Page 31 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition
P. 31
A Word About Those UFO Videos 31
A Word about Those
UFO Videos
I’m an astrophysicist, but that
doesn’t mean I have a
motivation to debunk them
Continued from Page 30
As far as I can tell, the only thread
connecting these videos to anything
involving aliens is science fiction. We
have a long cultural history of telling
stories of advanced civilizations living
among the stars—civilizations that
have much faster spaceships than we
do, and that choose to use those
spaceships to come see us and buzz
around a bit. After all, if we had the
ability to visit planets around other impossible that hyperadvanced aliens
possibilities. We discuss them, and do
stars, we might do something similar. could come to visit us on Earth—being
the calculations, because we see a
careful for some reason to first evade
real, strange thing, out there in the
But that’s an argument about human every sky-monitoring system we have,
cosmos. So far, alas, it’s looking like
nature, not astrophysics. There is and leaving no observable trace other
ordinary planetary science can
nothing at all connected to our current than the confusion of a handful of Navy
explain the observations better than
understanding of the real world that pilots.
alien tech, but if other evidence
points us toward “technology of
comes along, we’ll jump on it.
intelligences originating from a I do think it’s incredibly unlikely, and I
different planet” as an explanation for think when starting with only a few
Meanwhile, we’re continuing to
things we see in the clouds. When grainy hard-to-interpret videos, the jump
search for aliens who aren’t
astronomers search for life out there in to aliens is so extreme that it would take
transmitting or building anything at
the universe, we start not with science something much more compelling than
all. The most likely way we’ll find
fiction, but with a logic grounded in what anyone has seen so far to get me to
extraterrestrial life is via the
what we know about the stars. even begin to walk down that road. Even
observation of exoplanets—those
if I wanted to spend the time to dig up
numerous planets orbiting other stars.
One thing we know: space is big. The Navy aircraft camera manuals and work
We’re just getting to the point where
distance to the closest star to our Sun, out the flight geometry, my reward
we can make detailed observations of
Proxima Centauri, is so large that even would likely be a long and tedious debate
the chemistry of exoplanet
light takes more than four years to cross with a dedicated audience spanning the
atmospheres. If we can directly image
the expanse, and the fastest spacecraft spectrum from those who think UFOs are
an exoplanet, or see it pass in front of
we’ve ever built would take more than a fun idea to people dedicated to proving
its star, we can search the spectrum of
70,000 years. Whatever tech an alien they’re real.
its light for signatures of chemical
civilization might have, it’s reasonable
balances that only biological
to assume they would take the short So, with apologies to those who would
organisms can produce, whether they
option first, and send an like me and my colleagues to leap into
be microbes or mushrooms or
electromagnetic signal. Or perhaps they these waters, I think for now most of us
megafauna.
would build some large, obvious, will be sticking to space. There’s a great
electromagnetic radiation–absorbing big universe out there, and a whole lot of
These studies are in their early stages,
structure in their own backyard. With worlds to choose from. Maybe one of
but the hunt for biosignatures is
programs like the Search for them holds something amazing. []
developing into one of the most
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI),
exciting projects in astronomy today.
we’ve searched for both. So far, no
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cosmos, the evidence will likely be in
the form of an unusual set of spectral
There have over the years been a few
lines seen in the stretched-out
tantalizing hints of things that perfectly
starlight reflecting off or filtering
legit astronomers have proposed might
through the atmosphere of a distant,
be alien constructions—a weird
untouchable world.
dimming by an otherwise well-behaved
star, for instance, or an interstellar
I don’t think it’s completely
asteroid. We are open to the www.beautifulmindcoffee.ca
