Coast-to-Coast AM: SETI, Proxima Centauri, and Recent Sightings

 

We’ve talked about the SETI program of searching for intelligent signals from other planets in the past. We’re not necessarily looking for a message directed out into the cosmos, but any electronic signal that is not natural, though some sort of message would be a bonus. On Earth, we’ve been beaming these radio waves out for about a century and a quarter, meaning that scientists on worlds 125 light years radius of Earth might be able to detect a signal sent from here. That incorporates a lot of space because this is a bubble around the planet, not just a linear distance.

We’ve talked about the WOW Signal that was detected in 1977 that has not been explained as either a natural signal or interference from all the electronic devices in use at the time. You can read more about that here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/03/wow-signal.html

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/05/new-theory-on-wow-signal.html

There have been other examples, none quite as famous, and we just learned about the Chinese detection that has now been explained as some of that electronic interference.

There are other examples including a detection of a signal coming from Alpha Centauri C, better known as Proxima Centauri, which is not all that far from Earth. Just 4.2 light years. There is information suggesting this too, might be electronic interference from Earth, but there are important points to be made. There are two planets circling Proxima Centauri, one of them in the Goldilocks Zone, meaning it is warm enough for liquid water, and it is a rocky planet about one and a half times the size of Earth.

Proxima Centauri as seen through the Hubble Telescope.

There is another aspect that affects the Barney and Betty Hill abduction, or rather the identification of Zeta I and Zeta II Reticuli, as the home world of the grays. Remember, Marjorie Fish, using the information that Betty Hill had provided on the Star Map shown by the leader, attempted to determine the alien’s home world. She created a three-dimensional model of our section of the galaxy, looking for the same pattern among the stars.

Here's the problem. Fish rejected putting red dwarf stars into her models because there are so many of them, and she could think of no reason for the aliens to visit red dwarf star systems. However, if Proxima Centauri has planets, including one in the Goldilocks Zone, then that suggests that there might be something of interest there. The latest estimates that there are 1.5 planets for each star. This means, frankly, that Fish elimination the red dwarf stars was a mistake. It means that her identification of the Zeta Reticuli system is flawed and we should reassess this. You can read more about this here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/12/betty-hills-star-map.html

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-hillfish-star-map-revisited.html

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/hill-star-map-badly-out-of-date.html

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/03/revisiting-hill-star-map.html

Getting back to Proxima Centauri, if the signal recently detected is from an alien race, it means that our galaxy might be teeming with life, and if so, then that increases the possibility that some UFOs are alien visitors, though not necessarily from Proxima Centauri.

My thinking here is if the star closest to the Earth (other than the sun) had intelligent life on it, then it provides a good case for life throughout the galaxy. That doesn’t mean that every star system that has planets in the Goldilocks Zone will have intelligent life, but it certainly suggests that intelligent life will not be overly rare.

So, while SETI searches for radio signals and other electronic emissions, there are still important UFO sightings such as the one from Lamoni, Iowa, on March 26 of this year. According to MUFON’s Cases Management System and the Iowa MUFON Assistance State Director Jason Moran, the witnesses, a man and his wife, had been observing strange lights in the late evening and early morning for a number of years.

On March 26, the lights were spotted about midnight and remained in sight for about two hours. They moved slowly, mostly in an east west path but often stopped to hover for short periods. The objects emitted a sparkling star-like light of various colors. The lights were observed through a telescope and the witnesses took pictures through the telescope, using a cell phone. Moran closed the case as an Unknown Aerial Vehicle.

I’ll note here that such cases, of repeated observations, usually result in the identification of a terrestrially based source or some astronomical object just as Venus. However, in this case there are photographs that do not resemble anything in the area, and both the observations by the witnesses and the photographs tend to rule out many astronomical objects especially since it was viewed and photographed through a telescope.

In another report that is also part of the MUFON Case Management System, Florida MUFON State Section Director Vincent Maynard, reported on a sighting made on April 14 of this year in Davenport, Florida. The witness was taking a photo of a sunset and when reviewing the picture later, spotted a triangular-shaped UFO that he had not seen at the time. Maynard, who labeled the case as an Unknown Aerial Vehicle wrote, “…there is no way on Earth this [object could be confused] with anything terrestrial… it is either a craft from another world, dimension, time, deep within the planet or from light years away or something made… on Earth that the government owns and is it secret.”

The dark triangular-shaped UFO with a blunt nose and no visible surface features, resembles sightings made of such craft for the last several years. David Marler has cataloged many such sightings. This does not appear to be an artifact from the digital camera or some sort of lens flare or internal reflection.

