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Professor Says UFO Studies Should Be Taught At Universities
New York anthropology professor Philip Haseley wants young people to get the best education possible, and part of that education, he says, should be about UFOs. Haseley thinks universities should offer classes on UFOs and other unexplained phenomena from space. "[A sighting] happens to millions of people [around the world]. It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study. It's important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated," he said. I want to believe the truth is out there in 500 words or less.
I would take that class
there are 10 types of people in this world, those who read binary and those who don't. which are you!
Nothing wrong with teaching stuff like the Drake Equation. But alien abductions?
http://xkcd.com/718/
Some schools teach creationism. Some teach actual theology. Why should alien abduction be treated any differently? Teach the controversy!
Flake Equation! ;)
Why should UFO believers excluded. Why people believe weird and irrational things should be studied.
Reasonable-quality audio/video recording equipment is becoming nearly ubiquitous, being embedded in cell phones.
Yet the only "footage" that is available is grainy and poor quality.
As the quality and availability of audio/video recording equipment grows, one would expect the quality of "sighting" recordings to increase, but they aren't.
I think that's very telling.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"(A sighting) happens to millions of people (around the world). It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study."
It's worthy because the ignorant masses don't know what they're looking at? The vast, vast majority of sightings can easily be explained away by experts in the relevant fields. How about teaching classes in the fields relevant to determine just what these things are instead of begging the question? What a crock of shit. I'm all for listening to the sky, but studying OMGWTFBBQUFO is nothing but a bunch of brain-dead woo.
I took a class in religion studies in college. UFO or other paranormal theories would fit right in there.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...but I suspect that this isn't a course you want to reference on your resume, unless you're applying at MUFON.
I do wonder how many professionals (CIO/CTO's, at least) actually believe in little green men?
is for anymore?
A rigorous scientific and professional approach would be far better than an amateur approach any day. Otherwise we deny the phenomenon entirely, or rely on amateur people who keep finding traces of them anywhere they look. You know they saying: "To a person holding a hammer, every problem is a nail."
...would be widely embraced on campus. And much of the "truth is out there" stuff is little more than a religion.
The cultural phenomenon of the UFO is worthy of study, as is the SETI type stuff from the science end.
UFO doesn't mean aliens, space visitors, or conspiracies.
It means: Unidentified Flying Object.
If you see a condensation trail high in the sky, you know that there is something creating it, but if it is too high for you to see, it is unidentified. It is flying. It is an object. You have just witnessed a UFO. There is nothing ridiculous about it at all.
If this class focuses on the spotting of things you don't understand, and the process in which you go through to try to discover it's identity, then I'm all for it. A class that pushes students to come up with multiple possible theories and find ways to research them, to prove or exclude them, and to report on their findings.
Seems like an awesome class idea to me.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Podunk professor from community college in remote town close to Canada has crazy ideas and other news at 11.
Seriously this made the front page of /.? This could be on the Onion!
I’d think they could get an actual picture of a UFO for TFS.
(The picture came from here – translated from Dutch to English.)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Nope, despite a masters degree in UFO studies, they're still unidentified flying objects.
"We know people who think this is a nonsense subject. And we'll refer you to voluminous literature and facts about UFOs."
Seriously? These guys do understand that "voluminous" literature doesn't equate to "quality literature", right? There are tomes and tomes on dragons at your local library, but I don't think many of us would consider "Draconic Studies" a worth academic pursuit.
I think a class that studies those who believe in UFOs would definitely be worth of an anthropology class.
Who are the believers? Why do they so strongly believe they saw a UFO? What is the cultural basis behind this belief? What are the equivalents in other societies? Ghosts? Evil spirits? Angels? A study of the people would be very interesting.
I think this anthropology professor might even be qualified (if biased) to teach such a class.
The think that should be studied here is the the people that are seeing such UFO's rather than studding something that is UNINDENTIFIED yet. Btw, I am curious to know. Do they have something to do with such idea?
My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
I think this guy is right. There should be a class on this. I even have a name suggestion:
Anthropology 150: The UFO Phenomenon as a Study in Mass Delusion
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Any intelligent species which has the technological capability to travel across the galaxy at will (think about that for a second) also has the capability to avoid the slightest trace of detection. If they've been here, mark my words, we don't know about it.
