Extraterrestrial hypothesis

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A photograph taken in Passoria, New Jersey, on July 31 1952
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A photograph taken in Passoria, New Jersey, on July 31 1952

The Extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is the hypothesis that UFOs are best explained as being creatures from other planets occupying physical spacecraft visiting Earth.

The hypothesis is supported by a substantial number of individuals within the scientific community, and many organizations have been set up to actively study UFO sightings and contact reports in relation to ETH. It also has many detractors among the scientific community, and among skeptic groups who consider it to be a pseudoscience [citation needed].

ETH is an important component of UFO Abduction reports and remains one of the central questions of ufology. It has divided scholars for decades.

Contents

[edit] Etymology

The origins of the term "extraterrestrial hypothesis" are not clear; it was used in a publication by French engineer Aimè Michel in 1967[1] and again by Dr. James Harder, while testifying before the Congressional Committee on Science and Astronautics, in July 1968[2].

In 1969 physicist Edward Condon defined ETH as the "idea that some UFOs may be spacecraft sent to Earth from another civilization, or on a planet associated with a more distant star," while presenting the findings of the much debated Condon Report.

[edit] Chronology

Belief in extraterrestrial life -- the foundation of ETH -- is not a modern concept.

[edit] The ancestors of ETH

Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) hypothesized that every planet in the universe supported life.

On June 17, 1864, the French newspaper La Pays, wrote about two American geologists who allegedly discovered an alien like creature; a mummified three foot tall hairless humanoid with an trunk-like appendage on its forehead, inside a a hollow egg-shaped structure[3].

In October 1865, the Missouri Democrat (St. Louis), reported on the story of Rocky Mountain trapper James Lumley, who claimed to have discover fragments of rock bearing "curious hieroglyphics", which appeared to form a compartmentalized object; which he believed was being used to transport "an animate being", after investigating a meteor impact near Great Falls, Montana. The newspaper goes on to speculate "Possibly, meteors could be used as a means of conveyance by the inhabitants of other planets, in exploring space"[4].

[edit] Pre Modern ETH

In 1895, astronomer Percival Lowell expanded on the works of Giovanni Schiaparelli to speculate that patterns observed on the surface of the planet Mars were irrigation canals created by an intelligent civilization[5]. However, Lowell and Schiaparelli did not argue that Martians were visiting Earth.

The next few years saw a spike in the reports of "Mystery airships" in the U.S. Several newspapers; including the Washington Times and the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch speculated might they might have originated from Mars"[6].

American anomolist Charles Hoy Fort (1874–1923) also believed that many unexplained phenomena -- inexplicable artifacts, mysterious disappearances (and strange appearances), and bizarre lights reported in the sky or in the oceans -- could be the result of alien visitation[7]

In a letter that was published in the New York Times. Fort wrote, "If it is not the respectable or conventional thing upon this earth to believe in visitors from other worlds, most of us would watch them a week and declare that they were something else, and likely make things disagreeable for anyone who though otherwise."[8]

[edit] Modern ETH

Modern ETH -- specifically the implicit linking of unidentified aircraft and lights in the sky to alien life -- took root during the late 1940s and took its current form during the 1950s.

In 1947, Lyman Spitzer, Jr., an associate professor of astrophysics at Yale University appeared on New Haven, Connecticut's WTIC and speculated that the planet Mars could have been inhabited for millions of years, and that Martians had visited Earth at some point during it history. He also voiced that such visits would likely have gone unnoticed "unless [the Martians] had spent some time in a large city or had landed sufficiently recently to have been photographed, we would have no record of their having been here" he reasoned that "any few men who had seen them would probably not be believed by anyone else."[9].

On June 24, 1947 -- the day after Lyman's presentation -- at about 3.00 p.m. local time, pilot Kenneth Arnold reports seeing a nine unidentified disk-shaped aircraft flying near Mt. Rainier.[10][11]. Though he was impressed by their high speed and quick movements, Arnold did not initially consider the ETH, stating,

"I assumed at the time they were a new formation or a new type of jet, though I was baffled by the fact that they did not have any tails. They passed almost directly in front of me, but at a distance of about 23 miles, which is not very great in the air. I judged their wingspan to be at least 100 feet across. Their sighing did not particularly disturb me at the time, except that I had never seen planes of that type." Kenneth Arnold[12]

It was a misquote from a June 25, 1947 newspaper report on this incident[13] that the term "Flying Saucer" entered widespread use: Arnold said the objects moved as if they were a saucer skipping across water.

Literature professor Terry Matheson wrote,

"sightings of unidentifiable lights the sky had been taking place for centuries, but only after Kenneth Arnold’s flying saucer sighting on June 24, 1947, near Mt. Rainier, Washington, were they explicitly theorized to be extraterrestrial in origin."[14].

