Rachel Mocks UFO Citizen Hearing

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

434. We are evidence of aliens - the notion that we are alone in the universe seems almost like religious

doctrine, refusing to believe that intelligent life could evolve anywhere else than the place where God placed Adam and Eve.

After all, for some, the supposition is that 1) there are civilizations and intelligent life somewhere in the millions of stars contained in the estimated 50 billion galaxies in our universe and 2) one of more of these civilizations has detected us and arrived or had already expanded into our local area of space. Aliens = intelligent, civilized life. You can't compare it to ghosts, leprechauns or fairies because we’ve never had proof of at least one group of ghosts or leprechauns whereas we do have proof of at least one example of intelligent civilized life in the universe: ourselves. Therefore, the issue isn’t that intelligent life exists in the universe (we are the proof), it’s uniquely that there is somewhere a SECOND example of it beyond the Earth and that it has traveled here. Since scientists have theorized the probability of millions of space faring civilizations and their peoples in the countless habitable planets in the countless galaxies out there, the main controversy is one of travel, not of existence.


Then there is the claim that there is no physical evidence. Actually there is evidence of physical landings by heavy objects on the ground where eyewitnesses have claimed to have seen them. There is photographic and video evidence. There is radar evidence. There is evidence of radiation in the vegetation surrounding alleged landings. There is evidence of radiation burns on the bodies of eyewitnesses who claimed to have had ‘close encounters’. Of course there is multiple eyewitness evidence of people like airline pilots, military officers and police offers who didn’t previously know each other, located at different positions during the same alleged sighting. What other kind of evidence could there be? It leaves very few possibilities. The only other kind of evidence would be an actual crashed vehicle, one of its inhabitants, or both. If this involves a civilization with the technical wherewithall to get here, there's probably thousands of times less likelihood of a vehicle crashing than any man made vehicle crash landing. No government in the world would tolerate any private person remaining in possession of such evidence and that is exactly what eyewitnesses have claimed, such as in the Roswell incident. Therefore, the only type of evidence that would convince the non-believers is one that would not be allowed to be known to exist as soon as its private custodian reveals its existence.

And then there is the issue of what UFO means. It certainly doesn’t mean little green men. It’s something we can’t identify. There have been hundreds of thousands, perhaps even into the millions of sightings of things throughout the world in past decades. Almost all can be explained but there are some that cannot. Since the number of world sightings have been so numerous, even the small percentage of unexplained sightings around the world constitutes a significant number. Most of these accounts resemble each other in the strangeness of their details. Are people experiencing some form of psychosis or hallucination? Maybe. If so, that in itself would be worthy of scientific study since many eyewitnesses are professional people, law enforcement, military, and scientists who are disposed to not hallucinate very regularly.

And if the number of unexplained and strange sightings by reputable individuals doesn’t fit within the idea of a UFO or a mass hallucination, is there some other scientific explanation such as a natural phenomenon native to the Earth that we still don’t understand?

There are many scientists who have promoted the idea of studying UFOs because the various governments on Earth have not made an effort to do so. For example, Peter Sturrock, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Cambridge, UK and is an emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University organized a panel of scientists to study the phenomenon a few years ago. It was the only such scientific panel study in the last 40 years. Here’s what professor Sturrock was quoted as saying by CNN at the conclusion of the panel’s study:

“…And the only question asked of the panel was that, do you believe that further study of this kind of case, this kind of evidence, might eventually lead to answers to the problem of understanding the cause or causes of UFO reports? And the panel felt, yes, this would be a promising line of research for the future….”

Sturrock describes some of the incidents studied by the panel in his book The UFO Enigma. He doesn’t claim that UFOs exist or claim to know what they are, but he promotes their further study, a notion Rachel Maddow seems to pooh-pooh. Sturrock is a celebrated scientist having extensively published and having won several awards and honors. He’s certainly no crackpot. Michio Kaku is another scientist who has proposed the real possibility that there is something definitely worth studying as far as UFOs are concerned. Considering the resumes of just these two scientists, I’d take their expert opinions over Rachel’s (whom I generally admire) in this instance.

Peter Sturrock
B.A., Cambridge University, 1945
M.S., Cambridge University, 1948
Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1951
Radar Research Establishment, 1943-1946
St. John's College and Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, England, 1946-1949
National Bureau of Standards, 1949-1950
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Fellow, University of Paris, 1950-1951
Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, 1951-1953
Fellow, St. Johns College Cambridge, 1952-1955
Research Associate, Microwave Laboratory, Stanford Univeristy, 1955-61
Ford Fellow, European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva, Switzerland, 1958-1959
Professor of Space Science and Astrophysics, 1961-present
Director, Institute for Plasma Research, Stanford, 1964-1974, 1980-1983
Deputy Director, Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, 1983-1999
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow, American Physical Society
Fellow, Royal Astronomical Society
President, Society for Scientific Exploration, 1981-2001
Rayleigh Prize, Cambridge University, 1949
Gravity Foundation Prize, 1967
Hale Prize, American Astronomical Society, 1986
Arctowski Medal, National Academy of Sciences, 1990
Space Science Award, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1993