The NASA Study on Extraterrestrial Contacts

Instead of investigating the claims of extraterrestrial contact, there is a pattern of unwarranted character assassination. Throw in the hoaxes, and the public has a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction. And when it comes to extraterrestrial contact, there are the intelligence agencies who would like to tell us all about their side of the story:



And somebody had the sense of humor to make this statement carved into the wall of the building of the CIA:

As this is a controversial subject, and due to some sensitive information I have recently uncovered, I want to back up a bit and discuss the bigger picture.  Because from a particular instance of an extraterrestrial contact, we should not make any generalizations, especially when much about them is unknown.

At first I was just looking at NASA photos and videos to see if any other planets in our solar system were inhabited by advanced extraterrestrial races, to see if the claims made by Emanuel Swedenborg in the 18th century was correct. Not only is there evidence of unusual activity - crafts controlled by intelligent beings - there is incontrovertible evidence that NASA brushes up and tampers with the photos in order to hide it before releasing it to the public, which I discussed earlier in this blog. So, I thought that was the end of the matter, until I discovered evidence of a government extraterrestrial contact through a radio signal in an NSA document, which can be possibly dated to the year 1953. The surprise here is that it contains scientific information that was ahead of its time. If we look at the period of 1952-54, there was a flurry of UFO activity at that time, with rumors of a direct extraterrestrial contact with the government, perhaps initiated by the Roswell crash of 1947. And not just with one group of extraterrestrials. At least two groups. Each with a different agenda or motive. This is the exact time when the CIA and NSA were formed, as well as the rumored MJ-12 special studies group. So UFO studies is not just a pure scientific matter. It is also an intelligence matter. And a very weird one at that, needless to say.

THE BROOKINGS STUDY ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL CONTACT

Let us assume some direct contact was made with the U.S. Government some time in 1953 or 1954. Although I say the U.S. Government here, contact with other nations may have followed - specifically those with nuclear weapons. Those who research this will know that all major nations of the world are aware of them, typically the intelligence agencies rather than the elected officials. If contact was made, then soon after there would have been studies or study groups on how to deal with the matter. So, after 1953, were there any public government studies on extraterrestrial contact? Yes. Reading these reports closely reveals the "inside thinking" of government experts on the subject, and why they would not disclose it to the public.

The first government study on contact with extraterrestrials, was done in 1960 by the Brookings Institute for NASA entitled, Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs. The report warned that the American public should be prepared for the psychological impact of such a revelation. And if you think there is no psychological impact, there is. You do not know until you face it. It is like saying to yourself you are prepared and ready for the death of a close family member. Most are not - as most think death is the end of all existence. You think you are ready, but when it happens, you are not. The same goes with extraterrestrial contact: at first it is theory, a sighting here and there...but when faced with an actual contact, there is the shock factor. Because we have all been taught that among the billions of stars and galaxies we are alone. Not only that, we have all been told that contact has not been made and that we are still searching. This is false. Contact has been made, and it is slowly getting released to the public. So lets take a look at this government study - it does not discuss any contact, but it reveals the government thinking at the time. One concern of the Brookings Institute was nothing less than the complete collapse of civilization, if not a drastic change in culture:

"Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they have had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others have survived such an experience did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior."

Think of the Aztec civilization that were wiped out by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 16th century. Or the push against Indian tribes when North America was settled, until they had to retreat into small pockets. Or, instead of pure conquest, think of assimilation. In many cases, the weaker culture was assimilated into the stronger culture, until the weaker culture disappeared or was forever changed. If it survived, it was marginalized. In pop culture, this is described by the Borg collective in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here is a clip, where the Borg seeks to assimilate the biology and technology of one culture into their collective. A collective where there is no individuality:



The following summary of the the Brookings report is provided by NICAP:

"Even though the UFO problem was not indicated as a reason for the study, it undoubtedly was an important factor. Fear of public reaction to an admission of UFO reality was cited as the main reason for secrecy in the early years of the AF investigation. (Confirmed to NICAP's present director in 1952-3, when the AF was planning to release important UFO reports, also the famous Utah motion-pictures of a UFO formation.)
Radio communication probably would be the first proof of other intelligent life, says the NASA report. It adds: "Evidences of its existence might also be found in artifacts left on the moon or other planets."
This report gives weight to previous thinking by scholars who have suggested that the earth already may be under close scrutiny by advanced space races. In 1958, Prof. Harold D. Lasswell of the Yale Law School stated:
"The implications of the UFOs may be that we are already viewed with suspicion by more advanced civilizations and that our attempts to gain a foothold elsewhere may be rebuffed as a threat to other systems of public order." (UFO Investigator, Dec. 1958.)
The NASA warning of a possible shock to the public, from the revelation of more advanced civilizations, support's NICAP's previous arguments against AF secrecy about UFOs. All available information about UFOs should be given to the public now, so that we will be prepared for any eventuality."

