Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

According to “Dr. SETI“, H. Paul Shuch, from the official SETI League, “physicist Enrico Fermi, said to be a firm believer in the existence of extra-terrestrials, was frustrated by the lack of firm evidence of their existence”. Wait a minute, Fermi actually believed in the existence of aliens?

That may sound preposterous given that his famous Paradox is one of the most referenced arguments advanced against the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, but amazingly, it probably is true.

Fermi unfortunately passed away in 1954, shortly after he formulated his paradox. He didn’t publish the concept in written form, rather it was just an idea discussed by him with colleagues at lunch. That was then often quoted and referenced by others for decades afterwards. This probably explains why his original idea came to be so misunderstood.

It was only in 1985 that someone seems to have decided to actually document the origins of the paradox, and sadly, even this work is widely ignored. That’s the report from Los Alamos National Laboratory, “Where is Everybody?’: An Account of Fermi’s Question“, by scientist Eric M. Jones.

Jones interviewed those present at that historic lunch at Los Alamos in the summer of 1950. They were Emil Konopinski, Herbert York and Edward Teller, and he provided accounts of the conversation by all of them.

Interestingly, the paradox was related to the cartoon seen above. Konopinski wrote:

“I do have a fairly clear memory of how the discussion of extra-terrestrials got started while Enrico, Edward, Herb York, and I were walking to lunch at Fuller Lodge. When l joined the party, I found being discussed evidence about flying saucers. That immediately brought to my mind a cartoon I had recently seen in the New Yorker, explaining why public trash cans were disappearing from the streets of New York City. The New York papers were making a fuss about that. The cartoon showed what was evidently a flying saucer sitting in the background and, streaming toward it, ‘little green men’ (endowed with antennas) carrying the trash cans. More amusing was Fermi’s comment, that it was a very reasonable theory since it accounted for two separate phenomena: the reports of flying saucers as well as the disappearance of the trash cans.”

Edward Teller also recalled:

“I remember that Fermi explicitly raised the question, and I think he directed it at me, ‘Edward, what do you think? How probable is it that within the next ten years we shall have clear evidence of a material object moving faster than light?’ I remember that my answer vas ‘ 1 o-6.. Fermi said, ‘This is much too low. The probability is more like ten percent’ (the well known figure for a Fermi miracle.) “

The discussion then went on to other topics, as they arrived at the luncheon table. It “had nothing to do with astronomy or with extraterrestrial beings. I think it was some down-to-earth topic. Then, in the middle of this conversation, Fermi came out with the quite unexpected question ‘Where is everybody?‘ … The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi’s question coming from the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life”, Teller wrote to Jones. “I do not believe that much came of this conversation, except perhaps a statement that the distances to the next location of living beings may be very great and that, indeed, as far as our galaxy is concerned, we are living somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metropolitan area of the galactic center”, Teller added.

But York believes that Fermi was somewhat more expansive and “followed up with a series of calculations on the probability of earthlike planets, the probability of life given an earth, the probability of humans given life, the likely rise and duration of high technology, and so on. He concluded on the basis of such calculations that we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over. As I recall, he went on to conclude that the reason we hadn’t been visited might be that interstellar flight is impossible, or, if it is possible, always judged to be not worth the effort, or technological civilization doesn’t last long enough for it to happen.” York confessed to being hazy about these last remarks.

Note how York confirms that Fermi assumed extraterrestrial civilizations existed, only that their non-arrival must have meant something stops them on their way. That’s exactly the position taken by SETI scientists to this day.

Eric Jones’ report can be downloaded at the FAS website:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/la-10311-ms.pdf

So?

It must be noted that in the 1950s, it had only been some years since more accurate estimations of the size and age of the Universe had been done. And Fermi’s paradox is essentially an argument of “scale and probablity”.

The Italian physicist famous for simple approaches to complex problems was the first to realize that those discoveries about our Universe had this deep implication. If there are indeed billions and billions of stars billions of years old, then even if the chances of intelligent life to emerge are extremely small, it must have happened numerous times. Not only that, it must also have had plenty of time to arrive not only here, but everywhere.

Later considerations on this simple yet deep question only reinforced its strength. At a fraction of the speed of light, the whole Galaxy can be colonized in a few million years, without breaking any known laws of physics. The recent discovery of the omnipresence of planetary systems may be one of the most important discoveries of the recent decades — not long ago, many believed our solar system was a freak accident of nature –, and it also deepens the paradox.

