Going To Harvard This Fall? Stick To Science & Math - Not Subjective Indoctrination Majors- Like Economics!

Harvard Astronomy Chair Avi Loeb making observations at the Harvard U. Observatory

WSJ op-ed columnist Peggy Noonan ('Kids, Don't Be Success Robots', March 16-17, p. A13)  was correct when she advised:

"My advice to students still considering college in the year 2019: Avoid elite universities if you can.  They're too often indoctrination mills anyway."

Well, let's amend that a bit. If you are lucky enough to have secured entry to Harvard this fall - say to study astronomy - you are doubly fortunate.  The reason is you will experience  actual inquiry over indoctrination.. Prof. Avi Loeb achieved some renown on the basis of his co-authored paper appearing in Astrophysical Journal Letters in November — thrilling E.T. enthusiasts and upsetting the  skeptical stuffed shirts and purists in the halls of space academia. In other words, upsetting those more indoctrinated than inclined to do actual open inquiry., which is what professional astronomy should be about.

 Recall in my post on Loeb's critics last month  I cited one popular astronomer - the late Carl Sagan - who actually expressed regrets (to Dr. J. Allen Hynek) he had not been more open about accepting the reality of UFOs.  Sagan had admitted to Hynek that he really did accept the validity of UFOs but "couldn't admit it in front of colleagues."  See e.g.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76926

Such is the hallmark of genuine inquiry in that one can admit one is or was wrong, either in one's previous research or previous attitude to some object of inquiry.

Contrast Prof. Loeb with another Harvard prof, Martin Feldstein who - it can be argued - is more invested in indoctrinating his Ph.D. students with the codswallop of modern Pareto-based economics.  Recall, in Pareto economics "Pareto efficiency" rules and the  basic premise is that each dollar of a rich man is worth much more than that of a poor man. Hence, any transfer of money from rich to the poor hurts the rich man much more than any poor man.   

Such a template was invoked by Feldstein some years ago when he argued that ordinary folks ought to be paid money not get expensive medical screening tests, such as colonoscopies.  Indeed, Feldstein argued that given there is no way the ordinary patient could afford to pay out of his pocket for such a test (usually $3,500- 4,000) then it makes more sense to pay her to take a hike. To fix ideas: 

 If the insurance paid part is $3,000 (while the patient's reservation price is $2, 500) it makes more sense to give the prospective testee $2,499 NOT to get the colonoscopy, than to let her get the test and consume valuable specialist time and resources via $3,000 subsidy. 

(Note:  The reservation price for a given  product or service is just the maximum price a person is willing to pay. So, if I have a 1954 Henry Aaron TOPPS baseball card (now with a very high book price) and I offer it to you for sale, and ask what the top price is that you'd pay, if you respond "one hundred dollars" then that is your reservation price.)

The same scheme can be carried over to environmental considerations, especially say, in implementing global warming regulations or fuel taxes to alter behavior - say to cut carbon emissions. Since - according to Pareto economics -  the lives of all the poorer segments of the populace are worth less in terms of their dollar use (i.e. their "utils") then those like Feldstein would always argue to allow more of them to perish from climate-caused catastrophes than to cause harm to the rich.  The latter by exacting carbon costs which will upset the commodities and stock markets, and whole economies.

Now in his latest WSJ op-ed ('The Debt Crisis Is Coming Soon',  March 21, p. A19)  Feldstein continues his Pareto efficiency shtick as the be-all, end-all to the U.S. exploding debt problem. At the top of his hit list is, you guessed it, "entitlements", i.e.

"Thus the only option is to throw the brakes on entitlements.  In particular, the government needs to hold back the growth of Medicare, Medicaid  and Social Security."

Why does he argue thus? Well because of the metastasizing debt.   As Marty is wont to complain (ibid.):

"According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit this year will be $900 billion, more than 4 percent of gross domestic product.  It will surpass $1 trillion in 2022.  The federal debt is now 78 percent of GDP.  By  2028 it is projected to be nearly  100 percent of GDP."

But in fact, "part of the increase in the deficit was attributable to the shift in timing of certain payments, which made the deficit appear larger.  If not for those timing shifts the deficit would have risen only 25 %  from the same period in 2018." (WSJ ,   March 23-24, p. A4).