The NICAP quote above is not entirely accurate, here is a direct quote from the Brookings report:

"Recent publicity given to efforts to detect extraterrestrial messages via radio telescopes has popularized - and legitimized - speculations about the impact of such a discovery on human values. ...many cosmologists and astronomers think it very likely that there is intelligent life in many other solar systems. While face-to-face meetings with it will not occur within the next twenty years (unless its technology is more advanced than ours, qualifying it to visit earth), artifacts left at some point in time by these life forms might possibly be discovered through our space activities on the Moon, Mars, or Venus. If there is any contact to be made during the next twenty years it would most likely be radio - which would indicate that these beings had at least equaled our own technological level."

I take special note of the following statement: radio communication probably would be the first proof of other intelligent life. This is in perfect alignment with the theory that the NSA extraterrestrial radio signal dates to 1953, which I discussed previously. The other significant statement is that "evidence of its existence might also be found in artifacts left on the moon or other planets." Why mention this? As discussed previously, NASA and intelligence agencies may have found evidence of artifacts on the Moon in the 1960s, and there is video evidence of this as well as witness testimony. As this was published in 1960, they may have been aware of it even before that. And that may have been the secret agenda of John F. Kennedy: race to the Moon, and be the first to make contact. There is evidence that the astronauts encountered something but were not allowed to speak about it to the public. Because since landing on the Moon, we have not gone back. WHY? How is it we are talking about colonizing Mars, and not setting up something more permanent on the Moon? Inside sources have said that were warned off from the Moon: and even before that, in 1958 a Yale professor said "our attempts to gain a foothold elsewhere may be rebuffed as a threat to other systems of public order." There is this conspiracy going around that the landing on the Moon was faked and we never went there. Main evidence is that a replica of the Moon was made in Langley Virginia and simulation video was taken there. Here is one video, and one can hear from the dialogue that the "astronauts"  who participated in it were quite upset:



My theory on that is that simulation video would only be used in case actual contact was made: that way the public could have a video where nothing happened. I don't question we went there, I question which pictures and videos released to the public are real, which ones are tampered, and which ones are from the simulation. It is this story which perhaps inspired the script for the movie Capricorn One.

I have seen possible bootlegged video from the landing showing structures on the Moon that were never released to the public. As I have blogged before, NASA has continued its behavior of tampering or censoring photos and videos before releasing them to the public to the present day.

The Brooking report for NASA discusses the possible reaction of the public to an extraterrestrial contact:

"An individual's reactions to such a radio contact would in part depend on his cultural, religious, and social background, as well as on the actions of those he considered authorities and leaders and their behavior, in turn would in part depend on their cultural, social, and religious environment."

In terms of religious viewpoint, the New Church - originating from the theology revealed to Emanuel Swedenborg - not only expects that there is other extraterrestrial life, but also that they will be human or humanoid in form, they will tend to be telepathic, may regard us with some disdain, live in some form on other planets in our solar system and other solar systems as well. In his visions at least one of them had a tendency to travel between solar systems to gather knowledge.

The Brookings report mentions a very positive impact to knowledge of extraterrestrial life: a greater unity between the governments of this world. Nations will tend to stop fighting each other:

"The knowledge that life existed in other parts of the universe might lead to a greater unity of men on earth, based on the oneness of man or on the age-old assumption that any stranger is threatening."

Conversely, if an extraterrestrial race has ulterior hostile motives, it would NOT want its presence to be known. Because a united world would be more capable of addressing any specific threat from space. Disunited, fighting against each other, makes it easy for them to infiltrate, divide, and conquer should that be their motive. So despite this positive benefit from such a disclosure, the Brookings report recommended "continuing studies" on how the public would react to such a disclosure. But should an extraterrestrial race be discovered to be hostile, we cannot afford to keep up this secrecy: it is a risk.

THE RECENT NASA REPORT ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL CONTACT

The Brookings report is not only over 50 years old, it covered a wide variety of issues for space exploration, and extraterrestrial contact was mentioned only briefly. I discovered that in the year 2011 NASA did another study devoted specifically to extraterrestrial contact, entitled Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis.  It discusses the Fermi Paradox, which states that more intelligent life should have already been detected by now. The overriding assumption of this report, as well as the Brookings report, is that should the government detect or make contact with a more advanced extraterrestrial civilization it would tell us. There are scenarios where the governments (or intelligence agencies) would NOT tell the public. Those studies, which would discuss why not to reveal it to the public, would be classified. But I found one explanation as to why they have not been detected as quite revealing:

