questions and do better. 

—————————————————————

* “Shouting At the Cosmos” – about METI “messaging” to aliens 

** The lively fun video trailer for Existence

Science Fiction: the literary stuff - Hugos and China and a Latin Beat!

First, congratulations to this year's many fine Hugo nominees for best in Science Fiction for 2013! 

 -- Including -- amid a gallery of bright lights of SF -- Anne Leckie (Ancillary Justice), Charles Stross (Neptune's Brood), Mira Grant (Parasite), Larry Correia (Warbound), Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (The Wheel of Time) and so many more stories and novellas you might survey (and find opportunities to read!). 

Later note: the Hugo (and Nebula) Award went deservedly to the very impressive and multi-faceted Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Give it a read!

== SF that's for reading and the mind ==

But onward to the next year.

The Three-Body Problem is part one of an award-winning trilogy by Liu Cixin — and is arguably the best Chinese science fiction novel ever translated into English. Liu uses the “three-body problem” of classical mechanics to ask some terrifying questions about human nature and what lies at the core of civilization.

The series explores the world of the Trisolarans, a race that is forced to adapt to life in a triple star system, on a planet whose gravity, heat, and orbit are in constant flux. Facing extinction, the Trisolarans plan to evacuate and conquer the nearest habitable planet, and finally intercept a message—from Earth. The Three-Body Problem, released in October 2014, has been translated into English by award-winning writer, Ken Liu (author of books such as The Grace of Kings). Take a look at Stephan Martiniere's way-cool cover for the coming Tor Books edition!)

For more on China, culture and Science Fiction, see Ken Liu's article, What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese? Liu writes movingly that science fiction is "...a literature that is born on the frontier -- the frontier between the known and the unknown, magic and science, dream and reality, self and other, present and future, East and West..."

Special note… The Three Body Problem deals very closely with the issue of SETI and the Fermi Paradox and whether we should shout "yoo-hoo!" into the cosmos  -- a quandary about which I've also written, from time to time.

I've long maintained that the health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie. 

If so, the good news stretches beyond China!

== Sci fi with a Latin beat ==

Horizon-expansion has been the core cause of the liberal west, increasing the circle of tolerance, diversity and respect… 

...and no literary genre has explored these issues more deeply or broadly than science fiction. Despite an absurd reputation for being "dominated by old white guys," Science Fiction has actually been pretty joyfully accepting and welcoming… though any field will exhibit noxious old habits that need cleansing or at least interrogation. 

For years the James Tiptree Award (named after the great Science Fiction author Alice Sheldon) encouraged exploration of gender issues in Science Fiction. The Carl Brandon Society provides a center for discussion of the future as it relates to ethnic issues, especially in science fiction.

In another welcome endeavor, there are moves to form a support group for Latino sci-fi writers. We should all enthusiastically back any endeavors that will draw more bright writers from the cultural background of Cervantes and Marquez! Not only will we benefit from horizon-expanding insight and art (and social criticism!) But there are so many parts of the world that will reciprocally benefit from the greatest gift of all… more science fiction!

The posting at La Bloga is informative. Alas, it wrangled much too much about the politics of such a support org and speaks far too little about positive goals. Like how to get sci-fi excitement to latino youth and students. How to encourage the feed stock of sci fi thinking so that more young writers emerge...

...and how to spread the memes of future, change and exploration back into the grand Hispanic culture whose vibrancy is already a marvel to the world.

Although, the SF movement still has a center! California is the Future! And here's an interesting article about why the future seems so often to be set in California. Yes… so? Hey, Robert A. Heinlein explained it.... The continent is tipped and everything loose rolls down into this corner.

Of course, space is the frontier! An old-fashioned "can-do" sci fi novel, The Martian, by Andy Weir, updates Robinson Crusoe and Marooned with lots of fascinating, problem-solving verve. A best-seller that arose out of self-published versions, Weir's tale portrays an astronaut, abandoned for dead on the red planet, finding ways to survive until rescue can finally arrive… in 500 days.

A fine example of what's been called.... competence porn! Take pleasure in watching a superbly trained engineer performing extraordinary feats of technological wizardry. The Martian is to be turned into a movie in 2015, starring Matt Damon.

== And a Saharan What-If tale! ==

Here's a fun what-if scenario. When the Americas began breaking off from Eurasia, two possible north-south rifts might have made the sea-spreading divide. What if the other one - the loser in our world, stretching from the Congo to Morocco -- had taken off? Arfrica's western bulge would have stayed linked to Brazil. The resulting globe map is… creepy!

This is a cute story: Take a look at Southern Fried Cthulhu by Steve Poling. I love the assertive, can-do ghostbusters-style ethos. 

Also kind of reminiscent of Eric Flint's excellent 1632 alternate history series -- which my son and I both enjoyed.