I will note here that the photographs from both cases appear in the latest issue of the MUFON Journal.

Revisiting the Hill Star Map

As those of you know, who visit here regularly, I have been suggesting for years that we revisit the Betty Hill star map. I have thought that Marjorie Fish, who identified the Zeta Reticuli star system as the base of the aliens, did a great job. The shear size of the accomplishment is impressive. The only trouble with it was that she did that decades ago and our knowledge of our section of the galaxy has grown exponentially. In other words, as good as her work was, it is now outdated.

I also thought that, in the world today, with home computers that had more power than those used to put the men on the moon, we should be able to refine the process. Surely someone, somewhere, would be interested enough in this puzzle to revisit the star map. I have received word that such is the case.

In an email from James Hood, I was given the web address of a report that looks at the Hill star map using the latest information. I could find no signature on it (though the name might be embedded in the address), but found it interesting enough to mention here. Maybe someone also interested in the Hill star map, and who has a good knowledge of astronomy, will take a look at it and provide some insight into it. You can see the report here:

http://wolfmagick.com/nebula/zetareticuli/papers/a%20case%20for%20zeta%20reticuli_2.pdf

I will note that the Zeta Reticuli is not the only system identified as the origin of the Hill abductors. Betty Hill herself suggested it was part of the Pegasus constellation with Homan as the center star. There is another interpretation in which Epsilon Eridani is the main star and Groombridge 34 replaces the sun. There is another interpretation that suggested the star map was actually a map of the solar system as it existed in 1961 when the Hills were abducted. I mention all this only because I thought I should note that there is not universal acceptance for the Fish interpretation.

Anyone who has studied the star map, and who has some constructive criticism (and please note the qualifier), let me know what you think. This is one of those puzzles that demands a little bit of our attention from time to time. Something of importance might be embedded in it.

Project Blue Book Episode 9 - The Hill Abduction (Almost)

I suppose the only thing to say about this latest episode is that it was really annoying. It was based, loosely, on the Hill abduction in 1961. Yes, we had the black man abducted, but his wife was also black and not abducted. Given the time frame of the episode, that is sometime in the late 1940s or the early 1950s, with laws still forbidding interracial marriages in some states, this might be a nod to keeping the time frame accurate… except they have violated that rule a number of times.

Anyway, the black man was abducted by alien creatures and the terms abducted and aliens were bandied about with no thought that such terminology was certainly not in use in the time frame of the story. He had called the Air Force to ask for help, but Quinn, it seems,

Captain Quinn

had blown him off. In the early 1950s this case would certainly have been ignored given the incredible nature of it.

The man finally bursts into the Blue Book office where Quinn and Hynek are having an argument about Hynek’s resignation. Hynek wants to take his research files while Quinn, in civilian clothes, tells him the files belong to the Air Force. Before they can resolve this dilemma, the man, armed with a .45, bursts in and demands they listen to him.

Meanwhile, the Soviet spies are attempting to compromise the Hynek’s wife so that Hynek will give them information about his investigations, though, given the time frame, I’m not sure what the agents expected. The female spy convinces Mimi to get drunk so that they can take compromising photographs of her.

We do get to learn a little about the abduction, as Hynek interviews the guy. He has a paper with dots all over it and in what can only be described as an impossible deduction, Hynek recognizes the star field, but says that it’s reversed, as if looking at it from a point in space on the opposite side from that we see on Earth… Ah, an oblique reference to the Betty Hill star map.

I won’t say anything about the military response to the locked office and the rifle shot through the window. Or the fist fight between Hynek and Quinn. Really, Hynek? In a fist fight? I don’t think so.

So, let’s talk about the Hill abduction case. The Hill abduction took place in 1961, but the Air Force really didn’t take notice of it then. Betty Hill, rather than contacting the Air Force, wrote to

Donald Keyhoe

Donald Keyhoe at NICAP, which, given the Air Force attitude at the time, and Keyhoe’s prominence in the UFO field, makes sense… Unfortunately, it also sort of contaminates the case.

The only case that I can find in the Blue Book files that references the Hill sighting is from Lincoln, New Hampshire on September 20, 1961. The Blue Book index shows the radar sighting as insufficient data and the accompanying visual sighting as insufficient data, meaning there is no solution, but that the evidence isn’t all that strong either. Neither of these have anything to do with the Hill abduction.

