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.
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