Author: ssgeneralsilva10

BBC News

Tamlin Magee. November 1, 2022

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Humans are still searching for signs of Intelligent Life on other planets – but how would we react towards it if we ever did make contact?

According to many of our cultural touchstones, there’s only one thing for it if extraterrestrials ever take a cosmic detour to our planet: heavy artillery fire.

But from the sugary 1980s blockbuster ET the Extra-Terrestrial and the decades of Star Trek episodes to the books of Isaac Asimov and Ursula K Le Guin, science fiction writers have long wrangled with the question: how would we really treat them?

In popular culture, extraterrestrials are often cast as second-class citizens as or less than human. If it weren’t for the intervention of ET’s human friend, the titular Extraterrestrial would have been cut open on an operating room table. In the 2009 film District 9, millions of Extraterrestrial “prawns” are packed into South African slums – an allegory for human bigotry and cruelty in real life.

Evidence of extraterrestrial life has not yet been found, although we are certainly looking for it. In any case, anything we find in the near future is more likely to consist of the signs of microbial life that may have once existed on Mars than the humanoids depicted in films and TV shows.

But according to the Drake equation, there’s a decent chance, statistically speaking, that intelligent extraterrestrials are out there somewhere – even if the stars would have to align for us to find and contact each other, given the vastness of our galaxy and enormous distance between planets. “Finding life or making contact is always going to be highly unlikely until the day we do it,” says John Zarnecki, emeritus professor of space sciences at the Open University in the UK. “It reminds me of exoplanets: as a young researcher, it was a topic we talked about, and we all suspected exoplanets were out there, but there was no way that we’d ever find one because it was technically far too difficult.”

We now know exoplanets are out there, and some are even potential candidates for life because they host water. So with the search ongoing for   life and the possibility remaining that we encounter it, it’s not amiss to consider how we might react if we ever did make contact – especially considering an intelligent Extraterrestrial species is likely to be very different to our own human one.

Non-human rights

Writers don’t seem to have too much hope that humans would treat Extraterrestrials very well. Perhaps that’s because our track record of affording rights to the inhabitants of this planet, human or otherwise, has been so poor throughout history, despite the international legal conventions supposedly safeguarding them. The granting of inalienable, universal rights – that is, the rights guaranteed to all people no matter what – were enshrined by the international community into law through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 after the horrors of World War Two.

However, except for sanctions, there are limited means to enforce these rights even for humans. While these laws state that people are supposed to have rights like liberty and freedom from enslavement, afforded to each of us from birth to death, some political philosophers have suggested that in practice, these only really exist on paper.

A clue for how we might treat Extraterrestrials we ever do have contact with may lie in the rights we’ve afforded non-human species on our planet. Although many countries now recognize animals ranging from gorillas to crows as sentient, it’s only recently that animal rights groups have made some legal headway in affording “rights” to animals based on this sentience – loosely defined as their ability to experience comfort or distress.

We search the Universe to discover ourselves, because it forces us to reflect back on how we relate to each other, how we relate to our environment, and how we relate to other species and people – Jill Stuart

Some ethicists are already considering how the rights of a completely unfamiliar Extraterrestrial species would fit into our legal and ethical frameworks. But there’s been little in the way of open international discussion around Extraterrestrials. A question was raised at a United Nations General Assembly session in 1977 by the prime minister of Grenada, Eric M Gairy, who believed UFO sightings may have been signs of hostile extraterrestrial life on our planet, and suggested establishing an official investigation body through the UN. But no policy was adopted, and he was pressed to drop the topic by British diplomats, before being deposed in a coup the following year.

Some governments are taking an interest though. Back in 1999, journalist Leslie Kean was leaked a French dossier on UFOs showing generals and admirals believed the unexplained phenomena could potentially be extraterrestrial. Earlier this year, for the first time in decades, the US Congress publicly debated what to do about these mysterious flying objects; although there’s no evidence they’re of extraterrestrial origin.

Jill Stuart, a specialist in outer space law at the London School of Economics, doesn’t believe that humans will make contact with extraterrestrials within our lifetimes. But she still thinks considering what we would do in this situation is a conversation worth having. “We search the Universe to discover ourselves, because it forces us to reflect back on how we relate to each other, how we relate to our environment, and how we relate to other species and people,” she says. “These future-focused scenarios may never happen, but the whole process has value in and of itself.”

A Missing Plan

There are no international agreements or mechanisms in place for how humanity would handle an encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence, says Niklas Hedman, executive director of UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa). That’s not to say a framework could never exist. The UN, as the “prime global intergovernmental organization”, would be a fit for such mechanisms, he adds, but ultimately action and debate “boils down to the will of member states”.

Currently, all international space law relates to human activity, says Hedman. The first Outer Space Treaty was signed through the UN in 1967 by the UK, the Soviet Union, and the US, in response to the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could reach targets in space. It serves as the basis for all existing space law, which has developed over time as new possibilities and concerns around space emerged.

All five of the major space treaties, which now cover everything from the prohibition of weapons through to liability for damage and debris from spacefaring nations, center around what humans do in space and how this affects other humans.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence group at the International Academy of Astronautics did adopt a post-detection framework in 2010, building on decades of prior debate. In the case of any detection of signals from intelligent extraterrestrial life, this recommends creating a forum for international coordination through the UN and its Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (Copuous).

Stuart believes it’s unlikely any widely accepted international framework will be developed until it needs to be. People like having material, real-life scenarios to consider in order to bring new ideas into law. Should contact happen, it’s possible that the existing legal frameworks that govern human rights could be extended and adapted to those of Extraterrestrials.

One major consideration in this case would be the intent of the Extraterrestrials: in short, whether they were benign or hostile. This feeds into the debate over whether we should actively be attempting to contact extraterrestrials, or passively looking for signals of their existence, Stuart says – an ongoing contentious question amongst space experts.

When it comes to Extraterrestrials, we have to ask: what kind of intelligence do they have, and why do they have it? – Susan Blackmore

So what would happen if a flying saucer suddenly crash-landed somewhere on Earth? No protocols have been set out or even suggested, but hypothetically, it’s possible that the country it landed in would find itself having to lead initial discussions for how to respond, says Stuart.

“There wouldn’t be any precedent or legal background for there to be responsibility,” Stuart says, adding that if a UFO had been shot down and landed in a nation state, there may be a case that the country should take responsibility for the fallout.

In a 2011 paper for The Royal Society on “supra-Earth affairs”, former Unoosa director Mazlan Othman proposed that the interest of countries in combating the dangers of near earth objects – i.e. asteroids – could offer a model for international cooperation if the existence of extraterrestrial life or intelligence is ever established.

With little in the way of agreed principles about how we would collectively treat any extraterrestrials we encounter, one approach could be simply applying the rights granted to humans. Fitting this into the existing legal framework would make sense, says Stuart.

It’s a reasonable assumption that any species that could travel to Earth would be of a high level of intelligence and sentience, and therefore should be treated akin to humans. This could support a case for “human rights” to evolve into “sentient rights”.

We would also need to take into account the various types of possible intelligence and sentience. Even on our own planet, there are all sorts of intelligences we are only just coming to recognize. The debate continues over whether octopuses, long famous for their intelligence, also have consciousness and can feel pain. The growing practice of mycology, meanwhile, indicates that some fungi show aspects of intelligence, such as having a capability to learn and engage in decision-making.

“When it comes to Extraterrestrials, we have to ask: what kind of intelligence do they have?” says Susan Blackmore, a writer and visiting professor at the University of Plymouth in the UK, who researches consciousness. “Why do they have it? I think we must assume these Extraterrestrials would have evolved by Darwinian evolutionary processes, because that’s the only process we know that will produce living intelligent things.”

Extraterrestrial sentience

In a recounting of a supposed Extraterrestrial encounter in Varginha, Brazil, set out in the 2022 UFO documentary Moment of Contact, a story is told about a mysterious creature claimed to have been found near a crash site clearly in some kind of physical pain. Whatever you think of the sighting, it could be a capacity for pain and suffering that might better guide our approach to affording rights to any visitors from other worlds.