"The ETI [Extraterrestrial Intelligence] could be intentionally invisible. The intentional form of this solution is sometimes known as the Zoo Hypothesis because it implies that ETI are treating Earth like a wildlife preserve to be observed but not fully incorporated into the Galactic Club. This idea has been popularized through the Star Trek series as the "prime directive" for non-interference with a primitive culture. The Zoo Hypothesis thus implies that ETI could make contact with humans at any time. Perhaps such stealthy ETI will reveal themselves once Earth civilization has reached certain milestones. They may be waiting until we have reached a sufficient level of sophistication as a society such as the start of a METI  [Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence] program or the discovery of light speed travel, or they could be applying a societal benchmark such as sustainable development or international unity. The possibility that the Zoo Hypothesis explains the Fermi paradox has several important implications for contact scenarios."

This "Zoo Hypothesis" I consider very plausible: because in the majority of UFO sightings they tend to be stealthy and try to remain invisible. But if the Zoo Hypothesis is true, if we are like animals in a zoo being observed unknown to us, then I would argue we have already reached a milestone: the invention and use of nuclear weapons. Because with nuclear weapons, we now have the capability of not only destroying ourselves but our planet, which they may consider to be their "zoo." And in many alleged extraterrestrial contact, this was the main reason for contact and intervention: the threat of nuclear weapons. I believe this contact has been made, but the reason that we still have the Fermi Paradox now is different: the government is hiding it.

Whereas the Brookings report concentrated on the beneficial aspects, this report divides extraterrestrial contact scenarios into three categories:

1. Beneficial
2. Neutral
3. Harmful

For the harmful category, the report divides that into "intentionally harmful" or "unintentionally harmful." It acknowledges that this is a bit simplistic, but it is useful for analysis. And then there is this statement:

"Although we cannot know the level of technological sophistication achieved by ETI, we do have a compelling reason to believe that ETI would be significantly stronger than us and therefore highly capable of causing our total destruction."

The reason for this is that our technological development and science is still quite young. So the NASA study admits an extraterrestrial race would be more advanced. So there is another conclusion that is very obvious which the paper does not mention: if they are more technologically advanced, and scientists obtained this technology, would the military disclose their presence to the public? Of course not. Not only would they not disclose it, they will make every effort to hide it. And that is the EXACT behavior I keep seeing in the way the various intelligence and military agencies respond to the public concerning UFO events. Technological superiority is essential in warfare. But the Brookings report stated that one outcome of disclosure is that it will remove the need of much unnecessary warfare, as it can help unite the planet and bring about a long lasting peace. Even so, there have been neo-conservatives in the past who would have considered this outcome detrimental, as wars are often initiated to achieve certain political and economic objectives.

The paper next discusses ETI ethics, which it then divides into "selfish" or "universalist." The paper then says:

"It is worth noting that the analysis in this paper is in a sense selfish in that it focuses on benefits and harms to humanity. Throughout this paper, we do not consider how contact with humanity could benefit or harm either the ETI or any other entities affected, including other entities on Earth and elsewhere in the galaxy."

And that is the major limitation of the paper: without considering possible motives or the agenda of the ETI, it is not going to come to a complete analysis of a possible contact scenario. Another point the paper brings up: an ETI can be homogenous or heterogenous. Humans are heterogenous, with different cultures and motives. For a heterogenous ETI, this means the motive of one group may not determine the motives for an entire group. If it is determined that an ETI race is homogenous, with no individuality but part of a collective similar to the "Borg" of Star Trek, then their general motives can be determined.

The NASA paper considers various scenarios of ETI contact, which is summarized in the following chart:

In the above chart, I would guess that the neutral ones which are always intentionally hiding are the most common. In terms of motive, I would call them the "tourists" or "observers." As I started to survey certain alleged contactees, with evidence that they are not a mere hoax, I discovered a few that I would consider the "cooperative extraterrestrial" type. These are quite interesting. However they are hard to verify: these for the most part human in appearance who can blend into the population, and in the few cases where I have seen direct evidence provided, the intelligence agencies come in and cover it up or discredit the witness. This I am still researching at the moment. But what has taken me quite by surprise is there is another type of ETI, or an ETI behavior pattern, which is definitely one we would consider hostile. As to their motive, the above chart does not list it, and they are very clever about hiding it. I could never figure out their motive until I discovered that sometimes the beneficial cooperative type of ETIs revealed their motives to certain contactees. As the military and intelligence communities are so intent on protecting the knowledge of extraterrestrial technology, many may be completely blind as to their motive. I suspect not all are so blind.