== Brin - formation ==

Vint Cerf's recent hangout interview (TWiT Hangouts) was spectacular and wise. Classic Vint … sagacious and well-worth watching/listening. (And all right, I enjoyed late in the podcast when he gave me and my novel Kiln People a shout-out.)

Meanwhile the same novel is highlighted in a very interesting essay by Dean Burnett in the Guardian, about Mind-Swapping… whether or not this familiar sci fi and movie trope might ever actually come true.

 Talks at Google has uploaded my speech: David Brin, "Existence" - a one hour talk about pretty much everything (!) that I gave at Google HQ last winter, after the release of my latest book, Existence.

Here's a lovely mention of The Postman in the Arkansas Times, in the context of "books that women recommend to men, when they become more-than-passing interested in them as potentially more than a friend." Pleasant and wise.

While we're at it. This page takes you on a tour of the weapons used in the movie The Postman -- based on.. the book of the same name!

See more... A collection of my personal speculations on Science Fiction -- the literature of the future.

Also my own list of Favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels, with old favorites by Zelazny, Bester, Anderson, Dick and Asimov, as well as more recent works by Stephenson, Gerrold, Chabon and Willis. 

Plus a separate recommended reading list for Young Adults interested in Science Fiction, works brimming with sense-o-wonder -- including works by Douglas Adams, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin, Andre Norton, Terry Pratchett and others!

Is the world improving… despite our grouchy dogmas?

Poverty and violence are decreasing worldwide, at truly amazing rates. And of course - as we have seen - this fact seems anathema to grouches of both the far left and the entire right. But it does prove that the Great Program instituted by George Marshall, Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and Dwight Eisenhower has been working, in a spectacular mix of good development assistance and the better half of capitalism.

I have described several times how Dr. Stephan Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, shows clearly that per capita rates of violence across the world have been plummeting (albeit with tragic unevenness) every decade since the Second World War. Even the recent, terribly unwise wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though in many ways regrettable and devastating to our U.S. economy, were nevertheless waged in a manner unlike what any other generation would have called "war," looking more like heavy-scale (sometimes fierce) SWAT team action than mass armies pounding and flattening everything in their path.

But it is the fight against poverty that stands out even more. As reported in a recent Economist article, Towards the End of Poverty: "In his inaugural address in 1949 Harry Truman said that “more than half the people in the world are living in conditions approaching misery. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of those people.” It has taken much longer than Truman hoped, but the world has lately been making extraordinary progress in lifting people out of extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2010, their number fell by half as a share of the total population in developing countries, from 43% to 21%—a reduction of almost 1 billion people."

To be clear: I'm no pollyanna.  (1) These improvements are just enough to offer hope, not any excuse to let-up.  And (2) there are many areas that are not improving at a trajectory for success. Environmental worries top that list.  Nevertheless, violence and poverty are paramount, and the news in those areas is tentatively fantastic.

Why do we hear so little about this? Because amid today's callowly indignant political polarization and Phase Three of the American Civil War, good news serves the polemical interests of neither right nor left. The mania of the right is that "improvement" campaigns are manifestations of pushy do-gooder oppressors; things are rotten but that is the natural way of life and existence. Trying to "improve" people and the world is either nanny-frantic rudeness or else a commie plot.

The mania of the left is to hallucinate the most self-defeating fabulation of all. Not that we must improve… (I agree that we had better, a lot, or fail utterly)... but that chiding... and only chiding... will get us there.  That reflex, to emphasize only indignant finger-wagging, has been politically devastating, by alienating millions who naturally dislike being relentlessly guilt-tripped. Moreover it illogically and stupidly aims to motivate folks to take up progressive causes without ever admitting that earlier progressive campaigns to improve the world have actually … worked! 

Pause. Contemplate that sales pitch. Would you buy a product when those pushing it howl that it never worked? (This is why pragmatic liberals are essentially a different species from leftists.)

Feh. You can see how these right and left manias feed into each other. They are reciprocal addiction enablers. And extreme self-righteousness junkies are not the ones making a better world.  We are.

See also: Was 2012 the "best year in the history of the world"?

Now see it put in perspective with satire… 

== Emissaries wanted! ==

1) Jay Lake is inviting folks who will be near Portland on June 27 to attend his "pre-mortem wake and roast, a somewhat morbid, deeply irreverent, but joyous celebration of me." Gawrsh, wish I could attend.  (And weep a little between jokes.) Volunteers wanted to proxy-me, praise a truly vivid life, and wish Jay happy trails.

2) Another METI - (Message to Extraterrestrials) - stunt appears to be underway, pushed ahead by fools who claim an arrogant right to speak for humanity, without ever discussing the issue in open debate with colleagues or the public. One group will be announcing their planned Yoohoo Shout at a news conference in New York City on June 11: 1pm at 500 Broadway (2nd fl).

For background on this vexing issue see: Shouting at the Cosmos: How SETI has taken a worrisome turn into dangerous territory. Here is the shouters' rationalization: The Benefits and Harms of Beaming into Space, which is based (the Benford boys assure me) upon fallacious physics.