“Could Extraterrestrials suffer?” Blackmore asks. “If so, we should have some moral obligation towards them, and perhaps even build legal frameworks on the basis of [this].”

The ethicist Peter Singer, who has written on the subject of inalienable rights for extraterrestrials as well as animals, says that sentience would ultimately be the key consideration. “Assuming that the extraterrestrial being is sentient, in the sense capable of experiencing pain and pleasure, and has other desires and interests that it may take us some time to ascertain, the fundamental ethical principle we should apply is equal consideration of similar interests,” he says.

This term, based on a concept set out by Singer back in 1979, means that all beings capable of enjoyment or suffering deserve to have their interests equally taken into account in any moral decision that affects them. “In other words, the pain of an extraterrestrial counts as much as the pain of an Earthling.”

The difficult issue here would be establishing what interests the extraterrestrials had, he adds. “A lot would depend on the cognitive capacities of the extraterrestrials, which may be far more advanced than those of dolphins, or humans, for that matter – and if they are far more advanced than our own, we may not be able to grasp what they are.”

The Nonhuman Rights Project, a US organization which aims to secure rights for nonhuman animals, believes the starting place for these rights is autonomy, a concept valued in US courts which means an individual has the ability to choose what to do, where to go, how to act, and memory of events that have previously occurred. Consciousness, meanwhile, is far too broad a category to serve as a legal criterion for rights, because no one agrees on what it actually is.

“Today, at least in the United States, every human is born with the inalienable right to liberty, but it wasn’t always the case that all humans had that right,” says Jake Davis, attorney at the Nonhuman Rights Project. “It took many years, it took a civil war, and an immense amount of struggle for every human to be put on equal footing as far as the right to bodily liberty and integrity goes.

“My wish is that if an extraterrestrial species reached out to us, and they weren’t hostile, that we wouldn’t just assume that they are like nonhuman animals – things with which we could do whatever we wanted, because we are human, and they are not. My wish would be that we would evaluate them as peers to the extent that they show those capabilities [such as autonomy] and go from there.”

According to Lori Marino, a former director at the Nonhuman Rights Project, even intelligence and sentience are difficult concepts for experts to agree on. “They are both fuzzy concepts,” she says. “But I would feel confident saying intelligence is how one processes information and sentience is the ability to feel and be aware of feeling.”

In the case of finding multicellular organisms on another planet, provided they are moving, it’s a good bet they are intelligent and sentient, she argues. They would need some form of intelligence in order to exist at all, she suggests. “We should make the assumption that they are sentient and, therefore, capable of suffering, and leave them alone. Of course I am not so naïve to think we will, but that is morally what we should do.”

The idea that humans should ourselves avoid interfering with the natural development of Extraterrestrial civilizations itself has a long history in science fiction, such as in Star Trek’s “Prime Directive” – although in this fictional world, the principal can be overridden if the Extraterrestrial species is deemed too dangerous. Similar ideas are already considered in our own world today, however – NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection, for example, aims to protect both explored planets and Earth.

If Extraterrestrials can make it to our planet, though, perhaps it’s not their rights we should be worrying about.

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the SETI Institute, a non-profit research organization which aims to understand and explain the origin and nature of life in the Universe, is optimistic for some contact in our lifetime. But it’s important to differentiate between two kinds of contact, he says.

It’s more likely that we would receive signs and signals from technologically advanced civilizations than receive an Extraterrestrial visit. If we received signs, there would not be any great urgency, because any signal we do send would take so long to arrive that we’d have plenty of time to be deliberate about what we say back.

An Extraterrestrial visit, however, would mean the Extraterrestrial civilization has access to technology far beyond what we’re capable of. When ET’s pals at last pick up the hapless creature at the end of the blockbuster, they probably could have obliterated Earth on their way back “home”, if they had had the inclination.

“If they arrive, personally, I’m going to buy a lot of frozen pizza and head for the hills,” says Shostak. “If they can get here, as opposed to transmitting a message, they are more advanced than we are by an enormous margin.”

In this case, a more appropriate question might be: would our new Extraterrestrial overlords afford us rights?

“What are you going to do if they’re aggressive?” asks Shostak. “It’d be like Neanderthals trying to meet with the US Air Force: the Neanderthals could have all the policies they want, but it wouldn’t matter.”

The following is an abbreviated version of a Declassified NASA document originally published as Classified in 1975. Declassification date is unknown. The entire original document can be found at: NASA Document 3052333 Declassified

This document provides much support for some of the key points made in my Extraterrestrial Communication Code book such as:

1. Extraterrestrials probably left us a message to find and respond to; which we have not.
2. The messages we are sending are way too complicated to be interpreted as intended if found by extraterrestrials.
3. Back to Basics approach to the problem

NASA Document: 3052333 : FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Lambros D. Callimahos: 

Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence

We are not alone in the universe. A few years ago, this notion seemed far-fetched; today, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is taken for granted by most scientists. Even the staid National Academy of Sciences has gone on record that contact with other (extraterrestrial) “civilizations” is no longer something beyond our dreams but a natural event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur in the lifetime of many of us. Sir  Bernard  Lovell, one of the world’s leading radio astronomers, has  calculated that, even allowing for a margin of error of 5,000%, there must be in our galaxy about 100 million stars which have planets of the right chemistry, dimensions, and temperature to support (extraterrestrial) organic evolution. If we consider that our own galaxy, the Milky  Way, is but one of at least a billion other galaxies similar to ours in the observable universe, the number of stars that could support some form of (extraterrestrial) life is, to reach for a word, astronomical. As to advanced forms of (extraterrestrial) life—advanced by our own miserable earth standards—Dr. Frank D. Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia, has stated that, putting all our knowledge together, the number of (extraterrestrial) civilizations which could have arisen by now is about one billion. The next question is, “Where is everybody?”

Unless we are terribly conceited (a very unscientific demeanor), we must assume that the “others”(extraterrestrials) are far more advanced than we are. Even a 50- year gap would be tremendous; a 500-year gap staggers the imagination, and as for a 5,000-year gap… (By the way, if they are as much as 50 years behind us, forget it!) It is quite possible that “others” have satellite probes in space, retransmitting to “them” anything that sounds nonrandom to the probe. But they  have probably  called  us several thousand years ago, and are waiting for an answer;  or  worse  yet, they  have  given   up;  or,  more probably, they (extraterrestrials) have reached such impressive technological advances that they have destroyed themselves. In this connection, Professor Losif Shklovsky, Russia’s greatest radio astronomer, has cited the profound crises which lie in wait for a developing civilization, any one of which may well prove fatal:

1. Self-destruction as a result of a thermonuclear catastrophe or some other discovery which may have unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences;
2. Genetic danger;
3. Overproduction of information;
4. Restricted capacity of the individual’s brain, which can lead to excessive specialization, with consequent dangers of degeneration; and
5. A crisis precipitated by the creation of artificial intelligent

Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti were the targets on which Dr. Drake focused his attention in the spring of 1960 in Project Ozma, an attempt to detect possible intelligent signals from outer space.

The growing presumption that (extraterrestrial) life exists in other worlds led, in 1971, to a six-nation multidisciplinary conference held in Soviet Armenia on Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The U.S. delegation of about two dozen scientists was headed by Dr. Carl Sagan of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at Cornell University. The report of this conference, published in 1973 by MIT, deals with such subjects as the evolution of intelligence, the lifetimes of technical civilizations, and the number of advanced galactic (extraterrestrial) civilizations. Last November (1974)  a group of scientists at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico sent a three -minute message beamed at Messier 13, and this represented man’s first attempt to take the initiative in communicating with another civilization. The project was conducted by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, which operates the Arecibo Observatory for Cornell University and the National Science Foundation. Actually, the main purpose of the experiment was to dramatize the capabilities of the world’s  largest antenna at the Arecibo Observatory at that time. The message, consisting of 1271 binary digits or “bits,” is shown in Figure 1. Since 1271 has but two prime factors, 31 and 41, we would naturally be lead to write out the message in raster form, in 41 lines of 31 bits each, or in 31 lines of 41 bits each; the latter case reveals a greater non-randomness in the patterns disclosed, indicating that these are the correct dimensions.

