11/29/23: FIRST CONTACT – OVERLOOKED OR UNDERPLAYED W/ DR. SKY

A new search for extraterrestrial life aims to find out by listening for radio pulses from the center of our galaxy. Narrow-frequency pulses are naturally emitted by stars called pulsars, but they’re also used deliberately by humans in technology such as radar. Because these pulses stand out against the background radio noise of space, they’re an effective way of communicating across long distances — and an appealing target to listen for when searching for alien civilizations. The itinerary for the 21st century is to find evidence for technosignatures, biosignatures, and perhaps alien artifacts from space. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with astronomy journalist, Dr. Sky about FIRST CONTACT – OVERLOOKED OR UNDERPLAYED.

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The world is a very complicated place. It is time we started realizing this and pull our attention away from the distractions out there and start to be a bit more aware of how what we once saw as science fiction — is now catching up to us and that the media is too slow in keeping up with some of the more interesting things that are happening beyond politics.

The media needs to stop with its accusations of conspiracy theories when they too indulge in the same theories, but they do so to further the political echo chamber mentality.

Question everything you hear and take nothing that the puppet masters attempt to feed us for granted. You know the saying, “it isn’t what it seems”? Let’s say instead it is what it seems, but not what they tell us it is.

I think saying “It isn’t what it seems is far more applicable than saying the Truth is out there — that is what reporters say when they want to be cute — or when they want to sound like they are hip to the lingo of those crazy conspiracy nerds.

Please don’t kid yourself — they are certainly in on the idea of talking about these things– but the editors want more Israel more Hamas– more Ukraine more Russia, more bathroom habits of Donald Trump, or why Melania wore gray to Roslyn Cater’s funeral.

But everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.

Most conspiracy theory is fueled by a desire to see the universe as ultimately intelligible, the bargain being that things can make sense, but only if you believe in a pervasive totalitarian cover-up.

Sometimes I believe that UFO spokespeople speaking about a so-called conspiracy of an alien cover-up is far more profitable than admitting that there is an effort to at least welcome the idea of contact with aliens into the very sophisticated science complex.

Once we confirm what the whistleblowers are saying — the longtime UFO gurus will be either debunked or demonetized.

The answers will remain vague, and the information czars will still know the secrets and will be in on the planned big things.

For some time, there has been an attitude of malice towards the government and the military with regard to what is invading our airspace.

This has engendered cloak-and-dagger attitudes that have lingered after the Cold War with regard to cover-ups at Roswell, Men in Black, detainments at Area 51, and the belief that the new Space Force is all about alien warfare in a future war in space.

But there is an extension of space observations that also include the chaotic nature of our galaxy, the geomagnetic health of the sun, and cosmic messages that are now playing the magnetic field’s strings like a harp.

Bursts of energy in space are just God’s way of saying hello, or it could be something far more threatening –and that is a shot being fired at us to get our attention — at this moment these are a reminder of how small we are compared to the omnipotence of an advanced being or intelligence that we cannot comprehend.

Space scientists seeking to understand the enigmatic origins of powerful cosmic rays have detected an extremely rare, ultra-high-energy particle that they believe traveled to Earth from beyond the Milky Way galaxy.

The energy of this subatomic particle, invisible to the naked eye, is equivalent to dropping a brick on your toe from waist height, according to the authors of new research published Thursday in the journal Science. It rivals the single most energetic cosmic ray ever observed, the “Oh-My-God” particle that was detected in 1991, the study found.

Cosmic rays are charged particles that travel through space and rain down on Earth constantly. Low-energy cosmic rays can emanate from the sun, but extremely high-energy ones are exceptional. They are thought to travel to Earth from other galaxies and extragalactic sources.

The recently discovered particle nicknamed the Amaterasu particle after the sun goddess in Japanese mythology, was spotted by a cosmic ray observatory in Utah’s West Desert known as the Telescope Array.

The Telescope Array, which started operating in 2008, is made up of 507 ping-pong table-size surface detectors covering 270 square miles.

It has observed more than 30 ultra-high-energy cosmic rays but none bigger than the Amaterasu particle, which struck the atmosphere above Utah on May 27, 2021, raining secondary particles to the ground where they were picked up by the detectors, according to the study.

The event triggered 23 of the surface detectors, with a calculated energy of about 244 exa-electron volts. The “Oh My God particle” detected more than 30 years ago was 320 exa-electron volts.

