Tag: carl sagan

Posted on

The Sagan Paradox, Chapter 2: Extraordinary Claims and the Bermuda Triangle

“Extraordinary?” Sagan’s 1977 Standard Stuns UFO Dreamers

In 1977, when the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was released, Washington Post readers first heard of the “Sagan Standard”: that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.“

Carl Sagan uttered this aphorism in relation to the first film scene. In the scene, planes were found in the Sahara which years earlier disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. The notion of extraordinary claims was central to Sagan’s skepticism about extraterrestrial causes.

“There is no evidence that lights in the sky or the disappearance of ships or planes are due to extraterrestrial interference (in the Bermuda Triangle)”, Sagan said.

Reference: Second View, Sagan on ‘Encounters’
NEW YORK — Carl Sagan, the 43-year-old glamor boy of astronomy, is hunched down in the fifth row of the Ziegfeld Theater on West 54th Street, waiting for the five o’clock matinee to roll. Whoooooosh! A sandstorm rages across the screen, enveloping viewers in a yellow haze.

Bermuda Triangle Bombshell: Planes, Submarines & Atomic Mystery

Bermuda Triangle, 1986:
Nine years later, in the shadowy depths of the North Atlantic, the Russian nuclear submarine K-219 vanished beneath the waves. It left a chilling mystery in its wake. As the vessel settled silently on the ocean floor—nearly 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers) below the surface—a more disturbing discovery emerged. The submarine’s full arsenal of nuclear warheads had inexplicably disappeared, raising extraordinary claims about what might have occurred.

Any attempt to retrieve or remove the warheads should have been impossible at such an unfathomable depth. It was beyond the reach of all human technology in 1986. Yet, the weapons had vanished nonetheless, leaving behind only unanswered questions and a silence as deep as the ocean itself.

Official records claim that the catastrophic incident aboard K-219 took place hundreds of miles from the Hatteras Abyssal Plain. This spot was the very location where the lost submarine ultimately came to rest (Wikipedia).

Yet this contradiction is curious, to say the least, inviting extraordinary claims and speculations.

Deep-Sea Riddle: Vanished Russian Nukes Hide Under Triangle

Consult the Marine Gazetteer Map, and you’ll notice a small dot nestled between Miami and Bermuda. This is the location of the Hatteras Abyssal Plain. In other words, it is inside the notorious Bermuda Triangle.

Science moves forward through doubt, evidence, and the enduring patience to pursue both. But in a case like this, extraordinary claims about the vanished nukes cannot help but intrigue those. These claims make people wonder what secrets still lie hidden beneath those mysterious waters.

Location of the sunk Russian nuclear submarine K-219. Until now, no publication has linked it’s sinking and the disappearance of it’s nuclear arsenal to the presence of the Bermuda Triangle.

Cosmos Mania: Sagan Turns the Universe into Prime-Time TV

In 1980 the name Sagan finally became a household name when Carl presented his extraordinarily successful TV series “Cosmos.”

The series covered topics ranging from the origin of life to a perspective of our place in the universe.

The Sagan Standard, first phrased in the Washington Post article from December 1977, that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” became the mantra of the series. Carl claimed that nearly every UFO sighting is based on optical illusions and misinterpretations.

Carl Sagan wrote regarding UFO claims:

“When confronted with a claim for which there is no compelling evidence, we should reserve judgment. I know of no evidence for visits to Earth by beings from other worlds.”

  • – Carl Sagan
Posted on

The Sagan Paradox, Chapter 3: Skepticism and Egyptian Mysticism

UFO Smackdown: “Show Me the Proof,” Says Science Superstar

Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World” (1995), Ch. 11 (The Fine Art of Baloney Detection)

Rather than treating UFO research as a rigorous scientific inquiry into possibly extraterrestrial phenomena, Sagan rejected its validity on the grounds that it lacked the ‘extraordinary’ UFO evidence required by the scientific method and rested largely on unreliable eyewitness testimony, demonstrating his UFO skepticism.

Further reading: UFO Truth: Witnesses, Speak Out!
Witnesses should be allowed to stay anonymous, but non-anonymous testimony should be prioritized.

Radio Roulette: SETI’s Slow-Motion Search for Martian Pen Pals

Instead, he argued, the most promising avenue for detecting alien life was the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) via radio astronomy—a point he dramatized in his 1985 novel Contact. Of course, SETI has its own fundamental limitation: due to the speed at which radio signals travel, any interstellar message exchange could potentially experience lengthy delays, like years, decades, or centuries.

Interstellar two-way communication easily requires centuries, ruling it out for spontaneous chats. Despite this limitation, SETI’s search continues in hopes of finding concrete UFO evidence.

The shooting of “Contact” started in September 1996. Sagan himself was supposed to appear in a cameo, but he passed away 2 months after the shooting began. Sagan had been working on this project since 1979.

