Jerome
(Jerry) Clark sent me an interesting email that directed me to an entry in his
massive UFO Encyclopedia, which, by the way, is a required investment
for anyone who wants to seriously study UFOs. He suggested that an
abduction/contactee case from 1951 or 52, was an interesting match to one I had
just reported. According to the story, as told to some rather obscure sources,
the witness, whose name was not mentioned, walked into a newspaper office in December
1957, and told his tale of alien contact.
He
said that while serving in the US Army in Austria, as he was walking home, a
helmeted entity, stepped from behind some bushes, and pointed some sort of
weapon at him that paralyzed him. He was taken to some kind of craft. He told
the reporter, the creature put a black mask over his face, and that he was
“pulled along… after him.”
They
entered the craft through an opening in the top. It was a round object that was
about 150 feet in diameter. They then took off, flew past the moon and on to a
planet that might have been Mars. They landed at a spaceport (my deduction)
where there were other, similar vehicles parked. The being with him floated out
and the witness said that he saw two other humans, but they didn’t acknowledge
him. The creature returned, they flew back to Earth, and he was taken from the
craft. The being pointed the weapon at him and he was no longer paralyzed. The
being returned to its craft and took off.
This
would be of no interest to me, if not for the description of the alien
creature. According to what Clark reported, “He [the creature] had no hair at
all… His head was sort of cylinder form. A very high forehead with big eyes.
You could see lots of little eyes in the two big eyes. It seemed to me it
looked like the eyes of a fly.”
There
are points here that make no real sense. Why would an alien creature abduct the
man, fly him to Mars (if it was really Mars?), and then return him? There is no
indication that the witness was questioned, examined, or provided with some
sort of message for humanity. There is no way to investigate or corroborate the
story because the name of the witness has been lost, if it was ever known. It
is interesting here, only because of the description of the alien eyes, which
fits with the description given by the couple who made a sighting in New Mexico
in 2017. And I mention it only for that reason.
And
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that November 1957 was a time of
intense UFO activity and reporting. The news media was filled with tales of
UFOs. In many of those cases, the alien craft stalled car engines and dimmed
headlights. It wasn’t as if the witness appeared in a time when people weren’t
talking about flying saucers. Maybe all the talk inspired him to finally tell
his tale, or more likely, inspired him to invent it. And that is probably the
reason that the newspaper decided to run with it. The witness was talking about
seeing a flying saucer and riding in it.
Second,
someone pointed out that the Belt, Montana, and Malmstrom Air Force Base
sightings, were more than a half century old. To them, the idea that national
security was an issue was something that, in this case, was more than half a
century out of date. In all that time, wouldn’t the policy have been changed?
But
we see that Area 51 was exposed by UFO investigations surrounding Bob Lazar and
his claims of UFOs housed there. Had it not been for the investigation into
Lazar’s claims, whether real or imaginary, the existence of Area 51 might have
remained a secret. It was the probing of Lazar’s story that led to the exposure
of Area 51. It demonstrated that any tale of UFOs could compromise a real
element of national security. This reinforces the idea that national security
is one of the driving forces that is the reason that we still find UFO
information suppressed and the government’s continual denial that there is
anything to reports of UFOs.
The big news is that a Harvard scientist, Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, (seen here) who is the chair of the Department of Astronomy, has suggested that we were visited in 2017. Well, visited isn’t quite the right word but that an alien artifact had entered the Solar System.
In
my communications with him, I asked a number of questions, such as where it
might have originated. According to the data, it came from the direction of
Vega, which is about 25 light years from Earth.
On
September 6, 2017, the artifact crossed into the orbital plane of the solar
system, and on September 9, it made its closest approach to the sun. On October
7, it passed Earth, moving in the direction of Pegasus.
This
was the first interstellar object that was detected inside the Solar System. It
was not bound to the sun’s gravity, and apparently was just passing through.
According to the scientists, when it passed Venus it was traveling around
60,000 mph, which isn’t even close to the speed of light. Unless it had slowed
down as it approached the Solar System (which suggests intelligent control),
then it had taken a really long time to get here from Vega (if that is the
point of origin) … and I’m not even going to try the math. I’ll just say we’re
talking many, many millennia.
