Page 38 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - June 2015 Edition

38 Extraordinary Claims
Extraordinary claims
By R.P. NETTELHORST
The Jerusalem Post
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence.” So said Carl Sagan. Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle put these words in the mouth of
his character, Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of
the Four: “How often have I said to you that
when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must
be the truth?”
Many people believe in extraordinary
things. Take UFOs for instance. “UFO” is
simply an abbreviation for “Unidentified Flying
Object” Most people, when they use the word,
don’t use it for an airplane they don’t recognize.
Instead, when people say “UFO” they mean
“alien space craft.”
Most scientists are very skeptical about
the existence of UFO’s. How come?
Jerry Pournelle, the noted science fiction
author, has enjoyed an interesting life. He has a
PhD, he’s worked in politics, and he’s worked in
the defense industry for Boeing and had a rather
high security clearance. He does not believe in
UFO’s. He’d like to, of course. Most scientists
and most science fiction writers would love
nothing more than to find real live aliens. But
Jerry Pournelle relates an interesting story that
illustrates his reasons for skepticism.
During the Cold War there were reports
of UFOs in Chile and Peru witnessed by
thousands. And there was even a government
conspiracy and cover-up related to the incident.
There are treaties in place that stipulate civilization is unlikely to have large numbers of
that no nation may place weapons in orbit and
no nation may build or test orbital bombardment
systems. This was also generally interpreted to
exclude what’s known as fractional orbital
bombardment systems, abbreviated with the
acronym, FOBS. What is an FOBS? An FOBS
is a weapon that is launched into Earth orbit, but
is then de-orbited and made to re-enter the
atmosphere before it makes a complete circuit
around the globe. The Soviets thought they
could launch a missile into orbit, swing it
around the South Pole and then deorbit it so it
came at the US from our southern border and
thus avoid all our early warning systems which
were watching for Soviet missile launches from
the north. One day they decided to develop and
test their system, despite the treaties, and they
had their dummy missiles re-enter the
atmosphere over South America. They hoped
no one would notice.
Unfortunately, those re-entering dummy
warheads were seen by tens of thousands of
people in Peru and Chile, making it impossible
to simply dismiss all the reports as
hallucinations. So the KGB quickly concocted
an explanation. They spread UFO stories and
even made up tales of aliens being spotted.
Meanwhile, our government didn’t want
the Soviets to know just how much we knew
about their experiments. So the CIA did nothing
to counter the Soviet rumors. Thus, the test was
covered up by both the Soviets and the
Americans, each for their own reasons, but with
the same result: people believed they had seen
“real” UFO’s.
So, when people report they have seen
“UFO’s” or been abducted by aliens, or find
crop circles, or mutilated cattle, most scientists
are going to first consider mundane
explanations for what people are reporting.
Occam’s razor is an important principle for
science: the idea that given a variety of
competing theories to explain something, the
simplest theory that covers all the facts is more
likely to be correct than a more complicated
theory. A corollary to Occam’s razor is that a
mundane explanation is more likely to be
correct than an extraordinary one.
Although science fiction authors and
scientists would love it if aliens showed up, they at first realize he captured something
know the odds are against it. First, the universe
is extraordinarily large. Even if there are
billions of inhabited planets, which is quite
probable, the distances between the worlds is so
large that getting from planet to planet is
beyond any current or projected technology.
Star Trek notwithstanding, not only don’t we
have the engineering needed to travel between
the stars, we don’t even have a theory that
would make it possible. To go faster than the
speed of light requires overcoming some very
well-established physical laws that tell us it’s
impossible.
Even given some breakthrough allowing
travel between the stars in a reasonable time
frame, there are billions of stars—400 billion
just in this galaxy—and billions of habitable
planets. Space travel is expensive and hard,
even for the basic sort of travel we do now just
in our solar system. So any space faring
starships, and the frequency of travel is not
likely to be large, either. So what are the odds
that anyone would visit our particular planet
even once, let alone the dozens of times every
year they would have to if all the UFO reports
are of extraterrestrial origin?
While I suppose it is possible that some UFOs
are actual alien visitations, more mundane
explanations seem preferable at this point. []
Wormhole Appearance is
Connected with Large
Hadron Collider’s
Operation
Is the uncanny image of an unidentified object
taken over Netherlands be the first ever photo of
a wormhole or portal to another dimension?
Dutch camera-toting Harry Perton was
snapping stormy evening skies in his homeland
Groningen, when he fired the shutter at a flash
in the horizon that some people believe may be
a wormhole, akin to a black hole.
Wormhole in physics is a mysterious
hypothetical scientific theory that there is a
gateway in space-time to another part of the
universe or dimension.
When he took the picture, Perton did not
extraordinary, believing the flash to be
lightening.
Upon reviewing the shots at home, he
saw the strange semi-translucent thing shaped
like an inverted jellyfish or toadstool.
Though it is not the first UFO shaped
like a jellyfish captured on camera, it’s the
clearest so far.
A frenzy of speculation ensued after it
was posted online, including whether it may be
an evidence of wormholes, alien visit or a
religious warning.
A commenter said, “That’s a portal, it
allows a craft to travel from one end of the
universe to the other in a matter of seconds.
Someone made a mistake when entering our
system and basically got caught. What you’re
seeing is a craft entering not leaving.”
“It’s a wormhole,” another deduced.
While some speculated it may be the
restarting of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
at twice its original power.
The LHC is a large atom smasher
apparatus scientists use to unlock the universe’s
secrets that includes the existence of parallel
universes.
Though critics fear it has tampered too
much with the laws of physics, creating a
wormhole or manmade black hole.
Other online posts guessed it probably
was a sonic fighter jet boom, or even a mark of
the Second coming.
However, the majority of the posters
offered a mundane reason that it was only a lens
flare as the camera was pointed towards
the sun.
Perton is skeptical, believing it was probably a
meteorological trick of light. []
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