Returning to the NASA extraterrestrial study, unlike the Brookings report it states that the outcome of a disclosure is not quite certain:

"If ETI do exist within the galaxy, then confirmation of their presence would have profound implications for human science, philosophy, religion, and society. ...Some people might consider mere detection to be harmful to humanity. These people include those with religious perspectives and other worldviews that depend on the idea of humanity (and Earth-life more generally) playing a unique and privileged role in the universe. The detection of ETI could challenge these worldviews and therefore be perceived as harmful by those who hold such beliefs. However, this perception of harm depends on a philosophical mistake. The existence of ETI in the universe is independent of whether or not they have been detected by humanity. It is the existence of ETI that challenges such worldviews and not the act of detection."

Again, religion - probably a reference to the Christian religion - is brought up as a reason a known ETI presence would cause harm to humanity. Again, this has no effect on the New Church or New Christianity as revealed in the visions to Emanuel Swedenborg. The theology of the New Church is universal, whether one knows of the true identity of Jesus Christ or not. The theology explains why He had to be born of a virgin. It explains how other societies - including extraterrestrial ones - can be spiritual and reach heaven without a knowledge of the specific revelation of Christianity. Not only that, the extraterrestrial presence in our solar system is expected in the theology of the New Church. As it has corrected the errors that have crept into the Christian church over the centuries, there is no change in theology needed. Moreover, the angels told Swedenborg that without the coming of Jesus, the human race would have already been wiped out by the 18th century. Not just condemned to hell, unable to progress spiritually - completely wiped out. As to how that is so, He completely subdued evil temptation in His human body to the point where He subdued the influence of hell in the spiritual world. The influence of His spirit not only interacts with all of humanity, but the angelic realms, and other societies whether they are aware of Him or not. There are spiritual realms beyond this material one, and this NASA paper speaks of some beings in other dimensions which is mentioned below. The way I see it, the human race has an important role to play in the bigger extraterrestrial community. Our loss would have been their loss.

Another point of the above paragraph is revealing: it says mere detection is harmful. Not their presence, mere detection. What are they saying? What this shows is that there are some who believe that the mere revelation of an ETI detection is harmful, and consider themselves justified in hiding it. It perhaps shows that the authors are aware that certain agencies are currently hiding their presence. But the NASA paper gives another reason why detection should be hidden:

"More troubling is the possibility that detection could initiate or exacerbate conflicts in our society. The conflict could be over how to interpret or reply to such a discovery. There are already disagreements over how to message to ETI, whether or not we should, and who should speak for humanity; such disagreements would become much fiercer if ETI were detected."

In other words, if a nation which has made contact with extraterrestrials should disclose it, they would have to share their knowledge with other nations who don't have it. Sort of like a bunch of kids waiting in line to speak to Santa Claus: they all want to be first to tell Santa what they want. And if one kid is first, he would rather sit on Santa's lap and have everyone wait in line. And then he would pull on Santa's beard and show all the other kids that Santa Claus is a fake and does not exist. For the children: yes, Santa Claus exists, but he also keeps his presence hidden for reasons as of yet unknown. In fact, Santa Claus has been present here on earth since ancient times, there is a wall carving that proves it:

Rumor has it that Santa Claus came to planet earth after his planet Pluto was no longer habitable:

Even astronauts encountered "Santa Claus" when they went to the Moon:

BENEFICIAL EXTRATERRESTRIALS

For communication with "cooperative extraterrestrials" who are "sufficiently interested in humanity" I was very surprised when I found this statement in the NASA report:

"It is reasonable to assume that the general principles of physics and chemistry apply everywhere in the galaxy, even if mathematical descriptions of these physical phenomenon differ among intelligent civilizations. This type of dialog with ETI may require that we first develop a common mathematical language using physical observables that are known by both civilizations (such as properties of neutral hydrogen)."

Well what do you know. This NASA paper, published in 2011, is recommending the EXACT mode of communication of the NSA extraterrestrial radio signal. The exact same signal that the NSA put up on its web site in the same year - 2011. This method of communication was mathematical, and used the periodic table of the elements as the "physical observable." And the paper even suggests starting with neutral hydrogen - an element of the periodic table! THIS IS NOT NEW. IT WAS PUBLISHED IN A CLASSIFIED NSA DOCUMENT AS EARLY AS 1969. IT WAS FIRST PROPOSED AS EARLY AS 1953. Moreover, it says that the mathematical descriptions may differ. Again, that describes the NSA extraterrestrial radio signal: whereas we use base 10 in our mathematics, analysis indicates they used base 8. And they numbered the groups of the periodic table of the elements differently (actually, better than we do). See the following blog posts where I have been discussing this NSA extraterrestrial signal:

NSA Discloses We have made Extraterrestrial Contact
A Decoded NSA Extraterrestrial Radio Signal from Outer Space
The Origin of the NSA Extraterrestrial Radio Signal

What this reveals is a planned release of information...information that is 50-60 years older than what they already know. One wonders, WHAT ELSE do they already know which is discussed in a "theoretical" manner in this paper? It then says this:

"An advanced ETI may be capable of solving a great many of humanity's problems, such as world hunger, poverty, or disease. Benevolent ETI may even design their first message to contain information on how to avoid technological catastrophe in order to help less developed civilizations succeed. From humanity's perspective, this is the best-case scenario for ETI contact. However, while we suspect that the basic principles of physics and chemistry apply across the universe, it is somewhat less likely that ETI knowledge would be useful in addressing social issues on Earth."

