UFOs Up in the Air—Part 2

There are, however, more realistic and relevant considerations of the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. One is the ongoing efforts for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Serious work has gone on in this area for a few decades now, using sophisticated scientific equipment. For some SETI folks, the lack of any convincing electromagnetic signal thus far from outer-space is discouraging. The hunt has become ever more technologically advanced and sophisticated, but still no contact. Maybe we are alone. Maybe the distances and time scales are just too vast for us to ever find alien intelligent life this way. The search continues, however, because it may be our only way to verify life out there, and the consequences of finding it are so momentous.

Then there's a recent study by a consortium of astronomers and universities, suggesting that although we've not yet heard from an ET out there, maybe some of them have heard from us! This suggestion is bolstered by the fact that, in just the last few years, we now know there are hundreds of planets within a few light years of us, and billions of them farther away, just within our galaxy. Computations in this recent study show that our TV and radio signals emitted over the last century could well be detectable at some of those closer planets. That's a rather unsettling thought: they could know that we're around, while we are as yet ignorant of them. 

Some of these planets are even Earth-like. Could there be beings on those planets who have been watching our TV programs? If so, would it lead them to doubt that these signals indicate their origin as coming from intelligent life? So many questions and speculations, with no definitive answers! 

Yet another viewpoint suggests that we may be expecting the wrong kind of visitation. The likelihood of meeting living beings who traveled here on an interstellar craft is quite remote, given the fact that the distances to be traversed are simply too great for any living creature to cover—given that travel times would probably be on the order of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. Despite the fact that those brilliant adventurers in the Star Trek TV series travel at warp speeds and visit several star systems in a few months' time, there remains the strong likelihood that spacecraft speeds greater than the velocity of light are simply not possible. If so, travel times between star systems won't be measured in weeks or months, but in eons.

It's hard to believe that any biologically-evolved alien beings could live for eons. It’s hard to conceive that their life spans could be so long, or their metabolic rates could be so incredibly slow. One thing that science has demonstrated is that conditions around our universe are quite uniform. The laws of physics and biology that reign locally are probably similar across the cosmos. But that might just be another ignorant assumption.

Yet there's nothing to suggest that alien intelligent life (if it exists—which seems increasingly likely, though probably extremely rare) at all matches our technological skill level. After all, those ancient earthly humans had no hint of the nature and vastness of the universe, let alone what a flying craft might be. Moreover, we can't begin to imagine the technologies of earthly humans, even a couple of hundred years from now. (If we don't manage to create our own extinction in the meantime, due to our current technological foolishness.)

So life “out there” could currently be at the stage it was, say, three billion years ago on Earth: single-cell, microscopic critters. Or it could be three billion years further evolved than we are. In either case, we’d probably not be able to even recognize it, let alone receive its radio signals.

This last possibility I've described (life elsewhere as primitive or unimaginably advanced) may well be the most likely one. If so, and if the distances are so vast that interstellar travel requires tens or thousands (maybe millions!) of years, what's an intelligent species to do, if it wishes to explore the cosmos? Rather than send out spacecraft containing living beings, it's more reasonable that they'd launch spacecraft containing machines—robots that could easily go into stasis for the interminable length of the trip. Robots in suspended animation require no food, create no waste, and need no entertainment.

I have wandered here through time and space, as I address the fascinating subjects of UFOs, space travel, and life elsewhere. As of this date we have far more questions than answers. When might we get those answers? Will we ever? The enigmas of our universe—viewed from the tiny speck that we inhabit—are boundless. How many of them will we ever fathom?

UFOs Up in the Air—Part 1

From the first primitive human species—a few hundred thousand years ago—to today, we have peered heavenward and observed and pondered the behaviors of celestial phenomena. Our ancient ancestors had no ability to comprehend the true nature of those lights and the things that they saw, so they created stories to explain them. (Isn’t that what we do today, but with more knowledge?) They sometimes described the antics of super beings as being responsible for the phenomena they saw happening. Those super beings were viewed from the perspective of the primeval comprehension of people at the time.

Our more recent ancestors (several hundred to several thousand years ago) came to understand that those points of light might be stars, planets, and other transient phenomena (such as comets). They still had little idea of the true nature of these objects or why they behaved as they did, but they became quite familiar with the comings and goings of most of them. Many of the more unusual sightings were interpreted as omens from the gods—which were the beginnings of astrology.

It is likely that some of the early phenomena were similar to what have, in recent decades, come to be designated as unidentified flying objects (UFOs), but the rudimentary science of the times would not have caused people to interpret them as visitors from outer space. Humans didn't even have any concept such as outer space… at most they considered the objects to be part of the “heavens.”

