Here’s the PDF version of the Contact Project research proposal, together with the introductory note and the “Contact app” flowchart. The working title for the Contact App development is currently “UFO Alert!”.
Download and email these documents to promote or evaluate the Contact Initiative. If you do forward these documents I’d be interested in the responses you get.
Contact Project: The Introduction Letter
Contact Project: The Research Proposal
Contact Project: The Contact app flowchart
A note on the Alien Marketplace, funding, etc. As with most projects or initiatives, a positive cash flow greatly contributes to development speed and stamina.
The last chapter of the research proposal is the “The Alien Marketplace”. This type of chapter is more at home in a business plan than a research proposal and it outlines a funding possibility.
To finance the Contact Initiative a lottery and ad platform funded by advertisers and NFT trading technology are optional but not mandatory. It seems to be the most straightforward way to finance the app and its development and growth.
The Contact Project and Initiative welcomes donations and investments. Mostly the two are mutually exclusive, but I’m not an expert. How investment into the Contact Project could convert into equity has not been explored. I’m open to suggestions.
For donations: we are not tax exempt since this is the early start-up phase.
A Proposal To Contact UFOs/UAPs by Radio Keywords: crowdsourced, open source, automated alert system, distributed, public and specialized observers, smartphone app, passive radar operators, proactive HAM radio operators, gigapixel camera operators, megapixel telescope operators, CETI, METI, SETI
Erich Habich-Traut, https://contactproject.org 27. October 2021
1. INTRODUCTION 2. IS ALIEN CONTACT A GOOD IDEA? 3. A BIT OF UFO HISTORY 4. WHAT IS A UFO? 5. HOW TO OVERCOME THE ‘LIGHT BARRIER’ 6. HUMAN PROGRESS 7. WHY UFOs/UAPs? 8. CHANCES OF CONTACTING UFOs/UAPs 9. DESCRIPTION OF THE “CONTACT PROJECT APP”10. FUNDING: THE ALIEN MARKETPLACE
1. INTRODUCTION After more than 70 years the US Government recently confirmed the existence of UAPs/UFOs. There is a possibility that some of these objects or phenomena are not of earthly origin. To find out where they are from we want to try and talk to them by radio,
The Contact Initiative (CI) believes that UAPs/UFO’s are under the control of some form of intelligence and non-hostile.
SETI has been trying for decades to find signals of alien radio communications by pointing radio telescopes often at random at nearby stars in the hope that they may harbour intelligent life.
SETI faces three difficulties: 1. It has to find a planet that is populated by intelligent life 2. The alien life must be using radio waves to communicate 3. Any alien signals detected will be decades or centuries old and will take twice that time for a reply. (If we receive a message from ET in 25 light years distance, and we respond with a message immediately, then it will take 25 years to send signals to ET and another 25 years before we can hear a response. Hence, a human lifetime of 75 years will have passed.)
Point three shows the difficulty of trying to use radio waves for interstellar communications. Very often the participants of such a communication die of old age before they have even exchanged first welcomes..
In the movie “Contact” Carl Sagan tried to circumvent this inconvenience by speculating that ET could send instructions for a wormhole transporter that doesn’t rely on slow radio waves.
Even in the idealized world of the Hollywood movie “Contact” this approach didn’t prove the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence to all sceptics, because the resulting exchange between human and ETI left no convincing physical evidence.
The premise of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is that we are not alone in the universe and that Alien life somewhere has developed radio technology just like us.
We expect the Aliens to be friendly or at least impartial to our existence. That is by no means a certainty, looking at the example of our own species.
The Contact Initiative (CI) has as its goal to implement “active SETI”, or ‘CETI’ as it is known (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence).
Headline of the Chicago Sun, June 26, 1947. This started modern UFO/UAP history.
It’s been 74 years since the first widely publicized UFO encounter of Kenneth Arnold in 1947, who coined the term “flying saucer” when he saw nine objects skipping along the sky from his plane. Since then there have been tens of thousands reported unidentified flying objects in the Earth’s skies, some of them even similar in shape to Arnold’s sighting.
Countless theories about the origin and purpose of these phenomena exist. UFOs were a subject of public interest and regularly reported in the media until the end of the 1960’s .
