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UFOs, Space and Sanity

Immediately your friends, acquaintances and colleagues discover that your hobby is amateur astronomy you can prepare for the two main predictable questions: what do you think about black holes, and have you ever witnessed a UFO? It's a shame really, because the ancient and gateway science of astronomy offers its students wonders and awe aplenty... and all far more fascinating and satisfying than the so-called pseudoscience of ufology.

My friends' former question about black holes is a perfectly commendable query about an actual scientific and astronomical entity, the latter enquiry about UFOs is a subject steeped in wild speculation, the paranormal, the super (should that be sub?) natural, hearsay, conspiracy theories, vivid imaginings, plain old charlatanry and sheer profiteering by ufologist authors and ‘experts'.

So coming down off the fence, what are my answers to these two questions? Well, in regarding black holes I intend to compose a separate blog entry about the very subject, suffice to say here that there is overwhelming scientific theoretical (Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, one of the foundations of modern physics has predicted their existence since 1915) and observational proof of their existence. Indeed, most astronomers now believe that there is a black hole of super massive proportions at the centre of each galaxy, including our very own Milky Way. The enormous velocities of stars at its centre as they rotate around something with a gargantuan mass is indirect evidence from mathematical calculations that this object known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced ‘A' Star) must be something with the density of a black hole.

My thoughts regarding UFOs however are quite different. Before I go further, I'd better define the commonly held definition of the acronym UFO that is a guided spacecraft of non-human origin, emanating from either beneath the Earth, its oceans or an alien world. Henceforth in this post, all references to UFOs will adopt this definition, rather than the proper definition that overwhelmingly means natural or unnatural unidentified aerial phenomena.

Sadly for proponents of the existence of UFOs from an alien race, there is no scientific or astronomical evidence that I've ever been party to that shows that they actually exist (and I have studied theoretical astronomy and cosmology which has included the consumption of a large amount of contemporary science literature, journals and magazines). And in science, which happens to be my preferred method for understanding reality, any hypothesis for which no physical evidence exists remains just that... an entirely speculative hypothesis. To graduate to being a theory... to be a description and explanation of reality, any hypothesis must be testable and the associated observations and experiments must be repeatable and verified by peer group. To have a ‘gut feeling' that unidentified objects in the sky are emissaries, robotic or otherwise, from another world does not cut the ice, I'm afraid. Science emphatically requires its followers to think with their brains, not with their guts.

There is also is a well known and accepted principle in science popularly known as Occam's Razor. This states that where there are competing explanations for any phenomena it is the simplest explanation that should be adopted. For example, a bright, perfectly stationary small disc hanging over the western horizon at sunset should be regarded as an astronomical entity such as the planet Venus, before one jumps to the conclusion that it is an alien artefact (an appearance by Venus can be confirmed by star charts). If it's not Venus then other hypotheses, more simple than the alien spacecraft variety can be tested such as helicopters or aircraft landing lights.

I've been interested in the fascinating science of astronomy since I was a child, using just the naked eye, then a plethora of binoculars, before graduating to a two hundred millimetre Newtonian reflector five years ago. My telescope is a fine piece of equipment, and indeed is perfectly capable of resolving the most popular and brightest deep sky objects such as galaxies and planetary nebula, along with the resolution of multiple stellar systems and planets, asteroids and comets within our own solar system.

During the hundreds of observing sessions with my telescope I have not once seen a UFO through its eyepiece. Neither have I seen one through binoculars, or even with my naked eyes. Despite enjoying the night sky for decades, I have, however, seen objects aplenty that I could not identify, and many of them if I didn't know and rationalise better I could put down to the presence of Little Green Men. Indeed, most of the fainter stars below magnitude three I would be unable to recognise without the help of Norton's Star Atlas or the superb Stellarium computer planetarium simulation software. And then there all the artificial satellites such as the Cosmos or Iridium series (the latter famous for its ‘flares' when high up above the Earth, the spacecraft's massive solar panels reflect the Sun's rays down to the observer on a small footprint).

