Hairspray might one day serve as the sign that aliens have reshaped distant worlds, researchers say. Such research to find signs of alien technology is now open to funding from the public.
Science fiction has long imagined that humans could transform hostile alien worlds into livable ones, a procedure known as terraforming. For instance, to colonize Mars, scientists have suggested warming the red planet and thickening its extraordinarily thin atmosphere so that humans can roam its surface without having to wear spacesuits. To do so, plans to terraform Mars often involve vast amounts of greenhouses gases to trap enough heat from the Sun, forcing carbon dioxide frozen on the planet’s surface to turn into gas.
If humans might one day terraform planets, aliens with more advanced technology might have already done so. If that’s the case, astronomers could look for telltale signs of such changes to reveal that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists.
“Our hypothesis is that evidence of intelligent life might be evident in a planetary atmosphere,” said astrobiologist Mark Claire at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, a nonprofit network of scientists across the world.
One group of gases that might be key to terraforming planets are chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). These nontoxic, long-lived chemicals are strong greenhouse gases and were once often used in hairspray and air conditioners, among many other products.
CFCs are entirely artificial, with no known natural process capable of creating them in atmospheres. Detecting signs of these gases on far-off worlds with telescopes might serve as potent evidence that intelligent alien civilizations were the cause, either intentionally as part of terraforming or accidentally via industrial pollution.
“An industrialized civilization will be one that will use its planetary resources for fabrication, the soon-to-be-detectable-from-Earth atmospheric byproducts of which could be a tell-tale sign of their activity,” said astrobiologist Sanjoy Som of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.
Telescopes have currently helped spot hundreds of exoplanets so far and should help detect hundreds more soon. Future observatories could analyze the atmospheres of these worlds, and CFCs should be easy to see, because the way they absorb light is very different from naturally-occurring chemicals.
“We are on the scientific verge of being able to actively look for extrasolar worlds inhabited by technological civilizations,” Som said. “We are about a decade away of being able to measure detailed compositions of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.”
Using state-of-the-art computer models of atmospheric chemistry and climate, the researchers plan to discover what visible signs CFCs and other artificial byproducts of alien terraforming or industry might have on exoplanet atmospheres.
“We will then test if these features are detectable over interstellar distances, by severely downgrading our computed signal to mimic the signal quality of next-generation telescopes,” Claire said.
Scientists worldwide could then use this data to see if any of the exoplanets discovered so far or to come show evidence of these “technosignatures.”
“This SETI proposal is about looking at atmospheric chemistry rather than other previously proposed technosignatures like radio signals or pulsed light beams,” Claire said.
Claire added that sulfur hexaflouride is another industrial molecule and greenhouse gas that could serve as a technosignature. Other technosignatures may include unusually large amounts of ammonia or carbon dioxide, when observed alongside gases such as oxygen and water vapor, which are often thought to be common signs of life, Som said.
I can see that this is a nice, safe method of the mainstream “discovering” alien civilizations using super-advanced spectrographic measurements of extra-planetary atmospheres.
It keeps the aliens at a distance that is “untraversable” by mechanical means ( which mainstream science and politics deems desirable ) but it satisfies the need to find alien peoples.
And meets the criteria of the 1960 Brookings Report.
Hat tip to The Anomalist.
For some reason, 60 years seems to be enough time for SETI to scan the local star neighborhood for radio signals, a sign mainstream science believes will be the way we’ll prove there’s ET intelligence in the Universe.
And as Mankind hasn’t received any radio signals from Out There yet, the famous “Fermi Paradox” is invoked.
