HARD EVIDENCE

Many excellent UFO researchers are locating and cataloging trace evidence of apparent extraterrestrial craft and other anomalous objects. While a significant amount has been recovered the fact remains that as yet we have no hard evidence that will convince the scientific community that UFOs are a real phenomena. A recent edition of The MUFON Journal stated "There is no scientific evidence for UFOs." Why? Simply because it has not been possible to definitively prove that the stuff recovered came from another otherworldly technology.

While we don't know what the military might have recovered, civilian researchers have so far not been able to recover from an alien crash site anything that points to an alien technology. Objects believed to be implants have been recovered. So has apparent debris from crashed or exploded craft. However the technology they may represent has not been penetrated. And always, the materials they are made of are found on Earth. They always will be.

The artifacts brought home from the Roswell crash by Major Marcel and witnessed by his son are described as being exceptionally light and strong. Foil like substances are described as being impervious to cutting tools and return to their shape when crumpled. It would be wonderful to see an analysis of these materials but any analysis that may exist is hidden in Army or Air Force archives. Nevertheless, I expect they are composed of elements found here on earth. The possibility of finding a material never before seen on this planet is unlikely.

All of the elements composing the Earth, The stars and planets, and even ourselves were forged in the heart of stars and launched across space in the explosion of super novas. These are the elements that compose all of the universe. They are the elements described in the periodic table. While new elements are still being discovered at Fermi and other institutions and more are expected to be found by the Large Hadron Collider these new elements lack the stability to survive decay more than a few milliseconds. The elements composing the alloys used in construction of an extraterrestrial; space ship must be stable. They must be elements found on Earth as well as every other part of the universe.

Recently Bill Birnes and his team of UFO Hunters searched the site at Aurora, Texas where a UFO was reported to have crashed on April 17, 1897. They found a significant amount of aluminum in the well where crash debris was reportedly dumped and on the surrounding land. Aluminum is an element. Today it is used extensively in the construction of aircraft. It was rare in the 19th century but it was being made. This aluminum could have been made on Earth or it could have been part of a space craft.

In his book Crash: When UFOs Fall From the Sky, Kevin Randle reports a case in South America of a witnessed explosion of a saucer. The debris found at the explosion site was magnesium. Another element commonly used on Earth in aircraft construction today. This magnesium was unusually pure and free of trace elements but it still was an element found on Earth. Magnesium, like all Earthly elements that make all of our materials, are also found in space.

What then will constitute scientific proof of UFOs? What is needed is an intact device or artifact from a UFO if not a complete space craft or a physical alien. Nothing else will provide sufficient proof.

©2010 David A. Henninger

IFOs

A frequent UFO report describes a luminous object performing tight maneuvers at night. The lights on the object do not conform to the red and green navigation lights and white landing lights of normal aircraft and the maneuvers appear to be too radical for an air craft piloted by a human being. Yet a relatively new mn made aircraft can account for this kind of report. The availability of bright, lightweight. LEDs has been embraced by radio controlled aircraft hobbyists. Most have equipped their model aircraft with navigation and landing lights in precise scale. A few. however, have installed very bright LEDs in unusual configuration on their models creating an anomalous appearance. These can be reported as UFOs by a casual observer who may be unaware that they are observing a radio controlled model.

RC hobbyists often fly their models at night now that light weight lighting is available. The models perform maneuvers in scale to their size which appear to be,, and in fact are, impossible for a manned aircraft. Of course RC aircraft must remain in the immediate vicinity of the controller on the ground to maintain line of sight and radio range.

An example of this kind of UFO appearing RC plane can be seen at the following link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOo3FIS4q-g

©2010 David A. Henninger

Orange Balls of Light

The most common type of UFO reported in Indiana this summer is the Orange Ball of Light or OBOL. OBOLs appear, as the name implies, as a bright orange sphere that seems to be burning or smoldering. They travel slowly and lazily across the sky usually with the wind and only last a minute or two. They seem, at least in the cases that I have investigated, to appear most frequently at night under cloud cover or overcast. Certainly some of these reports are distant airplanes slightly obscured by smog so that the navigation lights are blurred together. But many are sighted by reliable observers with excellent eyesight and with airplanes clearly visible in the same section of sky. Dozens of these have been reported this summer. Many more over the past several years.

Exactly what these objects are is a matter of debate within the UFO community. Some investigators believe that these are controlled devices or vehicles. Linda Moulton Howe has reported that flaming balls of light accompany cattle mutalations.

