Punyverse not so puny?

http://tinyurl.com/29l3ow

Hot on the heels of our earlier post, ‘Across the Punyverse’, comes the surprising news that SETI has also disagreed with NASA’s choice of song. Hi-ho, on one thing at least SETI and we agree: the Beatles suck.

Actually, it turns out that SETI (who – never let it be forgotten – keep insisting they have yet to discover any signs of intelligent life in the universe), are worried that the nasal honking of the Beatles could result in an alien attack. It seems SETI is a tad concerned that if we advertise we’re here, then, well, we’re asking for trouble.

So, SETI, what do you know that we don’t know? More importantly, what do you know that NASA doesn’t know? And if you know something that NASA needs to know, then, dear SETI, you really should be communicating with them. If there really are angry aliens out there and you are worried that the Beatles might disrupt their quiet evenings, you really should’ve said something before NASA tromped all over their beauty sleep.

If readers happen to peruse the article at the link above, they will discover that SETI is quite a-feared of alerting a potentially unfriendly ET species to our existence, and, more specifically, our location. Pretty strange thinking for a group of people that publicly and ostensibly really don’t think there’s anything out there at all. But now, thanks to NASA’s intergalactic faux pas, it turns out that SETI is plain pants-wetting terrified that there IS something out there, and that we might make it mad.

Mixed messages SETI! What do you know that we don’t know? What have you discovered? What don’t you tell us? Why won’t you tell ANYbody, including all those persons or institutions capable of transmitting crappy songs out into the void? (Yes, it turns out some dude with a great honking satellite dish in his backyard transmitted Bob Marley out there about 10 years ago. Jeez SETI, you coulda said something before that happened.)

If our music, our culture, and our pathetic selves are such a dangerous torment to the easily irritated ET, then hell, SETI, you’d best start popping all our satellites out of orbit right now. Because, as we noted in our earlier post, we beam ourselves and our soap operas out into space every second of every day. This big round blue ball of ours must be the noisiest and most irritating disturbance this side of the Crab Nebula.

But don’t worry SETI, we promise it’s safe for you to sleep at night. If the intergalactic noise police were really going to visit and politely ask us to shut up, they’d surely have done it before now. Probably during the 80s – that wretched and embarrassing hiccup in our cultural development…

The Paranormal At Penrith Draws Response From Believers

http://tinyurl.com/yttyuy

Here's something not many would know - that Sydney's south-west, northern beaches and the Penrith-Blue Mountains region are regarded as 'hot-spots' for UFO sightings.

Those who believe are already convinced, and their numbers might be boosted as a result of an exhibition featuring UFO inspired art at the Penrith Regional Art Gallery The Visitors - The Australian response to UFO's and Aliens. The collection was co-curated by Anne Loxley and Regina Walter who have tapped into not only a rich vein of belief in sightings of UFO's, but also in artistic expression and influence from sources other than just a few re-runs of the X Files.

The exhibition incorporates sculpture, painting (some in 3-D), video , print and installation works as well as an 'evidence room', which is a collation of newspaper, TV and radio reports on the top 30 UFO encounters in Australia with the expert assistance of leading Ufologist Bill Chalker. Some of the collected evidence dates back to the 19th century to present day, and includes a rather compelling front page reports in the Sydney Morning Herald July 20, 1957 with the headline "RAAF jets ready to investigate Katoomba's mystery lights."

Anne Loxely says the evidence room has been a major hook, with people staying for hours examining the detail, and returning for more. She says when planning the exhibition, a clear direction was given. "It was important for us not to appear as zealots, as there is a strong element of faith in this topic. The evidence is being scrutinised by 'straight', seemingly upstanding citizens, who will stay for hours and sometimes return for more."

Beyond the evidence there is the interpretation of the UFO experience of belief, including the works of Pope Alice, who Loxely informs 'believes she is an alien'. Indeed, the exhibition catalogue states she was born in Outer Space in 5252ABCD (but currently based in Brisbane). The artist's work includes alien figures interspersed more earth-bound idols, light, audio and images and with a strong influence from people from indigenous cultures. Other contributing artists are from across Australia.
Adam Norton is inspired by perhaps the best known UFO spot, Roswell, following reports that a flying saucer, and its occupants, was captured in 1947. Norton's Roswell Timeline links events from pre-history to the current day in a large, detailed, linear exhibit that is difficult to ignore.