The following abstract gives yet another possible explanation of the “silence” and one I have heard of before, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it tossed out into the mainstream:
The emerging science of evolutionary developmental (“evo devo”) biology can aid us in thinking about our universe as both an evolutionary system, where most processes are unpredictable and creative, and a developmental system, where a special few processes are predictable and constrained to produce far-future-specific emergent order, just as we see in the common developmental processes in two stars of an identical population type, or in two genetically identical twins in biology. The transcension hypothesis proposes that a universal process of evolutionary development guides all sufficiently advanced civilizations into what may be called “inner space,” a computationally optimal domain of increasingly dense, productive, miniaturized, and efficient scales of space, time, energy, and matter, and eventually, to a black-hole-like destination. Transcension as a developmental destiny might also contribute to the solution to the Fermi paradox, the question of why we have not seen evidence of or received beacons from intelligent civilizations. A few potential evolutionary, developmental, and information theoretic reasons, mechanisms, and models for constrained transcension of advanced intelligence are briefly considered. In particular, we introduce arguments that black holes may be a developmental destiny and standard attractor for all higher intelligence, as they appear to some to be ideal computing, learning, forward time travel, energy harvesting, civilization merger, natural selection, and universe replication devices. In the transcension hypothesis, simpler civilizations that succeed in resisting transcension by staying in outer (normal) space would be developmental failures, which are statistically very rare late in the life cycle of any biological developing system. If transcension is a developmental process, we may expect brief broadcasts or subtle forms of galactic engineering to occur in small portions of a few galaxies, the handiwork of young and immature civilizations, but constrained transcension should be by far the norm for all mature civilizations.
The transcension hypothesis has significant and testable implications for our current and future METI and SETI agendas. If all universal intelligence eventually transcends to black-hole-like environments, after which some form of merger and selection occurs, and if two-way messaging (a send–receive cycle) is severely limited by the great distances between neighboring and rapidly transcending civilizations, then sending one-way METI or probes prior to transcension becomes the only real communication option. But one-way messaging or probes may provably reduce the evolutionary diversity in all civilizations receiving the message, as they would then arrive at their local transcensions in a much more homogenous fashion. If true, an ethical injunction against one-way messaging or probes might emerge in the morality and sustainability systems of all sufficiently advanced civilizations, an argument known as the Zoo hypothesis in Fermi paradox literature, if all higher intelligences are subject to an evolutionary attractor to maximize their local diversity, and a developmental attractor to merge and advance universal intelligence. In any such environment, the evolutionary value of sending any interstellar message or probe may simply not be worth the cost, if transcension is an inevitable, accelerative, and testable developmental process, one that eventually will be discovered and quantitatively described by future physics. Fortunately, transcension processes may be measurable today even without good physical theory, and radio and optical SETI may each provide empirical tests. If transcension is a universal developmental constraint, then without exception all early and low-power electromagnetic leakage signals (radar, radio, television), and later, optical evidence of the exoplanets and their atmospheres should reliably cease as each civilization enters its own technological singularities (emergence of postbiological intelligence and life forms) and recognizes that they are on an optimal and accelerating path to a black-hole-like environment. Furthermore, optical SETI may soon allow us to map an expanding area of the galactic habitable zone we may call the galactic transcension zone, an inner ring that contains older transcended civilizations, and a missing planets problem as we discover that planets with life signatures occur at a much lower frequencies in this inner ring than in the remainder of the habitable zone.
The mention of inner rings or zones smacks of the Anthropic Principle, so I’m not too impressed with this abstract, but it looks like it’s a very well written hypothesis.
But my question is this; “Why does the mainstream consider 60 years enough search time for ET activity to be detected?”
Are we really that convinced we’re on top of the local Galactic food-chain?
And where does that leave the issue of UFOs? Are they possible manifestations of civilizations who have attained Technological Singularity status?
Hat tip to the Daily Grail.
All week long we’ve looked at different articles with conflicting viewpoints on Hawking’s statements that we should take care in broadcasting our presence to the Universe, because we might attract a powerful interstellar nomadic species that could very well steal our planet and kill us all.
Of course, in the premise of scientists such as Hawking, Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak, the assumption is that possible aliens are a safe many light-years away from us and more than likely continue to be so. Material interstellar travel to 95% of the scientific community is a fantasy; a thing of science-fiction and as ephemeral as pixie dust.
But what if the aliens are already here?
I could be talking about UFOs, but that is only part of the story.
According to Gary S. Bekkum of Starstream Research, aliens are not only here, but could be controlling high ranking figures in world governments:
“As Cambridge Professor Stephen Hawking — the world’s most famous physicist — is warning of the danger of contact with otherworldly life forms — the file collection at STARstream Research suggests they might already be here.According to Stephen Hawking, the aliens are ‘out there’ and pose a threat to human existence.