For reference, 1 exa-electron volt equals 1 billion gigaelectron-volts, and 1 gigaelectron volt is 1 billion electron volts.

Far from attempting to even contemplate 1.21 gigawatts to get the DeLorean back to the 1980’s.

A new search for extraterrestrial life aims to find out by listening for radio pulses from the center of our galaxy. Narrow-frequency pulses are naturally emitted by stars called pulsars, but they’re also used deliberately by humans in technology such as radar. Because these pulses stand out against the background radio noise of space, they’re an effective way of communicating across long distances — and an appealing target to listen for when searching for alien civilizations.

Researchers led by Cornell University graduate student Akshay Suresh developed software to detect these repetitive frequency patterns and tested it on known pulsars to be sure it could pick up the narrow frequencies. These frequency ranges are very small, at about a tenth of the width of frequencies used by a typical FM radio station. The researchers then searched data from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia using the method.

Even though these signals have yet to be proven to be those of an intelligent civilization – they certainly motivated SETI – the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and NASA to up their game.

The itinerary for the 21st century is to find evidence for technosignatures, biosignatures and perhaps alien artifacts from space.

Unusual space artifacts when observed are now kept secret – that is of course only if it can be hidden away from the public— now it is becoming difficult to hide these findings as many people and scientists are closing in on what may be observing us from a distance.

Confirmation of alien life is becoming a constant at this time, but there is still some apprehensive containment of the information that is being doled out here in the United States as NASA wishes to have the monopoly on just what isn’t and what is the truth about the cosmic imperative.

In a new study, researchers hunted for technological signs of E.T. during the moments when exoplanets pass directly in front of their suns, from Earth’s point of view. These exact moments could be the perfect chance for an alien world to beam out a signal to Earthlings in an attempt to make contact.

Exoplanetary transits are special because they can be calculated by both us on Earth, as the observers, and also any potential technological species in the exoplanetary system itself, as the transmitters.

Perhaps the aliens are aware of our Sun’s activity and that is why there has been so-called active signaling from extra-terrestrial civilizations.

Our Sun was certainly active as a plasma whirlwind developed and eventually fired a CME toward Earth.

Dead center an M-9.8 solar flare, almost an X Class erupted from sunspots heading south on the surface of the star.

This powerful M-class solar flare created a high-frequency radio blackout event on Tuesday, and multiple eruptions from the Sun have prompted geomagnetic storm watches for later this week.

Some scientists are saying the earth may see the effects of a glancing blow –again sending a message from space that we are powerless and very capable of being pulverized by cosmic waves capable of shutting down our modern way of living.

These most certainly are not the extraterrestrial attacks we have seen in the movies, but they are just as threatening no matter how or why they are happening.

We live in a very chaotic universe — and are set up in a solar system that appears to be more and more like a snooker table, where we could at any moment bounce into an Apollo class asteroid, a solar anomaly, or a gamma burst capable of wiping us out in the blink of an eye.

Extraterrestrial events are common, but we certainly have some protection from neighboring planets like Saturn and Jupiter. I have always theorized that if you want to hide an alien outpost capable of space warfare, you would probably find it in the Jovian system.

Researchers are listening into the middle of the Milky Way because it is dense with stars and potentially habitable exoplanets. What’s more, if intelligent aliens at the core of the Milky Way wanted to reach out to the rest of the galaxy, they could send signals sweeping across a wide array of planets, given their privileged position at the center of the galaxy. Using narrow bandwidths and repeated patterns would be a prime way for aliens to reveal themselves, as such a combination is extremely unlikely to occur naturally.

The method uses an algorithm that can search through 1.5 million telescope data samples in 30 minutes. Though researchers did not find any telltale signs in their first search, they say that the speed of the algorithm will help improve searches in the future.

Space scientists have known for some time that there is one part of the night sky that is mostly obscured from view due to a bulge in the galaxy. Known as the “zone of avoidance,” it makes up approximately 10% of the dark sky and has had researchers wondering what might be behind it.

Because it offers researchers so little to work with, the zone has not been very well studied; thus, little is known about what it might be hiding. In this new effort, the researchers used a variety of tools to gain a better understanding of what might be hidden from view.

This area is suspected to be the place where mankind may discover evidence of active space signals that could change our earthly paradigm.

If any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life emerges, whether from whistleblower testimony or an admission of a cover-up, humans would face a historic paradigm shift.