Apart from that, let's bear in mind the 2017 Trump- GOP tax cuts added nearly $1.5 trillion to the deficit by itself.  ("The tax code overhaul in 2017 had constrained federal revenues over the past year." - ibid.)   It was evident from the time this trash was passed the GOOPs would need to find ways to make up for the losses, so have focussed  on cutting Medicare ($845b in Trump's recent budget, and gutting the ACA - which would toss tens of millions off their health care.)

So how does Feldstein propose to deal with these entitlements? His plan emphasizes (ibid.):  "Raising the age of eligibility for full Social Security benefits from 67 to 70."  Here, Feldstein shows that - like Alan Greenspan - he's oblivious to the the fact  that a third of seniors have Social Security as their only income. Also, more than 50 percent of Americans claim their Social Security by age 62.  

Why are so many citizens doing this? It isn't always a case of not wanting to work but rather, for too many,  not being able to last at demanding physical jobs, i.e. landscaping, roof repair, nursing home aide,  etc.  It is fairly easy to work past 70 when it's all consulting, paper pushing or brain work.   But not so much when one is involved in heavy day -to -day labor like a nursing home caretaker moving an elderly patient from bed to chair and back many time a day - not to mention other tasks, such as bathing, toilet use etc. Work that takes its toll on the back, as well as many other parts of the anatomy.

Interestingly, nowhere in Feldstein's op-ed is there any mention of cutting the defense budget, despite the fact we have ample evidence it's one of the biggest yearly deficit engines, e.g. 

We also know that at $716 billion annually, the U.S. spends more on the military than the next 11 nations combined, That includes Russia and China. As one recent WSJ letter writer put it: "The Pentagon already has enough enough resources to keep America secure.":

The sad fact is that too many of the nation's seniors do not, yet those like Marty Feldstein would just as soon indoctrinate more Harvard economics students into a useless system that's also heartless.

Kids, if you're headed for the ivy halls of Harvard, pick astronomy to study, not econ from a Feldstein clone; adjunct, lackey or TA.  Your brain will thank you for it, so will millions of us on "entitlements"!

See also:

Social Security

Honoring Frances Perkins, the 'Mother' of Social Security

AND:

Healthcare Policy

Rural America Needs Medicare for All, and Fast

Why Harvard's Top Astronomer (Avi Loeb) Is Wrong About UFOs - And Indeed Is Doing UFO Research Himself

Prof. Avi Loeb making observations at his Harvard U. Observatory

Right: The odd-shaped object Oumuamua as an artist's conception and which has Prof. Loeb transfixed. And yet he doesn't accept UFOs.

For those who may not know, or have missed it, Harvard Professor of Astronomy Avi (Abraham) Loeb has been making quite a name for himself in the press with his unconventional theory concerning the strange object Oumuamua.  Despite hyped up headlines in the WaPo and elsewhere ('Harvard's Top Astronomer Says An Alien Ship May Be Among Us')  he isn't necessarily saying there are any aliens manning the object, only that it is possible that it might be of extraterrestrial origin.

For example, in an interview appearing in The New Yorker last month Loeb was asked by the interviewer,  Isaac Chotiner (not exactly the brightest bulb in the room):

So this civilization would be out of the solar system and in the galaxy?

Loeb:

In the galaxy. It may be dead by now, because we don’t take good care of our planet. Imagine another history, in which the Nazis have a nuclear weapon and the Second World War ends differently. You can imagine a civilization that develops technology like that, which would lead to its own destruction.

It’s possible that the civilization is not alive anymore, but it did send out a spacecraft. We ourselves sent out Voyager I and Voyager II. There could be a lot of equipment out there. The point is that this is the very first object we found from outside the solar system.

Chotiner again:

The term U.F.O., in popular usage, has basically come to mean aliens of some sort. My question is whether we tend to see things that we can’t know or understand through the prism of things we have heard about since we were kids. Aren’t we more likely to see something like an alien society as an explanation than something we maybe can’t even comprehend or put into words?

Before giving Prof. Loeb's response let me sound the warning that he makes the classic error of too many academics in media interviews: giving legitimacy to the daft definition of the know nothing interviewer.   So, no, "UFO" does not mean "aliens of some sort".  It means unidentified flying object   but which is unfortunately conflated in the popular literature with "flying saucers" i.e. "alien" artifacts and technology. 

