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40 UFOs: Is This All There IS?

UFOs: Is This All There physicists and astronomers trying to poke out of technology.
the cocoon of present knowledge into the Still, we keep trying.
Is? unknown, to overturn Einstein and what passes Last fall when a strange object — an

for contemporary science. Lately, they haven’t interstellar asteroid now named Oumuamua —
gotten anywhere. was found cruising through the solar system,
Dennis Overbye The last time physicists had to deal with astronomers’ thoughts raced to the Arthur C.
faster-than-light travel was six years ago, when Clarke novel “Rendezvous With Rama,” in
Hey, Mr. Spaceman, a group of Italy-based physicists announced that which the object was an alien spaceship. Two
they had seen the subatomic particles known as groups have been monitoring Oumuamua for

Won’t you please take me along? neutrinos going faster than light. It turned out alien radio signals, so far to no avail.
they had wired up their equipment wrong. Meanwhile, some astronomers have
I won’t do anything wrong. So far Einstein is still the champ. But speculated that the erratic dimming of a star
surely there is so much more to learn. A lot of known as “Boyajian’s star” or “Tabby’s star,”
Hey, Mr. Spaceman, surprises lie ahead, but many of the most after the astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, could be
popular ideas on how to transcend Einstein and caused by some gigantic construction project
Won’t you please take me along for a ride? his peers are on the verge of being ruled out. orbiting the star. So far that has not worked out,
Transforming science is harder than it looks. but none of the other explanations — dust or a
So sang the Byrds in 1966, after strange radio While there is a lot we don’t know, there is also fleet of comets — have, either.
bursts from distant galaxies called quasars had a lot we do know. We know how to turn on our A pair of Harvard astronomers suggested
excited people about the possibility of computers and let gadgets in our pocket navigate last spring that mysterious sporadic flashes of
extraterrestrial intelligence. the world. We know that when physical objects energy known as fast radio bursts coming from
I recalled those words recently when zig and zag through a medium like air, as far far away are alien transmitters powering
reading the account of a pair of Navy pilots who U.F.O.s are said to do, they produce turbulence interstellar spacecraft carrying light sails.
were outmaneuvered and outrun by a U.F.O. off and shock waves. NASA engineers predicted to “Science isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of
the coast of San Diego back in 2004. Cmdr. the minute when the Cassini spacecraft would evidence,” the astronomer Avi Loeb said in a
David Fravor said later that he had no idea what dwindle to a wisp of smoke in Saturn’s news release from Harvard. “Deciding what’s
he had seen. atmosphere last fall. likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It’s
“But,” he added, “I want to fly one.” In moments like this, I take comfort in worth putting ideas out there and letting the data
His story was part of a bundle of material what the great Russian physicist and be the judge.”
released recently about a supersecret $22 million cosmologist Yakov Zeldovich, one of the fathers U.F.O. investigations are nothing new.
Pentagon project called the Advanced Aerospace of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, once told me. The most famous was the Air Force’s Project
Threat Identification “What science has already taken, it will not give Blue Book, which ran from 1952 to 1970 and
Program, aimed at investigating U.F.O.s. back,” he said. examined more than 12,000 sightings.
The project was officially killed in 2012, but Scientists are not the killjoys in all this. Most U.F.O. sightings turn out to be
now it’s being resurrected as a nonprofit In the astronomical world, the border swamp gas and other atmospheric anomalies,
organization. between science fact and science fiction can be Venus, weird reflections or just plain hoaxes.
Disgruntled that the government wasn’t very permeable, perhaps because many But there is a stubborn residue, a few percent
taking the possibility of alien visitors seriously, scientists grew up reading science fiction. And that resist easy explication, including now
a group of former defense officials, aerospace astronomers forever have their noses pressed up Commander Fravor’s story. But that’s a far cry
engineers and other space fans have set up their against the window of the unknown. They want from proving they are alien or interstellar.
own group, To the Stars Academy of Arts & to believe more than anybody, and I count I don’t know what to think about these stories,
Science. One of its founders is Tom DeLonge, a myself among them. often told by sober, respected and professional
former punk musician, record producer and But they are also trained to look at nature observers — police officers, pilots, military
entrepreneur, who is also the head of the group’s with ruthless rigor and skepticism. For officials — in indelible detail. I always wish I
entertainment division. astronomers, the biggest problem with E.T. is could have been there to see it for myself.
For a minimum of $200, you can join not the occasional claim of a mysterious light in Then I wonder how much good it would
and help finance their research into how U.F.O.s the sky, but the fact that we are not constantly do to see it anyway.
do whatever it is they do, as well as telepathy overwhelmed with them. Recently I ran into my friend Mark
and “a point-to-point transportation craft that Half a century ago, the legendary physicist Mitton, a professional magician, in a restaurant.
will erase the current travel limits of distance Enrico Fermi concluded from a simple back-of- He came over to the table and started doing
and time” by using a drive that “alters the space- the-envelope calculation that even without warp tricks. At one point he fanned the card deck,
time metric” — that is, a warp drive going faster drive, a single civilization could visit and asked my daughter to pick one, and then asked
than the speed of light, Einstein’s old cosmic colonize all the planets in the galaxy in a her to shuffle the deck, which she did expertly.
speed limit. fraction of the 10- billion-year age of the Milky Mr. Mitton grabbed the deck and sprayed the
“We believe there are transformative Way. cards in the air. There was my daughter’s card
discoveries within our reach that will “Where are they?” he asked. stuck to a mirror about five feet away. How did
revolutionize the human experience, but they Proponents of SETI, the search for it get there? Not by any new physics. Seeing
can only be accomplished through the extraterrestrial intelligence, have been debating didn’t really help.
unrestricted support of breakthrough research, ever since. One answer I like is the “zoo As modern psychology and neuroscience
discovery and innovation,” says the group’s hypothesis,” according to which we have been have established, the senses are an unreliable
website. placed off-limits, a cosmic wildlife refuge. portal to reality, whatever that is.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for Another answer came from Jill Tarter, Something might be happening, but we
progress on telepathy or warp drive, but I agree formerly the director of research at the SETI don’t know what it is. E.T., if you’re reading
with at least one thing that one official with the Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “We haven’t this, I’m still waiting to take my ride. []
group said. That was Steve Justice, a former looked hard enough,” she said when I asked her
engineer at Lockheed Martin’s famous Skunk recently.
Works, where advanced aircraft like the SR-71 I f there was an iPhone sitting under a rock
high-altitude super-fast spy plane were on the Moon or Mars, for example, we would
designed. not have found it yet. Our own latest ideas for
“How dare we think that the physics we interstellar exploration involve launching probes
have today is all that there is,” he said in an the size of postage stamps to Alpha Centauri.
interview published recently in HuffPost. In the next generation, they might be the
I could hardly agree more, having spent size of mosquitoes. By contrast, the dreams of
my professional life in the company of some U.F.O. enthusiasts are stuck in 1950s