Other exhibits are more 'down to earth' - or at least they may seem that way. As an eight-year old, artist James de Blass saw a UFO as an eight year old living in Tasmania, and has been influenced ever since as he produces paintings with a strong parallel universe theme. His father's actual interviews on the radio at the time are part of the evidence collection, and his mother attended the exhibition opening. It's the story from a family interested in science, but otherwise, curator Loxley describes as being not unusual, like many of the Visitors visitors. "We've had a phenomenal attendance at this exhibition. Scoffers have stayed away and more open minded have taken the opportunity to look at the evidence and interpretations of what is quite a full on subject. There is at times a real element of faith toward UFO's".

The exhibition runs from December 8, 2007 to February 17, 2008 at the Penrith Regional Art Gallery, 86 River Road Emu Plains. Ufologist Bill Chalker will give a tour, and close the exhibition on Sunday February 17 at 3 pm ($5 charge)

Apologetically Yours, signed....The Anecdote

Recently we read on the FQXi blog under the post entitled Are UFOs Foundational? (http://tinyurl.com/3auxze) that “if we [scientists] actually had scientific evidence of advanced alien life, or any alien life, we would all be jumping out of our skins”.

While digesting these eye-wateringly ignorant words we also stumbled across another statement stating that “anecdotal evidence is the least interesting kind of evidence in science, very close to being without value.”

And there you have it in all its magnificent glory, another argument by scientists as to why the UFO subject is a waste of their time - because it’s based mostly on anecdotal evidence. Poor little innocent anecdote - enemy of the objective, dispassionate observation of scientists. It carries no weapons, it doesn’t punch, abuse or maltreat anyone in any way, so why does science run shrieking in the opposite direction at the mere mention of the word? Why do scientists fear it so much? Is the dynamic construct of the simple anecdote too much for them to bear?

Maybe we have to be scientists to understand such things. Perhaps to offer anecdotal evidence for a scientist might be to admit the insufficiency of their knowledge. Could that be a tad too overwhelming for the scientific ego? But didn’t anyone ever tell scientists that science is anecdotal? After all, scientists observe an event then tell others about what they saw. Does that not qualify as an anecdote? Scientists didn’t wake up one day with the foundations of a scientific modality in their mind. They struggled with their mental limitations, entering deep discussions with other scientists, discussing the what-ifs and maybes of atoms, particles and electromagnetic spin and the like, all before they had their breakthroughs. Isn't the scientific world therefore brimming over with anecdotal reporting?

How can one deny the right of the anecdote to exist? Aren’t civilizations built on anecdotes? To deny anecdotal evidence is to stand in a pool of water looking for somewhere else to drink. It is to deny our life, our self. Anecdotes, or more simply, stories, are powerful tools that help us understand what our rigid linear minds cannot. They help us see what has existed right under our nose all along, whether it be how gravity works, how to send a man to the Moon, or whether extraterrestrial life exists.

If the demand for scientific evidence of the UFO subject was less critical of anecdotal evidence it might help us to understand what we obviously do not. Or is there more to it than that? Could it be that it is the power of the truth contained within the witness story that many fear after all…

Cosmic Top Secret Location

Lathrop, California

Across The Punyverse

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/across_universe.html

At 4.00pm (US-EST) on February 4 2008, NASA, for reasons known only to its erudite self, beamed the Beatles song ‘Across the Universe’ to the North Star, Polaris. NASA told us (ie, the ignorant world) that it did this to celebrate its 50th anniversary of space exploration.

NASA, NASA, NASA…very heavy sigh. What indeed are you trying to tell us?

For the last 50 years you’ve studiously ‘explored’ space with all the resources available to you and never found any sign of life – that you have told us about anyway. And whenever a sign of any pesky extraterrestrial life does emerge you hurriedly funnel those impressive resources into debunking your own findings, just to make sure we don’t get too excited, or too used to the idea that we may have some ET relatives out there, somewhere.

So why, dear old NASA, would you now spend your money on emailing a crappy old Beatles song to Polaris, of all places? Do you know something we don’t know? Have you discovered life, and transistor radios, out there? It must be a curious kind of life you’ve found on Polaris (who, we would like to keep reminding you, you haven’t told us about yet), one that bypassed the beat of the 1960s and apparently requires the overly nasal tones of John Lennon to snap it up a bit.