Furthermore, if they do have the ability and desire to study us, they probably wouldn't even have to come here to do it. At that level, they can probably just push a button and instantly know everything about us, from clear across the galaxy.
You've got to put this into perspective, and realize what kind of technological level we're talking about. They're not flying here in spaceships, that's for sure.
Get a copy of Jane's aircraft guide and some of those silhouette flashcard that fighter pilots use to train. If it's not in the book or on the card, it's not a bird/bug/bat, and it flies, it's a UFO by definition.
Which is it? One place the article says one, another it says the other. They are not the same thing.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They could teach it under Abnormal Psychology.
We seriously need to be able to calculate the impact on Global Warming that is caused by these UFO's. We need to force them to buy Carbon Offsets to make up for the damage they are causing the enviornment! They probably don't even use florescent lights! They had better be getting at least 35 miles to the gallon too!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
but perhaps not for the reasons he's suggesting or the outcome he wants.
I think that the study of UFO's *societal* genesis and spread could be quite interesting, as part of some sociology thing. But as a serious study into their existence? I think not. Weren't there no UFO sightings before space movies? And if so, did they just happen to co-arrive?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
UFOs have been put under plenty of scientific scrutiny, and absolutely nothing has ever stood up to the test. The very best results these fools can come up with is the occasional statistical outlier that they fixate on as proof that "it couldn't have happened by accident." The simple fact is, if there were any basis to this nonsense at all, it would have been proven true a long time ago. By the way, the same applies to ghosts, bigfoot, telekinesis, and prayer.
its amazing how many comment and make snap judgments without actually reading about the subject. Read Flying Saucers and Science by Stanton Friedman. He is an ex-propulsion scientist who worked on Project Orion. There are mountains of evidence despite other claims of there being none.
...welcome our new anthropologic overlords.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Psychology, neurology, philosophy. (To name but three.)
Are UFOs believers somehow special, that they should be studied in isolation from the fields which already examine our beliefs?
There are broader social implications to UFO sightings. How common are UFO sightings? What impacts do UFO enthusiasts have on broader society? How have UFO sightings changed over time, and what can that tell us about the phenomenon. It is possible to debunk almost anything by explaining it away, but it's important to know that explications are merely hypotheses and do not represent a scientific endeavor in themselves.
Like most (all?) college courses, this class would be a bunch of meaningless bullshit. But it seems unfair to exclude this particular field of study simply because many academics thumb their noses at it. I say bring on the "UFO Studies" graduates!
Crazy Professor Says UFO Studies Should Be Taught At Universities.
Please stop pluralizing words with an apostrophe. That is not what it is there for.
France, britain, russia already opened their secret ufo files to public. in some countries like mexico, ufo matters have never been a matter of 'national security' and were hush hushed. It is only united states that still hush hushes serious incidents, confiscates serious footages, and regularly invokes 'experts' to ridicule and demean any person that comes forth with anything ufo related. (including former usaf notables).
it is evident that something is happening. especially in mexico. tens of thousands of people film various objects in the sky while commuting on crowded roads. entire neighborhoods watch objects in the sky for hours.
first of all, it is BEYOND stupid to ridicule, hush-hush, write off these incidents as this or that, without ever getting one's ass off the chair. It is a scientific rule to go out and research, and try to find the real cause. Not retorting 'swamp gas', 'weather baloon', 'mass hallucination by 5000 people', 'my fart' and so on without lifting a finger. It is contradictory to the process of knowing, and learning.
These branches have to be established in universities and colleges, and their research should be conducted just like how we research any other thing.
Read radical news here
I'm shocked at how closed minded so many of you are. A lot of things sound ridiculous until you start learning about them. Here on slashdot we have tons of comments from people who have absolutely no knowledge of an area that are just dismissing it because it doesn't fit into their limited view of reality. I am not a "believer," but I sure as hell am not a pseudo-skeptic debunker either.
I have dedicated many hours to studying these things, so let me say a few things. I'm going to stick with abduction phenomenon, because I find that to be the most fascinating and the most controversial. First off, it happens to people from all walks of life. It even happens in cities. It happens to police officers, soldiers, teachers, and software engineers. It tends to "run in the family," meaning if a parent of yours had had the abduction phenomenon you are likely to as well. The stories that the vast majority of people report tend to greatly overlap in descriptions of things they saw, equipment used on them, etc. Most people that do report it are embarrassed and many are very disturbed and emotional about what has happened to them. They don't usually want any publicity. People who this happens to repeatedly often just want it to stop happening. In other words, the great majority of cases aren't people seeking attention.