According to Colonel Corso in The Day After Roswell, technological benefits reverse engineered from crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft has been secretly "seeded" into private corporations, without revealing the true source. I would not be surprised if it included advances in medical knowledge. This paper is "theoretically" describing what has possibly already happened. Moreover, it may be revealing what came next in an extraterrestrial radio signal after the periodic table was described...something probably still classified. It also describes a road block in the relationship with beneficial ETIs: the human race can be violent and selfish. They may not be willing to share information if it is used as a means for war. So the technological gap is not the problem. The problem is our spiritual and moral gap. It is the lack of spiritual ethics and way of living which will stop a beneficial ETI from making contact or giving too much information. And it may be forbidden for a beneficial ETI to influence our civilization in matters of religion: thus they cannot help with "societal issues." That is what this paper seems to be saying. What else? It says this:

"We do not know if ETI would be cooperative, but we have several reasons to suspect that they would be. ...a long-lived civilization that explores the galaxy may have transcended any aggressive patterns out of the need to maintain long-term survival. It is also possible that intelligent civilizations may inevitably develop cooperative tendencies as part of their evolutionary process."

The paper describes that these beneficial ETI races follow a sustainable mode of development, where they have no need to constantly expand. Is this "theoretically" describing a race we are already in contact with? Not sure...but there are some indications here and there.

It next describes the "uncooperative extraterrestrial" which may be harmful to humanity. It mentions a particular scenario from The War of the Worlds - a superior race is unable to defeat the planet because it succumbed to a deadly infection from ordinary microbes that are harmless to us. This is an important point. Suppose such an "uncooperative extraterrestrial" race existed, but it still seeks to expand into our environment. It knows it is vulnerable to the microbes in our environment. But the paper does not go into an obvious outcome of that scenario. What would happen if the ETI wanted to overcome the obstacle of the microbes and bacteria in our environment? This ETI race may start to engage in activities of medical testing and genetic engineering. Other scenarios are described: a direct confrontation between us and harmful extraterrestrials, as described in Independence Day. It then describes an alternate scenario should a conflict arise:

"A final scenario involves a second ETI learning of our situation and coming to our rescue, again leaving us better off than we were to begin with. Scenarios such as these might make for quality entertainment, but they also appear rather unlikely. Still, such contact scenarios are possible and thus worth including in this analysis."

This scenario is interesting. Because I have seen it described in certain contactee reports. However it is more like, "we will help you to help yourselves." The validity of this would be very hard to verify. It is strange territory: you have to weed out the hoaxes, depend on a witness, and there will be agencies always trying to discredit the witness. And then there are contactees, who let the situation get to their head and they go over the deep end. So I prefer going with this "theoretical" NASA report for now.

NEUTRAL EXTRATERRESTRIALS

For the neutral ETI, the NASA report says this:

"ETI could have the capability of hiding from us given the likelihood of their superior technology, and there are many ways that ETI could remain undetected by us if it chooses to do so."

The paper then mentions hiding out in the asteroids, as well as "eliminating all electromagnetic signals to hide any signatures of its presence." There is actually evidence of advanced cloaking technology: people have taken pictures of empty sky only to see a UFO after the picture was developed. Some UFOs have the ability to morph and change their appearance. For this I will mention something personal: there were three or more bobbing white UFOs, somewhat spherical, which were once hovering above a powerline tower in the park near our house. My sister and friend saw them. Probably detecting the observation, they then morphed into flying eagles. This was many years ago, and I did not believe it suspecting it was a joke. But they both insisted on it rather vehemently. Many years later, I again asked, "Was that a joke?" No, indeed it happened. There would be no reason to play a joke any more. I have recently seen videos of UFOs attracted to lightning storms, so I wonder if they were just sucking up the electricity from the power grid. The military is currently working on technology to bend light around an object so that it is invisible. I wonder where they got that idea from? Check out this video where they are now discussing experiments for cloaking technology:



Next the NASA paper mentions something odd:

"...ETI with even greater technological prowess could engineer a virtual planetarium surrounding Earth so that we are forced to observe an empty universe."