Out of all the members of our SETI dissidents group (arguing that there should be discussion involving top people from many fields, before small groups arrogate to go screaming into the cosmos on humanity's behalf, based on faulty assumptions) none of us are able to attend the news conference on short notice, or ask inconvenient questions. Do we have any volunteers from out there in the community? Calm sciencey types preferred!  Get in touch via comments below.

At minimum, we could learn who is funding this and who owns the telescope.

== A miscellany of fascinations… 

Are All Telephone Calls Recorded And Accessible To The US Government? Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, hinted that the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations (in the context of the Tsarnaev bombings.) Consider the implications of that blithe, offhand remark. The blogosphere went ballistic in outrage!

My reaction: and you expected… what? If they cannot do it now, they certainly will. Nothing on Earth will prevent the mighty (and I am more scared of oligarchs than civil servants) from seeing and hearing us.  We must concentrate our efforts not on trying (futilely) to blind them, but on measures that allow us (or trusted representatives of us) to sousveil and reciprocally look at the  mighty. If we cannot hide from the mighty, then let us strip them naked.

See an amazing 90 minute documentary on the Graf Zeppelin's 1929 voyage around the world. Especially fascinating is the portion about the airship's brush with death, after leaving Japan and barely surviving a Pacific typhoon, blown off course and coming  down near an uninhabited island to do repairs. (That part is 55 minutes in.)  A terrific show about olden times that (I believe) may in some ways come again!

(See my own future zeppelins! ;-)

You should know about the Cottingly fairies and other famous hoaxes!  Two little girls fooled the author of Sherlock Holmes.

And learn more about the online Museum of Hoaxes! 

Words that last: a research team has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years, spanning not only Indo-European but several of the six other major language groups in Eurasia. Among them the root words for "hand" ("main") and "to give" ("donne").

==Mars Haiku==

NASA solicited "Haiku about Mars," -- to be sent aboard the MAVEN Spacecraft, to be launched late in 2013. I whipped out two Mars haiku in about a minute….  So I'll just share them with you now.

Does Mars need women?

And incidental males too?

Let's supply them soon.

Snowy Olympus

Juts into vacuum above

The oceans we'll revive.

== More Miscellany ==

In "The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be: Why Futurists and Pundits So Often Get It Wrong," Christian Cantrell (author of Containment) offers  a welcome reality check, or dose of cold water in the face, concerning our excessive utopian expectations from technology. 

Indeed, his comments on declining quality of air travel hit home. I expect air travel to keep getting worse, until -- fed-up -- the middle class forms mobs with torches and pirchforks to burn down the corporate jetports and chase the rich back into First Class, where they belong.  That would end our decline into misery, overnight!  But read this cogent essay.

Now come algorithms that will only let your browser come up with things that they think you'll like. My novel EARTH (1989) portrayed hackers in the 2020s deliberately tweaking this "nuremberg-ware" so that it would do the opposite.  Instead of helping people only see and hear and read what agrees with them, all saluting the same memes at the same time, the hacked relevance algorithms would let through different and provocative points of view.  Breaking folks out of the group-think "nuremberg rallies" of memic sameness.

What's the solution?  To introduce randomness into searches? Randomness won't work.  It just makes your searches less efficient.  What's needed is a small symbol showing if someone with very high reputation and credibility scores disagrees or finds fault.  You can click on the symbol, or not.  But just glimpsing the symbol, flashing over on the far right, would say "there is dissent to this; don't assume it's just given."  Of course for this to work, we need the desperately neglected cred-and-reputation system I designed.

Or take a simpler wholesome reality check. A feel-good public relations move that just might do some good… Coca-Cola has set up hyper-window vending machines in India and Pakistan that let you meet, play games or dance with folks in the other country, then toast them with Coke. I hope this isn't a one-off but that they will deploy dozens.  Also, I hope the screens are Gorilla Glass viz the inevitable hate attacks.  Clearly they must be set up in affluent and highly supervised shopping malls.  Still… what fun.

A commercial product based on Transcranial stimulus.

A Guardian analysis of the top 50 video games sold in 2012 found more than half contain violent content labels. One third have weapons that depict real-life firearms.

== Artistry Notes ==

I've quite enjoyed the web-comic called "Tragedy Series" by Benjamin Dewey.  Done in sepia with a Victorian-Steampunk ambiance, these little one-image postcard vignettes are lovely jolts of dark wit and sometimes even genuine irony.

Next year will see the english language publication of THE THREE BODY PROBLEM by the greatest sci fi author ever in China, Liu Cixin.  It takes a very dark view of METI, by the way.

I will speak more in coming months about this top-flight, truly exceptional series and its excellent translation by our own Ken Liu.  

But when you do read it, you may never think the same about "harmless" METI shouts into the cosmos.