Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

Left, illustration by Ron Turner made in 1953 showing how the space suits would look like, available on the very nice page “Atomic Rocket: space suits“.
Right, illustration by Hal Crawford made in 1971 showing how the second more common type of extraterrestrial allegedly looked like at that time.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Astrona is an online collection of space and astronomical art, science fiction art, visions of future worlds, design and visualization of technologies for living in space, space exploration, spaceships, starships, space colonies and everything. Seen above, the work of Alexander Preuss. Of course, flying saucers and alien worlds and beings, as well as psychedelic art also feature proeminently. All fascinating.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Full documentary “UFOs Are Here!”, featuring: Steven Spielberg, Stan Deyo, Jacques Vallee, Prof. Allen Hynek, Stanton Friedman, Margaret Mead, Ken Arnold, Betty Hill, Rev. William Gill, Klaus Nobel, RAAF Sqdn Ldr White, Ray Palmer and Colin Cameron.

Produced in 1977, it’s very interesting to listen their opinions thirty years later. Most of them are also deceased now. Rev. Gill, for instance, passed aways a few weeks ago, so it only adds to the value of these interviews.

At that time, president Carter, who had previously reported a UFO, was promising greater things for ufology. And Spielberg was about to release “Close Encounters”.

This is the same documentary from which I excerpted some clips and commented some time ago, I didn’t know it was available in full on the internet.

[via Anomaly TV]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Seen above, a shot of Billy Meier‘s “weddingcake” craft, allegedly an extraterrestrial device. A strange appendage is circled in blue. What could it possibly be?

According to The Billy Meier case: more conclusive “smoking gun” proof of deception, that’s just the handle of a garbage can lid that can be found on Meier’s farm:

Read the full analysis for much more details. But maybe the best part is the “explanation” given by Meier (or his aliens) for why the lower part of an alleged alien craft looks exactly like a garbage can lid, complete with a handle. From Meier’s 254th Contact Report, November 28, 1995:

Ptaah: “. . . As far back as the 1920s we worked with flying devices you have named the ‘Wedding Cake Ship,’ … we endeavored to transmit all of the necessary data regarding the vehicles’ shape to terrestrial scientists, in the form of telepathic impulses, to assist them in developing flying disks on Earth … We thoroughly investigated the entire situation and discovered that the old, newly re-emerged drawings were used for the design and production of these receptacle covers. … This, then, is how the shape of the container covers came about, which, as I mentioned earlier, strikingly resemble the lower rim section and undercarriage on our flying devices.”

It’s more ridiculous than his excuses as to why his photos of the pretty Pleiadian girls were exactly like dancers from the Dean Martin show. Photographing an American show on TV and claiming it was a real contact with aliens is also not much different from photographing a book illustration and claiming it was from a time travel trip. Click the image below to check “SpaceTimeNews” comparison:

But I digress. Knowing how Meier created his alien ship, and having a photograph of an enthusiast on his farm proudly holding a garbage can lid (probably assuming it was obviously different, which it is not), tempted me to use some Photoshop skills to correctly scale the Weddingcake craft. The result:

Once again, I recommend the reading of The Billy Meier case: more conclusive “smoking gun” proof of deception for more on Meier’s garbage affair. Also, please note the man above is not Meier, and the actual model created over the garbage lid is not golden, but silver. The montage is just to show scale. And get some laughs from all of this.

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Popularity: 25% [?]

According to physicist Robert A. Freitas, Jr., There Is No Fermi Paradox:

Less than 10% of the Earth’s surface, 1% of the Moon, 0.1% of Mars, and 10^-7% of Venus (total 5 x 10⁷ km²) has been surveyed to 1- to 10-m visible resolution. This leaves 99.96% of Solar System surface area (1.3 x 10¹¹ km²) unexamined for likely artifacts. Interplanetary spacecraft and ground-based telescopes have photographed portions of some planets and asteroids down to 20-km resolution, plus a few tracts on some outer planet moons to 1-10 km. Objects buried or submerged are undetectable with current instrumentation. Large artificial habitats in the asteroid belt (Papagiannis, 1978) would appear visually indistinguishable from natural objects, especially since the belt population itself is poorly cataloged. The assertion that a resident artifact would alert us to its presence is an unwarranted, unsupportable, and untenable assumption.

Very reasonable. In my humble opinion, assuming a galactic civilization would be noticed is not that unwarranted, unsupportable nor untenable, but it’s indeed necessary to remind just how limited our search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been so far.

We can only discard with some confidence civilizations of Type III. But there may still be some Type II civilizations out there, and possibly countless of Type I. We would still not be noticing them. The Fermi Paradox assumes at least one civilization should have evolved to Type III by now.

We are still Type 0! Nada!

Popularity: 7% [?]