I suspect that OBOLs, at least the variety that appear in Indiana, are a natural phenomena, perhaps electrostatic in nature similer to ball lightening. Recently a number of new aspects of lightening have been verified by science. Lightening is now known to take huge etherial forms called elves, jets, and sprites that travel thousands of feet above a Thunderstorm . Lightnening might have other forms not yet identified.

There is also the possibility that OBOLs are related to earth lights, a phenomena not yet understood but beginning to get scientific recognition. Earthquake lights, which may or not be the same as earth lights, have been scientifically recorded both before and after an earthquake and are believed to be generated by geologic forces. None of these luminous bodies are fully understood.

So far we have no idea what OBOLS might be and we have no good clues. There have been many brief observations but few good pictures and even fewer good theories. Investigations continue.

©2010 David A. Henninger

Tiny UFOs in October

Indiana is being overflown by millions of tiny UFOs. They look like small bright spots in the clear blue sky Indiana is enjoying this week and are best seen in morning or evening.

Many species of smaller spiders will climb high in a tree and spread a net of webbing. The wind will take this like a kite and carry the spider for miles, sometimes hundreds of miles. This frequently happens shortly after a hatching so an observer might see dozens in an hour.

This afternoon I observed about fifteen. Most appeared as a bright fuzzy spot in the blue sky traveling in the direction of the wind and reflecting the sunlight. One or two were two or three bright spots connected by gossamer webbing making the whole thing resemble a creature in the first Poltergeist movie. truly an alien appearance.

Detailed information about this unusual trait of spiders can be found in Wikipedia. Search for ballooning (spiders).

©2010 David A. Henninger

My Sighting

The definition of a UFO is an object in the sky that cannot be identified. The old adage, proved by MUFON every day, is that 90 to 95 percent of all sightings are unrecognized or misidentified terrestrial phenomena or hoaxes. Its the remaining percentage that keeps the investigators at MUFON going and some of those cases are truly incredible.

I still don't know where to classify my first UFO.

Of course this is the UFO that I saw myself.

I was twelve years old. I had gone to the grocery store with my mother in her old '53 Chevy. We lived on the northwest side of Marion County in Indiana. since this was before UNIGOV it wasn't Indianapolis yet. In fact our house and the country road we were driving home on was surrounded by farm fields.

We were driving west when I saw it though the windshield. IT was a disk or sphere about the size of the full moon but not as bright, hanging low in the western sky. I thought for a moment that it was the moon but it was in the east behind me. Then I noticed that the object was descending faster than the stars. I watched it passing them. While this was happening we were traveling toward the object at forty miles an hour. My mother was always terrified of exceeding the speed limit. Before we reached the road we lived on the object finally disappeared behind the trees of a nearby woods.

I had already devoured two books by Frank Edwards, Stranger than Science and Strangest of All. I was excited and wanted to immediately go to where the object came down and investigate. My mother of course forbade this. I might of disobeyed her and sneaked out but I, at twelve, had no access to a vehicle and I had no real idea how far away the object really was. The matter remained unresolved.

The object appeared perfectly round and could have been spherical. It was illuminated from the inside but was easy to look at and not as bright as the moon. It took about five minutes to descend from about thirty degrees. All of this is from my memory. No measurements were taken.

The only plausible terrestrial explanation I can think of is an illuminated weather balloon. It would have to have a light source inside it that would illuminate it uniformly rather than on single side like a flashlight. In order to descend in the manner that it did it would have to be tethered and was reeled in. If this were true I would have expected it to wobble a little in the breeze. I bought several surplus weather balloons from Edmund Scientific when I was a kid and experimented with them. Even when filled with air they are the slaves of the slightest breeze.

I still don't know what I saw.

©2010 David A. Henninger

THE NEED FOR TRACE EVIDENCE

“No experiences, ordinary, everyday, usual or unusual, whether impressions, ideas, dreams, visions or memories, strange, bizarre, familiar, weird, psychotic, or sane, are objective facts.”

