By Jim Hoover

There has always been a giggle-factor for those who claim they have seen Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Someday, I believe, the laugh will be on the doubters.

At least two of the UFO photos above came from a pre-digital-effects period when photos were more difficult to fake. Lower left shows Star-Trek Enterprise’s representation of warp speed, and lower right depicts how space would warp.

Skepticism toward the existence of life beyond our own purview is fed by derision, coming from friends and media alike. For fear of being ridiculed, we fail to think outside society’s box, while embracing accepted beliefs and closing our minds to concepts beyond orthodox realms.

Sightings of UFOs have been quite numerous throughout the ages and throughout the world, for descriptions and images of men and objects coming from the sky date back to ancient times, told by The Bible, ancient texts and etched on the walls of caves.

A certain percentage of modern sightings are hard to rebuke. Most recent UFO sightings are variously proclaimed weather balloons, asteroids, mass hallucination, or experimental aircraft.

Actually, some 5 – 10 % of modern sightings have no reasonable explanation. Many in this category have been seen by trained observers like airline pilots, military officers, scientists, and policemen.

To deem UFOs as real opens up the unknown, which like an unreachable specter, strikes fear and angst in our lives. We fear the unknown, like many fear death.

Relative to known technology, the observed capabilities of UFOs give surety that they come from another world.  That means their travel began from some distant planet light years away. Our galaxy alone is composed of more than 200 billion stars and is some 100 billion light-years across, perhaps providing energy to hundreds of billions of planets.

Since the speed of light is our maximum speed, we might say that beings could not travel those distances even in many lifetimes. Some scientists would dispute that belief.

Many astrophysicists and cosmologists believe that warp speed, greater than the speed of light, is possible through the warping of space (bending space so that Gliese 581G, for example, is 1 light year away instead of 20.6), and time can be slowed to a crawl, compared to those left behind, for hyper-light-speed travelers. Even Einstein’s thinking confirms this.

For example, in Why Does E = mc²?, physicists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw posit that travelling at over 90%  of the speed of light, space travelers could reach the Andromeda Galaxy, 3 million light years away, in 50 years. This is possible with the warping of space and time.

Obviously, Cox and Forshaw are speaking theory, for no manmade object can travel even close to the speed of light. But, we aren’t talking about ourselves. We are talking about beings who could have visited using technology about which we can only dream.

Our science fiction might well be reality for them. Growing evidence that they have visited would testify to this, begging the existence of advanced propulsion systems.

An X-ray laser could directly push a starship via a “ribbon grey sail” at some 180,000 miles per hour – puny in terms of interstellar travel. Not so with anti-matter.

Kelvin Lynn and Marc Weber, two of the foremost positron physicists, have taken the first steps to harness antimatter. With only two milligrams of antimatter and a 10 pound trap to contain it, Lynn speculates that astronauts would be able to fly into deep space, like our space visitors.

Based on observed maneuvers of UFOs and their need for interstellar travel, it seems logical to assume that UFOs are capable of generating artificial gravity fields. This would explain noiseless, seemingly impossible maneuvering as seen in our atmosphere. Moreover, an alien who travels light years probably needs to manipulate the curvature of the fabric of space-time.

Sightings confirm that the glow / luminescence around the UFO change in color and shape. Physicists think it is due to ionization of surrounding air. Observed brightness and color changes seem to relate to the craft’s thrust and acceleration. Ionization of the air around the UFO is the result of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the UFOs and the air-turbulence it causes, the effect of a propulsion system with which scientists are not familiar.

Other effects, one might attribute to their propulsion system, have been experienced. This includes ultra violet (cases of sunburn-like effects and eye and skin irritation) light and soft X-rays (“burn ring” traces on the ground where UFOs landed).  Any other explanations for these phenomena must consider the difficulty of creating plasma in normal atmospheric conditions.

Furthermore, in the electromagnetic spectrum, visible light comprises a very tiny portion. Ultraviolet (UV) light is a shorter frequency and is not seen by the human eye. A man using UV photography on one occasion spotted a UFO quite close to an aircraft landing at a Japanese airport, when radar, emitting much longer waves, did not.

At least two American Presidents admit seeing UFOs: Carter and Reagan. California archives show that  Reagan had his pilot follow a UFO when he was Governor of California, which subsequently disappeared.

Telescopic probes – earth and orbital (Kepler, for example) — have discovered several hundred exoplanets. For several years, Kepler will be honing in on only 200,000 stars for some 4 years, a tiny portion of the 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone.

Our technology has advanced in a breathtaking fashion in the last several decades, giving us insights into the potential for alien life we could not imagine just a generation ago.

Perhaps another decade will bring us positive proof that we are not alone.