Figure 1 (See Original Document Link)

If another (extraterrestrial) civilization were trying to establish communication with us, it would first embark on attention-getting signals of such a nature that we could distinguish them from random cosmic noise; once we receive a recognizable signal, we have a good chance of understanding the message. For example, they could start with trains of signals corresponding to the natural number 1, 2, 3…, followed perhaps by prime numbers. They might continue with equal-length extended signals consisting of start and stop impulses, with occasional pulses in between; when these signals are aligned flush over one another, they would show a circle, the Pythagorean Theorem, or similar geometric design. ”these attention-getting signals would be followed by what amounts to early “language lessons,” interspersed with items of technical information to help bring us up to the level of our superiors, “them.”

In Figure 2 is shown the write-out of the message, in which the binary 1’s have been replaced by a dot and the 0’s left as blank spaces.

Figure 2 (See Original Document Link)

Now for its interpretation: (Way too Complicated)

There are dots at the four corners of the pictogram as reference points, marking the outlines of the rectangle. At the upper left is a representation of the sun; directly underneath in a column are dots representing 8 planets, identified by the appropriate binary coding to their left, preceded by a binary point as a marker. The erect, two-legged beings illustrated are obviously bisexual and mammalian.  One hand of the male figure points to the fourth planet where they apparently reside. At the top of the pictogram may be seen representations of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen atoms, indicating that the chemical structure of life on their planet is similar to ours.  From the third planet there emerges a wavy line, showing that it is covered with water; the fish shows that they must have visited us and therefore have space travel. One hand of the female figure points to a six (preceded by the usual binary point), perhaps implying that there are six fingers on each hand;  we  could   therefore  assume  that  their number system is probably to the base 12. At the right of the female figure may be seen a bracket, in the middle of which is eleven in binary form (preceded by a binary point): this implies that the beings are 11 units high. A reasonable interpretation is that the unit is 21 cm, the wave length of the transmission, making them about 2-feet tall, which should be all right for average Martians.

In 1952 the British scientist Lancelot Hogben delivered an address before the British interplanetary Society entitled “Astraglossa”, or First Steps in Celestial Syntax. Hogben pointed out that number is the most universal concept for establishing communication between intelligent beings, therefore mathematics forms the basis for the first steps in extraterrestrial communication;  he then illustrated how he could transmit pulses representing integers, and distinctive signals or “radioglyphs” representing ” —{- ”, ”— ”, ”= “, and so on. Morrison later carried out the basic idea a little further, using different pulse shapes to represent elementary mathematical symbols. An entirely different approach was developed by Hans Freudenthal, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Utrecht, who in 1960 published a book entitled Lincos- Design of a Language for (osmic Intercourse. ”Lincos,” an acronym of “lingua cosmica,” tries to establish a communication of ideas through symbolic logic, but the general consensus of those who have taken the trouble to study his book is that his plan is too difficult. After all, the object of the exercise is getting ideas across to another party, whose thinking processes may be entirely different from our own. In other words, what we need to develop is an “inverse cryptography,” or communication symbolism specially designed, not to hide meaning, but to be as easy as possible to comprehend. Cleverness on the part of the sender is then the important factor, not reliance on ingenuity of the recipient. (Back to Basics Approach)

The inverse cryptographer—somehow, this term doesn’t  sound quite right—must make his meaning clear to the recipient, even if the latter does not possess a cosmic equivalent of the Rosetta Stone.

As an illustration of how much information could be conveyed with a minimum of material, and as an example of facile inverse cryptography, let us consider a message I have devised to be typical of what we might expect of an initial communication from outer space. In Figure 3 is shown a series of transmissions which could have come from another inhabited planet, many light years away.

Figure 3 (See original Document Link- Still way too Complicated)

The 32 arbitrary symbols are representations for the 32 different signals (combinations of beeps, or distinctive pulse shapes) heard on a frequency of 1420.4 megacycles.

The punctuation marks are not part of the message, but here represent different time lapses: adjacent symbols are sent with a short pause (1 unit) between them; a space between symbols   means   a   longer   pause   (2   units); commas, semicolons, and periods indicate pauses of 4, 8, and 16 units, respectively.  Between transmissions (numbered here for reference purposes) there is a time lapse of 32 units.

The first transmission, (1), is obviously an enumeration of the 32 different symbols which will be used in the communications; in transmission (2) is the clear implication that A represents the integer 1, B the integer 2, and so on to J being the integer 10. In transmission (3), the symbols K for a plus sign and L for “equals” are introduced; in (4), the symbol M stands for “minus”; in (5), the symbol N stands for the concept and sign for zero. In (6), the concept of decimal notation is introduced; in (7), the symbol O must stand for the multiplication sign; in (8), the symbol P must stand for sign for division; in (9), the symbol Q must represent a sign for the reciprocal; and in (10), the symbol R must stand for a decimal point. In the next ten transmissions there are introduced the concepts and symbols for inequalities, approximations, nested parentheses and brackets, powers and roots, factorials, and infinite series defining pi and e. Transmission (21) adds nothing new to the 31 symbols recovered thus far, but  it does quote one of the most beautiful concepts in pure mathematics, Euler’s identity, e —[-  1  =  0.   With this they are telling us that, if they can teach us such a complex notion at this early stage, we will be staggered by what they will teach us by the 200th or 2000th transmission.

Beginning   with   transmission   (22), words and word-cluster concepts are introduced, so that by the time we come to transmission (30) we are now understanding, in a manner of   speaking,    pure    Venerean   sentences. Greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes. Furthermore,  we can  now see  how we could  recover the It will not be difficult for “them” (extraterrestrials)  to demonstrate their code  they  are  using  on  us,  and   which  will  obviously intellectual and technological superiority (first of all, consist of thousands  upon  thousands of code groups with don’t forget it was they who were able to call us!). If different  meaning;  this  is  easily  appreciated by anyone “they” but know the seventh digit of the “fine” structure who  takes  the  trouble  to  fathom  the  meaning of all 30 constant, ” they are ages ahead of us (we know only the transmissions in the foregoing example first five for  sure,  suspect  the  sixth). This  number, even  right after  this first series of transmissions, if we 137.039…, is the ratio, among  others,  of  the speed  of are  in  direct  communication  with  that  planet,  we shall light to the speed of the hydrogen electron; it may take a have questions  to  put  to  ”them” (extraterrestrials):  the  proof of Fermat’s century to calculate this constant to 9 digit. And after we Last  Theorem,  Goldbach’s  conjecture,  and  many other resolve our pressing scientific questions, it might be unsolved    problems   in   mathematics   and   the   natural appropriate to make discrete inquiries as to how we could sciences.  By the way, Goldbach’s  ’ notorious” conjecture live in harmony and peace with our fellow man—that is, is called by that adjective only because other if we aren’t eaten or otherwise ingested by the superior mathematicians weren’t  imaginative  enough  to make the civilization that had the good fortune to contact us. But as conjecture themselves; it states that every even number far as the cryptologist is concerned, he (and generations of his descendants who might  experience  the  supreme  thrill of their lives when we hear from  “them” (extraterrestrials)  must  keep  a  level head, not get excited, and be prepared to cope with problems the likes of  which  he  has  never  seen. 

Mr. Callimahos won world renown as a flute virtuoso before serving in the Army cryptologic unit in World Wars II. The author of many textbooks, monographs, studies and articles, including the ones on cryptology in the World Book Encyclopedia, Collier’s Encyclopedia, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, he has for twenty years taught NSA’s senior course in cryptanalysis.

 

 

 

 

Area 51 website owner who says armed feds raided his homes speaks out: ‘It could be your door next’

Arnu says all he knows is that the investigation was related to something he posted online

Fox News / Andrew Mark Miller / November 20, 2022 7:47am EST

 The owner of a prominent Area 51 website is speaking out after he says federal government agents raided his homes at gunpoint and broke down the doors while investigating a crime he still does not know the details of.

