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The UFO community is buzzing about political disclosures that may (or may not) be on tap in 2011.
What do WikiLeaks and mass bird die-offs have in common? Both anomalous phenomena have been linked in with the popular fascination with unidentified flying objects and the prospects for alien contact — all of which adds to a rising, under-the-media-radar buzz over unexplained phenomena.
The buzz is evident in the recent voting for the top space story of 2010: The past year's spate of UFO reports received the most votes in our unscientific end-of-year news poll. That doesn't prove anything ... except that there's a continuing level of interest in the UFO phenomenon. That interest is reflected as well in the results from opinion polls, the airing of TV shows such as "V" and the appetite for books such as "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record."
Last month, at the height of the disclosures of confidential U.S. government files, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said there would be "references to UFOs" in yet-to-be-published sections of files — contributing to the long-running rumblings that the White House would soon make some admissions about alien contact.
The past week's mass deaths of birds in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Sweden have also sparked speculation that invisible UFOs or stealth research projects were behind the die-offs. The reality is likely to be much more mundane: Statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that wildlife die-offs occur every few days, although the New Year's Eve blackbird blast in Arkansas rates among the top five of the past year. An Arkansas fish kill is likely to be traced to disease, based on the clues gathered so far. (Check out Cristine Russell's posting to The Observatory at Columbia Journalism Review for an aflockalypse timeline.)
And what about the pending WikiLeaks disclosure? Well, several countries — including Britain, Canada, France and New Zealand — have been releasing their UFO files over the past few years, so it wouldn't be surprising if U.S. diplomats cabled back some of the inside scoop about those files as they were coming to light.
In the meantime, the UFO buzz is sure to pick up whenever there's an anomaly to chew over ... even if the anomaly turns out to be bogus.
Extraterrestrial disclosures of a more scientific sort are also on their way in the weeks ahead. Here are a few to watch for:
- The Royal Society's detailed report about what we should do if we ever detect extraterrestrial life is due to go online Monday, according to a status update from one of the report's editors. For a preview of the findings, check out British UFO expert Nick Pope's commentary from October.
- The American Astronomical Society is conducting its winter meeting in Seattle next week, and the program includes lots of references to super-Earths and other extrasolar planets, as well as the potential for identifying habitable environments. Could moons in the outer solar system have been "seeded" by meteorites from Earth or Mars? What's the latest in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence? Stay tuned for some thought-provoking studies in the days ahead.
- NASA's Kepler mission has identified more than 750 candidate planets, many of them smaller than Neptune and approaching the size of Earth. The $600 million mission has already turned up some weird planetary systems, including a pairing of giant planets in constantly changing orbits. The next big release of data from the mission is due to take place on Feb. 1, and that will likely bring a fresh crop of revelations in the planet search. The preliminary buzz over the Kepler data has been going on for months. Now the big reveal is almost upon us. Aliens, schmaliens: This is the real deal.
More about the planet search:
- Join the worldwide planet quest
- How many alien Earths? More than expected
- How do you find life on an alien planet?
- Interactive: The search for other planets
- Interactive: The new solar system
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
Leave a Comment:
More likely than not, life is not confined to this little blue speck. Given the vastness of the Universe, there would be countless worlds with life. Of those, clearly some would be intelligent. However, the Universe is so vast, the chances of two intelligent civilizations for different world randomly bumping into each other is close to nil.
If there ever is contact it will be because an advanced civilization has an overwhelmingly existential reason to invest vast resources into finding another world that it can live on and it finds that world because another less intelligent civilization is stupid enough to let the rest of the Universe know where it is. The consequence would be the annihilation of the idiotic civilization that gave its location away.
It is in our own best interest to not reach out and touch another intelligence civilization. It will end badly for us.
Instead, we should content ourselves with terraforming worlds like Mars, currently devoid of intelligent life, for our own expansion within our safe neighborhood.
I disagree.