Now, the technical definition is that first given by Prof. J. Allen Hynek :

former Chair of the Astronomy Dept. at Northwestern University - now deceased. This was from his book,  UFOs- A Scientific Inquiry:

“A UFO is the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance, trajectory and general dynamic behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified, after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one were possible.”  

 As to the question of whether such objects are "believed in", this is what Dr. Kenneth L. Franklin (then head of the Hayden Planetarium) had to say in his first ever lecture in Barbados in 1975, when asked that question:

"Asking me if I believe in UFOs is like asking me if I believe in Chicago. Of course I do! What you're really asking me when you ask that question is whether I believe UFOs are spacecraft from another planet, and I don't."

In other words, Dr. Franklin took the extraterrestrial interpretation as one possible hypothesis for UFOs - not an identification with them.  Now we go to Prof. Loeb's response to Chotiner's query:

"The main argument against any of the U.F.O. stories that you may have heard about is that the technology of detection have improved dramatically over the past few decades. We have cameras that are far better than we used to have, and nevertheless the evidence remains marginal. And so that is why there is no scientific credibility to U.F.O.s."

But that is where Dr. Loeb is woefully wrong. In fact there is an enormous amount of scientific credibility to the subject - it's just that he appears to be unfamiliar with the research.  For example, my paper  ('Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere' ) was certainly deemed fit for publication in The Journal of the  Royal Astronomical Society of Canada,  despite proposing an alternative hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin for an object seen by a Founding member of the Barbados Astronomical Society, e.g.

Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere - a Case Study

adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1980JRASC..74..168S

Why the difference? Well, because I did not employ the loaded term "UFO".   Loeb is also wrong in his take given other scientists (like Dr. J. Allen Hynek) have devoted years of their life to the study of UFOs.  Hynek himself in the previously cited work, indicated the nature of UFO Close Encounters of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd kind - to differentiate between the effects of proximity. 

Then there is  The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, which was conducted by the University of Colorado and Physicist Edward U. Condon,  under contract to the United States Air Force.  See e.g. 

Brane Space: Yes - Scientific Analysis of UFOs Is Certainly Possible!

brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/04/yes-scientific-analysis-of-ufos-is.html

Finally, I can point to solar physicist Peter Sturrock's excellent monograph : The UFO Enigma: A new Review of the Physical Evidence, See e,g,  

Brane Space: Is Scientific UFO Inquiry Possible?

brane-space.blogspot.com/2008/08/is-scientific-ufo-inquiry-possible.html

In his New Yorker interview, Loeb insisted (ironically)  that "there is no scientific credibility to UFOs" yet the object   (Oumuamua) of his recent research is itself a UFO -  according to the strict technical definition of J. Allen Hynek.   Thus Loeb has inveighed against his own research being of scientific value.  Yet he cogently  has argued the observed behavior of the object means "it can’t be, as is commonly imagined, a clump of rock shaped like a long potato, but rather an object that’s very long and no more than 1 millimeter thick, perhaps like a kilometer-long obloid pancake — or a ship sail — so light and thin that sunlight is pushing it out of our solar system." 

 This indeed was the basis of his co-authored paper appearing in Astrophysical Journal Letters in November — thrilling E.T. enthusiasts and upsetting the  skeptical stuffed shirts and purists in the halls of space academia.  

The blowback from peers was indeed as fierce as one might expect as if he'd co-authored a paper on UFOs as opposed to a trans-stellar object or artifact  powered by solar radiant energy. For example,  Paul M. Stutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University,  shortly after the paper was published,  tweeted    

'Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship, and the authors of the paper insult honest scientific inquiry to even suggest it,"

This is exactly what those who misconstrue the meaning of UFO (like Loeb did in his New Yorker interview) would argue.   Then we also see, as if to reinforce this, a guy named Ethan Siegel   writing in Forbes:

"A shocking example of sensationalist, ill-motivated science"

Again, exactly what a UFO skeptic would have screamed about  Peter Sturrock's book or any of J. Allen Hynek's contributions, including his groundbreaking book, 'UFOs - A Scientific Inquiry.'  Then there is North Carolina State University astrophysicist Katie Mack who suggested to the Verge   that Loeb was engaging in a "common practice in which an astrophysicist poses a theory they might not believe".  Only problem with this take is Prof. Loeb does believe it to the point he has declared he "doesn't care what his colleagues think" and even if Harvard demoted him (in his position as Chairman of the Astronomy Dept.) he would have the  time to pursue more research "without the burdens of administration."