You see, it only takes one single civilization to have taken the task to colonize the Galaxy for a few million years, and then everywhere you looked there would be signs of its presence. Only one among hundreds of billions of planets, in billions of years of history. No need for warp drives, interdimensional travel, nothing of science fiction. This possibility is a scientific fact, as far was we know. It’s a scientific fact more established now than it was in the 1950s when Fermi first proposed the idea.

Fact is, however, that we don’t see any clear evidence of aliens. Not on Earth, not anywhere we can look for in millions and billions of light-years around us.

Maybe UFOs are evidence of alien spaceships, but that hasn’t been conclusively proven for a single case in more than six decades. You cannot ask “where are the illegal aliens?” without being slightly insane because it’s very easy to find illegal immigrants. But you can ask “where are the (extraterrestrial) aliens?”. In fact, you may spend your whole life trying to find conclusive proof of their presence.

So, Fermi’s question is really a paradox, “an argument that apparently derives self-contradictory conclusions by valid deduction from acceptable premises”. That’s a paradox, and it remains one to this day.

It’s not an argument that “proves” we are alone. That’s just one possible answer, and it’s not satisfactory exactly because of the paradox main line of reasoning.

The Fermi Paradox shouldn’t be derided by the believers. Fermi was one himself. Though one who would promptly admit, and then be puzzled, by the lack of conclusive proof that we are not alone.

He would still be asking, to this day, “Where is everybody?“.

A Chinese bridge that collapsed killing at least 41 people was made with rocks and concrete rather than stronger steel so that it would be in “harmony with the environment“, state media said, quoting an official.  … “While the cause of the collapse is still unknown, a local official at the scene claimed that a ‘traditional and risky’ model of bridge, made of stone and concrete, had been chosen over a steel structure to ensure it remained ‘in harmony with the natural environment’,” the China Daily said. [Reuters]

That reminds of a classic 1999 parody written by Steven Novella:

“Alternative Engineering”
A new phenomenon is sweeping the country, gaining the attention of both consumers and manufacturers alike. Increasingly disenchanted with the cold metallic world our modern technology is producing, people are beginning to take a close look at more natural alternatives. Collectively called Alternative Engineering (AE), a host of new and old methods are gaining scientific respectability.
Alec Waterston is one such self-styled alternative engineer. … Alec’s latest project is a design for a 1200 foot non-suspension bridge. He claims the bridge will be able to span this distance without pilons or overhead suspension, and will be supported only by the ancient art of Fung Sui. “This wisdom, which is thousands of years old, is the art of channeling energy through design and form. This energy can be used to support a 1200 foot bridge, or even larger structures.” City planners are intrigued by these designs, as such bridges will cost less than half of those built by conventional designs.
Alec has his critics, however. Anthony Trellis, a professor of engineering at State University, claims that Alec’s designs run contrary to basic principles of physics and material science. An exasperated Trellis commented, “A bridge built based upon Waterston’s designs simply cannot stand. It would be unsafe in the extreme.”
Alec is not perturbed by such criticism, however. “Of course professor Trellis does not like my designs, because they challenge his precious status quo and turn his world upside-down. The protectionism of the old guard, however, is starting to crumble, like one of their obsolete buildings.”
[Continue reading]

Sad thing is, it happened and people actually died. News of the disaster via Japundit.

Star Wars is specially interesting because a magical (or “paranormal”) universe was adapted to a futuristic context which still depends on technology, and one assumes, science. The saga is not actually science fiction, it’s just a nice fantasy, but there’s a notable effort to give some logic to this universe where one can predict the future, use telekinesis and hope the “Force is with them” at the same time that they travel through hyperspace to get to Death Stars powered by giant nuclear reactors.

The most visible and curious incoherence in Star Wars is that in this high-tech world, a warrior elite represented by the Jedi use swords instead of weapons like pistols or machine guns. Granted their “swords” are über cool lightsabers, a more “civilized” weapon, but as that infamous scene in Indiana Jones taught, Indiana may not be that civilized but he ended up alive. And maybe just as cool looking.

In the end, everything is explained simply because George Lucas was largely inspired by Kurosawa’s Jidai-geki samurais for his Jedi, but delving into the Star Wars fantasy, we may find a very interesting and far reaching Jedi logic for the lightsaber preference.

It’s all because the Jedis can predict the future. Just ask yourself how would you kill someone who could predict the future. Shooting at him? He does not even need to be a skilled warrior to deflect your shot, he can just easily avoid being your target by not being in the place to start with. Or he may even shoot you first – poor Greedo obviously didn’t have precognition, maybe Han Solo did.