Once we came to know that the night sky's lights are stars, planets, and galaxies, the immensity of outer space became clear. We then began to wonder if there are other forms of life out there. As our knowledge increased, our stories about the unusual aerial phenomena became more sophisticated. We no longer imagined super beings dragging the sun across the sky or “men in the moon,” but we wanted explanations for some of the more strange things that we saw. Mystifying lights and weird objects became the vehicles of visitors from outer space. Strange objects were seen as “flying saucers.” Science fiction tales added to our ideas about the possibilities.

The overactive imaginations of many people sometimes added bizarre additional beliefs to the incidents, such as humans being snatched up by superior beings and being experimented upon. Rumors flourished and fostered conspiracy theories. UFO sightings were romanticized and taken out of context. Many people became convinced that the government had positive evidence of encounters with UFOs, but was suppressing the information, for various security and secretive reasons.

Pressure mounted. This spring the US government finally conceded to release a report that would contain what it knew about what was now being called Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAP). For months the public conjectured about what might be revealed in the report. No more government secrets—the truth about celestial visitors would finally be known! Who are these aliens? Should we fear them? Should we greet them in peace or prepare for battle? Maybe the government will finally show us pieces of crashed space craft, so we can marvel at the advanced technology. Once and for all, we’ll know the truth!

Well, the report came out in June, and was a major let-down for many people. There is no physical evidence. There were no answers that satisfied curious citizens. There were no detailed photographs of any flying craft. There were no explanations for most of the sightings—just descriptions of radar contacts and multiple sightings of the same

phenomena, in a few cases. It was fascinating, but there were no great revelations. The report mostly—and disappointingly for many people—confessed to the government's continued ignorance of UAPs.

I was not surprised at the report. I feel that if the government had any hard evidence, it would long ago have leaked to the public. Moreover, too many of what were once considered to be actual encounters with alien spacecraft have been, upon careful investigation, shown to be explained by weather balloons, bizarre optical illusions, natural phenomena such as forms of lightning, etc. Conspiracy buffs, however, remain convinced that the government is holding back, and it may well be, to some extent, but we still don’t know. It is similar to the conviction that some people have—that the moon landings were faked by NASA and no opposing evidence will dissuade them.

More UFOs next time…

Widespread Wrath

Something ominous is happening in America's public places; outbursts of rage are becoming increasingly common. Customers in business establishments suddenly explode at the slightest request from staff. Asked to don a mask to limit the spread of COVID, some shoppers have pulled out a gun and shot the store's employee. Airplane flights are being terminated, when passengers assault attendants. Gun violence has dramatically increased. What used to be called road rage seems to have spread to “relentless rage.”

It is as if Americans have severed connections to each other, as they retreat into isolated and alienated enclaves, within which suspicion and fear of the other dominate. We have become politically and ideologically sequestered. In an attempt to acquire some measure of comfort, we seek the refuge of like-minded people, in order to let our fear and tension lessen, while we keep to our in-groups.

We have become intolerant of opposing perspectives, as if they are literally a threat to our existence. There is no longer much of a middle ground, where we may meet, listen to each other's stories, and come together. We retreat to our safe silos, taking comfort from those who share our concerns, and demonize those outside our confined bubble. There is a loss of unity, and of some common purpose. We've come to view the situation as a win-lose predicament, and we ferociously fight to be the winner.

What are the causes of this wrath and alienation? There have been numerous explanations offered—most often stemming from the opposing political persuasions that we hold. Another common interpretation is the vicissitudes forced upon us by COVID-19. Americans have been forced to hibernate and isolate, which has been an unbearable stress on socially-inclined individuals. One's imagination and dreads can become overwhelming under those conditions.

Additionally, the mystery of and misinformation about COVID have added to the anxieties. Rumor and apprehension quickly spread. Conflicting messages from the government and authorities have caused confusion and inspired conspiracy theories. Thus, problems of society—climate crisis, decay of democracy, inequality—have gotten set aside or fester in the minds of the populace. So COVID has definitely played its role in society's wrath. 

But the seeds of rage had already been planted well before this strain of corona virus entered the scene. Rudeness and alienation have relentlessly been on the increase in recent decades. Society has become progressively polarized. The internet's anonymity has allowed and encouraged some people to attack others. The domination of government by the rich and powerful has caused the country's leadership to ignore citizens' needs. As a result, frustration and anger have grown, as people have turned against the government's abandonment of their concerns and welfare. This anger and alienation culminated in the election of Trump, who further encouraged the rage and divisions.