All of this brings up Dr. Hynek's revelation on how the "in public" UFO skeptic Carl Sagan had admitted to him that he really did accept the validity of UFOs but "couldn't admit it in front of colleagues."  See e.g.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76926

For my own part, I've never shied away from broaching my own UFO observation (in North Miami in March, 1962)  even in front of colleagues, say at scientific conferences.  That was, of course, assuming there was a logical or rational opening for such discussion!   The last such opportunity arrived in Baltimore in June, 1984 during a Solar Physics conference  at the 164th  meeting of the American Astronomical Society.   One morning I had sat down to breakfast at the (Johns Hopkins University) cafeteria with several astronomers including the famed Martin Schwarzschild, author of 'The Structure and Evolution of the Stars' (the same text I'd used in my undergrad astrophysics at USF in 1970)  See e.g. for a review:

Structure and Evolution of the Stars: Physics Today: Vol 11, No 12

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.3062329

 Schwarzschild had brought up a strange sighting he'd made several weeks earlier in Arizona or some other place he'd been visiting. But he added that its dynamical behavior  ("hovering then speeding away") didn't make sense. I then made mention of my own sighting: an orange disk the size of the full Moon that appeared to hover overhead for 1-2 seconds - then raced toward the southern horizon.  

Intrigued,  Prof. Schwarzschild asked if I suspected a piloted craft or some atmospheric phenomenon.  I told him if I had to make an educated guess it would have to be the former, given no natural phenomenon I'd ever observed behaved in such fashion.  He nodded and said "Interesting!".    What was notable is there was no mockery or disbelief expressed. He took it in a matter of fact manner despite the fact we both understood that piloted craft meant "alien craft". 

It is also of interest to examine Loeb's support arguments (in his Scientific American article )  for his claim that Oumaumau is of extraterrestrial origin:

1- Oumuamua implies that the population of interstellar objects is far greater than expected. Each star in the Milky Way needs to eject 10¹⁵ such objects during its lifetime to account for a population as large as ‘Oumuamua implies. Thus, the nurseries of ‘Oumuamua-like objects must be different from what we know based on our own solar system.

2- Oumuamua originated from a very special frame of reference, the so-called local standard of rest (LSR), which is defined by averaging the random motions of all the stars in the vicinity of the sun. Only one star in 500 is moving as slowly as ‘Oumuamua in that frame. The LSR is the ideal frame for camouflage, namely for hiding the origins of an object and avoiding its association with any particular star.

3- If ‘Oumuamua came from a typical star, it must have been ejected with an unusually large velocity kick. To make things more unusual, its kick should have been equal and opposite to the velocity of its parent star relative to the LSR, which is about 20 kilometers per second for a typical star like the sun. The dynamical origin of ‘Oumuamua is extremely rare no matter how you look at it,

4- We do not have a photo of ‘Oumuamua, but its brightness owing to reflected sunlight varied by a factor of 10 as it rotated periodically every eight hours. This implies that ‘Oumuamua has an extreme elongated shape with its length at least five to 10 times larger than its projected width....The inferred shape is more extreme than for all asteroids previously seen in the solar system, which have an length-to-width ratio of at most three .

5-The Spitzer Space Telescope did not detect any heat in the form of infrared radiation from ‘Oumuamua. Given the surface temperature dictated by ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory near the sun, this sets an upper limit on its size of hundreds of meters. Based on this size limit, ‘Oumuamua must be unusually shiny, with a reflectance that is at least 10 times higher than exhibited by solar system asteroids

6- The trajectory of ‘Oumuamua deviated from that expected based on the sun’s gravity alone. The deviation is small (a tenth of a percent) but highly statistically significant....Altogether, ‘Oumuamua does not appear to be a typical comet nor a typical asteroid, even as it represents a population that is far more abundant than expected.

All Loeb's reasons are compelling, but for my money - the ones pertaining to the Local Standard of Rest (LSR, points 2, 3, 4) are most cogent and lead me to agree with Prof. Loeb's conclusion that Oumaumau is not an object of natural origin.

Now, if he would only get off his anti-UFO high horse and admit his object is in the same class as those studied by J. Allen Hynek and since embraced by Carl Sagan - after confessing to Hynek of being a pseudo-skeptic!