Fall RIver Herald News, July 29 1952: The invasion of WashingtonUFO/UAP captured from government survey plane in 1971 over Lake Cote, Costa Rica
This pretty much ended serious mainstream media coverage of UFOs.
THE SAGAN STANDARD The mantra became that ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’, a phrase known as ‘The Sagan Standard’.
To find extraordinary evidence for the existence of technologically intelligent aliens, lacking suitable specimens for testing, Sagan proposed instead to search for their signals in the sky with radio telescopes.
This concept he illustrated in his movie “Contact”, which had its premiere in 1997.
Two years after the premiere of “Contact” the University of Berkeley made it possible for anyone with a computer to join in the search for alien signals, when they launched the seti@home screensaver.
The seti@home screen saver
165000 people seized the opportunity to find ET on their computer, taking part in the largest participatory computing project in history. I was one of the first to sign up, on the 16th of May 1999. Sadly, seti@home stopped processing new data on March 31 2020. No announcement had been made whether or not it had been successful in its mission: to find radio evidence for extraterrestrial life.
PENTAGON ACKNOWLEDGES “UAPs” The next month, on the 27th of April 2020, 73 years after the first widely documented flying saucer sighting, the Pentagon publicly acknowledged the existence of UFOs, supplying pilots testimony, audio- and video recordings.
By now the UFO phenomenon had been so thoroughly discredited that skeptics quickly began questioning the Pentagon’s UFO/UAP material.
However, the material didn’t just consist of fuzzy camera footage, but also recorded radar tracks and simultaneous sightings by pilots and aircraft carrier personnel.
In any UFO/UAP sighting, camera images are corroborative evidence of the witness testimony. Very often the quality of the camera can not capture what the witnesses have perceived.
The Contact Initiative uses a wide variety of methods to verify UFO/UAP. First we have the human observer, who may be able to capture the UFO image in low-res with his smartphone camera.
Then the location of his sighting is forwarded to a number of search partners in his neighborhood. They will try to capture the UFO with HD telescopes, cameras and radar, as well as listening with RF scanners to incoming radio waves from the object.
Excerpt of “UFO Alert!” flowchart
The more data about a UFO/UAP sighting exists, in as wide a range of frequencies as possible, the easier it is to verify the sighting as genuine. And if that wasn’t enough, HAM radio amateurs will try to hail the sighting.
The Contact Initiative does not rely on images. Having the UFO Alert! app is like carrying the resources of an airplane carrier in your pocket.
Reconstruction by author, MUFON #82139, Ireland, 1986
Based on personal experience the author of “The Contact Initiative” estimates the chance to spot an UFO/UAP in any one day to be approx. 1:10.000.
UAP photographs on 35mm negative film, frame 7 of 2. MUFON #111680, UK, 1995, The UAP was grayish without markings as seen here. Photograph by author.
You may have a chance to take pictures or video of an UFO once every 50 years, as I did in 1995.
More impartial data than personal experience about the frequency of sightings comes from surveys. There are not a lot of surveys on the subject of UFO/UAP. More surveys should be carried out.
But there is one:
STUDY ON PUBLIC UAPSIGHTINGS One available survey comes from Century Fox Home Entertainment. They did a poll for a promotional campaign of the Ridley Scott movie “Phoenix Forgotten“.
Reconstruction of “Phoenix Lights” by eye witness Tim Ley, USA TODAY, 1997
The “Phoenix Forgotten” plot was inspired by the “Phoenix Lights” UFO phenomenon from 1997. (Ref.: 1, Ref.: 2)
Over 1700 Americans were asked if they had ever seen an UFO: 16.74% responded positively (Ref.: 3).
If that percentage is any guideline, then we can say that 16.74% of 258.3 million adults (Ref.: 4), about 43 million Americans, had a UFO sighting.
MISIDENTIFICATION OF UFOs According to author Leslie Kean, “roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings can be explained”. (Ref.: 5)
The chief investigator of CUFOS in 1979, astronomer Allan Hendry, concluded from 1307 cases that 91.4% had a clear and simple prosaic explanation. 8.6% were classed as “UFOs” and 1.5% of those cases had no possible plausible explanation. (Ref.: 6)
This leaves us with 645,000 unexplained sightings from 43 million. This covers a time-span of 38.4 years, it being the median age of the US population (Ref.: 7).