We've been broadcasting our presence for a long time. It's more likely they've known of our existence (if indeed they exist) well before we even conceived the notion that life elsewhere could exist.
We understand time, space, and gravity quite poorly and we know it. They don't necessarily have to invest vast amounts of resources to reach millions of light years. Interdimensional travel is very much possible, as is the notion that they've constructed sentient AI machines designed to search for life.
There's no reason to assume they think or act like us, and thus no reason to assume their immediate intent would be the destruction or enslavement of the human race.
They may not even find our planet suitable for living on if their form of life is not based on amino acids.
However, I do agree that we should continue to expand and try to terraform Mars. I just don't think we should worry about what they will do if they find us- assuming they haven't already.
I agree with Commonwealth.
If mankind carries his trend of exploration, salutation, domination, hatred, and greed to an extraterrestrial intelligent life form I just can't see anything good coming from it. Human beings have proven themselves to be nothing more than aggressive warmongering parasites to this planet. I would hate to see us trash another planets civilization for whatever riches they may have to offer. If there were ever a good reason NOT to meet up with extraterrestrials, it would be our own ignorance.
On the other hand, I also agree that we should make every effort possible to develop uninhabited planets for the welfare of our own future. Terraforming Mars is an excellent idea, and I believe we should make every effort possible to move forward in doing so as soon as possible.
I like the like the terraforming of Mars idea but that's probably 200 to 500 years off. For them finding us, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.
But your scenario is exactly how sentient life travels outward towards one another, be it in search of other sentient life or in search of other worlds on which to settle.
@ nobodies
Wouldn't it be faster if we use light to send information then sound? Isn't sound very slow compared to light?
Wouldn't it be better if we switched from listening for radio waves because it may still be quite some time before the radio waves reach us, to reading messages of light which would have already reached us?
Just a thought.
@ Robert Eastbrook
Radio is propogated via electrons which travel at the speed of light.
it all makes ense now, the dead birds, fish, aliens are preparing for invasion, and their queen, oprah, who looks an awful lot like jabba the hut, got her lapdog barak elected to help pave the way. I knew there was a reason his ears are so big, they're satelite dishes.
LMAO!!!
OMG... Reading some of these comments is... sigh....
Okay, let's start with some science.
1) Yes, we are broadcasting our existence, but the Inverse Square Law quickly comes into effect. The signal strength will be so low that they would not be able to pull it out of the noise. Let me explain. Take a piece of cardboard and cut a 1 inch square in it. Place it 1 inch from a bright LED light. take another piece of cardboard and place it 1 inch behind the one with the cut. You will notice that the square of light on it is 2 x2 inches. move that second board another inch away. The light will go to 4 x4 inches and be dimmer because the same amount of power is spread over much greater area.
2) The speed of light is the absolute maximum speed that anything can go. 300,000 Km/s in vacuum is the fastest anything can go. There is no friction in a vacuum to slow down the particles and Photons have no mass, so this means top speed. That does not mean that we will not find a way to bend this law. We use aerodynamics to skirt gravity. Maybe we can find something else...
3) Why would aliens come here? The second thing Europeans did when they found "The New World" was map it. (The first being killing/enslaving the natives to steal everything) We map the stars right now. We are currently mapping planets around those stars..
Dear writer of this propaganda-
Maybe you would be interested to look at the events surrounding January 7th, two days after you wrote this. There were videos and pictures taken in at least half of the states in the US, as well as several other countries, of MAJOR DAYTIME UFO activity. It very handily disproves all of your chicken-headed antics. And it also corresponds directly with the OPENLY PUBLICIZED mass-deaths of several areal and aquatic animals. The water and the sky...right where ufo's come from.
Maybe you should spend your time and energy more wisely, preparing for what is happening, rather than supporting your disinformation mongering overlords.