You may think that maybe this can all be mental phenomenon that perhaps people are genetically predisposed towards, but you'll have to look at the physical scarring that often occurs, the implant studies, the many cases that have had lots of witnesses, the cases where many people were abducted, etc.
A funny thing about this phenomenon is that it doesn't fit into any category very well. The more you study it the less sense any theory makes. People start proposing ideas like maybe these aren't physical beings but inter-dimensionals (whatever that means.) Some have noticed similarities between historical accounts of demon abduction and fairy abduction. Some people speculate on the motives of the beings. All we can really tell from studying this is that there is definitely some phenomenon occurring, it is extremely disturbing and embarrassing to the people that it happens to, it often has physical effects, and it we don't yet have any model that can explain it.
I know I'm not going to sway anyone's opinion with the little things I have time to write here. If you are willing to at least consider that something really is happening to people I suggest you find some books. Since the study of these things is not allowed to be discussed openly by scientists or at universities there are a lot of nuts that end up writing and lecturing about these topics. Many of them are the attention and money seeking people exploiting the phenomenon for their gains. Luckily there are some good people as well and some scientists that have risked their careers by exploring these things. It is hard to make suggestions as many authors have good and bad areas, but as an introduction I'd recommend Budd Hopkin's book "Missing Time."
The video quality has been improved ever since video cameras became commonplace.
YET, now there are people who reject ufo footages because 'they look too clean'.
make up your mind first.
if you cant trust anything, just go check Soviet ufo files. they are open, and history channel even ran a documentary with footage from within them. some of the footages are very very out of the ordinary. you can find them on youtube too.
Read radical news here
"It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study." They did. And after millions of dollars and decades of research they concluded that it was a waste of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
Seriously you want to be rational about UFOs? Saying that they obviously exist because some flying things have not been identified?
You must be new here.
They were certainly an important phenomenon especially in the 70s, so it can be expected that some people are not too familiar with them nowadays. Yet, they are responsible for some very important, memorable, and fascinating things from that period, and can still be observed around the world even today. I suggest that anyone with a slightest interest in such things does some further research into this topic.
Others have suggested this would go well with a religion class, but I really wish everyone had a class at some point on why people are biased to believe dumb things because of our biological tendency to recognize patterns even if they're not there and how you can combat that tendency in yourself. Commercial advertising tactics would play a big part of this, as would religion/cult tactics, new age anything, 'audiophiles,' fan death, etc. UFOs fit right in.
Not saying that Unidentified Flying Objects don't exist (obviously they do), but rather what conclusions you choose to draw from that.
i am moved by the religiosity of that thought: "a ufo is free forever"
this emotional moment has changed my life. i need to spread the word, start a movement
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I invite you all to begoin your FREE study of the only scientifically proven, still ongoing (more than 68 years!) UFO contact case, the Billy Meier case in Switzerland. If extraterrestrials are coming her ein UFOs, there has to be a reason for it. And the reason isn't to give us lights in the sky to chase, it's to help us assure our own future survival.
The scientific information in the Billy Meier UFO case is in itself so extraordinary, for its accuracy and for the fact that Meier has published it years, even DECADES, in advance of "official" discovery that I can't think of any university that wouldn't want its students, and teachers, to have an opportunity to learn about, and question, it thoroughly. And my presentations on the material have run as long as four hours; there's no shortage of it. For the knee-jerk naysayers, we've defeated every challenge from the top international professional skeptics. Check it out: www.theyfly.com
Michael Horn
The issue is poorly framed because she real sources of controversy are not whether "UFO studies" is taught but whether it is taught be skeptics or believers and whether it is publicly or privately funded.
For instance, your position might be to both endorse publicly-funded skepticism of alien encounters and to permit privately-funded teachings alien encounters. Then it is misleading to frame the issue as being for-or-against UFO education.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
At Temple University, since 1994, they had an UFO class taught by David Jacobs, Ph.D
.
I think this topic demands some rigorous scientific study. You look at the number of govt / intelligence / military industrial people / astronauts coming out with these "I want to say this before I die" stories, and it makes one wonder. Either they are lying, crazy, or telling the truth. I find it hard to believe they are all lying or crazy.