That is funny - if anyone is keeping us inside a bubble, it is NASA with the way they tamper or censor photographs before releasing them to the public. It is no wonder that the Vatican decided to purchase their own telescopes: they do not trust NASA. But in the far, far future, once science has advanced maybe a thousand years, technologies such as terraforming and altering the atmosphere to hide the surface of the planet may be possible. The paper does contain a reference to "environmental ethics in the context of terraforming Mars." And the focus of space exploration for NASA does now seem to be concentrating on Mars.

For ETIs that are unintentionally invisible to us, the paper suggests alternate life forms:

"Although it is common to assume that extraterrestrial life will most likely be carbon-based and require liquid water, there are a number of suggestions for more exotic configurations of life. These include alternative biochemistries based on alcohol solvents or silicon, a shadow biosphere that invisibly coexists with the life we know, pure energy beings that lack physical form, and even residents between multiple universes. In the same way, we may fail to notice ETI messages that are transmitted at a different wavelength range than we typically listen to."

The above seems to be straight out of science fiction. But here is another interesting point: it mentions a type of ETI that is spiritually minded, that is content with its life, and does not spend much effort in exploring other planets:

"It is also plausible that nearby ETI simply have no desire to communicate with us. Non-expansive ETI that pursue a sustainable development pattern may also find all the contentment and meaning they need on their own planet so that they have no desire for interstellar communication. They may have taken up transcendental spiritual practices that focus their efforts inward rather than outward, or they might limit their space exploration to passive interstellar probes."

The above passage is interesting, because I have seen a contactee claim which describes that exact kind of society. Spiritual societies will tend to follow a sustainable life pattern. Greedy societies will tend to follow an expansive life pattern - our modern society falls into this pattern. The ones that explore and make contact will tend to be more scientifically minded, rather than spiritual. Providing spiritual teachings may be forbidden, as that can be regarded as interference with a culture. I like the idea of "passive interstellar probes." As it is harder to sustain biological life forms in space, that may be the more common way of exploration for ETI races. Even we have started to resort to robotics for exploration. I may talk about evidence for these ETI probes later. They have been caught on video.

For ETI that are present but invisible to us, the NASA study does not mention one particular scenario: ETI that dwell underground, rather than on the surface. In planet hunting, our scientists are always looking for planets like earth in the "Goldilocks zone." The assumption here is that life is present only on environments such as ours. The other assumption is that life will be found on the surface. What may be missing here is that advanced ETI races may colonize other planets by establishing underground bases. They would not be noticeable. We have to acknowledge the scenario that such underground or underwater bases may be present on earth, and we would have no way of detecting them.

What about the gas giants of our solar system: such as Jupiter and Saturn? Science currently assumes there is no life there. The paper makes this interesting point:

"Remote observation of an ETI planet may also reveal strikingly different chemical compositions between their world and ours. ETI that originate from a gas giant planet, for example, may have followed a completely different evolutionary trajectory that leaves little room for biological similarity between us and them. Communication with such ETI may provide little useful information for humans."

For example? Is this just theoretical? As indicated by Sergeant Clifford Stone, certain government agencies do know the composition of other life forms which require a breathing apparatus in our atmosphere. And the only way to discuss them in public right now is in "theoretical" papers such as these. So far all I have been able to dig up are Cassini videos showing UFOs travelling back and forth from Saturn. See The Cylindrical UFOs of Saturn, and Emanuel Swedenborg. For Jupiter, U.C. Berkeley professor Burkhard Militzer as well as others are now predicting that Jupiter has a larger rocky core than we once thought - see Jupiter's rocky core bigger and icier, model predicts. Possibly as a result of this prediction, NASA has launched the Juno probe which will orbit Jupiter in the year 2016. Its goal is to map the planet's deep structure underneath the cloud layers. Right now science predicts that Jupiter and Saturn lack a solid surface. If scientists were wrong about water on Mars, how much other wrong information is being taught in our text books?

HOSTILE EXTRATERRESTRIALS

The paper mentions that the hostile extraterrestrial scenario has been the one that has been presented the most in science fiction. The most common scenario presented is the one where there is "intentional harm" and they simply want to take over the planet in direct military confrontation. The other "intentional harm" scenario is that they wish to eliminate us due to their ethical standards. They may consider us barbaric and primitive, and consider saving the planet more important than human life. The paper then quotes geographer Jared Diamond, who says that astronomers may be too optimistic about an extraterrestrial contact:

"The astronomers and others hope that the extraterrestrials, delighted to discover fellow intelligent beings, will sit down for a friendly chat. Perhaps the astronomers are right; that's the best case scenario. A less present prospect is that the extraterrestrials might behave the way we intelligent beings have behaved whenever we have discovered other previously unknown intelligent beings on earth, like unfamiliar humans or chimpanzees and gorillas. Just as we did to those beings, the extraterrestrials might proceed to kill, infect, dissect, conquer displace or enslave us, stuff us as specimens for their museums or pickle our skulls and use us for medical research. My own view is that those astronomers now preparing again to beam radio signals out to hoped-for extraterrestrials are naive, even dangerous."