“I discussed the case with an attorney specialized in Federal cases,” Joerg Arnu, proprietor of the website Area-51 themed website Dreamland Resort.com, said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Saturday.  “What I learned is truly incredible and in my opinion a much bigger story than the raid of my homes. What was done to me and my girlfriend, two unarmed, innocent, cooperating senior citizens, is apparently totally within the law. Truly incredible!”

It was reported earlier this week, that Arnu claimed 15-20 armed federal authorities from the U.S. Air Force and FBI raided two Nevada homes belonging to him and his girlfriend including a home he was present in where he says agents busted through his door and yanked the pair outside where they were “detained and treated in the most disrespectful way.”

Arnu said on Saturday that he still does not know what specific crime he violated and only knows what an agent told him during the raid that the incident was “related to images posted on my Area 51 website.”

(L) Joerg Arnu,(R) Door on Joerg Arnu’s property 

Arnu claims that between the damages to his houses, including the broken down door, and the value of the hard drives, cameras, and other equipment, amounts to a dollar value of around $25,000. “I have not been charged with a crime and all my attempts to reach out to the FBI to at least get my much-needed medical and financial records and passwords stored on the seized computers were in vain,” Arnu said. “Crickets from the feds!”

In photos provided to Fox News Digital, doors to Arnu’s homes can be seen bent and damaged where he says agents stormed into his dwelling. Arnu explained earlier this week that his girlfriend was “led out into the street barefoot and only in her underwear in full view of the neighbors” during the raid and that he was led outside “handcuffed and only in a T-shirt and sweats in sub-freezing temperatures.”

“The federal government has the right to harass and traumatize random citizens that are not accused of any crime,” Arnu said. “Kick in their doors, manhandle them and take whatever they want from them. Said citizens have no rights whatsoever to reimbursement of their damages, return of their property or compensation for the trauma they were subjected to.”

Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry, Nellis Air Force Base spokesperson, confirmed to Fox News Digital that there is currently an open investigation into Arnu but did not provide details as to the specific crime.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation multiple times but did not immediately receive a response.

Arnu started Dreamland Resort in 1999 and the site features videos of drone footage from around Area 51, satellite images of the base, discussion forums, and articles on various rumored top-secret projects involving UFOs. The site also features photos of “super-secret” aircraft being developed by the U.S. military.

Arnu says that he took down some photos from this website following the raid in an attempt to “diffuse” the situation but does not believe he posted anything illegal.

Arnu created a GoFundMe to raise money to replace the items he says that his lawyer told him he is unlikely to get back. “By the time you get your laptops back they will be obsolete,” Arnu says his lawyer told him. “IF you get them back.” Arnu has suggested that he will take legal action in order to recover his property.

“This is America, land of the free,” Arnu said. “Not so much from where I am standing right now. Everyone should know about this injustice. It could be your door that is kicked in next!”

Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.

 

UFOs Have Landed in Congress, where Legislation addressing them will be considered

Lawmakers want to know exactly what threat ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ may pose.

Reference: Chad Pergram / Fox News / August 29, 2022

Masked in turgid language deep inside next year’s Senate intelligence authorization bill lays the following sentence: “Cross-domain trans-medium threats to United States’ national security are expanding exponentially.” What if I decoded that sentence to tell you that lawmakers are petrified about growing threats to the U.S. from UFOs?

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explains a video of an unidentified aerial phenomenon as he testifies before a House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on May 17, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

For the first time in history, Congress is recognizing that unidentified aerial phenomena, or “UAPs” as they’re now called, may exist. And, if Congress approves the intelligence bill, lawmakers will mandate the creation of a special government office to determine what’s terrestrial and what’s extraterrestrial. The truth may be out there. But you can’t find it without first filleting the otherworldly, legislative bill text.

Unidentified Flying Objects have stumped military pilots for decades. They defy physics. Perform impossible aerodynamic maneuvers against the wind. They zip around at staggering speeds. That’s why lawmakers are compelling the military to unravel what we don’t understand.

“There are unexplained events out there,” said former CIA officer and Senate leadership intelligence adviser Ron Marks. “And if you can’t explain it, then, as a good intelligence person, you should analyze it to know what’s there and what’s not.”

Lawmakers have long been skeptical of whether the military and intelligence communities were fessing up about what they knew, or conceding what they didn’t know, about stuff that could be flying around overhead. That’s why the House Intelligence Committee conducted the first hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years back in May. “When we spot something we don’t understand or can’t identify in our airspace, it’s the job of those we entrust with our national security to investigate and to report back,” said Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

But the hearing may have created more questions than answers.

Pentagon hearing shows UFOs spotted using both human and two technical sensors, May 17, 2022. (FOX News)

Military officials played two videos at the hearing. One depicted a UFO event that they were able to explain as a visual anomaly, thanks to night-vision goggles and recording equipment. The other episode remains a mystery. However, the videos shown at the hearing were challenging to decipher. “Congress is responding to classified data because the unclassified data that we had all seen includes fuzzy images that are not very convincing,” said Avi Loeb, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Harvard University. “And I wouldn’t expect such a bill to be authorized unless there was much more convincing evidence, which I’m sure there is.” There’s concern the military may be hiding something. “I’ve always felt that it was the military attempting to, to some extent, disguise advanced programs that they were working on,” said Marks. “But there are some things that do need to be explained.” Lawmakers also worry that if the technology isn’t emanating from the U.S. or outer space it could be the Russians or Chinese; and that could pose an even bigger threat.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the top GOPer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested as much in 2020 during an interview with CBS.

“Frankly, if it’s something outside this planet that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some sort of technological leap from the Chinese or Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity,” said Rubio three years ago. “That to me is a national security risk and one we should be looking into.” This is why lawmakers and others who study the cosmos say it’s incumbent upon the defense and intelligence communities to identify the unidentifiable.

“The government is the organization that monitors the sky all the time for national security purposes,” said Loeb. “So, you would expect those people who have their day job to monitor the sky to find such objects first. We just need to figure out what these objects are.” Loeb said the government isn’t a “scientific organization,” adding officials are worried about “national security.” He says that enhances the onus on the government to try to figure some of this out.

It’s one thing to have people in Roswell, N.M., back in 1947 see things or even have sightings in the mid-1970s after the release of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” It’s another thing for people to spot things today. Loeb says that’s why the government should be able to better explain some of the events. “I think there is much better data now than there used to be decades ago. So, rather than worry about reports that took place decades ago that were not of high quality and that were anecdotal, now we have excellent instrumentation that was not available,” said Loeb.

At the springtime hearing, lawmakers said that there was still a bias inside the military. Navy and Air Force pilots feared their credibility was on the line when they reported seeing strange things in the skies. Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., who led the hearing, said some pilots worried that their superiors would describe them as “kooks.” Ron Marks invoked resistance among government officials to fully investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or explore the POW/MIA issue. While there’s far from anything conclusive, Loeb suspects that people resist possibilities that could shift established paradigms.

No one believed Nicolaus Copernicus and his idea that the Earth and planets

revolved around the sun in the 16th century. He faced trials from the Catholic Church. Galileo was placed under house arrest for his beliefs. “There is a stigma and there is some ridicule in discussing the possibility of extraterrestrials. But the point is, whatever it is; we should figure out what it is rather than ignore it,” said Loeb. “We should be open-minded because we may not be the smartest kid on our cosmic block.”

Congress must first approve the intelligence bill before anything happens. But just the existence of the language in this bill denotes a key shift in thinking about the unexplained. Perhaps this is one small step that could become a giant leap when it comes to UFOs.

Chad Pergram currently serves as a senior congressional correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined the network in September 2007 and is based out of Washington, D.C.

Taken from the Exordium (Preface) of my new book in progress,  Angel Communication Code:

The obvious and intended messages of Scripture and angels are about how we get to the eternal life in heaven. If we are looking for it, we can see that the history and structure of angels may also be pointing us in the direction of ET communication and our place in the universe via a specific coded message, and not just the way to heaven.  This book will examine the historic evidence and reveal new evidence that may have been provided by angels or by those humans who defined the structure of angels. This will be accomplished by way of establishing links to the unique discoveries presented in my first book entitled “Extraterrestrial Communication Code”. Extraterrestrial Communication Code is about the discovery and interpretation of a possible ET crafted cypher and how its solution leads to a response to that ET message intended to establish two-way communication with Ets.  The cypher and its message are derived by uniquely linking information from science, history, mathematics, geography, and logic. The code was discovered and then decyphered to reveal what might be the solution to establishing active communication with our ET brothers in our lifetime. It is a new and untested scientific hypothesis. The book concludes by designing and proposing an experiment to put the hypothesis to the test.