Where do we go from here? No one knows. We are in a time of upheaval, which causes us to fight for our survival and each other. Will society's problems finally get attention, or will chaos continue to increase? Threats from without tend to pull a citizenry together. Threats from within tear us apart.

Sight Slight

 Our eyes register far more information than our brain can handle. If our visual system attempted to register every photon that entered our eyes and send their signals to the brain to process, we'd become overwhelmed, so evolution has taught us to drastically filter the information that the eye is capable of responding to, such that the brain can pay attention to the tiny part that is necessary at the moment. And what is necessary, is to spot (1) food, sex, and those things we want and (2) threats—the things we don't want.

Our central vision is very acute, giving us the detail we need for our brain to discern important objects. Our eyes are constantly shifting about, taking in that important information, as we constantly monitor our visual field.

In contrast, our peripheral vision is not nearly as sharp, so it provides far less information to the brain, but is a crucial adjunct to our vision, because it is extremely sensitive to motion and can operate in lower-light conditions than does our central vision. Thus, evolution has provided us with very effective and complementary central and peripheral visions. Tightly-packed, color-sensitive cones are used for central vision, while sparsely-packed, color-insensitive rods provide peripheral vision that is far less precise.

Since (blurry) peripheral vision information is most often of minimal use to us, the brain ignores most of its signals—except when something that is off to one side suddenly moves. That's critical information, if we are to stay alive. The brain also learns to ignore objects that are in the field of central vision, when they are of little interest at the moment... in particular, objects that are familiar and unchanging. That picture on the wall virtually never registers in the brain, unless we specifically choose to look at it with our central vision. We hardly notice the easy chair, until we decide to sit in it, and even then we don't bother to examine it, because it's familiar and always there. Without looking, we plop down.

Put a new picture on the wall, however, and it keeps catching the corner of our eye, until it too becomes commonplace and we begin to ignore it. This learning to “slight our sight” of certain things is especially useful when we find ourselves in safe, familiar places. We can relax and maybe think deeply about things… even close our eyes. 

Learning Limits—Part 2

So, returning to the field of science—which is a case of collective knowledge, rather than individual belief: Are we able to describe boundaries to our scientific knowledge that may never be crossed? It may help first to address the difference between knowledge and understanding. My dictionary defines knowledge as “facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education.” Understanding, however, goes deeper; it involves a person's perception or judgment of a situation. Understanding implies that we perceive the significance of something. There are many scientists who acquire facts and information about a topic, but fail to comprehend their significance. For example, one may collect data on the geological characteristics of some location, without understanding how or why they came about, or what the future may bring.

So if we confine our attention to science, we may ask ourselves if Nature imposes some fundamental limit to what we can know about something. Before the invention of scientific tools such as telescopes and microscopes, we faced an impenetrable barrier to seeing the nature of stars or microorganisms. There seemed to be an absolute boundary to what we could learn. Those barriers were eventually largely surmounted. Today, science seems stumped about what dark matter and dark energy are—yet most scientists do not regard our ignorance in this area as an impenetrable barrier. More experiments and new or improved instruments may solve these quandaries. Better theories and models may point the way.

Cosmologists are posing some of the thorniest questions about the nature of the universe. Some of the questions seem to imply that there might be an outer limit to our knowledge. Does life exist elsewhere? The universe may be so vast and empty that we may never know. Our universe—according to current models—began, as it burst forth from an infinitesimal point, nearly 14 billion years ago. Was there a time before the Big Bang? Our universe—again, according to current theories—has been expanding ever since. Will it continue to expand? Is there anything “beyond” the universe that we inhabit? Some of these queries appear to some cosmologists as to be so fundamental and profound, that they may forever remain beyond the island of our knowledge.

Many of these questions are unanswerable from the perspective of today's knowledge, yet they are definitely worth setting forth. Should we frustratingly and doggedly pursue complex conundrums that are unsolvable? Should we step back, pause, and ask if we are even asking the right questions? Should we grasp at speculative explanations and refuse to acknowledge that we may be in over our heads? Or should we relax, live with the mystery, and let time and accrued wisdom point the way?

Learning Limits—Part 1 (7/5/21

The limits of human knowledge have ceaselessly been expanding, ever since our species came into existence. A major factor allowing that expansion is the fact that we discovered language and writing along the way. These unique human capabilities have taken us far beyond any other earthly creature, because they allow us to communicate and cooperate, so that our cultural accomplishments have escalated at an astounding rate. Each generation passes on its accumulated knowledge to the next.