WSJ: UFOs Don't Exist Because "No One's Seeing Them On Smart Phones" Not Quite!

Today we go from an April Fool's spoof (yesterday's post) to actual written remarks about UFO non-existence in a Wall Street Journal piece. It is always embarrassing when someone or other writes a book, or makes an assertion in the media, that very soon after is upended. Ask author and former State Dept. staffer Francis Fukayama about that after he wrote his tome, 'The End Of History', then had to swallow his proclamations whole after 9/11 and "history" suddenly got revived -  on radically different terms.

IN a similar way it seems WSJ author Steven Poole ('Secret History', Jan. 16-17 p. C10) as well as the author he was reviewing (John Higgs, 'Stranger Than We Can Imagine') allowed their hubris to run ahead of reality and word craft. Basically, the duo came to the same conclusion that - hey - UFOs never existed in the first place, and were merely the projection of our fears and desires.

Not quite. The UFO I observed in North Miami back in 1962 was definitely no projection, having been also observed by a dozen others. As recounted in one of my first blog posts (Dec. 4, 2007) it  appeared "as a brilliant orange disc, at least the same diameter as a full Moon, moving rapidly from north to south. It hovered for two to three seconds...before darting away."

As a seasoned sky observer, even at the age of 16, I was able to quickly eliminate all known man-made or natural objects from consideration. The exceptional luminous and dynamical behavior allowed this. Nevertheless, to this day I am not prepared to pinpoint a specific hypothesis in any dogmatic sense, though up until recently I have gravitated toward an operational craft of unknown propulsion and design. Certainly, no man-made craft I'd ever seen did what this object did. A next day Miami Herald report that an "unknown" was spotted near Miami International Airport imparted an even more valid frame of reference, especially that it was "traveling at over 400 mph".

Then there was the most cited case from Edward U. Condon's 'Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects', the case from McMinnville Oregon (see image) which I'd already explicated in some detail based on two of the researchers' findings, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/04/yes-scientific-analysis-of-ufos-is.html

Included within that discussion is the original definition of UFO given by Prof. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer at Northwestern University, from his book, UFOs- A Scientific Inquiry:

“A UFO is the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance, trajectory and general dynamic behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified, after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one were possible.”

Given Hynek's definition, the logical explanation for why fewer UFOs are being reported is that more people are better educated to discern what they are seeing in the night skies. In other words, they no longer mistake Venus or Jupiter at their brightest or the occasional artificial satellite for a UFO.

It is not, as Poole implies, because they no longer exist. Actually, his exact words are as follows:

"If UFOs really were infesting our airspace there would be plenty of crowdsourced evidence"

This is taken to be because "we all have smart phones now".

Uh, yes, many of us do (I don't) but we use them mostly for selfies and some other forms of navel gazing and grazing (or 'sexting' in the case of misguided teens).  But I'd warrant very few have them trained on the heavens - so why the hell would they see anything? The UFO I spotted along with about a dozen others in FLA was visible for barely 4-5 seconds at most. And, if you didn't look up, you'd have missed it completely (as dozens of others did). Since there are 360 degrees of open sky visible in azimuth on any given night (90 degrees in altitude), and a person-  by biological construction - doesn't have the eyes of a fly, it is doubtful he can see all those sky areas at once. That means he is bound to miss something if not looking at the exact area where a UFO manifests.

But my point here is it is folly to make the argument Poole does that just because millions or billions have smart phones they'd have faithfully captured any objects that are truly unidentified - like the McMinnville object or what I witnessed in 1962. Again, no instrument of any sophistication is any use unless it is specifically trained on where the alleged phenomenon is.

Let's also concede time is a factor in these teen years of the 21st century and you can't compare the time pressures now with the much slower pace in 1962. That left us more time to gaze at the starry skies and was one reason I became involved in astronomy and later astrophysics in the first place. Back then there were no computers, no cell phones, no video games, and the TV had basically three networks which only stayed on until about midnight. The radio was our main entertainment (usually WQAM in Miami was most popular) and the telephone the primary instrument for teens to communicate. (Unless your parents had to use it, and generally there was only one phone per home).

The point again is that back then it would be far more plausible to see something in the sky  -known or unknown  - because people took the time to LOOK there, since there were few other activities competing for one's time!

Another remark by Poole is also somewhat comical:

"Flying saucers now look a little parochial beside the routine discovery of exoplanets."