Earth-based
scientists were able to study the object, which was about three hundred feet in
length, had a somewhat cigar shape and was rotating slowly.
It
was named, “Oumuamua,” which means scout in
Hawaiian.
It was, at first believed to be a
comet, but it exhibited none of the characteristics of a comet. That suggested
to Dr. Loeb that it was something completely different.
Nearly all the scientists agree that
the object did not originate in the Solar System, which makes it the first
alien object to be observed inside the Solar System. While Dr. Loeb believes
that it is an artificial object, many scientists disagree.
The Nature
Astronomy article published in July 2019, concluded, “We find no compelling
evidence to favor an alien explanation for Oumuamua.”
I, on the other hand, am rooting for Dr. Loeb’s explanation but must note that while the object is certainly alien, it is not necessarily artificial. I’ll have more after my interview with Dr. Loeb coming up in the next couple of weeks.
I did the calculation for ʻOumuamua. Its speed in interstellar space was a rather sedate 1/11394 of the speed of light, so the trip from Vega would take 284,850 years. You're right, no sensible alien would choose to make the trip so slowly. I look forward to your interview.
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate the object wasn't detected earlier; perhaps clear, detailed images of it might have been captured which may have helped with a positive ID. It's odd to think a possible alien craft was that close and we missed such an opportunity and now it's gone, possibly forever.....
ReplyDeleteThe very unusual thing about Oumuamua is that it seems to have a radically different shape than any other astronomical body ever identified. about 1300 ft long and only 130 feet wide. That makes it about the size of the Starship Enterprise, to use a randomly chosen comparison.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to say whether its shape or its slingshot trajectory is more suspicious. I guess that being able to explain how a naturally occurring object came to be that shape is the hardest part.
I understand that has been another slingshot visitor since Oumuamua?
By the way, does anyone have a list of how many UFO sightings have included seeing occupants? One of my bosses in the USAF said that one night he was flying an airplane and got a call from ATC that he had fast moving traffic approaching. It slowed and flew formation with him for a bit. he did not describe it other than to say, "I ma telling you that was a ship from another world." Then it did the usual ZIP maneuver and ATC said they had lost track of it.
Then a few months later he got a call from his sister-in-law late one night. "Guess what!" she cried. He responded, "You saw a UFO." She said that she had been driving down a deserted stretch of highway that night and something came out of the sky, landed near the road, and some little people got out. "Well why are you calling me? he asked. She responded, "You're the Air Force!" He replied, "So what do you expect me to do about it?"
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ReplyDeleteDavid Evans: If I'm not mistaken, the object wasn't detected until well after it's entry into our solar system. If so, there's no way to know what it's top speed might be, since as other's have pointed out, it would have required some heavy duty breaking speed to make a slow transit of our system (for exploration purposes I'm guessing). If we can track the object once it leaves our system, and it shows a significant speed increase, that might be a clue what it is...
ReplyDeleteA sublight slingshot maneuver has become a staple of both SF and actual space operations. We do not know if it was FTL or coming through a wormhole or some such before it got to our Solar System.
ReplyDeleteClose up pictures of it sure would have been interesting, simply due to the object's shape, but we would have had to launch a spacecraft to intercept it and that would have taken years to arrange. Given that it was going 196,000 mph when it did the slingshot around the Sun, I doubt we have anything that could have intercepted it, other than by putting a spacecraft into a Heliocentric orbit that happened to pass by Oumuamua when it whizzed past.
While I am open minded to thinking some civilizations might be able to travel the vast gulf of space without lots of trouble, that believe this Oumuamua, after countless thousands of years of travel and pinpoint accuracy at aiming at our solar system, just ducks into our solar system for essentially a blink of the eye and then turns tail and shoots back out of the solar system seems a little too much for me. What is the point? Drop anchor! Hoist the mainsail! Fire the damn retrorockets at least! I mean, we are rather intimidating, but I doubt that much to run away.
ReplyDeleteSeems more like an unlikely occurrence of natural phenomena which we never bothered to look for before.
Other than that, I suppose it could be a vast game of interstellar billiards.