{"id":6908,"date":"2014-12-13T14:26:31","date_gmt":"2014-12-13T21:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6908"},"modified":"2014-12-18T20:05:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T03:05:07","slug":"why-aliens-might-be-invisible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6908","title":{"rendered":"Why “Aliens” Might Be Invisible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Magonia<\/em>, the review blog of esoteric books (0r should that be, books on esoterica?), recently revisited two books on Unidentified Flying Objects from the 1950s by Morris K. Jessup, the first writer, they say, to use the term “UFO” in a commercial publication.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ah, those were the days, I take it, when the assumed evidence for the reality of alien spacecraft was growing steadily. Soon we would know the truth! Governments would be forced to admit that there was Someone Else! Perhaps a disk-shaped spacecraft would float down onto the White House lawn \u2014 or in Red Square, why not? \u2014 and a being would step out, proclaiming, “We come in peace.”<\/p>\n

Or, conversely, the aliens would not be peaceful, and Earth would have to put aside its wars and rivalries to unite in a battle to save humanity. We have all seen book and movie versions of these possible scenarios, going back to War of the Worlds <\/em><\/a>in 1897, at least.<\/p>\n

Astronomers have now found \u2014 by calculation if not direct observation \u2014 many planets that orbit their suns not too close and not too far <\/a>\u2014 the habitable zone \u2014 and which, therefore, could possibly contain life “as we know it.”<\/p>\n

But getting there is the thing. With our chemically fueled rockets, which are limited in size, even a trip to Mars would take half a year or more<\/a>. And right now, that would be a one-way trip \u2014 although some people are still volunteering.<\/a> It did not take so much fuel for astronauts to escape the Moon, but Mars would require quite a bit more.<\/p>\n

“Hyperdrive” and “warp drive” are science-fiction plot devices, not technology that is anywhere in sight.<\/p>\n

So when it comes to actual physical aliens visiting us, I see only two possibilities:<\/p>\n

1. They travel slower than the speed of light, which means that they either have incredibly long lifespans or that they have learned to\u00a0 “hibernate” while traveling for many years.<\/p>\n

2. They travel faster than the speed of light using a sort of “hyperdrive.” But if they can do that, what else can they do?<\/p>\n

They would have no need<\/em> to land a spaceship on the edge of town, leaving scorched spots on the ground, drop a ladder, and climb down wearing silvery suits, looking for someone to put on their operating table and probe.<\/p>\n

Instead, their technology would so far ahead of ours that it would seem invisible to us. And so might they<\/em>. We would not even know that we had been observed.<\/p>\n

That blog’s name, Magonia, pays homage, I am sure, to French astronomer Jacques Vall\u00e9e and to the <\/a>name of a land in the clouds., taken from a medieval French tale. Vall\u00e9e borrowed the name when he wrote\u00a0Passport to Magonia<\/em><\/a>, introducing his “interdimensional hypothesis<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Briefly, it states that the Visitors\/Fairies\/aliens etc. are not from Out There but from In Here, “visitations from other ‘realities’ or ‘dimensions’ that coexist separately alongside our own.”<\/p>\n

Maybe they live in Icelandic boulders<\/a>, or as someone in a dream once told me, “inside the walls.” Either way, they should not be disturbed. Contact with them can be extremely upsetting.<\/p>\n

This idea has long made more sense to me than the idea of physical “flying saucers” coming chug-chug-chug through interstellar space. Now you see them, now you don’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Magonia, the review blog of esoteric books (0r should that be, books on esoterica?), recently revisited two books on Unidentified Flying Objects from the 1950s by Morris K. Jessup, the first writer, they say, to use the term “UFO” in a commercial publication. Ah, those were the days, I take it, when the assumed evidence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,210,22],"class_list":["post-6908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fairies","tag-science","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Nq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4684,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4684","url_meta":{"origin":6908,"position":0},"title":"What Happened to Ufology?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"When people are still talking and writing books about the Roswell Incident more than sixty years after it happened, you have to wonder if the air has leaked out of ufology. In Britain, the Telegraph reports, Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4015,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4015","url_meta":{"origin":6908,"position":1},"title":"Of New Agers, Nazis, and Vin Chaud","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"People described variously as \"hippies\" and \"New Agers\" apparently view a mountain in the French Pyrenees as some sort of a refuge from the upcoming apocalypse (you do have that on your calendar, don't you?). A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers \u2013 or esoterics, as locals call them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"France\"","block_context":{"text":"France","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=france"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2769,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2769","url_meta":{"origin":6908,"position":2},"title":"Space is Big, Time is Deep, Aliens Aren’t Here","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Les Johnson's article \"The Aliens Are Not Among Us\" reflects the way that I have come to think about physical aliens arriving in physical spaceships from other planets: Not very likely. Let me be blunt: the chance of an alien species evolving, developing intelligence with the physical characteristics that allow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=603","url_meta":{"origin":6908,"position":3},"title":"Fairies, the Dead, and Book-Blogging","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Spring semester has started, and teaching does cut into blogging time. And my reading list (for myself) is huge: all the books that I ordered at AAR-SBL (and elsewhere) started arriving in December. I just finished At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5900,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5900","url_meta":{"origin":6908,"position":4},"title":"Quality of British Crop Circles Sagging","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Says the Daily Mail, which prints some examples. Insiders say a number of top crop circle makers have quit following a clampdown by farmers and moved onto making sand circles, which are legal. In previous years, impressive crop circles have drawn in thousands of tourists to southern England and some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1059,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1059","url_meta":{"origin":6908,"position":5},"title":"The Fairies of Torchwood","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I never joined the Doctor Who cult, although I had friends who remembered every episode and could debate whether Peter Davison made a better Doctor than William Hartnell. At a post-INATS dinner, however, a publisher friend said that I had to see Torchwood, a Doctor Who spin-off. He compared it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6908"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6928,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6908\/revisions\/6928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}