But exoplanets are still not validated to be actual abodes where humans (or sentient aliens) can live, a point he conveniently omits. In addition, most laymen haven't the foggiest notion of how exoplanets are actually detected, so yeah ..they'd seem more exotic. As for "flying saucers" - Poole here reverts to the most popular, debased usage, i.e. "UFO" equals "alien spacecraft."   which as we saw Hynek's UFO definition disallows. In other words, once you use the term "flying saucer" you are no longer writing about UFOs, but an identified entity adhering to a specific hypothesis of origin..

He ends his take by writing:

"UFOs were once the future they are now just a part of the history of our desires and fears."

Again, wrong. So long as there is a visible, accessible sky and there are people who know little about it, i.e. can't even distinguish a planet from a star, from a satellite, there will be UFOs - because people will not have reached the level of observational sophistication to make determinations. What Hynek and I mean by "UFO" Poole is thinking "flying saucer" and little green men.

What we really need, as opposed to fancying ourselves such a superior breed in outlook that we're beyond inquiry into UFOs, is to develop means and methods that might finally uncover what has attracted curiosity - not just over one century - but many.

Solar physicist Peter Sturrock has perhaps contributed the most in this sphere via his  (2000) book: The UFO Enigma: A new Review of the Physical Evidence, Warner Books. The book is an outgrowth of the findings of a scientific panel formed to provide an evidentiary consensus for what would constitute: a) acceptable physical evidence for UFOs - especially in train with the extraterrestrial hypothesis and b) how that evidence might be obtained. None of the panel members were lightweights, and most had serious backgrounds in either astrophysics or plasma physics. Left unsaid too, is that most who "roll their eyes" harken from the less quantitative sciences, like psychology, sociology or anthropology. 

Also left unsaid is that most astronomers and astrophysicists take the UFO phenomenon far more seriously than the corporate mainstream media would have you believe.

Reports of UFOs, as Sturrock indicates, can be at least subjected to statistical tests (e.g. z-test, chi-squared)  against a stated null hypothesis: e.g. that the phenomenon is as likely to be caused by random meteorological or other agents as artificial craft from "another world".

In terms of a comprehensive scientific process of investigation, Sturrock notes the following aspects are all of use (pp. 94-95):

 i) Mechanical – A continuous or brief mechanical pressure distorts the soil, and this can be measured by a penetration instrument.

ii) Thermal – Measurement of the quantity of water in the soil as compared to other nearby control samples, allows determination of the amount of energy required to reduce the water content to that level.

iii) Magnetic: Some soils have a high magnetic remanence. In this case it is useful to examine the magnetic pattern of the soil with the help of magnetometers either in situ, or in a laboratory.

iv) Radioactive residue: Soil samples can be analyzed either in situ, of in the lab using recovered samples.

v) Physico-chemical: Samples from the trace region and control samples (recovered far from trace region) can be analyzed for molecular, atomic and isotopic composition.

Even if only photographic (or video) imagery is available, numerous physical analyses can be applied (cf. p. 178-179), such as attending to:

Basic film properties (to see if the profile is compatible with the imagery obtained)

i) Measurement of the diameter of the film’s crystals
ii) Obtaining the Modulation Transfer Curve (plot of response vs. spatial frequency)
iii) Obtaining spectral sensitivity curve (log of sensitivity vs. wavelength in nm)

Image Analysis:

i) Linear measurements made on an enlarged print – in tandem with elevation angles made using a surveyor’s transit of the location and objects in the vicinity (buildings, Mountains etc)

ii) Micro-densitometry scans: e.g. using the Joyce Loebl Recording Micro-densitometer to ascertain variations in optical density in the print. The result is obtained as a scan through the disc image (of the UFO for example)

iii) Black and white enlargements on different wavelength sensitive papers: Comparison between UFO (disk) images on panchromatic and blue-green paper may show features visible in one, that are not evident in the other (cf. Fig. 25-7, p. 185, with dome on disk visible on panchromatic image (a) not visible on blue-green sensitive paper (b).

iv) Computer-based contrast enhancement: e.g. digitize negatives using a scanning densitometer. Comparisons of enhancements using various filters (e.g. blue, green, orange, etc. ) show differential detail that must be accounted for. (E.g. Figs. 25-9, 25-10, and 25-11 on pages 188-89).

