Re: Question for William Mook-Ohio State SETI search


Matt Wiser wrote:
"William Mook" <william.mook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks. Interesting that the UFO and SETI camps were more civilized back then than they
are now. Nowadays, it doesn't take much for the venom to surface if you put the two in the
same room. Hynek and Sagan, when they appeared together, while they disagreed, did
respect each other's arguments.

Well, even then there was bad feelings between what some considered
pseudo-scientific or quasi-religious claims of UFO enthusiasts and
scientists like J. Alan Hynek and his students, who wanted to do a
serious scientific study of UFOs. I think what has happened is that
SETI people feel there has been no progress on the UFO front, and no
one has emerged as a replacement of Hynek, who ran Project Bluebook if
I recall properly. Of course,SETI people haven't made much progress
either - but respected SETI leaders still remain.

I think too that Senator Proxmire's Golden Fleece Award for SETI put
pressure on the community to appear more scientific and less aligned
with the pseudo-scientific and quasi-religious UFO enthusiasts - so,
SETI pushed away any discussions of UFOs - although Carl Sagan and Igor
Shiklovski in their book INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE - treat the
possibility of UFOs scientifically.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/189280302X/103-1396318-8831817?v=glance&n=283155

and even work out the Brin Equation if I recall properly. The Drake
equation gives the number of naturally occuring intelligences. The
Brin equation gives the number of space colony sites... the
interesting thing is that depending on initial conditions, the universe
is either chock full of intelligent life - with intelligence in every
corner - or - it is devoid of life, with life few and far between.
Going on Fermi's observation that the universe is not only stranger
than we imagine, it is stranger than we CAN imagine - it may turn out
BOTH are correct! Life may be rare on the scale of galaxies and common
on the scale of the universe. So, we see missing mass in the universe
and large empty voids between bright matter. THis suggests to me that
most of the stars in the universe got shut down by intelligence,
preseving the energy resources of the universe for tens of trillions of
years - rather than letting everything burn out along the Hertzsprung
Russel diagram in about 10 billion years. That seems the intelligent
thing to do,and some NASA scientists have considered star lifting
technologies that could use the energy of a star to snuff it out -
making all the hydrogen and other materials available for industrial
use.

Of course this is all rank speculation, but if treated scientifically,
could be formed into a testable hypothesis and be the subject of future
astronomy PhD theses! :)

Also, Frank Tipler has a scientific treatment of UFOs - with his
automated self-replicating probe network expanding across the universe
in his book THE ANTHROPIC COSMOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE;

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192821474/103-1396318-8831817?v=glance&n=283155

We could begin to fill the cosmos with self-replicating probes quite
possibly in the next hundred or thousand years - and over time learn
how to turn off the stars and make direct use of their vast energies
and material directly- rather than capture only 1 part per trillion!

Since that guthball has posted some more of his rants and delusions, here's a piece of
advice, if you haven't read it already: killfile him. He's obviously in need of professional help,
and is of the mind that "It didn't happen the way I thought it did, so it didn't happen!" or "I'm
right, everyone else who disagrees me is wrong, and all of you are either brainwashed or part
of the conspiracy!" He really needs that padded cell and straightjacket. I'd like to know if
anyone's run a tracer on him to find out where this refugee from a lunatic asylum is. He really
needs to go back.

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