At the heart of Extraterrestrial Communication Code’s premise is the use of prime number 3 and the first three prime numbers in series, 2, 3, and 5. These numbers are the root of the code’s discovery and development.

Clues have been presented throughout human history that can and should be considered obvious, direct, and credible evidence that supports the theory of a historic presence and direct contact with ETs here on earth. Of this there can be no doubt as the evidence is overwhelming. There are many ancient writings, including the Bible, that talk about gods and visitors from the sky coming to earth and interacting with humans. That has not so much been the case however, since the time after the global flood during the time of Noah.

The ETs and “gods” communicated directly and walked among humans, did their thing, and then disconnected from earthlings for the most part. There is a difference between contact and communication. One of the most important unsolved mysteries in the contemporary ET communication quest is  the lack of two-way communication with ETs in the contemporary era. Why is it not happening anymore? What are we doing wrong in our efforts to re-establish open communications?

There are numerous former government agents, military personnel, astronauts, and commercial airplane pilots that are now speaking out and divulging information about what they know. These are eye-witness accounts coming from extremely qualified and credible people describing direct observation of ETs in action and their technology. Not a single one of these accounts discuss that there was any meaningful and open two-way communication with ETs; at least in this “dimension of consciousness”. There are those that claim they can enter their minds into another dimension of consciousness and actually communicate with ETs via a higher level of consciousness. This is discussed in some detail this new book.

We absolutely know that there are pieces of our recorded history, including the Bible, that are not completely accurate either deliberately or because of blind bias, blind faith, translation issues or by the inclusion of inaccurate information (unintentional or otherwise).  We are past the point of questioning ET existence in the universe and the fact that they have been to earth. There is no need to continuously re-hash the same evidence repeatedly. We get it; and we accept the fact that ETs exist in the universe and have been to earth.   The time has come to move forward and focus on establishing two-way communication with them. To that end, there is evidence to suggest that ETs and / or angels, left clues for us to discover and decipher that when accurately interpreted, reveal a way to establish direct two-way communication with them. There are many reasons why Ets  might have taken this approach that are detailed in the Extraterrestrial Communication Code book.

The concepts and facts sited this second book, Angel Communication Code, may encroach upon traditional Christian interpretations of angels and their role in human history. As is the case with Extraterrestrial Communication Code; there are discoveries revealed in this book that are unique and directly apply to this two-way ET communication project.

There is room for a broader interpretation of traditionally accepted Christian (and all religious) teachings and beliefs regarding intelligent extraterrestrial life in the universe and the role of angels in the whole thing. These interpretations can be made without challenging or undermining the fundamental beliefs and teachings of any religious faith and their respective equivalents to Christian “Angels.”

The intent of the presentations made in this book is not to undermine any person’s faith or beliefs regarding Christian Angels or angel equivalents from other world religions. The intent is to present the applicable facts in a way that legitimizes the possibility that humans have been provided clues that point to a “code” that unlocks a way to establish meaningful communication with intelligent life from places far from earth. The hypothesis alluded to in this book is that angels (and other Biblical characters) may have been involved in the deposition of some of these clues. This book is not about faith or religion. This book is about finding a code that the angel themselves or the use of angels as messengers may have provided for us to find, figure out and use to establish two-way ET communication.

Extraterrestrial Communication Code reveals and deciphers a code for establishing communication with extraterrestrials; however, there is very little discussion in that book about angels playing a role in any of it.  The facts and interpretations presented in this new book will strengthen the Extraterrestrial Communication Code’s findings and further support the hypothesis and the experiment proposed to test the hypothesis consistent with  the accepted scientific method.

Religious teachings and beliefs can and do co-exist with the existence of ETs. This synergy is woven into the multi-dimensional fabric of the universe and all life within the universe.

 

The Government Is Officially Preparing For First Alien Contact

Advancements in technology have made the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) more likely to result in alien contact than at another point in our history as a species. Science has made it so that astronomers are able to detect the makeup of planets outside of our solar system. As a result, a new research hub dedicated solely to the quest for alien life has been established in Scotland.

According to an interview with VICE, John Elliot, an honorary research fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland has realized one of his dreams and officially established an alien contact research center. The SETI-Post Detection Hub focuses on what comes after first contact with an alien species has been established. The science at the new research center deals with how to communicate, not only with an alien species but with humans. Convincing a skeptical populace that aliens are real and contact has been made is a tricky proposition that crosses into multiple fields of study.

Elliot and his team are operating under the assumption that alien contact is inevitable. If other scientists are working hard on the actual finding of life, it stands to reason that someone needs to be prepared for what comes next. Going beyond science, the SETI-Post Detection Hub is attempting to answer the legal, ethical, and logistical problems from realizing that humans are not alone in the universe.

Part of the SETI-Post Detection Hub’s research is on human behavior after alien contact has been established. To that end, Elliot’s team is not only comprised of scientists, but also lawyers, sociologists, and UFO enthusiasts from around the world. The hope is to address an issue science cannot solve: conspiracy theorists that will insist a signal, even after verification, is being faked.

The joint collaboration came after Elliot received encouragement from other members of the United Kingdom’s SETI Network to draft a plan and formulate a response for when alien contact is confirmed. Scientists working on SETI worry that the original strategic plan, drafted in 1989, has not kept pace with the advance of science over the last 30 years. Currently functional, the SETI-Post Detection Hub is already experimenting with potential methods of communication regarding an alien signal.

Back in 1989, social media misinformation was not a concern for researchers. Today, Elliot says a strategy is needed to handle the extensive, complicated web of social media and modern ways of viewing information. The science behind this is not exact and a lot depends on the method of alien contact.

According to Eliot and his team, detecting fossilized remains of microbes is one thing, but an intelligent species reaching out to planet Earth is a much different issue. NASA’s latest missions to Mars, for example, may find ancient remains of aliens, but that is a different type of alien contact that is much easier to handle with traditional scientific methods. Inter-disciplinary methods are required where science alone is not enough and that is where the SETI-Post Detection Hub is focusing its efforts. Hollywood has shown different versions of what a post-contact world may look like, but now there is a dedicated team trying to make that our reality.

MSN.com, Jonathan Klotz 

Sharing this important publication from Scientific American with the ET Comm Group:

Experts Weigh In on Pentagon UFO Report

“The vast majority of examined incidents were not caused by U.S. advanced technology programs, the forthcoming report concludes. So what’s going on?

For more than a decade, the U.S. Department of Defense has been quietly cataloging and investigating scores of bizarre encounters—most from the U.S. Navy—of ships and fighter jets tangling with, or being tailgated by, unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Beginning in 2017, videos and eyewitness accounts of these weird sightings found their way into public view, ultimately spurring Congress to demand that the Pentagon produce a report summarizing all that the U.S. government knows about so-called unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP (an alternate term with considerably less stigma than the much maligned “UFOs”).

Produced under the auspices of a Pentagon group called the UAP Task Force, an unclassified version of the report is expected to be released later this month. Upon establishing the task force, the DOD released an accompanying statement explaining the justifications for its existence:

“The safety of our personnel and the security of our operations are of paramount concern. The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.”

ASSESSING THE “ALIEN” HYPOTHESIS

Meanwhile all this strangeness has garnered considerable media attention, from front-page stories in the New York Times to 13,000-word articles in the New Yorker, as well as prominent coverage on 60 Minutes and other prime-time television programs. Through it all, a sizable contingent of true believers have steadily proclaimed, “We told you so,” insistent in their conviction that, whether called UFOs or UAP, the entities seemingly slipping through our skies are actually alien spacecraft—and have been visiting Earth for a very long time.