The visual sighting was of a cigar-shaped object that was described as a band of light. The witnesses said that wings seemed to appear on the main body. They were “V” shaped with red lights on the ends. It would change directions abruptly and disappeared to the north.

On the project card, under “comments,” it was noted that the weather might be a factor in both the visual and radar sightings. It was reported that a strong inversion layer covered the area. They thought that an advertising search light playing off the clouds might be the cause of the visual sighting, but that seems unlikely. The Air Force concluded that there was no evidence that the objects were caused by anything other than natural phenomena, though they didn’t really identify any of those phenomena.

Other than weather records, the file contained a letter from Colonel Eric deJonckheere (who would appear in the Zamora case in 1964) which referenced the Hill abduction. He noted that Barney Hill had been investigated by officers from Pease Air Force Base and the case is carried as insufficient. This, I think, is a reference to the Lincoln, New Hampshire, case because deJonckheere’s letter is in that file.

Later in the file, there are parts of a magazine article, written by John Fuller, that chronicles some of the Hill abduction. The article is incomplete.

The points of interest here are the suggestion that the Hill abduction was investigated by officers from Pease, but I found nothing in the Blue Book file to confirm this other than deJonckheere’s letter.

As usual, he mentioned inconsistencies in the sighting report and that Jupiter seemed to be visible near the location of the sighting. He wrote that the sighting lasted about an hour and that Jupiter was in the approximate location of the craft and set about the time the object disappeared. He wrote the same thing that appeared on the project card which is that there was no evidence that the sighting was due to anything other than natural causes.

The one thing I do want to talk about is the star map that Betty Hill seemed to remember in a dream. It had a number of random points with lines connecting some of them. These have been called “trade routes,” which indicates alien interest in those specific points.

I have discussed this in past blogs which can be read here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/hill-star-map-badly-out-of-date.html

and here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-hillfish-star-map-revisited.html

and here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/12/betty-hills-star-map.htm

and here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/11/alien-marjorie-fish-and-zeta-ii-reticuli.html

and finally, here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/04/betty-hill-star-map-revisited-again.html

If you don’t wish to wade through all that, then let me reduce it without all the supporting information. Marjorie Fish created a number of 3D models of our section of the galaxy so that she might search for a pattern in the stars that matched that on Hill’s star map. She used the best information available to her, which has been revised over the years so that the distances to some of the stars are farther away and others are closer. She did not use any red dwarf stars in her models because there were too many of then and there wouldn’t be anything of interest circling them. If the aliens traveled to one, they should travel to them all. Or so she concluded.

This is not to mention that there are four other interpretations of the star map out there, including one that suggests the map represented not stars but planets in our own solar system. The Zeta I, Zeta II Reticuli interpretation seems to have gained the greatest popularity, but given the flaws in the Fish models, I believe that this should be revisited using computers rather than 3D models.

The point here is that one of the best bits of evidence for the reality of the Hill abduction is somewhat flawed (and no, this isn’t the only point that argues against a real event), we should be careful in our acceptance of this particular abduction.

On a person note, when I was investigating the abduction of Pat Roach, I was working with Dr. James Harder. He was conducting the hypnotic regression sessions. But he told me that he wanted to find something that would validate the Hill abduction. He wanted another case that mirrored the Hills because as second report, from an unrelated abduction, would strengthen the Hill case. What I saw during those sessions, and what I have learned about hypnosis, suggested that Harder contaminated the Roach abduction by his techniques. I firmly believe, given the research that I have done personally including my interviews with the principals, is that Roach experienced an episode of sleep paralysis… Harder managed to introduce elements of the Hill abduction into those hypnotic regression sessions. I don’t believe he realized what he was doing at the time.

All this was laid out in the book, The Abduction Enigma, which was published more than twenty years ago.

I mention these things as a way of, well, discussing the abduction enigma and some of the problems with the research. I also mention it to suggest there are terrestrial explanations for some of the abduction reports.

I will note that the writers of the Project Blue Book show seem to have done their research. They interject elements from the real cases into the plots, even if those points are subtlety made. Little things that many wouldn’t notice, such as the racial identity of the man who said he was abducted. Or the star map reference which here was even more obscure.

However, they seem to be drifting more into the realm of science fiction (though I don’t really object to that) and away from the reality of what can be found in the Blue Book files. Next week they are going to be tackling the Washington Nationals and if the previews are any indication, they’re going to move from intercepts without real conflict into intercepts in which the fighters fire on the “lights.” It’ll be interesting to see where they go with that.