If there are 645,000 completely unexplained UAP sightings in 38.4 years, we get 16,796 (sixteen thousand seven hundred ninety six) sightings per year. That’s 46 UAP cases without possible plausible explanation daily in the USA.
I believe this to be a fairly high number.
The Contact Initiative doesn’t want to wait around to get results. To maximize the chances of spotting UAP/UFO a large number of volunteer UFO/UAP spotters are needed.
And the method of spotting and forwarding a report of a sighting must be as simple as taking a photo or video.
The “CONTACT APP” (name may be changed) will be designed for this purpose, to be as simple as possible. But it will be the most powerful civilian use flying object identification program on the market.
One of its appeals will be that it provides near instantaneous identification of objects and phenomena commonly mistaken as UFOs: celestial objects, meteors, planes, blimps, military training exercises, satellites. The app gives feedback to the UFO spotter if what he/she saw is a known phenomenon.
The app records with high accuracy the position and time of the sightings and the number of users who see the same thing.
POSSIBLE UAP/UFO YIELD PER MILLION APP DOWNLOADS If the Contact app is downloaded one million times (corrected), then the chances are that we will see 65 UAP cases without possible plausible explanation in a year.
That amounts to a bit more than one really, really, puzzling UFO case per week. This should be enough to engage and keep the attention of the public. Because, what good would be an UFO app that doesn’t spot UFOs?
PEACE OF MIND On the other hand, incorrect identifications of common or explicable phenomena as UFOs should become less with the Contact App. This way the great majority of witnesses would feel less stress.
EDUCATIONAL VALUE A large number of participants serves to raise the awareness of the possibility of Extraterrestrial Contact. What does it mean to be a part of a greater community of diverse intelligences in the Cosmos?
GOAL OF THE CONTACT INITIATIVE (CONTACT PROJECT) The goal is to prepare for and meet a technological superior non-human species. That we’re not the most advanced technological species in the Universe is logical:
THE SAGAN The Universe is billions and billions of years old. In it there are billions and billions of habitable planets. Modern human technology only exists since a few hundred years and we left the stone age just about 5000 years ago.
The development of life and intelligence is most likely not a one-time miracle confined to an infinitesimal speck of the Cosmos, the Earth.
BENEFITS OF FRIENDS The potential benefits of contact to an advanced intelligent extraterrestrial species are incalculable to the future and destiny of the human race.
It may be that we don’t have much in common with each other except curiosity. But that alone would be a driving force of human determination and progress, geared at finding out more about the other.
DON’T BE AN OSTRICH Should it turn out that UAP/UFOs are otherworldly emissaries of non-friendly intent, then it would also be important to find out. It could be fatal to stick our collective heads into the sand.
ULTIMA R̶A̶T̶I̶O̶ RADIO These are the reasons why the Contact Initiative proposes to contact “UFO sightings in progress” by radio waves.
References: 1.: Kurt Russell claims he saw — and reported — the ‘Phoenix Lights’, https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2017/06/14/kurt-russell-claims-reported-phoenix-lights-ufos/394749001/
2.: Ex Arizona Governor saw a UFO during the 1997 Phoenix Lights, https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Former_Arizona_Governor_says_he_saw_a_UFO_during_the_1997_Phoenix_Lights
3.: New survey shows nearly half of Americans believe in aliens, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-survey-shows-nearly-half-of-americans-believe-in_b_59824c11e4b03d0624b0abe4
4.: U.S. Adult Population https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/united-states-adult-population-grew-faster-than-nations-total-population-from-2010-to-2020.html
5.: UFOs, UAPs and CRAPs https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ufos-uaps-and-craps/
6.: Identification studies of UFOs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_studies_of_UFOs
7.: US MEDIAN AGE https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/65-older-population-grows.html
Realtime data feed about in progress UAP sightings
Creation of Adam / Earth Rise Michelangelo / NASA
With the app named “UFO Alert!” (or “Contact Project App”) the Contact Initiative wants to engage with others who also think that they aren’t alone in the universe.
That includes not just our neighbors on planet Earth, should they exist. By that I mean neighbors on other planets.