Think of any way to kill someone who can predict the future, it’s impossible. He would always predict his own assassination and avoid it. You can try elaborate plans and dilemmas alike involving his loved ones, ideals and so on, but the fact remains that unless the future-predicting bastard lets you kill him, you wouldn’t ever be able to do it. That’s technically suicide.

That danger avoiding bastard would be pretty boring, we could have some drama at most. But things get more interesting when these future-predicting bastards are not cowards, and if their future-predicting is not equivalent to knowing with certainty everything that will ever happen (which may well be logically impossible if he plans to interfere with that). Just like the Jedi.

In such a Star Wars Universe, where some people can predict the future with progressively less certainty, it would still be very difficult to kill one of them, but not impossible. At the same time, if they were not cowards, they could train themselves to be able to foil assassination attempts without having to be always running away from them.

For instance, if you shot at one of them, even multiple times, they may predict where the shots would be (with reasonable certainty as the moment approaches) and actually train themselves to be able to either deflect or dodge them. They would be able to do that even if the shots were quicker than their “normal” reflexes. As they are predicting in some advance where the shots will be, they can plan a sequence of possible movements that will save them.

But there’s one way to kill them in which their precognition will be almost useless. And that’s close combat. If your first attack — either by hand, sword, whatever — can be predicted, your second one will depend on his reaction. Reaction that was based on his first prediction of your attack, which has just been altered when he interfered with it. And so on.

Which is, in close combat, because the predictions are being used and interfered with many times and their consequences are being felt almost instantaneously, precognition is not worth much more than plain old martial skills. That’s even more true if both fighters are capable of predicting the near future.

And that’s the wonderful reason why the warrior elite of this universe chooses lightsabers, the ultimate martial arts weapon, over more predictable weapons like guns or even bazookas. That’s the Jedi logic.

Reality would be very different if there were indeed people capable of predicting the near future like the Jedi. The whole logic of how everything works would be different. As it is, in real life we have just plain boring so-called “psychics” who can’t even win the lottery. That’s our real world logic. May the Reason be with you.

Click on the image for the original post on Loren Coleman’s Criptomundo. The photo was sent to him with this report:

Loren, hopefully you can shed some light on this thing. The thing has many human qualities I can see under a scope. [It] appears to have clothing, however the burnished bronze color throws me off. [It was] photo[graph]ed by a 15 year old American girl. She was on tour with a group from Michigan. Supposedly the temp. is 100+.

Loren, the photo was taken in July 2007. The story behind it is this little 15 year old girl was attacked by this [thing]. How it happened is unclear. I met personally with the girl and her parents; I felt imposing since I had just met these people for the first time. It was a large family gathering and I was an outside guest invited. Still not sure why I was invited other than they had motorcycles and needed answers to questions. I was their answer guy.

Her father plainly said she’d not be going on anymore trips out of his sight. Supposedly this thing grabbed her and attempted to hold her and put mud in her face and hair. She said she couldn’t get away from it by pulling so she got a firm hold and tackled it causing it to lose balance thus allowing her escape.

Supposedly there are other witnesses; I am still trying to get more info.

The area is: Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil.

Surely, someone there knows of this incident.Two-Cam McLaren, August 9, 2007.

Coleman thinks it’s “intriguing, if not curiously prosaic”, and remarks that “anything is possible as an origin of any new photo”. It turns out that though anything is possible, the most prosaic explanation indeed must be the answer to this. And it’s so prosaic any Brazilian, like me, would find it not only obvious but slightly revolting.

That mud area we can see in the photos is what is called “manguezal“, and it’s a very  important ecosystem in Northeastern Brazil, not only for the environment but also for the locals. The image at left of very happy people are some tourists bathing in mud, but the  second and third one are from locals earning their life. They mostly catch crabs in the mud, and end up almost completely covered in mud.

It’s obvious the original photo sent to Coleman is of a local covered in mud, probably a man. You can see that he’s wearing a T-shirt and pants. The “horns” are the same as we can see in the tourists above: it’s just something you can do with your hair when it’s covered in mud.

The “Manguezal” culture was even promoted in the 1990s in Brazil as a nice cultural movement, the “Mangue Beat“, leaded by band “Chico Science”.

Now, Coleman may not be blamed for sharing this pic, warning about it possibly being fake and asking for input. People outside Brazil may not be used to see homo sapiens covered in mud — though even Americans my have watched somewhat similar “Give it Away“.

But those who sent the photo and called that guy, very probably a poor local earning his life, a “Beast”… I don’t know which is worse: that they were indeed “attacked” by “it”, and did not realize it was a human being; or if they knowingly called a local a horned Beast.

