An Alternative Possibility Regarding UFOs

Many people believe that UFOs are spacecraft from other planets. If there is no possibility of a natural explanation for a UFO sighting, the hypothesis of a spaceship from another planet might be the best explanation. However, there may be some problems with such an explanation.

Problem 1: Where's the mother ship?

Because the distance between stars is so vast, it is generally agreed that an expedition from another solar system would require a very large spacecraft, probably something at least 500 meters in length. But most reported UFOs are much smaller. In addition, almost all imaginable designs for interstellar spacecraft are vehicles unsuitable for entry into the atmosphere. UFO theorists have dealt with this difficulty by assuming the idea of a mother ship. The theorists suggest that what we see in the sky as UFOs are just kind of shuttle craft that are launched from a much larger mother ship that is somewhere in outer space. The only problem with that is: where is this mother ship? If it existed somewhere out there in space, we would probably be able to spot it with our telescopes. But we haven't.

Problem 2: Some UFOs don't look like spaceships or vehicles

Quite a few UFOs seem to look nothing like spacecraft or any type of vehicle. UFOs are often described as balls of light or blobs of light. An example of a UFO that does not look like a spacecraft is this recently reported UFO sighted in Italy:

Problem 3: Some UFOs reportedly travel so fast that any passengers in them would be killed

With UFO sightings it is quite commonly reported that the UFO zoomed away at incredible speeds. But accelerating so quickly would expose any inhabitant of the vehicle to incredibly high g forces that would be enough to kill any protoplasmic life form in the vehicle. You might be able to get around this difficulty by imagining that UFOs are manned by robots, but one would think that the super-fast speeds reported in some UFO sightings might even be enough to damage the electronics of a robot.

Problem 4: Why are UFOs so bright?

UFOs are commonly reported to be very bright. But if they are alien spacecraft, why are they so bright? If an extraterrestrial civilization were to design craft for discreetly exploring other planets, you would think that they would be careful to make such survey craft not very bright, so that there would be the possibility of making a secret stealth survey of the planet.

An Alternative Possibility

Let's try to imagine some possibility that may overcome such problems. One possibility is that UFOs may be something other than survey spaceships from another planet. UFOs could instead be manifestations from some higher dimension. The higher dimension could be some physical dimension that somehow lies above our own dimension. Or it could be some kind of spiritual dimension.

To explain this idea, I can give an analogy. Imagine some fairly intelligent octopus living in the sea. Suddenly one day a scuba diver appears. The octopus is overcome with awe. Using his rather bright mind, the octopus reasons that the scuba diver must be from far, far away – because the diver looks like nothing he has ever seen. But perhaps the diver is not from far away. The diver might be from nearby. In truth, the diver is almost like an inhabitant of a higher, undiscovered dimension that the octopus knows nothing about – a land dimension that is physically above the water dimension where the octopus lives.

Similarly, there could be lying above our observed reality some higher dimension that is as unknown to us as the land is to the octopus. Such a dimension might be either physical or spiritual. Conceivably beings from such a dimension might be able to briefly “dive” into our dimension in somewhat the same way that a land creature might dive into the sea. Or they might be able to send energy manifestations or physical manifestations briefly into our dimension, just as we can pick up a stone and hurl it into the sea. UFOs may be such manifestations.

Rather than being spacecraft from other planets, UFOs might actually be the bodies of beings from such a higher dimension. In their higher dimension, perhaps everyone has a body of pure energy. A pure energy being from a higher dimension might be able to dive into our sky as easily as one of us can dive into the ocean. Perhaps this is why UFOs are so bright – they may be pure energy.

Or UFOs may be just energy manifestations that beings in such a higher dimension occasionally send into our sky, rather in the same way that we occasionally toss fireworks into the sky. Beings in a higher dimension may be sending us such manifestations as a way of sending us a signal that they are out there. The same beings might be responsible for crop circles.

Such a hypothesis is worth considering, and it seems to have the virtue of getting rid of the four problems I have listed. By removing the assumption of interstellar travel, we solve the problem of the missing mother ship (Problem 1). By assuming pure energy UFOs, we solve the problem that UFOs so often look like blobs of light rather than physical spacecraft (Problem 2). By assuming pure energy UFOs without protoplasmic or electronic passengers, we solve the problem of passenger-killing acceleration of UFOs (Problem 3). By assuming pure energy UFOs (which we would expect to be very bright), we solve the problem of why UFOs are so bright (Problem 4).

I would not claim that such a hypothesis is necessarily more plausible than the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitation. I think, however, that when considering the origin of paranormal phenomena, we should consider a wide spectrum of possibilities, rather than being one-dimensional in our thinking. I may also note that the hypothesis I have mentioned and more conventional ideas of extraterrestrial visitation are not mutually exclusive. It could be that some UFOs are from other planets, and some UFOs are from a higher dimension. It may also be that UFOs are just natural earthly phenomena, although under such a theory it is hard to explain cases of close encounters.