What if Hawking is right — contact with the aliens could be fatal — and what if they are already here?
One highly placed government-related source has confirmed to STARstream Research his opinion — based upon conversations with senior government associates and others — is the extraterrestrial presence is already here, and has made contact with the US government.
Others — notably from fringe government-funded projects like the NSA / DIA / CIA / STAR GATE psychic spy units — warn of an extraterrestrial presence walking among us, and based throughout the solar system.
Real or imagined? Cover-up, disinformation blitz, or bizarre tales based on hidden knowledge of the alien presence?
Over the past several years, persons known for their government affiliations — including key consultants on new technology threats and past and present intelligence officials — have been providing information ‘on background’ to a handful of Internet-based journalists about the CORE STORY: rumors of extraterrestrial contacts with the US government.
Based upon the best information available, it appears that the CORE STORY emerged in the mid-1980s from tales of USAF involvement with extraterrestrial visitors and other, more esoteric events surrounding the United States SECRET psychic spy research.
According to some sources, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were overcome by paranormal events during investigations of anomalous mental phenomena — the apparent ability of the human mind to access information beyond the reach of ordinary senses — including a series of bizarre holographic-like projections of strange animals, and even a disembodied arm, floating in space.
Later, additional “veridical data” said to have originated with the LLNL security officer, led to the idea of a CORE STORY within the US government.
At least one independent and unrelated source I call “Sarge,” from the USAF, told me in the early 1980s about strangeness taking place involving the Air Force and the aliens.
Recently, other sources have come forward and have provided information concerning an alleged series of extraterrestrial contacts; alleged to have taken place in 1947, 1983, and 1992.
When pressed for the source of this information, we have been told that at least some of the rumors originated with very senior government officials, possibly including Presidents of the United States.
Gus Russo, an investigative author known for his books about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was independently advised by one unidentified source:
“I believe there’s a ‘core story’, but I don’t know what it is. I have been told by people more senior than me that there is some truth to it, but they told me time and time again to stop pursuing it with CIA people and other Intel types. Two very senior officials told me they saw briefing books, [however] the only ones who would be cleared to know the story are the most senior Pentagon career officers. I have spoken to three former Presidents and the subject always comes up, not as a briefing, but they also want to know the truth. But apparently they aren’t cleared for it.”
A key figure from America’s STAR GATE program, who helped to develop the mental techniques used to spy on the Soviets at the height of the cold war, revealed in 1998 that he had been taken on-board by a covert group interested in uncovering an alien presence on the Moon. In my book, Spies, Lies, and Polygraph Tape, I retell the story of Ingo Swann, adding additional recently declassified material from STAR GATE. According to Ingo Swann, following covert sessions tasked to psychically spy on the lunar aliens — by a mysterious man he calls “Mr. Axelrod” — he encountered an Extraterrestrial Avatar — an alien in the form of a beautiful human woman — as she was being watched by Axelrod’s henchmen in black. The entire story strains credulity — one can easily imagine Axelrod’s men playing mind-games with Swann — but later the same covert group took Swann to a remote location in Alaska to witness first hand one of the extraterrestrial visitations.
According to the account provided by Ingo Swann, the extraterrestrial craft was diamond shaped and faded into existence from a mist suspended over a lake. At one point, the group had to dive for cover: according to Swann, they came under attack by “ruby-red laser beams” which blasted the surrounding woods.
In another report found in the CIA released STAR GATE files, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer tasked his psychic spy to remote view aliens in the solar system. According to the documents, which are stamped by official CIA release identification markings (and are available to view at STARpod.org), the DIA psychic team identified three locations populated by extraterrestrial entities, including locations on the Earth.
In recent years, several sources have come forward and alleged the existence of a new psychic spy effort, alleged to be under the management of the DIA and the National Security Agency. According to one source to Gus Russo — a person who claims to know someone working for the program — an attempted psychic spy operation against a foreign target was disrupted by “interference from an unknown extraterrestrial source.”