One of the most stunning phenomena commonly misinterpreted as a UFO is when the manned International Space Station (ISS) passes overhead, especially when NASA's Space Shuttles or Russia's Soyuz spacecraft have been docked to this orbiting space outpost. Its appearances can be researched and predicted, as can that of most satellites via a little work and the utilisation of websites such as Heavens-Above (http://www.heavens-above.com/) where the celestial position of particular satellites is exquisitely and accurately portrayed for every location on Earth. The ISS is so bright, so huge and has such a high velocity that it would be so easy for the uninformed occasional visitor to the night sky to regard it as a guided alien spacecraft.

And then of course there are the planets, two of which are so bright that when literally hanging in the sky above the horizon they can transfix and mesmerise the observer. This is especially true of Earth's sister planet Venus, which at approximately only 30 million miles distant, and with a stifling atmosphere of carbon dioxide, and a high albedo due to highly reflective lemon coloured sulphur dioxide clouds shines as the third brightest object (after the Moon and Sun) in terrestrial skies at magnitude -4.3. Jupiter has a similar effect, although not quite so bright. When Venus and Jupiter join together in the night or twilight sky at conjunction, then even I have been startled as they both hover above the trees at the bottom of our garden

Other easily explained reports of UFOs include comets, such as the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, C/2006 P1 Comet McNaught in 2006, and Comet 17P/Holmes in October 2007. To the uninitiated, they could all have been mistaken as of alien origin... which indeed they are of course, although strictly natural in formation. Then of course there are meteor showers such as the Perseids in August each year. Their point of origin or radiant lies in the constellation of Perseus and with an hourly rate of over one hundred per hour can resemble a squadron of attacking Mosquito aircraft. They are caused by grain of sand sized debris (normally from the tales of comets through which the Earth has passed during its orbit around the Sun) entering the atmosphere at immense velocities... the friction with the atmosphere caused them to melt and glow white hot.

Again, a small amount of research in one of the summer editions of the popular astronomy magazines such as Astronomy, Astronomy Now or the BBC's Sky at Night publication soon predicts to the reader the appearance of such meteors. Fireballs are less common, but once again are cosmic debris entering the Earth's atmosphere at high velocity which then melts their outer layers causing them to glow white hot. When they fall over the planet's polar ice caps they stand out easily against the white snow and ice, and can be discovered by scientists and collectors as meteorites, and range from pebble size to the size of a television set. 

Despite the fact that the majority of sightings can be explained away as either astronomical or terrestrial phenomena, even the most ardent sceptic must admit that there is a very small minority of reports that defy scientific explanation, and these are seized upon by active and vocal ufologists such as Richard D Hall or Stanton T Friedman. Friedman especially continues a tirade against those he sees as "nasty, noisy negativists". Another feature of the UFO proponents is their reinforcement of their scientific qualifications to study the subject... the fact that in the past they were atomic physicists, aerospace engineers or rocket scientists, all designed to maximise their credentials and the seriousness of their lucrative work. Well there are books to be sold; presentations to be given aren't there? And it must be very lucrative, as why relinquish a well-paid career in mainstream science?

The overriding problem for the ufologists however, is that there is no physical evidence to support their hypotheses. A belief in UFOs is really all it is. As Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Pasadena, California-based SETI Institute (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is the scientific endeavour to detect alien radio signals using some of the world's largest ground based radio telescopes such as the Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico), he'd love to discover scientific proof that aliens were visiting the Earth. This is despite that such evidence would throw him onto the dole queue... but nothing short of a spacecraft part or capsule hatch or even an alien onboard guidance computer part on display at the Smithsonian Museum would be adequate evidence for him

And that's just the point isn't it? There is no physical evidence apart from grainy photographs or shaky videos of unidentified aerial objects that in any case may have been doctored. Even the alleged UFO reported to Mission Control at Houston by Armstrong and Aldrin 200,000 miles out from the Earth in their Apollo 11 spacecraft, although not the S4B third stage of their Saturn V booster was much more plausibly other human space junk or an asteroid than a UFO. It's the same for the UFO reports around the secret US Air Force aircraft technology and development base of Area 51 in Nevada (where the top secret Stealth Bomber was developed), or the famous Roswell ‘incident' in New Mexico in 1947... No physical proof... period.