Those deeply entrenched public beliefs, paired with the apparent reinvigoration of investigative interest in these incidents at the highest levels of government, can lead to dazzling speculations. Might we be on the verge of a formal disclosure—backed by irrefutable evidence—that humankind is not alone and is indeed being monitored by extraterrestrial civilizations? Or could it be that UAP are entirely homegrown products of revolutionary and clandestine technological advances, whether by other countries now challenging American airspace or by the U.S. itself as part of some super-secret domestic program meant to detect flaws in the nation’s defenses? The mind boggles.

Although the task force’s unclassified assessment is not expected until June 25, the New York Times provided a cursory preview of its contents in an article on June 3. Citing anonymous senior officials familiar with the report’s contents, the story said that the assessment has come up short of explaining what UAP are and that it provides no evidence to link them with any putative alien visitation—despite reviewing more than 120 incidents from the past 20 years. The report’s firmest conclusion, it seems, is that the vast majority of UAP happenings and their surprising maneuvers are not caused by any U.S. advanced technology programs.

Lastly, according to the New York Times article, the final report includes a “classified annex” of information deemed unsuitable for public release—leaving more than enough room for die-hard UFO advocates to remain convinced that the U.S. government is hiding the truth.

NO “BIG REVEAL”

Andrew Fraknoi, an astronomer at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco, echoes the widely held sentiment among scientists that, for decades, the media has lavished too much attention on sensational claims that vague lights in the sky are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft. “Recently, there has been a flurry of misleading publicity about UFOs [based on military reports]. A sober examination of these claims reveals that there is a lot less to them than first meets the eye,” Fraknoi says. Given sufficient evidence (which, arguably, many of the recent reports fail to provide), UFO sightings can essentially always be tied to terrestrial or celestial phenomena, such as lights from human-made vehicles and reentering space junk, he adds.

There is not going to be any “big reveal,” says Robert Sheaffer, a leading skeptical investigator of UFOs. “There are no aliens here on Earth, and so the government cannot ‘disclose’ what it does not have. Some people think that the government knows more about UFOs, or UAP, than the public, but it’s clear that they know less on the subject than our best civilian UFO investigators, not more.”

The DOD employs some very competent photographic analysts and other technical experts, “none of whom obviously were consulted in this comedy of errors,” Sheaffer says. “The Pentagon has already suffered enough embarrassment from the [apparent] incompetence of its UAP Task Force.” He says it is time to rein in such “rampant foolishness” and ensure that proper experts will shape the task force’s conclusions rather than “clueless, self-important people who don’t even recognize out-of-focus images when they see them.”

REAL ISSUES

Skeptical science writer Mick West has taken on the chore of analyzing the spate of UAP videos released by the U.S. military, steadfastly investigating how some of the incidents could merely be mirages from flaws in newly deployed radar systems, as well as various sorts of well-understood visual artifacts regularly seen in cameras. Despite his work to debunk the recent claims, West maintains that reports of mysterious aircraft stalking military assets should be taken quite seriously.

“Firstly, there’s a set of very real issues that could be grouped together as ‘UAPs’ or ‘UFOs,’” West says. “Any time something unidentified shows up in restricted airspace, then that’s a real problem that needs solving.” There have been many reports of drones above or near restricted areas, he notes. “We know that drones have been used for terrorist attacks, and drones will very much be a significant factor in future conflicts,” West says. “So we need to figure out how to identify and mitigate such things.”

Another real issue is that pilots sometimes see things that they cannot readily identify, West says, and they may misidentify such objects. Regardless of what such pilots actually observe, this is a problem. “If something there is hard to identify—like a novel drone—then we need to figure out how to identify it,” he says. “If the pilots are making mistakes, then we need to figure out why.”

THE “DISCLOSURE” FEEDBACK LOOP

“The advocates of alien disclosure are encroaching on these real issues of UAPs,” West says. These believers take mundane videos of incidents that are simply unidentified, he says, and then reframe them as evidence of extraordinary technology—which, of course, is intended to mean “aliens,” even if enthusiasts for that hypothesis will not explicitly say so. This cultivates credulous media attention, which in turn creates a feedback loop of public interest, more media and then pressure on politicians to “do something.”

“All the while, the military makes no comments, because that’s their modus operandi. Military things are assumed classified by default, and there is nothing compelling them to clear things up,” West says. In the end, he hopes that the forthcoming report represents the views of serious people finally stepping in to clear up what is—and is not—going on.

“I expect much discussion and information about the real issues of unidentified flying objects. But I do not anticipate it will have much that will please the UFO enthusiasts,” West says.

WAIT AND SEE

One person who is taking a “wait and see” attitude about the upcoming report is Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, a research scientist in planetary studies at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The history of scientific studies of UAP in the U.S. is not limited to the recently released video snippets, which is a good reminder to avoid painting the whole phenomenon with one broad brush, he says. Additionally, this is not a U.S.-specific issue, nor is it limited to observations by U.S. armed forces.

“There may not be a single explanation to all such observations. What I would suggest is that we not leap to any conclusions when the findings of the report are made public,” Kopparapu says. “The report would be immensely helpful if the data that informed it are made publicly available so that more experts and scientists can look at it and hopefully reach a scientific consensus on the nature of some of the unexplained events. Otherwise, there will always be conspiracy theories shrouding, and inhibiting, a proper scientific investigation of UAPs.”

A similar view is held by Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the Center for UFO Studies, who says openness should be prioritized as much as possible in future investigations. “We don’t know whether the UFO problem is an intelligence one, due to foreign adversaries, but we do know, from its long history, that it is absolutely a scientific problem that deserves serious attention,” he says. “In a subject that has been too long ignored, downplayed and ridiculed, the government and scientific community should study UFOs openly and, importantly, with an open mind.”

WANTED: SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb says the significance of the UAP Task Force report will depend on the evidence it discloses, which at the moment remains mostly unknown. “But this focus on past reports is misguided,” he says. “It would be prudent to progress forward with our finest instruments rather than examine past reports. Instead of focusing on documents that reflect decades-old technologies used by witnesses with no scientific expertise, it would be far better to deploy state-of-the-art recording devices, such as cameras or audio sensors, at the sites where the reports came from and search for unusual signals.”

Loeb goes a step further, saying he is willing to sign up to help unravel the UAP/UFO saga. “Personally, I will be glad to lead scientific inquiry into the nature of these reports and advise Congress accordingly,” he says. “This could take the form of a federally designated committee or a privately funded expedition. Its most important purpose would be to inject scientific rigor and credibility into the discussion.”

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

For some seasoned investigators, such as William Hartmann, a senior scientist emeritus at the Planetary Science Institute, headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., the current dustup over an influential government report on UFOs is a reminder that, eventually, everything old becomes new again.

Hartmann was a photography consultant and a co-author of the University of Colorado UFO Project’s report Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Funded by the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1968, that investigative effort was led by physicist Edward Condon, and it had dismal effects on subsequent scientific investigations. The extensive study of UFOs, Condon and his co-authors concluded, is simply not a fruitful field in which to seek major discoveries and “probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.”

Reflecting on his work for the project, also called the Condon committee, Hartmann says that none of the photographic evidence he examined could establish anything extraordinary about the observed phenomena. “We proved that some of [the cases], including classic photos still being trotted out, were fake,” he says. “That fact alone makes it extremely difficult to apply straight scientific techniques because we know some, not necessarily all, of the data we were given were carefully prepared to delude us. [That is] not quite like astronomy, where we can assume that the photons coming through our telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii are not put in there by a hoaxer.”

“To put it another way, if you think there could be a real alien spaceship among a pile of photos you are given, but you know that some of the photos are fakes, then it is very hard to prove that any single one of them is proof of an alien visitation,” Hartmann says. “I’d want to see multiple, clear photos or detections by witnesses who don’t know each other, from multiple cities, viewing from multiple directions, before getting very excited.”

Still, he adds that ever since his experience working on the Condon committee, he cannot escape “the feeling that there may be electromagnetic phenomena in the atmosphere that we still don’t understand.”

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

Sarah Scoles is author of the recently published book They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers. Although the report’s full details remain to be seen, she senses it will not be as revelatory as some hope.