Who chose you, NASA, as the arbiter of the message humanity might like to send into the void? We don’t recall being asked to participate in a poll, so we assume that you used some other egalitarian method that we must have missed out on. Or did you hold a meeting of your board of directors, catered of course, where you discussed at your leisure which golden oldie best represented our planet and the people on it.

Unfortunately we cannot commend you on your selection. Would not a better choice have been Justin Timberlake’s ‘Bringing Sexy Back’? Or Britney Spears’ ‘Hit me baby one more time’? After all these are the sorts of things humanity thinks about ad infinitum -- sex and violence -- and as Justin and Britney are our current reigning deities we should share them with the rest of the universe, huh. It just seems that if you are going to waste electricity on the biggest pulse of information you’ve ever sent out there, wouldn’t we as a planet have been better served by sending out some useful information about ourselves, so our Polaris pals can decide whether they want to email us back? Or not.

Of course we have skirted the obvious – the fact that our transmissions are being beamed endlessly out into space every minute of every day, boinging from satellite to satellite and thence on to lord knows where. Our ET friends, even if they are as far away as Polaris, already know that John Lennon was a pale and myopic bipedal creature who never cut his hair, and that the population of planet Earth spends all its leisure time obsessing over who can dance and who cannot. One wonders what we could have to tell them that they don’t know already.

So, dear NASA, while your personal message to Polaris was clear and to the point (‘Yoo hoo, here we are! This is the kind of music our board of directors listens to!’), your message to us was somewhat confusing.

Stop playing with our minds – is there life out there or isn’t there? Indeed there seems to be, since you are sending them the hits of the 60s one painful tune at a time.

Jesus Doesn't Live In The Toaster & We're Not Nuts

Some may see little green aliens in their dreams and imagine every memory lapse is down to spending time aboard a UFO, but this is not as common in the UFO community as many think. While there are those who certainly fit the image of a wannabe, fantasy-prone personality or are just plain delusional, the reality is that there are no more escapees from reality in the UFO community than there are in the general population.

In fact, dare we say it, there may be more intelligent thinking people circulating in the UFO community than in our society at large. People with degrees in biology, psychology, engineering, microbiology, oceanography, medicine, astrophysics, archaeology, anthropology, education, just to name a few, are heavily peppered amongst the UFO community. In addition, those who lack formal education are successfully self-educated in many areas of life.

In his book, After Contact : The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Contact, Albert A Harrison PhD states that a study was undertaken on 102 Ufologists who were listed in the Encyclopedia of UFOs and it was found that roughly one third of the group held less than a bachelor’s degree, one third held a bachelor’s or master’s degree, and one third held a doctoral degree. Ufologists were highly educated relative to the general population. “Ufologists who believed in the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs were as likely to hold an advanced degree as those who were skeptical. Thus a weak intellect or lack of schooling does not seem to explain an advocacy for the extraterrestrial hypothesis.”

Furthermore, most who circulate within the UFO community have a strong orientation towards the social concerns of our time such as natural health, the environment, governmental management, social inequality, consumerism, and are quite critical of most large institutions in modern society. Typically they reject narrow analyses and despise media as business. In short they are critical thinkers. They may go a bit overboard sometimes but that enthusiasm is driven by their desire for truth and a better world. So if you imagine that people in the UFO community think Jesus lives in their toaster, think again. And if you plan to attend a UFO meeting anytime soon, plan on expecting the unexpected – you may be very surprised.

The New Church of Ufology

We are tired of being asked the question: 'Do you believe in UFOs?'

Do we believe in UFOs? No, we don't. Because UFOs aren't a faith, they're a reality. We don't require fervent belief and hope that UFOs exist -- they do. There are photographs, there is film footage, there are physical traces. Unlike the saints of old, UFOs don't need to manifest their likenesses in a piece of toast because they reveal their physical selves to people all the time, every single day.

UFOs are a reality, far more than God who, after all, has yet to appear at or hovering above a shopping mall and pose for a photograph. And if God did pose for a photograph, would the photographer have to run the gamut of disbelief, ridicule, shame and public humiliation that a person who snaps a photograph of a UFO must endure? Hardly, when the face of Jesus in an eggplant receives credible and global media coverage and draws pilgrims from far and wide.

So why must Ufology endure this constant criticism? What status quo does it threaten? Is Science in fact the religion that the New Church of Ufology threatens to topple?