Though a common one, Matheson's argument is innacurate: decades before the Arnold sighting, several people had explicitly speculated that odd aerial phenomema might have an extraterrestrial origin, but these early ETH proponents had limited audiences. According to journalist Edward R. Murrow,the ETH as an explanation for "flying saucers" did not earn widespread attetnion until about 18 months after Arnold's sighting [15].

The results of the first US poll of public UFO perceptions were released by Gallup on August 14 1947[16] and showed that most people either held no opinion, or believed that there was a mundane explanation for apparent UFOs.

33%: No opinion
29%: An optical illusion
15%: A US secret weapon
10%: A hoax
3%: A "weather forecasting device"
1%: of Soviet origin
9%: "Other explanations" (Including fulfilment of Biblical prophecy, secret commercial aircraft, or related to atomic testing).

The term "flying saucer" was familiar to 94% of the respondents. No option was provided to allow participants to explicitly select "extraterrestrial" or "interplanetary".

In 1948, the U.S. Air Force's Project Sign wrote their Estimate of the Situation, which was the first and only formal U.S. governmental study to argue in favor of the ETH. This report was rejected by high-ranking officers due to a lack of physical evidence, and its existence was publicy disclosed only in 1956.

A later poll of UFO witnesses, published in Popular Mechanics magazine in August 1951, showed that 52% of questioned UFO witnesses believed that what they had seen was a man made aircraft, while only 4% believed that they had witnessed something of alien origin[16].

Belief in the ETH grew by the late 1950s. Retired U.S. Marine Corp officer and writer Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe was one of the first to actively promite the ETH. By 1957, when asked if they believed, or were willing to believe, in the ETH, 25% percent of Americans responed Yes, 53% responded no, and 22% said that they were uncertain. [17].

The ETH would also fragment into different camps, each believing slightly different variations of the hypothesis. The "contactees" of the early 1950s said that the "space brothers" they met were peaceful and benevolent, but by the mid-1960s, a number of alleged Alien abductions; including that of Betty and Barney Hill, and of the apparent mutilation of cattle cast the ETH in more sinister terms.

[edit] Science and the ETH

In a 1969 lecture Dr. Carl Sagan said,

"The idea of benign or hostile super beings from other planets visiting the earth [is clearly] an emotional idea. There are two sorts of self-deception here: either accepting the idea of extraterrestrial visitation in the face of very meager evidence because we want it to be true; or rejecting such an idea out of hand, in the absence of sufficient evidence, because we don't want it to be true. Each of these extremes is a serious impediment to the study of UFOs."[18].

Similarly, astrophysicist Dr. Peter A. Sturrock wrote that for many years,

"discussions of the UFO issue have remained narrowly polarized between advocates and adversaries of a single theory, namely the extraterrestrial hypothesis ... this fixation on the ETH has narrowed and impoverished the debate, precluding an examination of other possible theories for the phenomenon."[19]

[edit] Arguments Against

The primary scientific arguments against ETH were summarized by Astronomer and UFO researcherJ. Allen Hynek at a 1983 MUFON Symposium[20].

  1. "Failure of Sophisticated Surveillance Systems to Detect Incoming or Outgoing UFOs"
  2. "Gravitational and Atmospheric Considerations"
  3. "Statistical Considerations"
  4. "Elusive, Evasive and Absurd Behavior of UFOs and Their Occupants"
  5. "Isolation of the UFO Phenomenon in Time and Space: The Cheshire Cat Effect"
  6. "The Space Unworthiness of UFOs"
  7. "The Problem of Astronomical Distances"

In more detail, Hynek argued that

  1. Despite world-wide radar systems and Earth-orbiting satellites, UFOs are alleged to flit in and out of the atmosphere, leaving little to no evidence.
  2. UFO-related creatures are alleged to be overwhelmingly humanoid, and are allegedly able to exist on Earth without much difficulty (often lacking "space suits", despite the fact that extrasolar planets would likely have different atmospheres, biospheres, gravity and other factors, and extraterrestrial life would likely be very different from Earthly life.)
  3. The number of reported UFOs and of purported encounters with UFO-inhabitants outstrips the number of expeditions that an alien civilization (or civilizations) could statistically be expected to mount.
  4. The behavior of extraterrestrials reported during alleged abductions is often inconsistant and irrational.
  5. UFOs are isolated in time and space: like the Cheshire Cat, they seem to appear appear and disapear at will, leaving only vague, ambigous and mocking evidence of their presence
  6. Reported UFOs are often far too small to support a crew traveling through space, and their reported flight behavior is often not representative of a craft under intelligent control (erratic flight patterns, sudden course changes).
  7. The distance between planets makes interstellar travel impractical, particularly because of the amount of energy that would required required for interstellar travel using conventional means (Accoring to a NASA estimate, it would take 7x10^19 Joules of energy to send the current space shuttle on a one-way, 50 year, journey to the nearest star, an enormous amount of energy) [21], and the level of technology that would be required to circumvent conventional energy/fuel/speed limitations using exotic means (See Faster than light travel)[7].