Parachute? Kite? Weather Balloon? Lightning? Auroa... auraoa... pretty lights in the sky?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
He's part of the problem. But here's the "Official UFO Quiz" to test yourself on what you do know. http://www.scribd.com/doc/13586254/The-Official-UFO-Quiz
Michael Horn is a tireless, fast-talking promoter of Billy Meier who will argue with you endlessly trying to make you believe that the Billy Meier photographs are real. Actually, the pics have been proven fake many times. They've used garbage can lids, models, and props. They've lifted pictures from books--one of a dinosaur to 'prove' Billy traveled back in time. Besides being fake, it's about the silliest story you could ever read. If you want to make UFOs a laughingstock subject, this is the way to do it.
Horn can talk all he wants, but the fact is, he's flat out busted.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Why didn't you even Google this:
http://www.google.no/search?q=increase+in+ufo+sightings&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rlz=1R1GGGL_en___NO343&client=firefox-a
Top hits: ...
Report - Massive increase in UFO sightings in 2009, tracking group
Huge rise in British UFO sightings - Telegraph
End Times Prophecy News: UFO Sightings Increase
UFO Sightings Increase in China - UFO Evidence
Massive Increase In UFO Sightings The Daily Llama
Oh yeah, I forgot.. This is /. We don't need to research anything. Our spine will actually tell us the Truth!
After all, many universities already teach homeopathy and other forms of quackery and pseudoscience, so why not add ufology to the list?
...in psychology and sociology courses. If they want to see crazyness and mass hysteria in action, is a perfect real world example. Probably would be useful in advertising related careers too. Why manipulate people when they can perfectly manipulate themselves?
Anyway, i would put it in the same course as religion, probably those kind of "wonders" are the kind of things that started most current religions, attribute what you cant recognize or understand as an act of gods, ghosts or aliens is cultural, next ones could be mutants, murphy fields, time machines or quantum entanglement.
If governments have not come to any solid conclusions over this long period of time, it is very unlikely a university course will have anything significant to contribute. Except a raging debate between the skeptics and the true believers.
It was at Temple, and actually given under the History department. The prof was David Jacobs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Michael_Jacobs
He seemed pretty reasonable back then. His position was that there was enough unexplainable stuff going on that something weird was happening that warranted further investigation.
From the Wikipedia page on him, it seems he's gone a little more extreme on the subject these days.
Not trying to get too suspicious or too paranoid, but there's a small part of me that thinks the Govt. is slowly and purposefully getting people "used" to the idea and concept of alien lifeforms.
Is it just me or have we seen a gradual increase in the amount of movies and T.V. shows about alien lifeforms and interaction with humans.
District 9, Star Trek, Independence Day, Stargate, Voyager, etc, etc and countless other shows and movies that have come out in the last 30 yrs seem to suggest humans and aliens can somehow learn to communicate and co-habitate together.
Could it all be a grand, elaborate scheme to indoctrinate earthlings to accept the idea and concept of other-world beings? Imagine how society would have freaked out 50yrs ago if we were presented with an actual alien life form? Now imagine how that same event, while as shocking as it would still be, would affect people today? I dare think mush less mass-hysteria and more wider acceptance among today's youth who have grown up with all these Sci-Fi films and TV shows bombarding them with the concept of alien life being a distinct possibility, albeit even normal...
Most people don't learn how to *think* until their late 20s, if then.
I was hoping universities might start teaching classes in skepticism and rational inquiry so every third person I meet isn't a blithering idiot about science.
But UFOs sounds much better. Why not angels or astrology or atlantis?
ANTH 724 Chariots of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
from article
The main criticism of alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is essentially absent, many are definitely known to be the work of human pranksters and others can be adequately explained as such
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
...where it belongs, alongside other phobias, irrational behavior, groupthink, etc.
I do like programming things that work super quickly, especially when they work super quickly, super quickly.
that a fool and his/her money are soon parted.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
IMHO, unexplained aerial phenomena (I hate the term 'UFOs') are quite an open question. There is a lot of data out there to establish the reality of the phenomenon and that a significant number of events are unexplained. Probably the best are a number of radar/visual cases occurring in the 1950s and 1960s, in which multiple radars and multiple aircraft all tracked an anomaly for a lengthy period of time. For a good summary of unexplained cases, I recommend looking up the report of the Sturrock Panel (http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/SturrockPanel.htm). This panel examined some of the best evidential aerial anomaly cases and concluded that there was a significant unexplained component to the UFO phenomenon. There are several other good reports, but I recommend this one as a good place to start.