Interesting stuff. Maybe we're getting smart enough for disclosure
one of the problems dealing with Darwin and E.T. is that Darwin expects to find 'direct visual contact' .
the research project (link above) has discovered three distinct and provable references to light speed @ The Great Pyramid . The triple whammy proves to a certainty that E.T. has been here and that we , by comparison are ants.
check it out :
temple of solomon.org Reticulum.htg/Reticulum.htm
sneaky bitchez
Hmmmmm...let's see........
ancient alien theory or "god".......
my bet's on ancient aliens theories.
No doubt we have already and continue to be in constant contact with our fellow space creatures. I wouldn't be surprised in the least. For us to assume we are alone is foolhardy and incredibly arrogant.
...there's a bridge I'd like to sell ya
whoops
no putz-a-leer prize for you Alan.
The evidence of the UFO phenomenon doesn't rest entirely on a famous sighting or any group of them. It also rests on the reaction of the government/military . . . what they did in direct response and how their developments in the aviation field have been clearly influenced by it.
http://ufopartisan.blogspot.com/
xhamster.com
Its too bad that journalists who write scientific bent articles that dismiss the subject without doing any due diligence at even studying the phenomena get front page attention while the real story goes by the wayside. The point here is that there is and has been UFOs or objects that are unidentified which does not constitute aliens, per se but could be military flight tests. bolide meteors, space debris and have natural prosaic explanations. On the other hand, there is ample evidence from sheer volumes of released data from governments and still classified documents on the subject with credible witnesses making serious claims that something is indeed traversing our skies that does not have easy explanation. I would welcome a serious article by a journalist (like Laura Keene's recent book) to be written. What a refreshing story that would be. by the way, no one in the UFO world has tied Bird deaths to UFOs, only journalists who want to diminish the need for a serious study of the subject.
I've looked into some cases through the years, but it takes a lot more work to track down the cause of an anomalous phenomenon than to note that it's anomalous (and then assume it's an alien spaceship). Leslie Kean did write a serious commentary for us, by the way, which is linked above. Here's the link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38977500/ns/technology_and_science-space/
Also, I'm pretty sure the only reason why journalists are talking about the UFO angle is because the UFO folks are bringing it up:
http://www.ufodigest.com/forum/1000-dead-birds-beebe-arkansas
It would be naive of anyone to think the existence of races and species outside of our own is an impossibility, Mr. Boyle. I am not implying that you are part of that naivety, but articles like this further close the mind of an already close-minded America to those possibilities. Ultimately, it generates a mass negative opinion of the people who revel in the excitement of the more than mundane. And being that the story is coming from a supposed credible source, it even furthers that divide.
Don't you think it is possible that there are people out there who believe in entities and forces outside of our planet who don't take the supposed "nut-job" approach? Do journalists chomp at the bit for these stories, and then post a pompous article making ALL those who take an interest in this, albeit nut job or regular schmo, out to sound unreasonable?
It's funny. I see more articles and news stories where writers, analysts and news anchors bring up the story in a satirical manner. Laughter and jokes are always part of the equation when these stories come out. A responsible journalist would take the approach of a true debunker if they wanted to debunk something. A responsible journalist would also mention the years and years of misinformation the public has been fed about events involving phenomena, ufos, extra terrestrials, etc. How come articles are only written when people are made out to look like a bunch of bafoons when something seemingly extraordinary occurs? That isn't fair to those of us who actually take a scientific and research approach.
Alas, it is not surprising that the mainstream media, who typifies everything negative in our society, would take this approach.
Chris,
i think you need to check your figures. I do not remember the numbers, but I saw a poll that said more than 1/2 of Americans believed in aliens.
Chris - They laughed at people who thought the world was round. Give it time.
Anyone who has actually "seen" an unidentifiable object or being is going to believe they exist. The fact that close minded people refuse to accept the possibility that the things those people saw exist doesn't make them "not" exist.