Scientists react to UFOs with the same kind of witch-burning zeal as the Popes of old - and it isn't hard to imagine that the Whitecoats would love to round us up and burn us at the stake for our blaspheming and false idols. All hail the doctrine of evolution. All hail MAN, the greatest pinnacle of biology that any creature on any planet could hope to aspire to!

Or should it be all hail the NEW gods, the DNA-manipulating Greys, the stately perfection of Orthon.

How difficult then is our struggle, fighting against all the old gods of science. Darwin, the Zeus of Evolution, and Sagan, the Ares of our time, zealously guarding the sterile vacuum of space from our irrational imaginations. They rule from on-high, casting their thunderbolts of fear and doubt and confusion upon an unsuspecting world.

How can the tribe fight the gods? More importantly, how can Ufology fight these time-honoured tactics, and win?

Feeling Sneaky

Just like Australian band Sneaky Sound System who rocketed to fame with their gold single entitled UFO, a lot of people have seen a UFO but nobody believes them either. How frustrating, but more to the point, how very isolating. Just like the first line of the song that says “ I just don’t wanna be lonely”, thousands around the planet are also being forced into exiled loneliness by hostile skeptics and denialists. As people report their experiences of UFO events to their doctors, neighbours, churches etc, again as the words of the song say, they end up having to bite their tongue for the “plastic man on the telephone”.

Witnesses are continually forced to endure the continuous stream of debunking by the narrow-minded commentary of SETI scientists blabbing on about the simple physics of high school science making intergalactic space travel close to impossible, the casual bald-faced avoidance by skeptics of any serious questioning of UFOs and ET visitation, and the intelligence community hell bent on keeping a lid on the possible negative aspects of the phenomenon that has the potential to ignite public panic.

For those who endure this consistent wash into the falsely turbulent mythology of our current reality, it becomes at times almost too much to bear. Many may feel they are sent far from home and their respective tribes by these experiences, and just like in the song, left wondering “Whats it gonna take to get me back home tonight?”. After all, their goal is that they too, just don’t wanna be lonely - and isn’t that the simple point....?

Mirror Mirror On The Martian Wall

The much-discussed news story about humanoid life on Mars was laid to rest this week by among others, The Planetary Society, who pulled the anthropomorphic wool off our eyes to reveal the humanoid-shaped rocky outcropping on an image captured by Nasa's Mars Explorer Spirit, was not a Martian Bigfoot after all. Turns out the "Bigfoot" is actually less than five metres from the rover and no more than about 6 centimeters tall, or thereabouts. While this comes as no surprise the public response to the story and it’s whirlwind circulation in cyberspace around the globe, has revealed, among other things, the naked truth about human self projection.

Spirit has sent back images of another world – Mars, but what did the public see? A reflection of it’s own self, just a hairier version. While we are privy to gaze upon other worlds, or other life-forms, we cannot do so with our narrow human perception and expect to get it right. Our ignorance about ourselves and the human condition is brimming over into our understanding of everything and seems to be the source of our ultimate affliction, hijacking us from a greater reality.

As Australian author Jeremy Griffith points out, “the greatest of all human explorations in the universe is in fact the ‘dark continent’ of ourselves”. The trail explorers blaze through the wilderness of our inner selves will ultimately become humanity’s highway to truth, and a key component to any large scale contact we may ever have with an extraterrestrial society.

The War On Error

On 15th January a report was posted by KTVU – TV from California that began with this comment - “Across the globe, researchers searching for signs of life in space were abuzz this week with word that a mystery signal has been picked up by a giant radio-telescope in Puerto Rico.”

That comment caused the hearts of UFO researchers across the globe to go all a-flutter. Yes, all very exciting except the journalist reporting the story got it all wrong. Turns out radio astronomer, Dan Wertheimer, who is affiliated with SETI was interviewed about sending signals into space (so-called "active SETI") as opposed to just listening for aliens. The scuttlebutt is that after the interview Werthmeier talked to the reporter about some of the astronomy he does, including looking at radio transients: bursts of radio waves that are caused by one-off events like colliding neutron stars, exploding stars, and so on.

Somehow in the article the reporter mixed up the observation of the transient signals with detecting a signal from E.T. Worse, the observations of the transients weren't from Arecibo, and they weren't from Wertheimer as initially claimed. It was another astronomer altogether, observing with the giant Parkes radio dish in Australia!