Professor Rory Coker teaches a class that covers this area at the University of Texas at Austin. It's called Psuedoscience and the class is phenomenal. That is really all that needs to be said about the subject of UFOs in a school setting.
with one difference. universities should offer classes on UFOs and other unexplained phenomena from human social psychosis
I took "The Search for Life in the Universe" in college, Astronomy 333 at Western Washington University. UFO's were discussed, but the topics included travel, biology and chemistry, planetary habitation zones and other important details about the possibilities of intelligent alien life. I still have the book at home....
Millions have seen "UFOs"? Then it's obviously not about identifying things that weren't seen clearly. Every person who has ever lived and who has the sense of sight has observed things, moving or still, in the air, on the ground, in the water, that the observer couldn't identify.
No, Philip Hasely is arguing that a delusion should be taken seriously, just because it's popular.
See Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things."
UFO Class prerequisites...
Tinfoil Cranial Protection Technology & It's Application 101
Introduction to Conspiracy Theory
Intermediate Conspiracy Theory
Extraterrestrial Fiction in Modern Media Pre-Star Wars
Extraterrestrial Fiction in Modern Media Post-Star Wars
Klingonese 101
Take the Red Pill.
...as soon as someone actually manages to take an in-focus photograph.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
They can also be classified as
So, the Un-explained Flying phenOmena are the UFO, and once some specimen are identified, they need to be studied, explained and reclassified as EFO. Who said aliens need to be involved?
PS: Ahh, this does not prove they exist, but Nothern Lights were a UFO once, and now they are explained, sort of.
A professor I had last quarter, Joseph Phillips, at DePaul University in Chicago teaches a course called "The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" as a Liberal Studies credit. Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Loop, apparently. Despite being ostensibly a Catholic university, DePaul's actually pretty liberal like that.
I used to read extensively about UFO's. I was determined to "get to the bottom of it" and figure out once and for all whether the phenomenon was hardware or wetware (psychology). I never did come to a conclusion. The debunking was usually disappointingly sloppy; they make almost as many logic flaws as the "believers". My analysis left me with a Big Null.
But the one thing I did learn by reading many witness accounts and the after-math is that if YOU see a flying saucer or UFO, shut the hell up. Reporting it is a recipe for headaches and ridicule.
Call MUFON or a similar organization to report it to get it off your chest and into their database. Other than that, it didn't happen. Move on.
Table-ized A.I.
yes, we do need ufologistology!
From the classified UFO documents that UFO conspiracy theorists like to use to justify their paranoia have shown once they have been declassified have been quite disappointing. What we have always ended up finding is that they weren't classified because there was some massive UFO cover-up, but rather that governments were paranoid regarding sharing how data was distributed and communication protocols. The actual data was pretty boring and has done nothing to vindicate conspiracy nuts.
I see URO's in Windows Task Manager all the time. Who do I call?
Table-ized A.I.
While we're at it!!
Sure these classes should be taught... by qualified space aliens/extraterrestrials/underwater dwellers.
Just thinking aloud again.
It's the study of anything that you want to believe could be out there, without any real proof that they exist.
Sounds like dead ringer for theology.
Then again, if I remember right there isn't a legitimate school in the world that teaches cryptozoology, other than maybe in a passing reference in a real class.
While I personally doubt their legitimacy, a lot of theological schools are accredited.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I consider myself an educated person, I'm a member of Mensa so I supposedly have brains. My job requires logic and reasoning, and things making sense is important. I have no mental conditions, wasn't on any drugs, and I'm agnostic. With that said, I have experienced "ghostly" events firsthand, multiple times. Examples: Watching tv + doing homework and a picture flew across the room from it's place on a brick wall as if struck with a backhand, 10+ feet. (no strange air movement, no earthquake, no person standing nearby, no animals, no reason at all I could discover why). I've seen doorhandles wiggle, doors open fully all the way against the opposite wall, then shut by themselves. Other things that are just... weird. If these things had not happened to me personally I wouldn't have believed it. Do I believe in ghosts? I am not sure, but I believe there are unexplained things that defy my understanding at the moment.