Our accrued knowledge has been compared to the size of an island in a vast ocean of unknowing. As our erudition has grown, the island has expanded. What we've come to know today, in fact, is more like a continent than an island; yet the immense ocean of ignorance still surrounds us and still appears unlimited. The more we know—measured by the size of our continent and the length of its shoreline—the more we aware of all that we don't know.

This situation raises an interesting question: Is there a limit to the size of our island of knowledge? Will our shoreline some day bump up against a formidable ocean barrier that brings a halt to what we can know? Are there some fundamental limits to our learning?

Questions like these are often asked in the context of science, rather than theology, philosophy, or history. In theology, for example, many people have wrestled with the question of whether or not God exists. Some (theists) are convinced God is real, others (atheists) “know” there is no God, and yet others (agnostics) stake out a position that we can't know, or will never know; so they clearly feel that there is a limit to our knowledge in this realm of theology.

Some of the more thorny questions of philosophy seem to be beyond our capability to ever answer. We have struggled with them for millennia, without making much headway. There seem—so far—to be no final answers to questions such as, What is the good life? What is beauty? What is truth?

And what about history? Short of time travel, will we ever know why some events happened, but not others? Why did Alexander the Great decide to engage in some battles, but not others? What would have happened, had he made another decision? How would events have turned out differently, had Jack Kennedy chosen not to take the route that his procession took that fateful day in Dallas, November 1963? These kinds of questions can go on indefinitely, and their answers—as is often expressed—are “lost to history.” So there does seem to be a limit to our knowledge, in the context of history. There are some things we'll never know.

The limits to our knowledge in the arenas of theology and philosophy are not necessarily the same for each of us. It's more a case of relative or individual knowing. What one person knows—or believes they know—may be quite different from another person. We often are in the realm of opinion, rather than knowledge. It can be difficult—if not impossible—to characterize what the collective knowledge may be. In fact, when we ask questions about the limits of human knowledge in these fields, we even often find ourselves asking the wrong question. It may be more a matter of exploring ways to ask better questions, than struggling with the limits of the wrong question.

Next time” returning to science…

Constitutional Compromises

In the previous blog I focused on the US Constitution's priority of protecting citizens' rights—to the unfortunate omission of their welfare and needs for education, health care access, or food. The Constitution was preoccupied with rights, rather than welfare. Another fatal defect of the Constitution was its compromise between northern and southern states over the issue of slavery.

The North generally adhered to the concept that “all men are created equal,” and believed that slavery was a fundamental denial of that ideal. The South's agrarian economy was completely dependent on the free services of enslaved people, however, and it adamantly refused to join the union, unless the institution of slavery was protected.

The result was a Constitution that attempted to gloss over the slavery issue by not even mentioning it, while acceding to the South's demands in two momentous ways: (1) the US Senate would constitute two representatives from each state—regardless of population, and (2) for purposes of determining the number of representatives in the House (which goes by population), slaves would be counted as 3/5 of a person (an appalling compromise). The less populated states of the South thus gained an inordinate advantage in Congress, which allowed it for seven decades to block any national legislation that would be to its disadvantage.

The unsustainable constitutional compromise finally ruptured in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. In response, the South not only seceded from the Union (a constitutionally illegal deed), but committed an act of war by firing on a federal fort. The provocation was answered by the North declaring war on the South. After several years of vicious combat that caused massive destruction and loss of lives, the South surrendered. The US Congress—at the time dominated by northern states—abolished slavery and offered full citizenship to African enslaved people—including voting rights.

A new day seemed to have dawned in America, as Congress soon passed several additional laws that promised full rights to Blacks. Tragically, a new compromise was made, that canceled the federal government's Reconstruction Program, which would have ensured that the rights of Blacks would be equivalent to those of European descent. That compromise installed Rutherford Hayes as president, in exchange for an end to Reconstruction.

Although the Constitution (amended after the Civil War to eliminate the original compromises to slavery) officially guaranteed freedom and rights to formerly enslaved people, the South found new ways to block legislation and deny freedom to Blacks. The Jim Crow era (enabled by the end of Reconstruction) began. Nearly 100 years later new federal laws were once again implemented, spurred on by civil rights demonstrations throughout the South in the 1960s.

Despite these attempts to rectify “civil wrongs,” US institutions retain a significant degree of racist attitudes embedded within them. Much of that prejudice can be traced back to that original constitutional compromise, which formed the foundation of a national racial unjustness that persists, over 230 years later.