In a retraction, KTVU-TV says the signal has not been confirmed as any sign of extra-terrestrial intelligence, although the Allen array in California is now actively searching for more of these signals.

Well, we want to know who’s raking the media over the coals about getting this story wrong? Who’s making the media take responsibility for circulating false stories? If this were an erroneous story about, say, a presidential candidate, it would have been withdrawn quicksmart and with a lot of loud shouting. But in this case it was a story on the possible existence of little green men that the media got wrong, and really, it doesn't matter if it’s wrong, because nobody takes this stuff seriously anyway. Not even SETI.

Mantle Burning

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, but can Philip Mantle run for his life? Well let's hope so, because Philip will be taking his life into his own hands when he appears at the UFO Congress in Nevada this year, proving once and for all that the Alien Autopsy footage was indeed a hoax.

The perpetrator, Spyros Melaris, claims cudos for the hoax, but we're yet to know the complete whys of it, although some reasons have begun to filter through, most notably in Philip Mantle’s recent expose ‘Alien Autopsy – Game Over’.

Despite the years and years of doubt surrounding the Alien Autopsy film, it seems that some have clung rather steadfastly to the hope that it was real, that this time they held the smoking gun in their quivering fingers. And while the Alien Autopsy footage was the Ufological equivalent to the face of Jesus in a piece of burnt toast, a wine-stained image of the Virgin Mary on great aunt Hilda’s tablecloth, an Elvis Presley bust in a 15 year old tooth filling…well you get the idea….it served as a sign telling us to never give up faith and that yes Fox Mulder, the truth is out there.

Yes indeed, Philip Mantle will surely shatter a few hopes and dreams on Feb 23 in Nevada, and like fervent believers of the true faith, the UFO community may just rise up to burn him at the stake for it. We vigorously suggest that conference organisers ban all those entering the door wearing long white dresses, peaked hoods and smelling of smoke. Good luck Philip, our hearts and prayers are with you.

I am, You Are, We Are Australiens

An experienced UFO spotter has lent his support to the theory aliens landed at Uluru and created human beings. Lew Farkas runs the store and holiday park at Wycliffe Well, an internationally-renowned UFO hotspot 380km north of Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway. The Northern Territory News yesterday reported on a US UFO enthusiasts' website carrying a story about aliens landing at the Rock and creating human life.

The event, the UFO Area website claims, is depicted in Aboriginal rock paintings at Uluru. Mr Farkas, 60, said he has spotted about 30 UFOs in his time. "I think it's feasible," he said. "There's more to things in the past and to our lives than we can comprehend. "I think that some other beings from another planet in some format started us off down here. "That's why they keep coming back and checking us out."

Mr Farkas said depictions of aliens were common to the art of many ancient cultures. "They all seem to have a being with helmets on and space-looking characters," he said. "They only paint what they see. "Indians, Aztecs, they've all got space creatures."

Mr Farkas said there had not been a sighting at Wycliffe Well since November 7, when a group of British backpackers said they saw a light hovering around for about 15 minutes before flying off. Outside the tourist season there are not as many eyes trained to the mysteries of the sky.

"Nobody here spends all night sitting around looking at the sky," he said. "If it came early in the evening someone might see it." The Wycliffe Well Holiday Park is popular with tourists keen to catch a glimpse of an alien visitor.

"If you stand outside in the middle of the night you can look in any direction and see the whole sky to the horizon," he said. "If something does move, you can see it."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23035923-2,00.html

We are the Aliens

Did humans evolve from alien life forms? That’s the question Horizons documentary asked SBS viewers on January 6. But if you’re waiting for an answer don’t hold your breath, because the question of human origins is still as contentious as ever in the scientific community.

With the opening statement that if we went back far enough we’d find the ancestors of humans to be extraterrestrials, the show knew how to capture its viewers’ curiosity early. But once released back into the wilds of suburbia would this question get people really thinking, or would they yawn and flick channels to Extreme Makeover? Well we know some who did!

The idea of life on Earth being seeded from among the stars via natural processes is known as Panspermia. If we really did come from elsewhere then Panspermia requires a closer examination, and that’s exactly what the program did. However such crusades into our origins can be quite boring for most, hence the program being accompanied by 1950s music and B-grade alien movie images, and we loved it.