This wasn't a ghosthunters "I got a cold flash, Ooh EM field spiked, it must be a ghost!" sort of event, but real physical events witnessed with others at the time. I wish I could explain it, I wish these sort of events happened more than a handful of times over a decade+ of living in that house. I wish there was repeatability. I wish there was proof. Wishing all of the things needed for any scientific analysis of anything. If for no other reason than I don't like mysteries that I can't figure out.
So with all that said, I'd welcome a class on UFOs or other phenomena if it involved the full skeptical approach on discovery, data analysis, and testing hypothesis. I don't know how you handle the 'one in a million' sort of events that qualify as a UFO. From a sociology or anthropology perspective that would be interesting too - just learning what leads a person to believe something and more insight into how humans work could be fascinating.
I considered posting this anonymously but oh well, I've done far worse than accept that I don't know all of the laws of physics. Besides, someday I'd like to figure out a logical reason to what the heck happened. Or at least figure out how to make it repeatable, it'd make the house value skyrocket!
Carl Sagan is spinning in his grave.
I would encourage anyone and everyone to read the 1968 Condon Report:
http://files.ncas.org/condon/
Please don't be distracted by criticisms of the report. It's all too easy to shift into a mode of supporting your side in a perceived debate. As such, many may immediately be biased that this Internet version of the report is hosted by a Skeptics organization.
If you really want to see criticisms of the report, you can start with Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condon_Committee
But I strongly encourage all interested parties to read this report. Even if you believe there must be something there, you need to know how to weed out false positives. And the Condon Report should amply describe how prevalent those are.
From an anthropological point of view, however, it would seem there are tons of things worthy of study here.
UFOs don't want to be seen. Especially in the last 20 years or so, they have desired to remain unseen. The ones reported or observed or photographed anyway were luck or an accident or chance. Or bullshit like the Mexican UFO fleets of migrating geese.
But the real UFOs don't want to be seen. Hell, human science is close to working optical camouflage so something more advanced should be capable of the same thing. FLIR cameras are still seeing very strange things. But they're not visible to the eye. SO whatever they are, they don't want you to see.
It would be nice if a serious objective study was done to see what is -or is not- actually there. But I don't think it will ever happen.
Honestly, the answer has to be predetermined to be'there is nothing there' because just about any alternative answer would be the most unsettling news possible. Do you really want to know your planet isn't yours, that something more powerful is doing whatever it pleases and there isn't a thing you can do to stop it? What would your response be? To demand action from politicians who are also as powerless to stop it as you are? The military? Really?
This sort of plot where a superior force reveals itself and all is happy ever after works in Star Trek scripts maybe but it would ruin your happy ignorant life of pizza and Xbox and sitcoms.
Any conclusion that does not assume there is other life in the universe is hopelessly Creation-ist and/or human-centric.
Any conclusion that accepts that beings capable of making ~87 light year voyages are going to crash into a freaking planet or come anal probe a red-neck in Kentucky is hopelessly absurd.
They've mastered FTL, they've mastered force fields or whatever it took to survive impacts with micro-meteors at Light+, they've managed to find one little marble, in an infinite velvet blanket, they're going to crash in the last .001 of the last 1% of the most difficult voyage humanity has ever conceived of? Then they come all this way, doodle some shit in a cornfield in Kansas, ass-probe some dude in Delaware, eviscerate some cows in Vermont, and go home. Wtf? Really? That's stupid.
That's like driving to your Aunt's house in California, and pulling into the drive way and breaking the flag off her mailbox and going back home.
Plus, we have nukes. Sure, there's a chance they have a star trek force field and nukes are so low tech they don't matter any more. But it's more likely their ship is made of metal or plastic and being caught in an airburst will rip it apart like any other physical structure we know of. Doesn't really sound like a risk worth taking, even to find out what happens when you sodomize the herdlings with a metal probe.
Maybe the whole thing is drunk teenagers, from Alpha Centauri? Like a frat hazing. They dodge the ICBM radar, swoop down, seize a redneck and drag him up into their saucer amidst homoerotic/in-group social status building shoulder punching and man-hugging and then fire up the alien beer-bong and do keg (?saucer?) stands and dissect the terran.