Digital enhancements may include high-reverse contrast images of the disk itself, e.g. Fig 25-20 on page 207 of Sturrock, which discloses the left side of the particular disk is not a circular extension of the rest of disk – but is rather flattened to some unknown extent.

All of the above are eminently doable in terms of available modern  technology. All that's required is the right confluence of circumstances - that is, an encounter or proximate sighting of a UFO which allows all or most of the preceding to be applied.

Sturrock's book, to be sure, is not an easy read for the layman. But for those- say in the "soft" sciences - who think or believe that the "UFO" is the province of mental misfits, 20th century parochialism or those inhabiting "La-La land" it delivers an excellent wake up call. Alas, most of those would -be skeptics likely would not be able to navigate even the most rudimentary chapters.

Whether the WSJ's Poole falls into this category is another thing, but his column reference to UFOs being a "parochial" phenomenon and an anomaly of 20th century history and paranoia is not designed to inspire confidence.

Gov't Releases UFO Files: Don't Look For Alien Artifacts!

The release by the NSA of  thousands of  declassified UFO documents has the blogosphere and twitter-sphere ablaze and speculations running rampant that somewhere in those files is the 'smoking gun' for alien craft in the skies of our planet. The website for accessing the documents can be found here:

https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/ufo/

But don't hold your breath trying to turn up evidence for extraterrestrials. There won't be any. Or, let me correct that by noting there might be some semblance of signal - but it's buried in tons of noise. Do you have the patience to sift through it all? When the JFK Records Act saw millions of files released from back in 1992, only a relatively few determined and hardy researchers had the diligence to plumb through them to turn up assorted nuggets, such as Oswald's CIA files - showing he'd at least been a contract agent for the 'company'.  Further work by stalwarts such as Peter Dale Scott also identified the key telegrams from the CIA Mexico City station showing indisputably how Oswald had been framed to take the fall. Of course, it's ironic that scads of lazy critics - who like to shoot from the hip on the whole JFK  assassination conspiracy issue - couldn't bestir themselves to lift one pinky finger to find a single file themselves.

Expect the same reaction from the lazy dopes if you happen to hit pay dirt by going through the UFO files from the link above. "The truth is out there" - yes, but few in the government want you to see it, as in the Kennedy assassination conspiracy.

Does this mean we are talking about actual alien ships? No, not necessarily. A common misperception is that UFOs are “flying saucers” or space ships. However, this is actually only one possible hypothesis among several. This is evident in the late J. Allen Hynek's  exacting UFO definition

“A UFO is the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance, trajectory and general dynamic behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified, after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one were possible.”

The gist of the definition - however lengthy = is that one must not automatically jump to any conclusion that conflates the UFO with an extraterrestrial craft.   The difficulty in formulating UFO hypotheses, and interpreting UFO reports, is a first-hand experience for me. Not only have I investigated other people's reports (inevitable if one is involved in astronomy)  and published the results[1] but I've observed a "UFO"  myself. The incident occurred in March of 1962 at the opening of a shopping center in Carol City, Florida. While awaiting the start of festivities I happened to look up at the night sky, being the amateur astronomer that I was. Amazingly, I witnessed a brilliant orange disc, at least the same diameter as a full Moon, moving rapidly from north to south.

It hovered for two to three seconds above the crowd and I detected the odd "Oooh" or "Aaah" from random spectators. Thus, I knew I was not having a simple hallucination (at least not by myself!) The most ironic and notable thing to me was the complete absence of sound. No whirring, like one would expect from a helicopter's propeller blades, or engine noise. The object - if "object" it was - appeared to be a light source rather than just reflecting light from elsewhere. After about three seconds it took off due south at what I estimated to be an incredible speed. As a seasoned sky observer, even at the age of 16, I was able to quickly eliminate all known man-made or natural objects from consideration. The exceptional luminous and dynamical behavior allowed this. Nevertheless, to this day I am not prepared to pinpoint a specific hypothesis in any dogmatic sense. Nor am I prepared to assert it as a "craft" from another planet.

But let's say one is looking for some kind of signal from the NSA files that a real artifact exists, what would one look for? What sort of parameters, physical aspects?