“At various times during the 20th century, the military has undertaken studies of UFOs to determine, largely, whether what people are seeing represents a national security threat,” Scoles says. “This report doesn’t, then, seem seminal, because it’s doing a 21st-century version of that same thing.” That said, Scoles feels an unbiased analysis of available data could shed light on the true frequency of UAP observations—and perhaps on the characteristics and possibly identities of these sightings. “One problem with UFO/UAP research is that it often doesn’t resemble traditional scientific research in terms of rigor,” she says.

The task force report could quantify and analyze a wide swath of data, Scoles hopes, with the requisite background knowledge of sensor capabilities, current domestic and foreign military capabilities, and so on. If so, that would be a welcome change from previous high-profile studies, she concludes.

Where does this leave us? The truth, of course, is somewhere out there, whether or not it appears in the pages of the UAP Task Force report. But for now, the odds seem to be against the U.S. government knowing what it is, let alone revealing it anytime soon.

Experts Weigh In on Pentagon UFO Report

Author: Leonard David

Publication: Scientific American

Publisher: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc.

Date: Jun 8, 2021

Copyright © 2021, Scientific American, Inc.

 

Announcing that the Mysterious Radio program will be interviewing me about my first book entitled Extraterrestrial Communication Code on November 25 at 1:00 PM EST. The discussion will likely also include discussion on my Extraterrestrial Communication Group website, and my first live podcast interview with Stan Mallow, the Paranormal Yakker which premiered Nov 30, 2021. The Mysterious Radio interview will be made available to the public shortly thereafter. Stay tuned for an update on that.

In addition, my second book that is currently in progress will be entitled “Extraterrestrial Communication Angels” will be discussed. It is an exciting project that is somewhat of a sequel to my first book. This new project however, digs much deeper into the Biblically documented messages and sub-messages delivered by Angels and much more. There is a lot more to Angels and their messages and structure than most people realize. The book guides us directly to a means, method, time and location to make a new and different attempt to establish real-time and two-way communication with our friends not of this earth. As time permits, I will post up excerpts from this book on my website.

The Mysterious Radio podcast has scheduled an interview to discuss my first book – Extraterrestrial Communication Code published in February 2021. It will also include discussion of my up-coming book, Angel Communication Code. The interview is scheduled for this November 25^th at 01:00 PM.

 Mysterious Radio ranks in the top 1% of more than 4 million pod casts. They average over 1.3 million downloads per month with more than 89 million down loads since its inception. Mysterious Radio is a top rated podcast that conducts in-depth interviews with top scientists, journalists and researchers that dare to look way beyond the edges of our reality to analyze extraordinary events and claims. The show is hosted by “K-Town” who is a military veteran and produced by a small team out of Knoxville, TN. Some of their guests have included:

• Emmy Award-Winner, Linda Moulton-Howe

Linda Moulton Howe is an American investigative journalist and Regional Emmy award-winning documentary film maker best known for her work as a ufologist and advocate of a variety of conspiracy theories, including her investigation of cattle mutilations and conclusion that they are performed by extraterrestrials. She is also noted for her speculations that the U.S. government is working with extraterrestrials. Howe was a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM for 28 years, dating back to 2003.  Howe has been interviewed on Larry King Live specials, CNN; The O’Reilly Factor, Fox; Sightings and Strange Universe, Fox; NBC’s The Other Side; Britain’s Union Pictures, ITN and BBC; The Discovery Channel special Evidence On Earth; the NBC network special, Mysterious Origins of Man, and the History Channel television series Ancient Aliens.

• Pulitzer Prize Winner, Katherine Ellison

Katherine Ellison is an American author. With two colleagues, she won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. She has won other journalism prizes including the National Association of Hispanic Journalists first-place award.

 In 1997, the Inter American Press Association first-place award for feature-writing, won in both 1994 and 1995, the Latin American Studies Association Media Award, in 1994, the Overseas Press Club Award, in 1989, and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, in 1986.

Ellison has authored and co-authored seven books, including: “Loving Learning: How Progressive Education Can Save America’s Schools,” Square Peg: My Story and What it Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers, published by Hyperion Voice in March 2013; Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention, Hyperion Voice, 2010, The Mommy Brain: How motherhood makes us smarter (2005), The New Economy of Nature: The quest to make conservation profitable, Imelda: Steel butterfly of the Philippines.

This will be my second podcast interview. The first was with Stan Mallow, host of the Paranormal Yakker, Season 21 – Episode 31: https://paranormalyakker.com/2021/31.html

Thank you all for your on-going interest and support of the Extraterrestrial Communication Group. Remember to tune into the interview on Mysterious Radio on November 25^th at 01:00 PM.

2024 will be the 50^th anniversary of the “Arecibo Message” we shot out into the stars back in 1974.

To the best of my knowledge, there has been no verifiable response to that message. We have sent several messages out into the stars over the decades, and none have generated a response as far as we know. Some of the smartest people in the world continue on this quest every day using the most advanced technology we have; so one would have to believe that they must know at least something right? If making contact is proving to be very difficult, imagine how hard it is going to be to communicate. As we get closer and closer to contact, the question about meaningful communication becomes increasingly urgent.

As the technologies we have deployed to learn about the universe have advanced in recent years, astrophysicists have been able to discover the past and current presence of water on other planets and / or moons; the prerequisite for life “as we know it”. The probability that at least one of these billions of planets supports intelligent life is good enough to warrant all the time and money being invested.

In March 2022 an international team of researchers headed-up by Jonathan Jiang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory published a paper on arXiv.org entitled “A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects,” by Jonathan H. Jiang et al. Preprint posted online March 4, 2022 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). The arXiv site is an on-line library  holding over two million articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering, systems science, and economics.

The Beacon in the Galaxy article is intended to be an introduction to mathematics, chemistry, and biology as they relate to design of the Arecibo message and other past attempts at contacting extraterrestrials. In my Book “Extraterrestrial Communication Code” (ECC); the focus is about finding (not sending) an ET created message and responding to it at the right time, in the right direction and from the correct location. This all means that the scientific community is coming to the realization that we need to change / improve our methods and thinking on this subject.

The Beacon in the Galaxy paper includes a detailed plan for the best time of year to transmit the message and also proposed a dense ring of stars near the center of our galaxy as good target at which to shoot. The proposed transmission includes newly designed instructions intended to help extraterrestrial listeners find us.

“The motivation for the design was to deliver the maximum amount of information about our society and the human species in the minimal amount of message,” Jiang says. “With improvements in digital technology, we can do much better than the Arecibo message in 1974.”

The problem always begins the same simple things. What to say and how to say it? After that, the problem becomes how, when, to where in space and from where on earth do we send the message.

There are some fairly grand assumptions we make about the development and transmission of our current “Message in a Bottle” approach to establishing contact and then communication with intelligent extraterrestrial life:

1. If our message to the extraterrestrials is received by a radio telescope, that life must therefore have similar knowledge of physics and mathematics.

2. If item 1 is true then it is reasonable to expect that these extraterrestrials understand prime numbers, binary code and that the concept of numbers is nearly universal.

The way we have chosen to illustrate numerals is entirely arbitrary. This is why many attempts, including “Beacon in the Galaxy,” have designed their message as a bitmap which is a way to use binary code to create a pixelated image. The concept is reasonable however; the messages we have composed and delivered are much too complex.  It was scientist Frank Drake that originally developed a binary / bitmap message for the Arecibo transmission in 1974. He sent his binary message in the regular mail to some colleagues which included several Nobel Prize winning scientists.  Not a single one of them one of them was able to understand the message. Only one figured out that the binary was meant to be a bitmap. If some of the smartest humans on earth struggled and failed to understand this form of encoded message, how can we expect that an extraterrestrial would do any better. ECC makes this point as it relates to the “Scientific Method”. The Scientific Method demands that we revise the experiment and this is the nuts and bolts of ECC.