According to Hynek, points 1-6 could be argued, but point 7 represented an insurmountable barrier to the validity of the EHT[7].

Historically, the scientific community has often shown little support for the ETH and has largely argued that UFOs are the result of misinterpretations of common objects or phenomena. In 1977 astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock surveyed the members of the American Astronomical Society, asking them to assign probabilities to eight possible explanations for UFOs.

Respondents believed that there was only a 3% probability of UFOs being extraterrestrial craft, a 9% probability that they represented a previously unknown natural phenomena, but that there was a 66% probability that they were the result of witnesses either misinterpreting an ordinary object or phenomena, or witnessing an ordinary object or phenomena that they were unfamiliar with. Returnees also assigned an average probability of 12% to UFOs being a hoax[22].

12% Hoax
22% A familiar phenomenon or device
23% An unfamiliar natural phenomenon
21% An unfamiliar terrestrial device
9% An unknown natural phenomenon
3% An alien device
7% Some specifiable other cause
3% Some unspecified other cause

Professor Steven Hawking argues because most UFOs turn out to have prosiac explanations, it was reasonable to presume that all "unidentified" UFOs were explainable phenomena. [23]

[edit] NASA

NASA frequently fields questions in regard to the ETH and UFOs. As of 2006, its official standpoint is that ETH remains possible because it has yet to be proven otherwise, but that it cannot be regarded as anything other than a hypothesis because of a lack of empirical evidence.

"no one has ever found a single artifact, or any other convincing evidence for such alien visits". David Morrison[24].
"As far as I know, no claims of UFOs as being alien craft have any validity -- the claims are without substance, and certainly not proved". David Morrison[25]

Despite public interest, NASA considers the study of UFOs to be irrelevant to its work because of the number of false leads that a study would provide, and the limited amount of usable scientific data that it would yield.

"That whole subject is really irrelevant to our own human quest to travel to space ... if someone in the previous century saw a film of a 747 flying past, it would not tell them how to build a jet engine, what fuel to use, or what materials to make it out of. Yes, the wings are a clue, but just that, a clue." NASA[26].

[edit] Arguments For

ETH has a substantial following, among scientists and the public, based on several factors.

In a 1969 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American physicist Dr. James E. McDonald summarized his reasons for seriously considering the ETH:

"we have evidence of some [UFO] phenomena defying ready explanation in terms of present-day science and technology, some phenomena that include enough suggestion of intelligent control ... that it is difficult for me to see any reasonable alternative to the hypothesis that something in the nature of extraterrestrial devices engaged-in something in the nature of surveillance lies at the heart of the UFO problem. That is the hypothesis that my own study of the UFO problem leads me to regard as most probable in terms of my present information. This is, like all scientific hypotheses, a working hypothesis to be accepted or rejected only on the basis of continuing investigation. Present evidence surely does not amount to incontrovertible proof of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. What I find scientifically dismaying is that, while a large body of UFO evidence now seems to point in no other direction than the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the profoundly important implications of that possibility are going unconsidered by the scientific community because this entire problem has been imputed to be little more than a nonsense matter unworthy of serious scientific attention. Those overtones have been generated almost entirely by scientists and others who have done essentially no real investigation of the problem-area in which they express such strong opinions. Science is not supposed to proceed in that manner." [27].

In 1968, American engenner Dr James A. Harder argued that significant evidence existed to prove UFOs "beyond reasonable doubt," but that the evidence had been supressed and largely neglected by scientists and the general public, thus preventing sound conclusions from being reached on the ETH.

"Over the past 20 years a vast amount of evidence has been accumulating that bears on the existence of UFO's. Most of this is little known to the general public or to most scientists. But on the basis of the data and ordinary rules of evidence, as would be applied in civil or criminal courts, the physical reality of UFO's has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt[2]" Dr. J A Harder

Physicist Bruce S. Maccabee argues that belief in ETH is justifiable, and the reason that scientifically acceptable proof has not yet been provided is because UFOlogy has been relegated to the level of a pseudoscience by mainstream scientists who have either been unwilling to investigate it, or unwilling to reach credible conclusions based on credible data, because of a priori prejudices in the wider scientific community.

"For nearly 40 years, the science establishment has ignored the UFO problem, relegating it to the domain of 'true believers and mental incompetents' (a.k.a. 'kooks and nuts'). Scientists have participated in a "self-cover-up" by refusing to look at the credible and well reported data." Bruce S. Maccabee[28].

According to Dr. Frank B. Salisbury of Utah State University, in order to prevent science from descending into pseudosciences, some burden must also be borne by those who challenge the ETH.