To solve the question of human origins the documentary began by re-examining the Red Rain that fell in Kerala (India) in 2001, although in their attempts to explain this peculiar phenomenon away as earthly, the ‘rain’ was said to be anything from bat blood to lichen spores. Samples of the ‘rain’ revealed cells containing no DNA - a curiosity in itself - and begged the question where did the micro-organisms come from? Taking viewers on a romp through the world of extremeophiles, life forms that live in extreme conditions, viewers were shown terrestrial places with extreme temperatures and chemistries while abundant with life.

As a species, we were told, we need to re-examine current notions about where and how life might exist, and Considering that micro-organisms have been found to exist even on spent rods of nuclear fuel, it leaves the mind boggling over how durable and adaptive life might actually be. Of course scientists can swallow only so much and have ultimately relegated any possibility of ET life to that of only tiny life (micro-organisms) joy-riding the universe on comet tails, surfboards or whatever. Despite initially stating that the diversity of life on Earth (and that pinnacle of biology and intelligence – us!) may have evolved from a handful of such space-born micro-organisms, apparently taking that extra step and imagining that a similar kind of life (or, heaven forbid, a better kind of life) might have evolved on other planets and might one day visit Earth seems just too much for scientists to tolerate, at least for now.

However, one important point the program did make was the growing number of scientists now willing to at least accept the concept of Panspermia and that our ancestors might indeed have come from elsewhere, whether they began as microbial life or not. As it turns out bacteria are born space-dwellers, and if they are indeed our ancestors that might explain why some of us feel that call to space…

In Remembrance of “Ricky” Royal

Thomas Richard Royal, popularly known as Ricky Royal, embarked upon his passionate interest in UFO’s towards the end of WW2. In 1944 while flying over Bass Strait in a Beaufort Bomber, Ricky saw a dark shadow belching flame from it’s rear which then flew parallel to his plane while remaining at a distance of 100 - 150ft. This object paced him for approximately 18 minutes then accelerated to 3 times the speed of Ricky’s plane, emitting 100 ft to 150 ft of flames while doing so.

Ricky estimated it’s speed to be 235 mph flying at an elevation of 4500ft. Soon after he submitted a report to THE AUSTRALIAN FLYING RESEARCH SOCIETY describing what must have been a terrifying experience for a 29 year old during wartime.

This incident inspired Ricky to spend the next 25 years of his life devoted to UFO research during which time he, along with other interested members of the public, established the Queensland Flying Saucer Research Bureau (now UFO Research Queensland Inc) in Redcliffe, Queensland in 1956.

By this time, there had been many reports around the world of UFO sightings which fuelled the interest of the Bureau here in Australia. Ricky’s daughter and family historian Trish, recalls this time in her life very clearly, especially when the Bureau was visited by a noted identity from America whose name was George Adamski.

This almost alien–like icon himself was organized to stay at the Royal’s residence but they didn’t know exactly what to expect of this chosen contactee of alien crafts. However, the visit turned out to be very memorable with Adamski telling the family of his experiences which left them feeling sure that they too would be visited by these unknown entities from outer space in the near future.

This prediction by Adamski may have proved quite accurate as the family had a group sighting around 1956 while living at Scarborough near the Redcliffe Peninsula. The family house looked out towards Deception Bay and on one very clear evening, just on sunset, Ricky called the family out to witness what Trish believes to this day to be a UFO. The object was heading North to the other side of Deception Bay in the direction of the Glasshouse Mountains. Of course Ricky always kept his eyes open towards the skies as often as possible and by the time he had called the family to witness the UFO it was too far away for Trish to distinguish the shape, but she described the behavior as not being that of a helicopter or aeroplane. It was travelling fairly slowly at first but then suddenly accelerated and disappeared - not out of sight over the mountains, but completely GONE.

The neighbours saw the family gathering on the seashore and knowing that Ricky was a “Flying Saucer Nut”, joined them in the hope of seeing the UFO too.

Pursuing his passion, Ricky built himself a powerful telescope and Trish remembers him spending hours on end grinding the lenses until he had a means of viewing the heavens, the moon, the stars and of course any UFO that may come his way. This telescope was the centre of attention in the neighborhood with Ricky allowing anyone who wanted to look at the moon see the wonderful sights near and far.

Ricky also built a light beam transmitter with a microphone attached using his knowledge of electronic engineering gained from his Australian Airforce service. The transmitter was used to send friendly messages into space with the hope they’d be picked up by spaceships from other planets. The transmitter was designed using magnetic fields, similar to the design of a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope, an early version of the TV receiver we know today.