Not all astronomers are naive, a few have expressed reservations. The risk is that any that we make contact with are likely to be far more advanced than we are. We have no idea about their agenda or motive. Stephen Hawking - likely to have been consulted on other subjects related to this matter - even expressed his concern about extraterrestrial contact. From Stephen Hawking: alien life is out there, scientist warns:

Hawking says that in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, it is unlikely that earth is the only place where life has evolved.

"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said, according to The Sunday Times.

"The real challenge is working out what aliens might actually be like."

Hawking says that they could be microbes – basic animals such as worms which have been on Earth for millions of years, but suggests that extraterrestrial life could develop much further.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," Hawking said.

"I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

For the hostile ETI, the paper says that an ETI is unlikely to travel interstellar distances just to come and eat us, as "they should have already solved these problems through some combination of machine labor, artificial synthesis, and conservation." But other selfish motives may exist. There could be some human trait that they find useful for themselves. It then quotes Shklovskii and Sagan:

"Or perhaps human beings have some relatively uncommon talent, of which they are themselves entirely unaware. J. B. S. Haldane once pointed out to me that sea lions and seals have a remarkable ability to balance a rubber ball on their noses, which is part of the reason we maintain them in captivity."

And then it makes this statement, a scenario which I consider more plausible:

"Similarly an ETI may simply be interested in using us as a means for growth of their economy. On an individual level they may not be interested in killing us, but may be interested in incorporating us into their civilization so they can sell us their products, keep us as pets, or have us mine raw materials for them. Such a scenario could be harmful or beneficial to us, depending on the methods they use to bring us into their society."

Harmful or beneficial? An initial contact may seem to our military to be extremely beneficial. But is it beneficial in the long term? That depends on the goals and the intentions of the ETI. What is their long range plan? While sustainable ETI are likely to be beneficial, an expansive ETI are likely to be hostile. Then there is another possibility:

"...it remains entirely possible for an ETI to be both sustainable and harmful. Such an ETI could be expanding as fast as happens to be sustainably possible, along a colonization wavefront as in the simulations of Newman and Sagan. Unlike the sustainable civilization described above, this maximally expansive civilization would be sustainable but still eager to consume all the resources of Earth and destroy humanity if we got in its way."

Next discussed is the universalist ETI race, which holds to a universal set of ethics of peace and harmony, but regard us as violent and barbaric and would see a need to interfere should we cause irreparable harm to their ethical values. Again the paper does not discuss the obvious: the invention and explosion of nuclear weaponry which could destroy the planet and many biological life forms. Would our biological diversity be valuable to them? Yes, I believe so. Our planet is very unique in its biological resources.

In terms of unintentional harm, the paper brings up the physical hazard that contact with an ETI could bring about a transmission of a disease to humanity that our immune system would find hard to resist.

"Introducing diseases have been extremely potent because the population receiving the disease has no prior exposure to it and thus no build-up of immunity. Indeed, disease introductions are blamed for loss of human life so widespread as to have altered the broadest contours of human history. If ETI could introduce disease to humanity, then the impacts could be - but wouldn't necessarily be - devastating."

There are a lot of scenarios for introducing diseases and the affects it would have on us. But the paper does not consider the obvious corollary scenario: an ETI race introducing a biological disease on the human race for intentional harm. If this was the goal of the ETI race, how would it proceed about introducing the biological agent? Medical testing and genetic engineering. Perhaps such an ETI would regard the human race as a pest that is destroying the earth they have been using as a resource for centuries. Or that the human race is having unchecked population growth - a population growth that our planet will not be able to sustain in the future. This indeed is a threat, so the paper discusses counter-measures, one is protecting the Earth's biosphere from the ETI biosphere. And then it mentions this:

"If prevention fails and ETI disease is contacted, then treatment may be aided by information about the biology of ETI and other organisms in their biosphere. Perhaps such information could be used to develop vaccines or other countermeasures. However, our experience with novel diseases on Earth, such as novel influenza strains, suggests that it takes much less time for a disease to spread than for us to find a cure."

