People are so strange sometimes.
Funny how it was a Greek Satirist named Lucian of Samosata who became the first writer in Western thought to theorize about alien life on planets other than Earth. Centuries later, the inconsequential falling of an apple from its tree inspired Issac Newton to wonder if such an unseen force, capable of drawing the fruit away from its leafy loft, might also maintain the moon in its orbit. Bizarre theories for their time, indeed.
More recently, physicist Migul Alcubierre proposed the idea for a warp drive machine back in 1994 that would essentially shrink space in front of a craft travelling through the cosmos, as well as expand the space behind you, resulting in a form of space travel that satisifies Einstein’s equations and falling well within the given laws of physics. And more recently, Michio Kaku in his book Parallel Worlds described a step-by-step plan as to how, in theory, a civilization may escape a dying universe.
All these great thinkers over the ages have had one thing in common having to do with their interest in science: they all speculate. This ability to speculate about things unseen, as well as things to come, has played a major role in creating what is known today as theoretical physics. Recently, author Mac Tonnies at the SETI blog questioned why it’s okay for physicists to expound theoretical concepts, and yet it doesn’t appear to be couth for Ufologists to call themselves “theoretical Ufologists”.
http://www.aboutseti.com/blog/theoretical-ufology
“Am I a ufologist?” Tonnies asks. ”I don’t know. Maybe. If I am, I should probably qualify the ‘U’ word with ‘theoretical.’ There are theoretical physicists and literary theorists; why not theoretical ufologists?”
Yesterday, I blogged about what I jokingly referred to as a ”Sky Squid”. Okay, wait a minute… call off the hounds! I know, this is most likely a cluster of Mylar balloons, as suggested already by numerous different sources, including the astute Mr. Tonnies. I too had suggested this early on… Latin American UFO sightings are very prolific, yes. However, almost as frequent as the sightings from this part of the world are the discovery of Mylar or other metallic/reflective balloons in creating hoaxes connected with them. Anyone who watches the video will see that this is pretty obvious.
Anyhow, my friend Wm Michael Mott shared a different take on the video yesterday, which I found to be a refreshingly theoretical approach discussing possible by-products of experiments with particle colliders:
If such a device were to create a powerful black hole, space and time would be compromised. Events would be effected with RIPPLES forward and backward in time. Anomalies would not ONLY be observable at the point of the event and forward–the flow of time and the integrity of the continuum would be affected BACKWARD as well. Of course, quantum weirdness would be more likely the nearer to the event, from either direction in the timeline. Or time-lines, if the continuum were ripped/diverged/split.
Could such an event explain MUCH of the anomalous, Fortean, and paranormal/quantum activity that has always haunted this planet? I think it’s worth considering.
To me, what Mott asserts here is interesting, with or without relevance to any cluster of Mylar balloons, or giant Lovcraftian Sky-Squids, for that matter! Considering reports of what some call “interdimensional beings” like Mothman, various alien entities, and even Bigfoot in a few bizarre instances, what Mott proposes lends itself to a theoretical scientific explanation for paranormal phenomenon. But just because this, according to some, may fall outside the usual scope of what we deem Ufology, doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of consideration. Many tried and tested scientific theories had first undergone scrutiny and even ridicule before being proven to be scientific facts in the end. We can only break apart, sort, and categorize this stuff so much… and last time I checked, I don’t think anyone has gotten around to building any functional warp drives yet, either. Still, that hasn’t kept theoretical physicists from assuring us that devices like this not only can be built, but that their use may be realized in the not-too-distant future!
That being the case, what else might we suppose today… and it end up being reality further down the road?
September 1st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
[...] Alas, I remain a skeptic. In the meantime, read this follow up post from September 1st as to why I think it’s okay to speculate on such matters: http://gralienreport.com/ufos/theoretical-ufology-why-so-hard-to-swallow/ [...]
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
[...] this over at The Gralien Report and I liked what they had to say about it, better than what I had to say for [...]
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
Very interesting stuff.