THE FIRST “PARADOX”: Reason meets mysticism

Ur-Uatchti, a winged sun disk, was once mandated to adorn every temple as protection against evil.

Throughout his career, Sagan loathed sloppy thinking. He famously derided Erich von Däniken’s ancient-astronaut theories—that extraterrestrials had a hand in erecting the pyramids—as nothing more than fanciful speculation, lacking credible UFO evidence.

And yet, in 1981, he purchased the Sphinx Head Tomb, the headquarters of Cornell University’s oldest secret honors society, designed in hauntingly authentic Egyptian style.

The symbol of the Sphinx Head Tomb Secret Society, Cornell University

What could possibly have enticed Carl Sagan—the very embodiment of rational, evidence-driven science—to take up residence in a building modeled on an Egyptian tomb? Granite walls etched with hieroglyphs, a false burial chamber—this was a home more temple than townhouse, a place charged with the power of millennia.

Those close to him sensed a shift. His daughter, Sasha, later recalled that almost immediately after moving in, her father’s health began to falter. The scientist who probed the furthest reaches of space found himself besieged by a far more intimate mystery: a sudden decline that culminated in his death on the winter solstice of 1996.

Reference: Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan

What compelled a scientist such as Carl Sagan to relocate into a structure reminiscent of an Egyptian tomb? Did the ancient mystique of the tomb hold a deeper sway over even the sharpest mind of his generation? The first paradox has been set in stone—yet its enigma endures.

Posted on

The Sagan Paradox, Chapter 5: Cosmos Eating Space Probes and Sagan’s Response

SELF-REPLICATING PROBES

In the context of the Extraterrestrial Intelligence Search, in 1980 the mathematical physicist and cosmologist Frank J. Tipler published a paper, “Extraterrestrial intelligent beings do not exist.”

Reference: Extraterrestrial intelligent beings do not exist, Tipler, F. J.

Tipler sought a universal principle to explain the Fermi Paradox: the apparent absence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth. He contended that if extraterrestrial intelligent beings existed, then their manifestations would be obvious. Conversely, since there is no evidence of their presence, they do not exist.

Von Neumann Probes

Frank Tipler argued that if any extraterrestrial civilization ever built self-replicating von Neumann starprobes, those probes would grow exponentially. They would fill the galaxy in a few million years. Since we don’t see them here, Tipler concluded there are no other intelligent civilizations.

  • Tipler assumed each probe would land on a new world and make just one or a few copies before moving on. However, he had no reason to limit its reproduction so drastically.

  • Even if each probe were only 10 grams and doubled once per decade, in about 150 generations we’d have the mass of an entire galaxy. This conversion to machines would be on the order of 1 followed by 54 zeros grams (1 quindecillion tons). Moreover, this transformation would occur in less than 15 million years.

  • Because we see no evidence of such galaxy-eating machines anywhere, Tipler said no one else ever invented them. Therefore, no one else is out there.

SAGAN’S RESPONSE

Carl Sagan pondered the arithmetic of Tipler’s solipsist argument. His response is a classic in the realm of science and philosophy. He draws attention to the limitations of our current knowledge and the vastness of the universe. By stating, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” Sagan cautioned against jumping to conclusions based on what we don’t know.

Sagan and William I. Newman challenged Tipler’s assumptions and conclusions, proposing a more realistic colonization model based on population growth and organization. This alternative model estimates a galaxy-crossing time of approximately one billion years, significantly longer than Tipler’s few million years.

Sagan further suggests that self-replicating probes are subject to evolutionary divergence, imposing unacceptable risks to altruistic extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI). The ETI only communicate with other ETI through signals. This argument assumes that self-replicating machines are essentially uncontrollable because they must evolve.

Sagan and Newman also propose that the emergence of powerful weapons of mass destruction may impose a universal brake on unchecked expansion. This could potentially limit the spread of advanced civilizations. Ultimately, they emphasize the importance of experimentation in resolving the Fermi Paradox. Systematic searches using radio telescopes and other tools are necessary to settle the question of whether we are alone in the universe.

Reference: The Solipsist Approach to Extraterrestrial Intelligence, by Sagan / Newman 1983QJRAS..24..113S Page 113

Terrestrial Shortsightedness

Imagine New York in 1894, its streets choked with the clatter of hooves. Its futurists were drowned in calculations of manure. They predicted that by 1944 New York would drown in horse manure.

The futurists only saw linearity: more carriages, more waste, an apocalypse of filth. However, they could not fathom the silent revolution already stirring—the internal combustion engine, the horseless carriage—a paradigm shift that would render their equations relics.

So too might we falter when envisioning the starfarers of tomorrow. To assume interstellar travel or contact must devour suns is to chain possibility to the physics of this moment. What of the technologies unimagined? The spacetime shortcuts, the dark energy harnessed, the self-replicating probes born of nanoengineering? The cosmos whispers of mysteries we have yet to decode.