Interesting. Research into extraterrestrial life forms and their biosphere. Reminds me of...Michael Wolf perhaps? But why is this NASA paper picking out influenza as a particular example for a possible extraterrestrial disease scenario? The influenza epidemic struck worldwide in the year 1918. This appeared suddenly across the world, had no single point of origin, and killed millions of people worldwide. More Americans died of influenza that all the wars of the 20th century combined: 600,000 people dead. Across the world: 50-100 million people dead, or 3-5% of the world population. It was the first appearance of the H1N1 influenza virus, which targeted the immune system of young healthy adults. And then I discovered this: there is research studying the possibility that the influenza virus has an extraterrestrial origin: see Influenza 1918, A Venus Connection? It states that a recently released standard for American history includes no mention of this flu pandemic:

"The recently released "National Standards for United States History" published by the National Center for History in the Schools does not include any mention of the 1918 flu epidemic."
"For the survivors we spoke to," says producer Robert Kenner, "the memory is one of horror and fear--which may explain why many Americans were willing to let those few terrible months fade into obscurity. Schoolchildren know more about the Black Plague from centuries ago than they do about this episode in our recent history."

Venus has no magnetic field, so during an inferior conjunction the Solar Wind could blow off its atmosphere and it could head right to earth, as shown in this diagram:

There is astronomical evidence from a British observatory which indicates this. Perhaps the position of Venus was coincidental. It quotes a NASA article, All the World's a Stage ... for Dust. If this is true, then perhaps our first extraterrestrial contact is from 1918...a virus. And perhaps the upper atmosphere of Venus bears microbial life forms. This idea comes from a Time article on 21 Feb. 1944 entitled Flu from Venus?, mentioning the research of Professor Louis Backman of Uppsala. Is this why this NASA article is talking about protecting the Earth's biosphere from an ETI biosphere? The "biosphere" of Venus perhaps? There is a NASA study that indicates that the upper atmosphere of Venus is quite earth-like, in the future we may be able to colonize it using floating cities. What a bizarre theory - Venus has life in its atmosphere? There was another flu pandemic in 2009, and recent estimates indicate that as many as 579,000 people died from it worldwide.

Next the NASA paper discusses a possible "Information hazard" from extraterrestrial contact. A harmful ETI may release false information to the public. The paper does not delve into this in detail, but the danger here is that the human population, not knowing what is true or false, would likely believe the ETI messages over the government. Such as...they created us.  Such as...they implanted a human born of a virgin here 2000 years ago. I don't know, I am just guessing.  Conversely, the governments may send out false information about a discovered ETI that is beneficial or neutral and tell the world that they are hostile. Also, due to compartmentalized information in top secret projects, one group of the government may regard an ETI as beneficial, and a completely separate group of the government would regard them as harmful due to lack of information sharing. How are we to know? There would be no information available due to the secrecy over the past 60 years. The NASA paper does acknowledge that the analysis is very limited, due to our very limited knowledge concerning ETI races. It also acknowledges that impacts on non-humans should be an area of future research.

CONCLUSION

The NASA paper has two recommendations. One is, our attempts to contact extraterrestrials should be cautious until their intentions are known. The Arecibo message included information concerning our human biology. It then says this:

"...details about our biology, though seemingly harmless, may actually help certain ETI to cause us harm. A malicious ETI listener may use a message about human biology to design a potent biological weapon for use against Earth. Since these messages will ultimately be sent toward unknown ETI, we cannot know whether or not they might be received by such a malicious ETI. Therefore, caution is warranted."

This may be alarmist. We also need to consider other reasons why they would be interested in human genetic material. Medical and genetic testing does not automatically mean that ETIs are hostile. They could have other interests. These would include:

1. Using our human genetic material as "star seeds" to colonize other planets.
2. Cloning humans to operate in our environment. See An Extraterrestrial Prophecy.

The second recommendation is that humanity should stop "giving off the appearance" of being a rapidly expansive civilization. I don't know why it is saying that: we are a rapidly expansive civilization. The paper does not address this, but to correct this, we need to change our values. There needs to be a shift away from materialism to a stronger spiritual form of ethics. It is spirituality which provides the answer, not technology: technology can be used for both good or evil. It depends on who has it. It is not just about increasing the economic output each year - we have need to have regard for the planetary eco-system. A capitalist economy is expansive by definition. We need to switch to sustainable economies. The paper states:

"If an ETI perceives humanity as such, then it may be inclined to attempt a preemptive strike against us so as to prevent us from growing into a threat to the ETI or others in the galaxy. Similarly, ecosystem-valuing universalist ETI may observe humanity's ecological destructive tendencies and wipe humanity out in order to preserve the Earth system as a whole."

So, the matter of extraterrestrial contact is very complicated. There are many reasons why certain things cannot be revealed (directly) to the public. The reason why I am bringing this up is I have uncovered evidence of the hostile kind of ETI, or a hostile kind of ETI behavior. But I want to make it clear that this kind of behavior should not be taken as an example of all contacts - there could be many ETI races observing us now. That the U.S. Government may regard a certain ETI as a threat, I discussed earlier in The Secret UFO War.

One last point, the paper ends with this statement:

"Two anonymous reviewers provided helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article. Any remaining errors are our own."

Anonymous??? Why so, anonymous?