Sources familiar with or alleged to have been involved with the NSA program claim to have been tasked to locate Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
A key component in many tales of extraterrestrial encounters is an alien Internet — a ‘telepathic’ direct mind-to-mind information system — which is, perhaps, the basis of the claims of remote viewing psychic phenomena used by the United States government to spy on enemy targets.
According to Swann, ordinary human psychic perception falls flat in comparison to what he has described as the alien’s “telepathy plus,” a powerful and robust form of mind-to-mind communication suggestive of the use of technology to connect brains to each other.
Recent developments in the neurosciences are also suggestive of the possibility of a “telepathy plus” — the direct intervention of human perception using advanced information processing.
All of the above, if taken at face value, suggests the CORE STORY of contact could be interpreted as the takeover (by an unknown, presumably extraterrestrial presence) of the minds of key human leaders, as part of a covert alien operation to subvert the human race from within. Is it possible the US government has been faced with an insidious extraterrestrial ultra-high-tech command, communication, control, and communication system?
Or, perhaps, the rumors are merely chatter, virally spread throughout the intelligence community by a handful of well-positioned individuals.
Either way, Hawking is clear: contact with an extraterrestrial source may ultimately prove to be fatal.”
In my InnerTube travels during the past three years, I’ve run across Ingo Swan, Stargate Program, YellowBook, alien moonbase, etc., and the sources are usually pretty sketchy to begin with and doubtful at best. Legends of MJ-12, Project SERPO and Eisenhower signing a treaty with aliens also are stories of InnerTube lore and hard to trace and nail down with certainty.
There’s one thing for sure however, Mr. Bekkum is right about there being a “core story” meme that is used through-out the government pipelines to the corporate media and disseminated in drips and drabs to the clueless public.
So is this story just as credible as the others that were talked about during this past week?
Time will tell.
Far be it for me to question common sense or wisdom (if you believe that, I have some swampland in Arizona to sell ya!), but hasn’t anyone noticed that NASA and everybody else’s’ plan for exploring the Moon getting drawn away?
And all this attention given to Buzz Aldrin’s supposed mention on CSPAN of a “monolith” on one of Mars’ moon, Phobos? What’s up with that?
Are we being distracted? Why?
And are UFOs involved?
The reason I’m asking these questions is because the panel requested by CFR backed US President Obama to rethink NASA’s “Road Map to Space” (an unfunded mandate by former President Bu$hco) is more than likely is going to recommend that the US go away from exploring the Moon.
Instead, the panel suggests that NASA concentrate on using the Orion capsule to explore Lagrange points in lunar and Earth orbits and “docking” with asteroids.
I realize that money , or lack thereof might be a huge reason for some of these changes in policy, and god knows that the US as a viable economic entity might become a thing of the past sooner than later, so it could have larger fish to fry than lunar exploration shortly.
But IMHO, the Moon provides resources that are close-by to be exploited, re, three days travel by even primitive rockets. Plus the Moon is a natural (?)satellite that can be used as a military base of operations.
Whoa. Did I say ‘military?’
That my friends, could be the answer right there.
According to UFO lore, President Eisenhower met with some supposed ‘aliens’ back in 1954 and signed some treaties.
Now from what I’ve researched of that, it was mainly about letting the aliens sample people for genetic studies, but could some of the language of the treaties have set ‘boundries’ for human exploration of the Solar System and beyond possibly?
In fact, the 1960 Brookings Report about ET contact claims that such contact stemming from interplanetary exploration would throw world societies into total chaos, unable to recover.
And one other legend that will not die is the supposed “Apollo 20″ video that records an ancient spaceship in a crater on the Moon.
Is that b.s. too? Or did it happen?
All I see is that every time someone suggests we (meaning human beings) go back to the Moon to either explore, exploit for resources, set up bases or colonize, there’s a thousand and one reasons that pop up to kill such endeavors.
It’ll be interesting to see if NASA still carries out this LCROSS crash into a crater in the southern lunar hemisphere (crater with water?) this fall.
If it doesn’t happen, or the mainstream media doesn’t mention anything about it at all, I’ll be all the more curious.
So now we’re supposed to set our sights on Mars because Moon exploration is so ‘old hat’ now eh?