Carl Sagan may have cautioned Tipler that his reasoning could mirror that of the horse-cart prophets. One may fail to see beyond the boundaries of the known. The universe is not merely a puzzle to solve with present tools. It is also a frontier that reshapes the solver. As we once tamed fire and split the atom, so too might we one day dance with the fabric of spacetime itself. The answer to the Fermi paradox may not lie in the scarcity of civilizations. It may lie in the humility of our assumptions.

After all, the stars are not merely endpoints. They are teachers. Their greatest lesson might be this: To traverse the light-years, we must first learn to think in ways as boundless as the dark between galaxies.

Reference: The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894
By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were drowning in horse manure. The London Times predicted in 1894 that in 50 years’ time, every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure.
Posted on

You’re warped onto the home world of friendly aliens in some unknown part of the Galaxy. How would you describe Earth’s location in the universe to them?

Pulsar Map Tattoo

I would show them my pulsar map. Astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake designed the map, working with fellow astronomer Carl Sagan and artist and writer Linda Salzman Sagan. The pulsar map shows the location of our sun relative to known pulsars. This map was placed on the interstellar space probes Voyager 1 & 2 in 1977.

The map is slightly inaccurate because of a rounding error on one pulsar, but its better than nothing.

Whether or not to have a tattoo of it is debatable. A dog tag may be easier to carry.

The Magic About Pulsars
Discovered in 1967 by Northern Irish astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, pulsars were described by Antony Hewish to be the remains of collapsed suns.

For reasons not entirely understood they emit pulses of radio waves (and like lighthouses sometimes visible light) with the accuracy of atomic clocks, staying active for billions of years. It has something to do with magnetic fields.

Frank Drake drew the pulsar map using 14 pulsars that were known in the early 1970’s. Today we know of many more pulsars but they are not as powerful and bright. Frank Drake’s original pencil-drawn pulsar map today lives in an old tomato box at home.

Frank Drake hand drawn original pulsar map that went to Outer Space.

Each pulsar is connected to the sun by a solid line. The length of the line represents the pulsar’s approximate relative distance from the sun.
Etched along each of the pulsar lines are vertical and horizontal dashes that represent a binary number that can be converted into a decimal.
When multiplied by a known measure of time, that number reveals the frequency of the pulsar—how fast it spins and flashes.

Successfully decoding the map would unambiguously pinpoint the sun’s position and the time frame of the spacecraft’s launch.

This is an article by the “Contact Project”.

We can be found on https://contactproject.org.

The Contact Project is also on reddit: https://reddit.com/r/contactproject

Reference:
How to Read a Pulsar Map
https://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/science/pulsar-map/

←Previous | Next→

Posted on

4. WHAT IS A UFO?

The author examining 35 mm negative with a digital microscope, MUFON case #111680, 1995.

It isn’t clear if UAPs are the product of human or non-human technology. It is only by their shape and fantastic alien flight characteristics that a non-human origin can be inferred. Human planes can not make 90° hairpin turns or accelerate from zero to hypersonic speeds in the fraction of a second.

Prof. Kevin Knuth, Associate Professor of Physics and Informatics, University at Albany, explained this in his article “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles“.

The majority of the public believes that other intelligent life in the cosmos exists and that we are not the only species inhabiting the Universe. This concept was popularized in the TV show “Cosmos” by exobiologist Carl Sagan and it is held to be true in the general consensus.

People who believe that humanity plays a more special role in the cosmos (anthropocentrists) do think that UFOs come from our own future, instead from alien worlds. They cite the large distances between solar systems as an obstacle for interplanetary spacecraft to make contact.

Some people think that it would be easier to build a time machine than a faster than light spacecraft. Otoh, with a time machine, superluminal flight would be easy. Just slow down the clock dial whilst maintaining forward momentum and viola!, speed is increased.

Superluminal flight implies time travel, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Time slows down progressively the more one approaches the speed of light. And should one travel in excess of light speed, then time begins running backwards. That follows from the theory and mathematics of relativity, which does not consider time paradoxes. It’s just numbers.

Book cover of “Identified Flying Objects”, 2019, by anthropologist Michael Paul Masters

Professor of anthropology Dr. Michael Paul Masters is one of the proponents of the UFO as time travelers. He explained it in more detail in his book “Identified Flying Objects” calling the time travelling occupants of these craft “extratempestrials”.

I believe that it’s a definitive possibility that some UFOs do come from our own future. Yet the infinity of possible futures in time means that SOME UFOs will also come from other worlds, even if it’s just our mutated time-traveling offspring from thousands of years into the future visiting their ancestral home planet.

If they exist they may be just visiting their ancestral home planet, or their great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Is there a paradox?

The Contact Initiative (https://reddit.com/r/contactproject) wants to discover if it’s possible to make radio contact with UFOs, to ask them what they are. It’s as simple as that.

←Previous | Next →