The question of who is “in charge” of preparing for contact with alien life has always been a mystery to me… I mean who is qualified to speak with beings that have communication skills advanced enough to determine language patterns — or will we continue to receive what could be dangerous magnetic and radioactive signals from unknown civilizations?

The communities – and their interpretive lenses – most likely to engage in any contact scenario would be military, corporate and scientific.

By giving Americans the legal right to profit from space tourism and planetary resource extraction, the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 could mean that corporations will be the first to find signs of extraterrestrial societies. Otherwise, while detecting unidentified aerial phenomena is usually a military matter, and NASA takes the lead on sending messages from Earth, most activities around extraterrestrial communications and evidence fall to a program called SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

SETI is a collection of scientists with a variety of research endeavors, including Breakthrough Listen, which listens for “technosignatures,” or markers, like pollutants, of a designed technology.

SETI investigators are virtually always STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – scholars. Few in the social science and humanities fields have been afforded opportunities to contribute to concepts of and preparations for contact.

In a promising act of disciplinary inclusion, the Berkeley SETI Research Center in 2018 invited working groups – including our Indigenous studies working group – from outside STEM fields to craft perspective papers for SETI scientists to consider.

Neither Breakthough Listen nor SETI’s site features a current statement of ethics beyond a commitment to transparency.

SETI Institute and certain research centers have included ethics in their event programming, it seems relevant to ask who NASA and SETI answer to, and what ethical guidelines they’re following for a potential first contact scenario.

Even though they say that they will strive for transparency, I am sure that there will be an effort to underplay and underreport potential dangers that come with the relationship with advanced civilizations.

We may be overestimating extraterrestrial’s ability to reach us in the first place or even care that we are out here –we may care more about them than they care about us.

Can we live with that?

SETI’s Post-Detection Hub – another rare exception to SETI’s STEM-centrism – seems the most likely to develop a range of contact scenarios. The possible circumstances imagined include finding ET artifacts, detecting signals from thousands of light years away, dealing with linguistic incompatibility, finding microbial organisms in space or on other planets, and biological contamination of either their or our species. Whether the U.S. government or heads of the military would heed these scenarios is another matter.

SETI-affiliated scholars tend to reassure critics that the intentions of those listening for technosignatures are benevolent, since “what harm could come from simply listening?” The chair emeritus of SETI Research, Jill Tarter, defended listening because any ET civilization would perceive our listening techniques as immature or elementary.

As Stephan Hawking warned, if the extraterrestrials decide to colonize — maybe we should take into consideration how the earlier colonizers here on Earth, were more than happy to destroy indigenous or native occupants on the land.

If we draw upon the history of colonial contacts we can demonstrate the dangers of thinking that whole civilizations are comparatively advanced or intelligent.

For example, when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers came to the Americas, those relationships were shaped by the preconceived notion that the “Indians” were less advanced due to their lack of writing. This led to decades of Indigenous servitude in the Americas.

It seems contradictory that we begin our relations with aliens by listening in on their transmissions without their permission while actively working to stop other countries from listening to certain U.S. communications. If humans are initially perceived as disrespectful or careless, ET contact could more likely lead to their colonization of us.

In some cases, colonization leads to genocide.

Throughout histories of Western colonization, even in those few cases when contactees were intended to be protected, contact has led to brutal violence, pandemics, enslavement and genocide.

James Cook’s 1768 voyage on the HMS Endeavor was initiated by the Royal Society. This prestigious British academic society charged him with calculating the solar distance between the Earth and the Sun by measuring the visible movement of Venus across the Sun from Tahiti. The society strictly forbade him from any colonial engagements.

Though he achieved his scientific goals, Cook also received orders from the Crown to map and claim as much territory as possible on the return voyage. Cook’s actions put into motion wide-scale colonization and Indigenous dispossession across Oceania, including the violent conquests of Australia and New Zealand.

The Royal Society gave Cook a “prime directive” of doing no harm and to only conduct research that would broadly benefit humanity. However, explorers are rarely independent from their funders, and their explorations reflect the political contexts of their time.

We all know what happened next.

The bigger question is could it happen to us — but on a worldwide scale?

The initial domino of a public ET message, or recovered bodies or ships, could initiate cascading events, including military actions, corporate resource mining and perhaps even geopolitical reorganizing.

The history of imperialism and colonialism on Earth illustrates that not everyone benefits from colonization. No one can know for sure how engagement with extraterrestrials would go, though it’s better to consider cautionary tales from Earth’s own history sooner rather than later.

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Written by Ron Patton