Two years before sputnik was launched I was laying in our yard watching the night sky for meteors (I was 10 years old at the time). I spotted an object that I thought at first to be a relatively dim star, but it was moving slowly in an Easterly direction. It moved from an angle approximately 60 degrees West to a position that was almost directly above me. At that point the object which was comparable to a dimly lit star, made a 90 degree right turn (from my point of view) and continued briefly in a Southerly direction. It then made another 90 degree right turn and went an equal distance and then made another 90 degree right turn and continued to the point where it made it's first 90 degree turn.
In effect, the object completed a perfect square without altering speed. The turns were sharp right angle turns. When the object got to the position of the first right angle turn it "appeared" to stop and then slowly fade from view. The optical comparison of that fading would be that of a satellite passing into the shadow of the Earth as it moves along it's orbit, but this object appeared to be stationary in space as it faded from view.
Once again, this happened before the existence satellites. I have no idea what this object was, but it was in controlled flight, and made maneuvers that I doubt are even possible today with our current technology. It had the appearance similar to that of a modern day satellite as far as the "apparent" distance from Earth and brightness, but the speed at which it was traveling was about half that of a current satellite.
Did that affect my opinion on the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life? Yep. Do I care if anyone believes me? Nope.
This story leaves out the bird deaths in nearby Louisiana entirely. Tisk tisk. Surely, this story has more to it than some fireworks.
I think it's more fun to believe in UFO's. Keeps life interesting. Besides.. with all the stars that exist within all the galaxies within the universe. It's hard to imagine that life doesn't exist out there beyond our little blue planet. Also if you add in Quantum Physics with parallel universes and multi dimensions... hey.. anything is possible.
sigh, somebody has to be first though....
If there are UFOs, the people in Space station will be the first one to spot them. And, our satellites should have pick up some unusual subject flying...
UFO is still something exist, physically existence. And, they still either fly or walk or land...
We have ozone hole...
@ Billie-2352729 bce
The space station and the space shuttle crews have already seen them.
No if they are flying nighthawk stealth UFOs. :-)
I keep looking around for a species that obviously does not "fit" the environment of this planet......I think it is arayan man. asian man seems close to other primates, same for most others...but only one species has been hellbent on changing the planet for it's own wonder. I wonder what we did to finish off the reptiles, at least in effective terms......nay, I say we broadcast..loud and clear, and when some angelic civ is dumb enough to answer...it's us, viking Konqerer all over again (replete with ubuntu)....even if 80 percent of us protested, you know some bushnutite will rise to power again and somehow we get a hitler every 100 years or so, sometimes worse than others...thank god george was only partially idiot otherwise a lot more id ots would of held up there right hand to whatever...
on a more serious note, the older civs are towards the older inner part of the galaxy...out here in the arms we are in younger, more segregrated areas of the galaxy, we are going to find that jumping across the arms is tougher than staying inside the galaxy barreir due to pressure differentials...I bet the first craft to REALLY leave the galaxy will swept up in a fast moving interstellar gust and dissapper faster (all unexpectedly, the norm for our "intelligence") ..the older civs may have less metals than us and no matter what, will see in different energies than us, mimiking thier sun....the overall conclusion is that the greenbank formulae breaks down as civs begin to build god in thier image (robots)....robot probes probably visit here ever so often, rule out any significant intellegent life, or better yet, report back that the dolphins have not yet evolved opposable thumbs...but soon, soon. In the meantime we got hoaxsters eager to make a buck so keep looking for the tea cup in every darn "saucer" photo. And as always, I got the grill on, with or with out baby rays bbq sauce, bet they taste just like chickin'!! I think Heinlien had some of the best insights as to alien thought and apperance...but I know I am right, bipedal, looks like yoda and smells like hell, talks in riddles and really could careless what humans want.. Well it's either that or pine trees, certain kinds of pine trees could survive a wide extreme, more so than tribolites....our future galactic leaders are trees..go figure..