How can anyone be surprised at the presence of unidentified aircraft in the skies around a base specialising in top secret high technology aircraft? As Sagan (1995) points out -- why would aliens travel light years across the Milky Way in crafts so technologically advanced they're beyond even our wildest imagination only to abduct a handful of humans, mutilate cattle, draw crops circles, or embarrassingly crash in the sands of New Mexico? The cost of freightage at relativistic speeds even to such a technologically advanced civilisation would be huge indeed.

Since 1995 over five hundred extra solar (or planets around other stars) have been discovered, most gas giants the size of our own Jupiter. Through NASA initiatives, however, such as the Kepler Space Telescope we are on the cusp of confirming the presence of Earth-sized worlds around other suns. Planets, once thought to be oddities of our own solar system, turn out to be commonplace in the universe. Travelling to them however, may present insurmountable problems. The Centauri triple star system, containing our closest neighbour, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri is 4.3 light years away. A light year is one of the standard astronomical units of distance when miles don't cut the ice.

Consider this: the photons of light travelling from Alpha Centauri take nearly four and a half years to enter your pupil... and that's travelling at the speed of light (at 186,000 miles per second, Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity states that it is the cosmic speed limit). I'll allow the reader to calculate this gargantuan distance in miles, but remember: this is just the very closest stellar system to the Earth! Some of the newly discovered extra solar planets are hundreds, even thousands of light years distant. It's all a far cry from the three days it took NASA to deliver their astronauts to the furthest point in deep space that the human race has ever travelled... a measly 230,000 miles to the far side of the lunar orbit of Apollo 13.

Interstellar travel either at speeds close to that of light, or travelling through theoretically possible wormholes (tunnels though the fabric of space-time with a black hole at one end, and a white hole for ejection at the other) as propounded by both Caltech's Kip Thorne and Carl Sagan, both require the energy of a star according to Einstein. At the speed of light time stops for the observer in the reference frame of the spacecraft, so it literally would take no time at all for a round trip to say M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years distant. However, although our travellers would not have aged at all, to the people the astronauts left behind on the Earth, a round trip for the mission would take five million years, meaning that when the voyagers returned, there colleagues and friends would be long gone... even the human race itself may be extinct, or have evolved into something else. The same would be true of any aliens planning the same feat.

There are further perhaps insurmountable problems, however. According to Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2, as one approaches the speed of light any object's mass tends to infinity. Hence, an infinite supply of fuel would be required. Indeed, at any meaningful relativistic speed to cut journey times, these same problems apply. ET, the extraterrestrial would have to overcome these challenges if they had human lifespans, unless multi-generational trips were adopted... hardly an attractive prospect for the travellers who would be born and die on the spacecraft.

So although belief in UFOs may be a new religion to some, their existence scientifically is highly unlikely. Although there are probably millions of habitable worlds in the cosmos, on average they must be many thousands of light years apart, and the technology required to travel such distances would evolutionally place any civilisation in its possession vastly ahead of homo sapiens. Even if there do exist sentient beings capable of such travel, the costs to their civilisation would be enormous. And why expend such energy just to abduct our women and mutilate our bovine livestock? Presumably any such advanced civilisation would have the power to replicate anything it wanted rather than travel vast distances for the real thing. The lack of any physical evidence at all from either the present day or from antiquity is also telling... grainy photographs and anecdotal stories just don't cut the ice.