K.
Of course I didn't read the article, but I think this would be a great class, if it focused on the writings and speculations of all the well known scientists who have commented on the possibility of alien life.
For instance, the class could learn about the Fermi Paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox. In a nutshell, why the universe appears so silent given that billions of years should be plenty of time to have had thousands of alien civilizations completely colonize the galaxy, and most likely the universe.
If I were teaching it, I would also include books by authors such as James Gardner http://www.biocosm.org/about.htm, specifically "The Intelligent Universe". Great read for anyone interested in AI, ET, etc..
I imagine you could teach about UFO's, as long as it was in the context of historical impact, cultural psychology, astrophysics theories, etc.. I would personally love to take a class that objectively analyzed things like ttp://www.disclosureproject.org/, which has hundreds of former military folks, scientists, radar operators, and pilots who swear that they've seen alien craft.
...how to identify Venus would be a great help. Some people even need help identifying the moon
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Common UFO misconceptions:
1. There are no clear photos - There are many pretty clear image here: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/photohome.asp
2. Lack of evidence, is evidence of absence - where are the clear photos of atoms, quarks, etc?
2. UFO means Unidentified Flying Object - this is absurd. If you don't believe me, ask the next 5 people if they've ever seen a UFO, and ask them what that means to them. UFO = ET!
3. There is no physical evidence for UFOs - There are many cases of materials dropped from UFOs, and changes to soil - http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/PhysicalEvidence.htm
4. No world governments believe in UFOs - Not true. http://www.ecologynews.com/cometa.html
Please grow up. We are not alone, and have not been alone for thousands of years. Please do the research, then decide.
You might want to start here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFsSKCax2CY
http://www.stantonfriedman.com/
"postmodern studies", "post-colonial studies", and so on. These subjects exist nowhere but in media-prepped human minds, just like UFOs do.
Theology, at least, has over a millennium of smart people trying to understand the concept of God -- even if it consists entirely of fallacies, even those fallacies are worth knowing so that one does not reinvent them again under new names -- "benevolent state", "human-made apocalypse", and suchlike.
Consider the through that a person cognizant of theology -- and aware of junk theology -- is much less likely to fall for newfangled "religions" like Scientology.
classes such as this one? [university of nsw]
I have a friend who was a tutor for the class, sounded pretty cool and a fun way to burn through some gen-ed requirements.
there are some lecture slides listed here[unsw] if anyone is interested
And in particular it is worth reading the section about Project Blue Book Special Report No 14 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book#Project_Blue_Book_Special_Report_No._14 ) which contained the most interesting statistics and some conclusions which were in direct conflict with their own data.
Quoting from wikipedia:
When the meanings of words change for most of the population there is a danger because people ASSUME you mean alien craft, not a possible plastic packet, when using'UFO'. As with the 'organic vegetable' craze. ALL vegetables are organic, and any farmer can sell them as such. Whether they are organically GROWN is another matter entirely!
irrationality.
We've become far too tolerant of this sort of thing. Deliberate pollution of the info-sphere.
Aliens did not fly millions of miles to Earth, just so they could probe Cletus the slack-jawed yokels' anal cavity.
There is no invisible man in the sky who knows when you've been naughty and when you've been nice, and who you can ask for things.
A larger percentage of the human population than you might think possible, are genuinely mentally disturbed.
to believe that after 13.75 ±0.17 billion years of the Universes existence, we are the only culmination of advanced civilization is questionable at best. A million years is enough time to create an civilization more advanced than ours. Another million years to completely erase that very same civilization with absolutely no evidence left. The (current) Universe might not have been hospitable for life for the first 6 billion years. That leaves 7 billion years unaccounted for.
The universe is rather large There will almost certainly be alien life forms. But WHEN?
I think that in our own limited time-frame we'll find remnants and/or embryo's, if any proof at all.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
and with that word, 'idiot' you have proved that i was wrong, you were right, HOW.
i cant understand the stupor that states we HAVE to reject stubbornly any kind of possibility of unidentified object observation or label them as shitty atmospheric events or swamp gas or ballons. this is not a fucking religion, there are VISIBLE objects there, moving with their own accord. its not a dogma or a poltergeist or anythign.
ffs. there is no science in 'stubbornly reject without researching' its morondom.
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