Dear Mr. Boyle:
Aaaargggghhh! Yeah, a lot of UFO material currently circling the net is the result of misidentification, lack of understanding of basic science, outright hoax, or folklore. Nevertheless, credible people have seen incredible things, including members of my family and me, who aren't gullible, self-promoting, or stupid. Something's going on up there, and even if it's all attributable to military/intelligence/industrial complex activities, should be taken at least somewhat seriously. That poll IS telling you something, you just don't want to hear it. After all if you wrote a piece that gave UFOs some weight, you'd be jeopardizing access to some sources and that future Pulitzer or Peabody or network anchor slot. To get ahead, don't make waves. Right?
I said in the last discussion on the subject of UFO's that I think the term is a trap. Unidentified Flying Objects. Flying seems to imply intelligent controlled flight. And object suggests an intelligently created physical machine. We should really be saying unidentified lights in the night sky. I think we as humans hate not knowing ... and perhaps thus our fascination with the WikiLeaks phenomenon. Or perhaps we are just fascinated by the wierd and the unknown.
They have already been among us for quite some time. Why are they here? It's simple they are trying to prevent us from destroying our planet. Just as what we do that harms our environment the same is for the universe. If we destroy our planet it will have an effect on the rest of the universe so they have been here trying to do what they can to make us understand that not only are we endangering ourselves but the universe itself. If the the danger becomes too imminent then they will have to interfere and try to save the planet themselves but they would prefer to educate us and let us save our own planet without them interferring. The UFO visits are just for those here to communcate and update their species as to the progress. They aren't really different from us other than being taller and highly intelligent.
@ Ray Smith - all humans are from the same species. Either we are all aliens or none of us are. We only look different because of our geographic locations and selective breeding or gene swapping based on who we lived near all those 1000's of years before we could easily jump countries as we can now. Eventually we will all pretty much be one big mixed bag of races as a good majority (and growing every day) of us already are (besides the isolated tribes of humans that don't have the human traffic in and out that the rest of the world does).
@ Big G - I like what you have to say, but don't get too caught up in the label rather than the information behind it. I agree that UFO is a very general term, but the description of said UFO (and a quick character judgment in most cases) should tell you whether or not something is probably a light anomaly or something worth looking into. The very fact that there even is classified information on UFO's makes me wonder "what's to hide?". Same with the "Wikileaks phenomenon"...I highly doubt that people's interest lies in Wikileaks because it's Wikileaks and exciting but more to the fact that the information coming from them is something that many people believe we have a right to know about. We will always be fascinated by the weird and unknown, but knowledge about the universe we live in and what wrong-doings any government is up to should not be among that list.
Aliens exists and they are more intelligent than we are which is why they don't visit Earth. We annoy them.
They often complain about how we took such prime real estate (the Earth) and turned it into a nasty, rundown slum. They are simply waiting for us to wipe ourselves out, and then they will land on the earth, redevelop it, and sell it off to rich aliens as vacation and retirement homes.
FINALLY! Someone with a logical argument. I vote for this one. Will, you da man!
Just let the people decide for themselves. Telling all of us to just stick to a few "official" sites isn't going to work anyhow is it? I don't see the point of this article for merely stating an obvious fact.
that's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
The truth is out there.
Some compelling thoughts posted here. I, too, believe there are civilizations beyond our world & have been fascinated with the whole UFO phenomena, but with media saturation and conspiracies abounding, it's no wonder so many views exist. Let's break it down: we who visit this particular site have a vested inborn interest and fascination of wanting to know if this planet we inhabit is the only planet with life or are there others. We believe there are others and we like to share this belief. Now, as science/astronomy fans, we have some knowledge that the universe has an immense size consisting of millions & millions of galaxies each containing billions of stars and that a vast number of those stars mathematically have a chance of harboring worlds conducive for life in some form, whether intelligent or not, to exist. The only way will ever know of ET's existence will either be direct contact in front of many witnesses, whether they come here or we go there, or mountains of statisical data, concurred by the entire scientific community of technical readings of another world's spectra that yes, we have found proof of an exoplanet containing conclusive evidence of life existing or has existed there(depending upon that world's distance). I, like you, would love nothing more than to know that truth. Until then, I'm afraid we have each other to deal with.