Stories of abduction, such as Travis Walton's alleged abduction by an alien spacecraft in Snowflake, Arizona in November 1975 and immortalised in his subsequent book The Walton Experience and the 1993 movie Fire in the Sky, again have produced no physical evidence of the events concerned truly happening. Like the Betty and Barney Hill case before it in September 1961, Occam's Razor offers the simpler solution of psychological trauma and phenomena on the part of the ‘abductee', rather than physical abduction by inhabitants of Zeta Reticulli.

In all of my time in amateur astronomy I have only ever had one tantalising moment when I truly witnessed something in the night skies above County Durham that although I could explain, was at the time quite exciting, and the acronym ‘UFO' ran through my mind. It was a balmy May evening in 2010, and I had been observing some deep sky objects, such as Bode's Nebula M81 and M82 with my Newtonian Reflector. Every so often then, as now, I would take a look up, just with my naked eyes to see if there were any satellites passing overhead or weather there were any meteors making a show. Travelling quite high up in the east from north to south were five bright orange lights in a large triangular shape possibly five or six degrees in size. Between the lights I couldn't see any stars, and the lights were moving quickly, perhaps at the speed of a commercial passenger jet aircraft. Several weeks later there were reports on the internet from members of the public in other areas of north east England concerning the orange lights in the sky.

So what were they? A huge V-shaped alien craft with orange markers around its silhouette? Were the Phoenix lights visiting County Durham? But just when you start to get excited and want to call MUFON, your scientific mind engages that pesky Occam's Razor and scepticism.

Sure, the lights could have been all of those things, and much more. But they are thousands of times more likely to have just been a squadron of RAF aircraft flying in formation over the night skies over north east England. Not exciting at all really unlike the UFO hypothesis, but much nearer the truth. Now just imagine how many fewer UFO reports and books would be written if the general public used a little less imagination and a little more scepticism. And more to the point just think of the money saved by the gullible against the charlatans purveying their UFO literature and promotional merchandise!

Bibliography:Sagan, C., "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark", Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN: 978-0345409461.

About the Author

Andy Fleming is the author of the Andromeda Child blog which features an eclectic
mix of topics that include news and current affairs, astronomy, science in general, music, movies, the media, cookery, transport, psychology, philosophy, history, education and cricket. Infact something for virtually every reader!

I look forward to your visit at Andromeda Child!

do I own the worlds strongest binoculars?

carl zeiss nr 11359 110x750 15x 30x 50x eyepieces
any idea what they may be worth?
I can send photo's to anyone interested in these binoculars. email me at :
oldjack18@gmail.com
these binocs are about 33 inches long and tripod mounted.
I was told they were used by the German's in ww1 to read signal flags at great distances.
since I know nothing about binoculars, maybe I'm not stating it right. On the rear of the big tubes where the rotating eyepieces mount, on the left it says
"carl zeiss jena" on the right it says
"df 110x750 nr 11359"
ok, I don't understand the numbers with regards to the dia. but these are about 6" in dia. and 33 inches long without the tube extensions pulled out.

Its barely possible that you have a set of binoculars with 110mm aperture & 750 mm FL. and an unusual notation scheme. At least, that would seem to fit with your general description.

The eyepieces included would make it quite powerful, but definitely not in the running for ''worlds strongest binoculars''. Though it is doubtful that any of your neighbors would have anything to even come close.

Value? tough to say. If they are in excellent condition, there could be collectors in the military and optics fields that would be interested. If they've been used heavily or somewhat dinged up - the value would drop significantly, but there would still be collectors that would be willing to look at them and give an offer. Shop around a bit before you sell. Quite likely they might fetch $1000 if in very good condition, possibly up to $10,000 if you happen to get a lucky in an auction setting.
If the condition isn't all that good... divide by 10 or so.

From Galileo to Cassini -- 400 Years of Saturn's Rings [Life at the SETI Institute]
By Dr. Mark R. Showalter Planetary Astronomer at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe , SETI Institute In 1609, Galileo introduced to the world his new invention, the astronomical telescope. It opened up new opportunities to explore a territory that all prior generations had regarded as familiar--the night sky. In short order, he was making major discoveries. But the sky ...

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