R. D. Laing

This statement may seem hard and intransient but it has to be when attempting to prove a scientific concept. It lies at the heart of the scientific method. Science, like it or not, requires hard facts and solid evidence. The abundance of sightings, witness reports, and unexplained experiences on file with MUFON hold little weight with mainstream science because they can’t be repeated. This is certainly not limited to the UFO phenomena. Every radical concept has been greeted with skepticism. Consider the theory of continental drift. It was first proposed that the continents were constantly on the move when one man recognized that North and South America fit neatly into the coastline of Europe and Africa. Further there were animal species and geologic formations common to both. The idea that every continent was floating on a sea of magma rather than solidly rooted to the Earth was radical to say the least and the theory while occasionally mentioned was not considered valid. Then, in the sixties, several things happened. First the ocean floor was accurately mapped by sonar and satellite radar showing the expansion plates and hot spots necessary for a regular motion of the Earths surface. Then maps were published showing the sea floor that graphically illustrated the ongoing action of continental drift. Finally satellite measurement allowed us to track the actual movement of the Earth’s surface exactly as predicted by the theory. Today continental drift, now called plate tectonics, is the working theory for understanding and predicting earthquakes. Solid evidence and facts, prevail.

It isn’t always easy. When the exploration of Australia began reports of the platypus were dismissed as ridiculous. A specimen was found and subsequently mounted by a taxidermist, the usual method of the day, and sent to England. Ripley, of believe it or not, reported how the scientists who examined it attempted to disassemble it to prove how it was faked. It took a living specimen to lay the matter to rest. And this is the standard that must be met. Victorian science had been faced with plausible fakes and simple misidentifications for years. Genuine looking and obviously organic unicorn horns were presented as proof of the unicorns existence that later turned out to be the horns of the no less exotic narwhale. Later the skull of Piltdown man was accepted for decades as authentic later turning out to be a complete fraud.

It is for this reason that while we must continue to investigate witness reports and close encounters, the collection of trace evidence is vital to ultimately proving the existence of UFOs to the scientific community.

©2010 David A. Henninger

Quantum Communications Between Stars and Spacecraft

If you accept, as many of us do, that we are being visited by craft and machines of extraterrestrial origin, how then are they communicating among themselves and why, in spite of the best efforts of SETI, The Search for Extraterritorial Intelligence, have we not detected such communications? This kind of question has often been posed by skeptics. It is a legitimate question and deserves an answer beyond the simple statement that they are in some manner more scientifically advanced that we are. Now, new breakthroughs in quantum mechanics suggest an answer for this question and, at the same time, promise the greatest advances in computing and communications since the invention of the radio.

The argument that any communication used by extraterrestrial should be detectable come from the fact that, until last year, the only form of long distance communication over great distances that was understood by humanity was electromagnetic (EM) radiation, commonly known as radio and television. Limited by the speed of light, EM is poorly suited for communications beyond the confines of Earth. Communications with probes on other planets are delayed by several minutes, making it necessary for exploration devices such as Spirit and Opportunity on Mars to be completely self operating robots and communication with probes to other stars is impractical to impossible due to delays measured in years. This is all about to change. We now know of a theory of communication that will render EM - radio and television - completely obsolete.

The answer has been understood as an aspect of quantum mechanics since the Thirties. It is a principal called quantum entanglement. This is a property of sub-atomic particles with a common origin. Suppose a particle decays, as they constantly do, and emits two photons. These two photons are entangled. Whatever happens to one will happen to the other. In a sense, they are still the same photon in two places at once. They share the same state, wave or particle: they can be either or both. They have the same properties, spin, for example. Both are speeding away from each other at the speed of light. They could be light years apart, yet what happens to one will happen to the other. The important part is that it will happen at the same instant. There will be no delay for the information to get to one from the other at the speed of light or slower.

Suppose that you have the ability to use a laser to affect one of the photons. You want to change the photon to have an up spin. At the same instant, with no regard for the distance that may be between them, whether feet or light years, and with no delay at all, the other entangled particle will also have an up spin.

This seems impossible. In Einstein’s universe there seems to be no way for the second photon to change with out some carrier wave to take the information that it is supposed to change to it, a carrier wave that can go no faster than the speed of light the universal ultimate speed limit . But here we are not dealing with Einstein’s universe governed by his theory of relativity, the theory of the very large, space itself. We are dealing with quantum mechanics, the theory of the very small, atomic and subatomic particles.

When this was still documented only in theory, Albert Einstein used this argument as a point against quantum mechanics. The entire theory of quantum mechanics was invalidated, he said, since it predicted quantum entanglement and nothing could violate the speed of light. Einstein was wrong.

Quantum mechanics, the theory of the very small, is now a major part of our lives. Quantum mechanics makes your computers run, it makes your cell phone work, it allows you to listen to an Ipod and a multitude of other things now taken for granted in our world. Instantaneous communications over vast distances using quantum entanglement is only one small benefit and proof of quantum mechanics. Faster than light communications is not only possible it has been done.