Or more exactly, the moons of Mars?
Okay, I’ll buy that.
In fact, I discussed this with Quasar9 one time. He wasn’t too thrilled about it, so we agreed to disagree.
My argument was that because a planet had a deep gravity well, it was harder to exploit for resources, thus, we need to go for the asteroids.
And lo and behold, for the very reasons the space exploratory panel suggests.
I didn’t suggest they use asteroids as stepping stones to get to the moons of Mars (I suggested the asteroid belt beyond Mars).
And that’s where I think Mr. Aldrin came in with his ‘monolith’ on Phobos schpeel.
Was that an attempt to influence discource on that panel?
I’m sure it was.
So, you’re gonna say “some space exploration is better than none Dad”, and I’ll agree with that.
What I’m saying is that “there might be more than what we’re being told.”
Yeah, I know, tin-foil bullshit and all that.
And I didn’t even bring up the fact we’re going waaaay out of our way to avoid bringing any kind of nuclear powered equipment into space, even if it would make things a thousand times easier to plan and operate.
And don’t even tell me about those bullshit non-nuclear treaties we’ve already broken with our military programs.
*Barsoom - A fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs .
From J.P. Skipper’s Mars Anomaly Research site:
When you see some of the images below with the Mars atmosphere a little more prominent and accurately represented, stop and think a minute. When you’re looking at them, note that you will be thinking more about the obscuring atmosphere rather than just the geological terrain alone. That is the point. As a thing is minimized in visual perception, it is also minimized in psychological awareness. This is how subtle manipulation is done.
The trouble is that showing various global views of a more real looking Mars with its high sunlight reflective atmospheric haze would mean less perception of the planet’s geological surface as well as the dry as dust scenario and more perception of the planet having a very real atmosphere that actually includes significant water vapor. Remember that obscuring atmospheric sunlight reflective haze means concentrations of water vapor either in liquid or solid particulate ice form. Just remember that sunlight reflects off of that water presence as a white color defining general water vapor as a haze or in greater concentrations as clouds.
With that thought in mind, take a look at the next two images. I had to make the first one large enough so that you could adequately read the text credits at the bottom of it and that meant that I had to make the second one equally as large for more direct comparison purposes.
The question of just how “Earth-like” Mars may, or may not be has been a huge argument between official mainstream scientists and independent researchers since 1877 when Schiaparelli mistakenly spied canali or channels on the surface, spawning many tales for generations of evil invaders, princesses, ancient civilizations and other myriad images that ended up being pareidolia .
Now, to be fair to the mainstreamers, the main fly in their ointment, Richard C. Hoagland (Face on Mars), has over the years has started to be more New Age with his and Mike Bara’s “Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA” and has tarnished his image with pushing book sales instead of research for researchs’ sake (a guy’s gotta eat I suppose), but their hue and cry of “conspiracy nutcases” , outright denials, obfuscations and the most damning probably, silence, has made NASA, JPL and other mainstream organizations’ credibility almost lacking as people such as Hoagland.
Now am I saying that Mars is Earth-like? No.
But I’m willing to consider that Mars isn’t as deadly to related (Terran) forms of biology as the mainstream purports it to be and that it might have a more advanced biosphere than is being let on.
To make a point, the 1960 Brookings Report is a little known study conducted during the late 1950s concerning “what would happen if humans made contact with a more advanced civilization?”
It wasn’t favorable to say the least.
So what do you do to mitigate the culture shock?
You slooowly insert the meme of non-earth life, starting with the primitive life, into the mainstream culture.
Do I have proof that’s what NASA’s doing? No. And despite his and Bara’s book, they should’ve taken a lesson from the Brookings Report they wanted to expose and left out the occult stuff, even if it might have been true. They would’ve sounded credible and gained more supporters from the mainstream, if that was their aim to begin with, which I don’t think it was.
As far as I can see, Skipper doesn’t have a literary axe to grind (he does claim to be working on a book) and is more open to give out his information for free than the aforementioned folks. He seems to just want people to question what they’re told and do some digging on their own.
Maybe eventually we’ll get past the Brookings Report attitude pervading our so-called “leadership.”