Various experiments in making contact were undertaken by members of the Bureau in and around Brisbane with one chosen location being Clear Mountain, north of Brisbane. A previous test had been carried out at Redland Bay but disappointingly with no response from ETs.

Sadly Ricky’s involvement with UFO research ended with his untimely death of a heart attack in 1969, but his enthusiasm never waned from the beginning of his UFO interest in1944.

Experiencers - ABC TV Documentary

Aired on Thursday January 3, this was a no-frills look at stories of close encounters. Some were terrifying, some uplifting, but all branded a lasting imprint on the psyche of the individuals concerned. Opening with scenes from the late Dr John Mack’s funeral service and comments from astrophysicist Rudy Schild, viewers were treated to personal stories about the reported clashes of different realities that left some people traumatized, some with apocalyptic visions of the future, and some environmentally concerned and/or spiritually uplifted.

With an apparent focus on proving alien abductions to be a real physical event, or at least something to be taken seriously by science, the producer still seemed to be at odds with descriptions by individuals of being transported to other dimensions where our laws of physics no longer apply. As a result the documentary lurched from topic to topic, probably in much the same way that the producer’s mind must have lurched when faced with these incredible accounts.

The first half of the documentary seemed the most structured, focusing on Dr Mack’s researches and eventual conclusions as to the reality of the abduction phenomenon. Included were Dr Mack’s interviews with South African school children who witnessed a silver UFO hovering near their school, and at least one of its occupants. These interviews were the most compelling part of the documentary, coming from the mouths of innocent babes as it were, and telling the same frightening stories that have been told for years across the globe.

The second half of the documentary fizzled somewhat, lacking structure and going nowhere. An inordinate amount of time was spent, or wasted, on the experiences of a US family that were neither new nor unique in the annals of abduction scenarios. If the aim of this documentary was to initiate the novice to Ufology or simply bring the phenomenon to the public, then that might explain where it was going. But viewers still would have been left wondering what the point of the documentary really was, if indeed it had a point.

This documentary could have achieved so much more but it just sat there like a piece of clay waiting to take shape. Many documentaries rely on the content alone to tell their story, but the subject of close encounters doesn’t do too well with this approach since there is no established context for close encounters in western society. This film would have been greatly improved if that foundation, even briefly, had been mapped out first for viewers. As we could tell from the responses of the producer, he had nowhere to go with this, no paradigm in which to place it, and no point to make. Perhaps the best revelation that this documentary made was the need for us to redefine human responses to what may be a truly non-human problem.

One thing is for sure. We are living in a world where absolute certainties are being swept away with new discoveries and as Rudy Schild said - current scientific certainties are proving increasingly fragile. These days, thinking people everywhere are wondering what the heck is real anymore?

Tell us what you thought.

Seeing Is Believing

Source : Centenary News, January 2008 (page 12)

While many may question the UFO phenomenon, Jindalee husband and wife team, Sheryl and Martin Gottschall have seen enough to believe.

Chairperson for UFO Research Queensland, Mrs Gottschall said it's not a matter of believing or not believing in UFO's to be capable of having an experience, it's one's ability to accept or reject information.

"Whether people choose to acknowledge this phenomenon or not is personal. My personal experiences, of both craft and aliens, have interested me in these occurrences. Since the inception of UFO Research Queensland in 1956, more than 5000 sightings have been recorded through our association from all across Queensland.

"Today, the association is one of the oldest UFO research organisations in the world. People who genuinely believe they have witnessed a craft, contact us at which point we record all information, many even send photos."

The most vivid account of a UFO sighting for Mrs Gottschall took place as the car she was in was travelling north along the Gateway arterial road. "It was about 7pm and extremely overcast. I looked out my passenger window and there 150m to my left, sitting at eye level, was a large white luminous circular object - it was the size of a full moon - it was incredible."

UFO Research Queensland holds monthly seminars on the last Friday of every month commencing at 7.30pm ACNM building, 362 Water Street Spring Hill and is open to anyone who is interested in the UFO phenomenon or who wish to discuss their experiences. Information obtaining to encounters both locally and globally are addressed. "It's an opportunity to socialise with others who share the same interest. We have a broad range of people from all walks of life who are looking for answers, even spiritual church participants who believe in the paranormal attend," said Mrs Gottschall. For further information visit www.uforq.asn.au