We, the Contact Initiative, believe that there is a non-zero chance that UFOs/UAPs have an extraterrestrial origin. In other words and more precisely: we believe that UAP may be of extraterrestrial origin.
But we can’t be 100% certain.
In the past we may have seen something unexplained in the sky and wondered what it was… We never found out about it because no one told us and we didn’t have the tool to tell us.
We are the casual UFO/UAP witness. We are 46 million people in the USA alone. We wanna know what’s going on!
The UFO Alert! app
An tool to identify the identifiable and investigate the unknown.
click image to enlarge
Currently the flowchart of the app is not hewn in stone. No godly instructions were received on a mountain to create this.
This is a project in the brainstorming stage. To make it a reality compromises may have to be made.
That is possible because the app has a modular design. The app is composed of modules. Each module is desirable, but not essential to create the app.
For instance. the “Identified Flying Object Databanks” can be left out. They can be added at a later stage, or never. Omitting them would make the app programming much easier and faster.
How much can be realized at the first try?
That depends on a) funding or b) the selfless support from the open source community.
UFO Alert! is an open source UFO/UAP real time reporting tool. Every user who downloads the app is a “Search partner”. Users CAN register to use the app. During the registration users CAN enter their profession, such as pilots, air traffic controllers, military personnel, and age and hobbies.
Search partners can be anyone with a smartphone, radio operators, videographers, gigapixel camera operators, Unistellar telescope operators and (passive) radar operators, which are a subset of radio HAM enthusiasts and people that are close enough to have visual or audible contact with an UAP/UFO.
UAPs are a very transitory phenomenon. Often a sighting lasts less than a minute. Speed is of the essence to reacquire the target. Because it is in the reacquisition phase that the “UFO Alert!” app gathers most of its data.
The Contact Project
The “UFO ALERT!” app has two modes of operation: ALERT and CONTACT.
App users that report a sighting shall be called Alerters.
HAM radio and other operators that are sent the coordinates of the UFO shall be called Contacters.
What happens when an UFO is spotted? The user who sees the object/phenomenon presses the “UFO sighting in progress” or “Alert!” button of the CONTACT app:
The app immediately uploads the timestamp and GPS coordinates of the sighting:
The user can also try to take snapshots or video of the UFO sighting with their smartphone. This provides real time additional data: the smartphone’s gravity sensors record the elevation and its magnetic compass records the azimuth:
The data are then sent to an “Identified Flying Object server”. Here GPS and time data are parsed (and available elevation and azimuth). An astronomical real-time database, the NORAD database and air traffic databases are used to identify known flying objects near the UAP location, such as planets, planes and satellites. (To categorically exclude ship traffic, such as may have been filmed in Kumburgaz, Turkey, in 2007-2009, a marine AIS database should be included). Secret military projects are excluded via NORAD TLEs:
If the object is not identified, it becomes a “prospective UAP” (PUAP):
GPS coordinates and other data of prospective UFOs/UAPs are forwarded as an ALERT to close-by Contacters using the same Contact app, to be investigated in more detail:
Contacters are selected based on their vicinity to the GPS coordinates of the sighting and their hardware/qualifications/experience. The contacters may beHAM radio operators and others (search partners with CB / HD camera / HD video / telescope / radar):
Should the same PUAP be reported multiple times at different locations a trajectory can be computed and search partners will be notified in advance of a possible PUAP arrival.
Users that spot the PUAP can fill out a standard UFO sighting questionnaire and/or supply more detailed reports that will be attached to the alert.
The presence of a not identified flying object has now been broadcast to users of the CONTACT app in the vicinity of the sighting via multiple routes (SMS, EMAIL, POP-UP APP NOTIFICATION).
Alerted by this notification:
HAM RADIO OPERATORS will be listening for incoming broadcasts from the sighting using multiband radio frequency scanners. Should the sighting be a remote controlled drone it would now be identified via the unique drone radio frequency signature.
If the PUAP is a viable UFO and not a drone → then HAM operators will attempt to make contact using a variety of radio bands. A pre-recorded message or data burst transmission may be broadcast towards the UFO.
TELESCOPE AND CAMERA OPERATORS Other search partners may try to use the information to get radar or visual confirmation via HD cameras or automatic telescopes (for instance UNISTELLAR / VAONIS STELLINA).