Update: Coleman quickly and kindly posted our explanation on Criptomundo.

Shortly before those amazing Haitian/Dominican videos, one of the biggest Youtube UFO sensations of 2007 was this one, allegedly from a source within the Italian Air Force. That was quickly dismissed by the actual publicizer, Paola Harris, on UfoUpdates:

This old Film Footage I have been showing for 3 years and It was given to Us Italian Researchers… not By the Air force. It is our Technology.

I had a cassette examined in Hollywood by my friends Rob and Rebecca Gordon who had the connections and money to do it. It was a 7th generation – copied 7 times – cassette. It was given to us with no explanation. It is a real object in the film. It has been shown in my MUFON and Laughlin Presentations and someone put it on U-TUBE [sic] and Google!

This all takes place in the Veneto region of Italy at a place called Ponte di Giulio. Near Aviano NATO Base. It is a dry river bed where the military does maneuvers and the photographer was on a tripod waiting for the object to come out of the woods. I doubt aliens appeared there!

Though the claims about it being real and “our technology” couldn’t be verified to this day, the ones about its origin could. Italians Antonio Pischiutti and Stefano Saccavino visited the location, near Ponte de Giulio, in Pordenone, and took this photo from roughly the same spot:

Many Italian ufologists received the video from the anonymous source some years ago (more on this below), but apparently only Harris started to promote and sell it abroad on a DVD. Somehow, that resulted in two versions of the video (one converted directly from the DVD, at the beggining of the post, and the other filmed from a projection/screening of it) being recently uploaded to Youtube, and the rest is history. That we will tell here.

Given the anonymous source and the poor quality of the Youtube versions, it was expected that no definite proof of “authenticity” or of the probable hoax would be found, but people worked on it anyway and endless debate ensued. One of the most interesting evidence of hoaxing was pointed out by “onthefence” on the OpenMindsForum:

The alleged UFO has a very different blur from the background. Though it has been reasonably suggested that that was the result of poor rendering of the 3D model on a computer, I think it has more to do with the simple difference in contrast between the flying saucer and the background in the original footage. Because the video versions initially on Youtube have such poor quality, I don’t think this “pulsed” blur artifact from a quick rendering of the 3D model would show up. One can barely discern details in the craft. Either way, it’s clear evidence that the flying saucer and the background are two very different things. One is real, the other is not.

Further evidence of hoax include the so convenient and extremely lucky cameraman (who according to Harris was using a tripod (!!!)). He had the saucer hovering near that chimney that turns out to be from the nearby power plant and which makes a nice detail. But do not make much sense because in the real geography of the place, the saucer at that point was actually hundreds of meters away from it. Only the cameraman at that point had the illusion that the saucer was near the power plant — and only if he had no depth perception.

But if things remained at this point, only skeptics would be satisfied to consider such soft evidence on such bad quality, anonymous video, a case closed for hoax. Fortunately, another Italian ufologist who received the original footage years ago decided to step up.

Antonio Chiumento, contrary to Paola Harris, allegedly chose not to publicize the video he received because of the anonymous, unknown origin. Wise decision. It remained archived for years, but after the international Youtube sensation and subsequent echoes in his very own country about it, he finally spoke about it. And we are glad that he did.

In the videoclip above you can watch the best version of the infamous video yet available on the internet. That’s probably because they are showing the original video that Chiumento received directly from the anonymous source. You can see clearly that the flying saucer is fake, as it clearly stands out against the background many times. As it was made three or four years ago, the CGI is not near as good as the Haitian/Dominican videos — in which, we must note, the UFOs blended well with the scenery because everything was computer generated.

Not only that, but the local TV station received a phone call from the alleged authors of the video, who confessed it was created with Adobe’s After Effects post production software. Though this confession cannot be confirmed (as the original source was anonymous), we don’t have so many reasons to doubt it since there’s such clear evidence already that allows us to conclude this one is indeed a hoax.

[This post is heavily based on the original dossier at ufofu]

UPDATE: I became aware that in the interview, Italian researcher Chiumiento actually tells much more than what I described above, at times incorrectly. He received the video from an anonymous source and after seeing it immediately considered it a hoax, given the evident difference in sharpness between the UFO and the background. He then received an email confession from the author, at the time, who made the video as part of a Computer Graphics class. He repeatedly emphasizes that no video, photographic evidence, no matter how good, is valid without a good supporting testimonial evidence. In this case it was also anonymous, so that’s another reason that he ignored the video.

This was all allegedly clarified long before the video became famous on Youtube recently, and Paola Harris claimed it was declared authentic by Hollywood experts.