Douglas Vakoch is the president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence International (METI), which is a nonprofit focused on researching how to communicate with other life-forms. In 2017 Vakoch and his colleagues sent the first interstellar message transmitting scientific information since 2003 to a nearby star. Like all the other messages we have sent, it was coded in binary. This message however, avoided bitmaps for a message design that explored the concepts of time and radio waves by referring back to the radio wave carrying the message. This was a different method largely based on 2003 Cosmic Call broadcast from the Yevpatoriaradio telescope in Ukraine. The 2003 message featured a custom bitmap “alphabet” created by physicists Yvan Dutil and Stéphane Dumas as a proto-alien language that was designed to be resistant to transmission errors.

After an initial transmission of a prime number to flag the message as artificial, Jiang’s message uses the same alien alphabet to introduce our base-10 numeral system and basic mathematics as a foundation. Then the message uses the spin-flip transition of a hydrogen atom to explain the idea of time and mark when the transmission was sent from Earth, introduce common elements from the periodic table, and reveal the structure and chemistry of DNA. There is more to the message but the point is this: The message is too damn complicated to decode at the other end. It’s like these super smart people just can’t help themselves.

ECC takes a different and fresh approach:

1. Trying to generate an original and grossly overcomplicated message into a random location millions of light years away are probably a waste of time for several reasons.

2. It is safe to say ETs have visited earth and observed humans. They probably still do. ETs probably left a coded map to where they came from and / or where they went. Humans have always done this here on earth so why would ETs not to the same or similar.

3. If we find the code / map and message, then we repeat it back, the ETs will know we found it, understood, it and are capable of communication.

4. The ET map / Code presented in ECC includes:
   1. The message itself that we need to repeat back (2-way communication principal)
   2. When to send the message with respect to solar events here on earth.
   3. From where to send the message (a probable wormhole location). The distances are too great to send / receive messages without the use of a wormhole.

The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico was destroyed in 2020. Jiang and his colleagues have proposed sending their message from either the Allen Telescope Array in northern California or the Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in China.

The problem with that is both of these radio telescopes are only capable of listening for and not sending messages. Jiang acknowledges that outfitting either telescope with the equipment required to transmit the message would be difficult and costly but it is possible. He says he and his co-authors are discussing ways to work with researchers at FAST do achieve this however; they are not in direct contact with China on this matter at this time.

Let’s assume that someday soon contact is made using the universal language of math. What do we do next? Communicating with math is only going to get us so far. We will need to communicate with these extraterrestrials. It is entirely possible that the intellectual / evolutionary gap is just too big. We can communicate with certain animals on earth to some low level of understanding but there are limits. We can teach a dog or a dolphin to perform certain behaviors for us and they get a reward for doing the trick. We can’t ask a dog or a dolphin to read a book or solve an algebraic expression. These are human creations and we assume aliens are similar to us in this way but what if they are not? People can learn to speak different languages but what if extraterrestrials have evolved beyond audio language. Maybe they communicate telepathically with each other and don’t even have vocal chords. Are we prepared for that contingency – probably not? How worried about his should we be at this juncture? We can’t learn the language of a species we have yet to contact right? Do we really need a special language to communicate with extraterrestrials?

In May of 2018, a radar facility in Tromso Norway focused its antennas on GJ237b, which is a potentially habitable exoplanet approximately 12 light-years from Earth. Over the course of three days, the radar transmitted messages toward this planet. Each message was comprised of a variety of short songs and instructions about how to interpret the message songs.

This was the second iteration of “Sonar Calling GJ273b”, an interstellar messaging project by the nonprofit METI International . This second broadcast was notable for using modified extraterrestrial language developed by the physicists Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas in the late 1990s.

All of the previous formal messaging attempts have taken basically the same approach.  Teach numerals and basic arithmetic first. Recent insights in neurolinguistics however, argue that this might not be the best way to attempt communication with extraterrestrials.

The world’s first interstellar communication system, the lingua cosmica, or Lincos, set the standard for all subsequent attempts by placing basic math at its core. Designed by the Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal in 1960, Lincos inspired several other mathematicians and scientists to try their hand at designing extraterrestrial languages. Each system is ultimately an attempt at solving a remarkably complex problem: How do you communicate with an intelligent entity you know nothing about?

The question leads down the path of understanding the nature of intelligence itself. Humans are the only species on Earth endowed with advanced mathematical ability and a fully-fledged capacity for spoken and written language, but are these requirements of intelligence. Is there a common feature of intelligence that is universal? We know that other animals on earth can communicate with each other but it is not the same as human language as far as we know. 

Scientists, mathematicians, theologians and scholars have all struggled with these sorts of questions for hundreds of years.  Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner once observed, mathematics is “unreasonably effective” at describing the natural universe, which has led a significant contingent of mathematicians to conclude that math is baked into the fabric of reality. From this perspective, mathematics isn’t something produced by the human mind so much as something the human mind discovers.

Most interstellar communication systems were designed around this conclusion. The goal isn’t to teach ETs about addition and subtraction because they already know mathematics. The purpose is for us to show them how humans code numbers as symbols. Then they can build up to more complex ideas.

It is a convenient and defensible solution to a very difficult problem. It all relies on the giant assumption an extraterrestrial is “human-like in the way they think.  If in fact extraterrestrials do think in a similar way to humans, do they also have some kind of human-like language?

That was where Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, two of the progenitors of artificial intelligence, landed after they became interested in interstellar communication. Both Minsky and McCarthy had a deep interest in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which they realized had a lot in common with their own search for artificial intelligence. They argued that extraterrestrials are likely to have language because language is an ideal solution to the fundamental problems faced by any intelligent species such as constraints on time, energy, and resources in general.

The more complex question is will their language will be similar to our own. Will their language, however communicated, obey the universal grammar, the hierarchical, recursive structure that linguist Noam Chomsky has argued is the deep structure common to all human languages. Although languages tend to be analogized as a form of software running on the hardware of our brain, recent work in neurolinguistics suggests that language—and the universal grammar—is actually an expression of the hardware itself.

Several brain imaging studies have shown that the deep structure of human language manifests in our neural activity. When people are taught fake rules for either a made-up or real language, their brains respond differently than when they use actual languages (whether familiar to them or not). These findings suggest that the shared attributes of natural languages might be encoded in how neurons connect. In other words, our faculty for language may be inextricably linked to the structure of our brain.

If extraterrestrials do have a language similar to ours, that might imply they also have a functionally equivalent neurobiology. To say aliens might think like us and have language is one thing, but to argue they have brains like ours pushes the concept to the limit but it might not be as crazy as it sounds.

Biology is a slave to the laws of physics, which puts constraints on the trajectory of evolution. Astrobiologist Charles Cockell makes this argument in his recent book, The Equations of Life, in which he points to the remarkable similarities across species on Earth, from the fact that life is cellular and holds the same four nucleotides, to the structure of an eye or a wing. This is not to say that evolution is deterministic as random events like asteroid impacts and genetic mutations still happen, but that the number of evolutionary end points is not without limits.  

It is reasonable to expect that an extraterrestrial planet will be quite a bit different from earth, and the species there would have adapted accordingly. The course of evolution however, will still be bound by the same physical laws, and they will face the same fundamental constraints on time, energy, and resources. So it is reasonable to assume that extraterrestrial evolution might arrive at similar solutions to these common problems, such as a brain capable of developing hierarchical, recursive languages.

If that’s the case, then the best way to communicate large amounts of information may not be painstakingly designing artificial languages from scratch, but sending a lot of natural language text, such as an encyclopedia.  If ET has developed its own AI, it could potentially decipher the structure of a natural language message.

Natural language processing algorithms on Earth don’t really understand the meaning of the text they analyze. They are blindly manipulating symbols and aliens may still need some kind of extraterrestrial language to connect some of the symbols of human language to their meaning. But as on Earth, the best way to start an interstellar conversation might simply be saying “hello.”

This article is adapted from Extraterrestrial Languages by WIRED staff writer Daniel Oberhaus. It was released on October 22 by MIT Press.

References

1. Daniel Oberhaus. Researchers Made a New Message for Extraterrestrials. Scientific American. March 30, 2022

Daniel Oberhaus is a science writer based in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was previously a staff writer at Wired covering space exploration and the future of energy. His first book, Extraterrestrial Languages (MIT Press, 2019), is about the art and science of interstellar communication.