(PASSIVE) RADAR OPERATORS A special field of amateur HAM radio is the analysis of passive radar data, often to observe meteor tracks. Sometimes unexplained tracks are recorded, showing flight maneuvers of objects at right angles. In case of these anomalous sightings an ALERT can be triggered with the aim of visual confirmation and radio contact.
VISUAL OBSERVERS Any search partner who can verify the sighting by eye sight using the CONTACT APP provides real time data to the sighting in progress.
The CONTACT INITIATIVE effort may be coordinated via the members of SETI Institute / SETI LEAGUE / MUFON / HAM and other organized networks.
All who download the app can make UFO reports. A sighting by a single person is less convincing than an event that many witnesses report from a distance to each other.
An AI algorithm will analyze live reports coming in in real time to determine if multiple witnesses are reporting on the same thing. This takes into account the position and possible flightpath of an object.
To motivate the public to take part in this search, prizes can be given for successful detections of UAPs, staggered by evidence weight:
more important: 4. reception of radio emissions, 5. verifiable conversation with ETI (CETI), 6. physical alien artifact, 7. actual landing of UAP with ETI.
Alternative to cash prizes, credits may be given, they could be collectible non-fungible tokens (NFT’s), whose value is based on their desirability.
The whole endeavor (and prize money) will be funded by private enterprise through the “Alien Marketplace” advertising space. This marketplace is accessed through the Contact app. To filter out fakes and false identifications AI algorithms and volunteers evaluate the results. The volunteers may be paid cash or NFT tokens that can be traded on the Alien Marketplace.
To motivate the public to take part in the Contact Initiative search and to download the app, prizes can awarded for UFO Alerts! that lead to detections of UAPs, staggered by evidence weight:
more important: 4. reception of radio emissions, 5. verifiable conversation with ETI (CETI), 6. physical alien artifact, 7. actual landing of UAP with ETI.
NFT’s for verified UAP sighting pictures or video? Alternative to cash prizes, credits may be given (that’s at the discussion stage), they could be collectible non-fungible tokens (NFT’s) linked to the detection record and/or the verified UAP pictures,. Their value is based on their historical value, rarity and desirability.
The whole endeavor (and prize money) will be funded by private enterprise through the “Alien Marketplace” advertising space.
This marketplace is accessed through the Contact app. To filter out fakes and false identifications AI algorithms and volunteers evaluate the results. The volunteers may be paid cash or NFT tokens that can be traded on the Alien Marketplace.
The app and the Contact Project Organization itself may be financed by advertisements in the APP, which sell on the ALIEN MARKETPLACE.
A ‘jackpot’ cash prize will go to the first person to report an UFO/UAP that makes contact. Lesser prizes are for genuine UFO reports, verified unidentified flying objects without explanation.
A credit system of some sort or a cash prize should be instituted to motivate the participants. False reports are penalized by subtracting from the prospective “jackpot” money of the participant.
Examples for advertisements on the ALIEN MARKETPLACE are any products of interest to UFO, SCI-FI and Fantasy fans, as well as the general population.
The logo needs a bit of explanation. The green branches are not a laurel crown, bestowed upon the victor in a game or after battle.
The branches are olive branches, a symbol of peace. The world map, seemingly overlaid with the grid of a gun sight, is an azimuthal projection. The grid lines represent latitude and longitude.
The UAP flying over the world visualizes that the phenomenon is a global one.
I decided to color in the UN logo, since I’ve never seen a blue olive branch, nor blue continents. But I did color the seas blue, which unaccountably where in white before.
When I designed the logo I did have in mind the grid lines of a targeting scope. This is because an accurately sighted UAP on the smartphone with the “UFO Alert!” app can be better pinpointed in space by azimuth and elevation.
The logo represents peace. The size of the UAP is due to the perspective.
United we can achieve great things.
Non-human contact has never been verified to have happened in recorded history. There exist records of sorts, but they belong to recorded myths.
Unless one understands those books, at least partially, as fact.
The Contact Initiative believes that UAP exhibit friendly to indifferent traits towards the “Children Of The Planet Earth”, as Nick Sagan called Earthlings on the Voyager Golden Record.
To find out more we want to make radio contact with UAP.
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