"Can we eliminate the spaceship hypothesis in any rigorous scientific manner? Logically one might think of two approaches: we must show in each and every instance ever reported that the object was not an extraterrestrial spaceship, or we must show by some sort of scientific logic that it is impossible for extraterrestrial beings to visit us." Dr. Frank B. Salisbury[29].

Missouri ufologist Val Germann argues that earthly level of development is still too limited for us to attempt to use scientific methodologies to disprove ETH, and that the apparent absence of empirical evidence is irrelevant to belief in ETH because humans are not currently qualified to extrapolate anything meaningful from the information that is available to them[30]. In Germann's view, all arguments against ETH, based on our current understanding of science, are pure speculation.

Noteworthy supporters of ETH among the military, scientific and aerospace community have included

[edit] Conspiracy

A frequent concept in UFOlogy and the argument for ETH is that the true extent of information about UFOs is being suppressed by some form of conspiracy or cover up (See UFO conspiracy theory).

A survey carried out by Industrial Research magazine in 1971 showed the more Americans believed that the government was concealing information about UFOs (76%) than believed in the existence of UFOs (54%), or in ETH itself (32%). [22]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Michel Aime (1967), "The Truth About Flying Saucers", Pyramid Books, ASIN B0007DRR38
  2. ^ a b Testimony of Dr. J A Harder before the Congressional Committee on Science and Astronautics, 29th July 1968 (October 2006)
  3. ^ Jacobs David M (2000), “UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge”, University Press of Kansas, ISBN 0-7006-1032-4 (Compiled work quoting Jerome Clark; "So far as is known, the first mention of an extraterrestrial spacecraft was published in the 17 June 1864 issue of a French newspaper, La Pays, which ran an allegedly real but clearly fabulous account of a discovery by two American geologists of a hollow, egg-shaped structure holding the three-foot mummified body of a hairless humanoid with a trunk protruding from the middle of his forehead.")
  4. ^ Missouri Democrat, October 19, 1865 (Transcript), (October 2006)
  5. ^ Lowell Percival (1895), “Mars” (Complete Text from Bibliomania)
  6. ^ Jacobs David Michael (1975), “The UFO Controversy In America”, Indiana University Press ISBN 0-253-19006-1
  7. ^ a b c Clark Jerome (1998), “The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial”, Visible Ink, ISBN 1-57859-029-9
  8. ^ New York Times, (September 5th, 1926)
  9. ^ The Hartford Courant (June 23 1947)
  10. ^ Chicago Daily Tribune (June 26 1947)
  11. ^ Arnold Kenneth, Report on 9 unidentified aircraft observed on June 24 1947, near Mt. Rainier, Washington], (October 1947)
  12. ^ Kenneth Arnold; Speaking to Journalist Edward R. Murrow (April 7, 1950), (Transcript care of Project 1947
  13. ^ Pendleton (Oregon) East Oregonian (June 25, 1947)
  14. ^ Matheson Terry (1998); “Alien Abduction: Creating A Modern Phenomenon”, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-57392-244-7
  15. ^ Edward R. Murrow (April 7, 1950) The Case of the Flying Saucer, CBS News (Radio Documentary available in MP3/Real Media), (October 2006)
  16. ^ a b Jacobs David M (2000), “UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge”, University Press of Kansas, ISBN 0-7006-1032-4 (Compiled work: section sourced from Clark Jerome)
  17. ^ Trendex Poll, St. Louis Globe Democrat (August 24, 1957)
  18. ^ Sagan Carl, Page Thornton (1972), “UFOs: A Scientific Debate”. Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-0740-0
  19. ^ Sturrock Peter A (1999), “The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence”, Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-52565-0
  20. ^ Hynek, J. Allen (1983), “The case against ET”, in Walter H. Andrus, Jr., and Dennis W. Stacy (eds), MUFON UFO Symposium
  21. ^ Warp Drive, When?: A Look at the Scaling, (October 2006)
  22. ^ a b John F. Schuessler (January 2000), Public Opinion Surveys and Unidentified Flying Objects; 50+ years of Sampling Public Opinions
  23. ^ Hawking Stephen, Space and Time Warps Cont...
  24. ^ Morrison David, Senior Scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute (June 2006), Ask an Astrobiologist, (October 2006)
  25. ^ Morrison David, Senior Scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute (July 2006), Ask an Astrobiologist, (October 2006)
  26. ^ Warp Drive, When?: FAQ, NASA, (October 2006)
  27. ^ Science in Default: Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations: [1], James E. McDonald, (December 27, 1969)
  28. ^ Maccabee Bruce S (1986), Still in Default
  29. ^ Testimony of Dr. Frank B. Salisbury before the Congressional Committee on Science and Astronautics, 29th July 1968 (October 2006)
  30. ^ Germann Val, “Science, Proof And The 'UFO'”

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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