Recently, two teams working independently, one at The National Institute of Standards and Technology at Boulder Colorado, the other at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, using slightly different methods to transmit information in zero time from one quantum entangled particle to another. (They don’t have to be photons.) The Boulder team was led by David Wineland, the Innsbruck team by Rainer Blatt. Both are experimental physicists who will undoubtedly be one day considered for the Nobel Prize. Each used lasers to affect a particle and that effect was duplicated in its sister entangled particle instantaneously.

This is only the first baby step in a complete revolution in computers and communications that will lead to the quantum computer and then to faster than light or, if you prefer, instantaneous communications. ---

Today’s computers are direct descendants of the ENIAC computer that filled warehouses and used vacuum tubes for on/off switches. All computers can only understand binary language. Everything in the computer, whether its math, word processing, spread sheets or Internet surfing is reduced to ones and zeros. A letter of the alphabet, for example, is expressed by a series of ones and zeros in a particular order. This was understood by the ENIAC by its vacuum tubes, off for zero and on for one. Huge and slow, ENIAC had valuable but limited uses. In modern computers, things work much faster, since all of those switches and many many more have been crammed into a chip an inch across, reducing the distance a signal has to go between switches by several orders of magnitude and vastly speeding up the computer. Otherwise modern computers work exactly the same in principal as the ancient ENIAC. But computers are still limited by the number of switches you can cram into a chip, a number that must have an ultimate limit: how fast an electron can travel through circuits within that chip. Supercomputers try to improve this by using super-chilled circuits to create superconductors. If a circuit is chilled to near absolute zero the resistance is lowered and the electron can go closer to the speed of light. But that still has its absolute limit. Now replace all of those switches with quantum-entangled particles. Suddenly computing time drops to zero. A computer can now function faster than the human brain. In terms of power, a single desktop computer can be more powerful than all of the computers and supercomputers in existence today. That alone would be enough to revolutionize society, but inevitably those computers are going to be connected just as computers are today. If a computer can have a few billion entangled particles of its own then it can also have a few billion entangled particles that it will share with its several thousand brothers. Now these quantum computers can communicate with each other instantaneously. If one of these computers can be taken on a space ship to another star, we will be able to speak with the ship with full sound and video over vast distances with no delay whatever for the speed of light, exactly as two people would converse in the same room. - like Captain Picard calling Star Fleet Command from Enderi Epsilon III.

When this technology comes online - we should see the first signs in about fifteen years -scientists will be able to control robot probes on other planets in real time, fighter pilots using control centers at bases in the United States can take part in dogfights while their planes are on the other side of the world - or the other side of another world, dangerous mining operations can be conducted by remote control regardless of the miles of rock between operator and machine. We could in fact mine the moon by remote control.

If all this will soon come to pass on our world, then isn’t it likely that other intelligences may have thought of it too? Isn’t it possible that quantum computing may be the basis of communications and operation of extraterrestrial craft if they exist? There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of reports of flying objects that perform maneuvers that would kill any human pilot. Perhaps no pilot was on board. Or rather the pilot was perhaps in a distant mother ship or safely on its home planet. Is it possible that the robot-like objects that have been reported disembarking form landed craft are the alien equivalent of our Mars Rovers, operated either remotely or by independent preprogrammed quantum computers?

There is an aspect to this that does not bode well for SETI. When a quantum-entangled computer communicates with another quantum entangled computer, there is no EM radiation, no carrier wave or any detectable connection between the machines at all. If you don’t have a machine that was part of the original network, you have no hope of eavesdropping at all or even detecting that such communications are taking place. Thousands of civilizations throughout the galaxy could be communicating with each other or with their machines or people on or around Earth and we will never know. Even when we develop this technology we will not detect their communications since we will not have machines that share their entangled particles. SETI -and for that matter the NSA - can close up shop. If we are to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization that communicates by quantum computer, we will have to do it face to face either on their turf or our own.

For the rest of us, this will be life-changing. In addition to the complete revolution on Earth, we can go to the stars. While we still don’t know how to travel faster than light, we do know how to go about half that fast and how to lengthen the human life span. A trip to another star will soon be equivalent to a voyage with Magellan or Columbus in their centuries. When our astronauts or our probes get there, they will communicate with Earth as easily as we speak now on the telephone. In light of this it becomes apparent that extraterrestrial spacecraft can cross vast distances without traveling faster than light. they could be robotic probes using quantum communication that needed to travel to our planet only once.

We thought of it. Why wouldn’t others?



©2010 David A. Henninger