Its funny how most posters who say Aliens do not visit earth on a daily basis. Ignore the evidence. I mean Apollo astronauts said they encountered Alien space craft on there moon trips. US Air force setup project blue book back in the 60's. They hired J. Allen Hynek to lead the project because he was a prominent astronomer who did not believe in UFO's but after 10yrs of research Mr Hynek stated the UFO phenomena is real and Mr Hynek himself setup MUFON. This from a man who did not believe in UFOS before heading up the BlueBook project. There are thousands of reports and pictures from Air force pilots and Navy Pilots men trained to spot aircraft. We have aircraft radar confirmation, ground radar confirmation, gun camera chase photo confirmation, eye witness confirmation over military bases with 100s of people seeing the same object and jets chasing the objects. You can even go back further in time Japan, China, Europe, read the diary's of Alexander the great he "states during there campaign against the Persians the city was surrounded, what he called flying shields swooped down from the sky scaring the men and horses scattering them everywhere. It took 4 days to gather the troops and continue the attack. This is also documented on the Persian side" As for satellite we have captured UFO's coming into our at atmosphere in the UV spectrum based on the data 10 to 20 million per year NASA's Polar satellite. Nasa tried to say it was blocks of ice but water or ice would show up in the visible spectrum these objects only show up in the UV. Another data point you can check look up "ununpentium" none as element 115. This element was discovered in 2003. Now look up Bob Lazar he was in the media 1989. Bob said he worked for S-4 on alien space craft. He said the key to their propulsion system was element 115 which he described some of its properties. Bob was ridiculed and called a liar because scientist said element 115 does not exist so his story did not hold water. 12 years later element 115 is discovered. This provers Bob was correct he did work on the craft and element 115 is the key. Aliens visit this planet and others in our solar system on a daily basis they have trade\ business like any other civilization and come here for what ever it is the trade. We are being lied to by Nasa and our government to keep this silent. William Rutledge (look up "interview with William Rutledge) summoned it all up and I leave you with his question 27 in the interview.
Interview with William Rutledge
There is a question you didn't ask for and I'm always surprised that nobody does. This could be your question 27 - why is it necessary to hide UFOs, why disinformation, why putting all this under the carpet? It's question of economics. All currencies on Earth are based on the value of gold. Not many citizens know that but gold is an extraterrestrial metal coming from the death of a star. When a star is dying, its mass is growing, atoms are compressed and when the star explodes, it spreads large amounts of gold in young solar systems. That's why gold is not a mineral to treat but a perfect, carbon free metal. This mean that it is the most common substance in the universe, no more value than a piece of plastic.
That's enough to put down all world currencies. Imagine also that an EBE says: "coffee has a good taste, rare in this galaxy", the only perspective of trading coffee through universe would displace the economic power to countries of the South in one day. You see, not a problem of panic, but simply a problem of economy.
My brother told me saw a ufo flying over his house, with Elvis piloting it and Michael Jackson in the tail-gunner's slot. I'm mildly skeptical, but do find credence in cmon-864012's post above. I had often wondered why obammy's ears were so big.
glenbo. Go to a site you are intellectually equipped for, starting with 2+2=? When your answer to that question is something other than a fraction- you still won't be intellectually equipped for this comment thread.
Space is still mysterious and the human imagination is boundless. Those two factors insure that the UFO question will never die. I just hope that when they come they bring some more elephants and tigers with them. We are almost out. Hey, maybe they ARE elephants and tigers., in which case they will be very angry with us.
The reason why the UFO question doesn't die is the tremendous amount of data which dictates that unidentified flying objects exist. What are they and what intelligences are responsible? That is what we need to determine next.
Poor journalism, misinformation, and disinformation are not going to prevent unidentified objects from flying in our airspace.