As a good preliminary test,  one can do no better than enlisting Physicist Edward U. Condon’s Air Force- commissioned Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (1969, NY Times Books) While most of the cases are exposed as either natural or meteorological phenomena – or possible hoaxes- one case stands out: Case 46, p. 396 from McMinnville Ore. (11 May, 1950) that concludes - and I quote, from p. 407

:"This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated: geometric, psychological and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object- silvery, metallic and disc shaped flew within sight of two witnesses. "

I found the best part of the case study was the photometric analysis (pp. 402-06). This was essential in order to discriminate luminance conditions between a hypothetical hand model nearby and an actual, extraordinary, distant flying object. The key observation made by the investigators was:

"The shadowed bottom of the UFO (see image) has a particularly pale look suggestive of scattering between observer and object. If such scattering is detectable it may be possible to make some estimate of the distance involved".
From there they list a sequence of possible interpretations, including: optical fabrication or double exposure (rejected because the UFO is darker than the sky background luminance); a retouch of a drawn image (rejected because analysis of the negatives disclosed they were unretouched); physical fabrication using a 'frisbee' hand spun model (rejected because the UFO displays an off-axis pole which is never seen displaced, i.e. in rotation); model suspended from a wire (similar positions in each photo -so possible), and extraordinary flying object (since photometry suggests a large distance).

So, in the end, the last two interpretations had to be analyzed for consistency with the least likely of the two rejected.

The investigators proceeded by computation of the luminance, or the apparent brightness of an object at a distance r, normalized relative to some intrinsic value B(o) at r(o), viz p. 402:

B = B(sky) (1 - exp(-br)) + B(o) exp(-br)

where b is the scattering coefficient. In the equation, the first term (with B(sky)) represents scattered light and the second term, extinction. As the investigators noted (ibid.):

"Since all measures must be based on the witnesses' two photographs, we will determine b for the given day from the photographs themselves. Normalizing all brightnesses (measured from the film and assuming that the images fall on the linear portion of the gamma curve (see- e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction) to that of the sky near the horizon, i.e. on a line within a few thousand feet of the ground, where the UFO is constrained to be by the reported cloud height and probable nearness to the camera, we have:

B = 1 + exp(-br)[B(o) - 1]"


From the above, if the object is sufficiently distant one would have:

exp(-br) -> 0

so therefore,

B = 1 + exp (0)[B(o) - 1] = 1 + [B(o) - 1]

and B equals the sky brightness. (in optical terms, the optical depth t >> 1)

To ascertain whether the claimed sighting photographed is a fake then, all that's needed is to solve for the distance r, given a zero distance luminance B(o) cmopared to an observed luminance B. As can be seen from the equation, to do this one needs to obtain the scattering coefficient, b.

The investigators used densitometric analysis to obtain an assorted range of values for the luminance B, for different objects appearing in the photographic image - these are presented in Table 2, from the Case Study. (Shown, with comparison of two plates, 23 and 24). Since the investigators knew the distance of 'Hill 2' at 2.2 km then photometry indicated B = 0.685 for the distance hill, while the foreground foliage yielded B = 0.403.

Processing all this data in concert, the investigators obtained the distance r = 0.32 km, or just over 1,050 feet as the distance to the object - nearly one fifth of a mile. The investigators graphically illustrated the domains of the two hypotheses via their graph (Fig. 3) which is appended here. As they note (p. 406):

"If the object is a model suspended from a wire only a few meters away the surface is some 37% brighter (B = 1.21 v. B = 0.885) than the tank and the shaded portion is probably more than 40% brighter than the shadow on the tank...nearly impossible to maintain in the face of the photometry.

The shadowed side of the UFO appears so bright that it suggests significant scattering between it and the observer"

In other words, conforming with the distance calculated from the luminances..

The investigators graphically illustrated the domains of the two hypotheses via their graph shown below:

The point of all this is there appears to be at least quantitative -photometric  evidence for the existence of extraordinary craft if one knows how (and where) to look for it.

The $64 dollar question is: Are most interested people qualified to be able to perceive the evidence even if it's staring them in the face?

I suspect that depends on one's scientific background, or at least exposure to basic physics principles. This includes those pertaining to luminance and relation to brightness,  as well as geometrical factors such as being able to derive linear scales from angular  - e.g. as observed against the sky background.

So, by all means have a look at the released UFO files, but always be aware of what it is you are seeing, and also whether the parameters, physical aspects are sufficient to make any kind of determination. And lastly, whether you are really qualified to make any determination.

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[1] Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere - A Case Study, in The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 74, No. 3, June 1980.