[fearn]

Hi Alan,

I appreciate the article. I've seen UFOs: it's very simple, really. They were distant moving lights in the sky. Almost certainly they were planes or satellites, possibly a meteor or two. Since I didn't have binoculars at the time, I lacked any way of determining what they were. Hence they remain UFOs (unidentified flying objects). I've also had the experience of looking up and seeing odd white birds flying high up in the sky, then looking up a few seconds later and having trouble finding them. Angels? The souls of the recently departed? Or simply seagulls or other white birds, flying high up in air that's just hazy enough to hide them? I favor the last, but since I didn't have any binoculars with me when I've seen them, so I can't say.

Thing is, I'm a working scientist, and I used to work on some very, very common microscopic soil organisms that are difficult to identify. When I was learning to work with these things, my teacher told me that one sign of a good researcher was to be honest about what could and could not be identified. In his opinion, the sign of mediocre research was that every single organism was given a scientific name. He'd rarely seen a sample where every thing could be identified, and that had made him suspicious about people who claimed otherwise, unless he knew them and their skill levels.

That said, I'd be very surprised if UFOs were aliens from another star. There are two reasons why:

1. Distance. Star Trek has really messed up our idea of how far apart stars are. Basically, if the distance from the earth to the sun was a centimeter, the nearest known star (proxima centaurii) is roughly 2.67 kilometers away. For comparison, Voyager 1 has taken 30 years to travel roughly a bit over two meters of that distance. Most of that distance is deep space, which is not empty, but full of really dangerous radiation (cosmic rays) that we can't easily shield against.

In other words, it's a long way to go, and it's a really hostile environment to live in. Doesn't mean that they didn't come here, said hypothetical aliens would have to have a very cheap form of totally unknown technology to do it. Why really cheap? Look at the things UFOs do. They cruise over areas. They mutilate cattle. They kidnap people on isolated roads in rural areas and probe them. Even if they were conducting scientific experiments, their experimental design is stupid, by our standards. Considering how little they'd learn from what they're reported to do, all I have to say is that UFO travel has to be really cheap for them to do such foolish things.

2. Biology. Life has been on Earth for over two billion years, and the Earth has had something approaching a breathable atmosphere for over 400 million years (although oxygen levels have fluctuated substantially over that time). That's a *long* time, and if aliens can travel here and live here (without getting eaten alive by our microbes), it's amazing that we have no fossils of alien cities, no alien life-forms that don't follow known DNA forms, etc. Admittedly, scientists are only starting to look for alien microorganisms in the soil, but the telling point is that, if aliens came here, they've had hundreds of millions of years to explore, settle, and take over, and yet, they've left no known trace of themselves. Considering what we'd do if we got to an alien planet (i.e. settle it, name it New Earth, build cities, raise crops, and transform the place), this is a really, really odd record.

Based on these two points, the simplest explanations for UFOs are earthbound: planes, hallucinations, mystical experiences, hoaxes, and the like.

As for spirits in a keris? We definitely haven't established that we're all talking the same thing when we use the word "spirit," or "soul," or whatever. Since we are probably discussing a mishmash of experiences and beliefs using a common and imperfect set of terms, it's amazing that we can have a reasonable discussion about it at all. It's a testament to the people on this list that we can.

F