Do UFOs Come From a Paraverse?

UFOs are in the news because of some upcoming government report on them, and some very hard-to-explain footage and accounts released by government sources and employees.  The mainstream media is doing what it so often senselessly does in the rare cases that it covers reports of paranormal phenomena: getting quotes from professors who show no signs of having studied the relevant phenomenon.  So, for example, a recent USA Today article quotes an astronomer dismissing UFOs as "strange reflections" or "atmospheric phenomenons."  That's just what someone might say if he had spent zero time studying UFO reports.  The same article quotes another astronomer talking about UFOs, showing zero signs that he has studied the evidence for such things.

Why is it that when mainstream sources quote professors dismising the paranormal, such sources never ask questions such as, "Please tell us how many hours you have spent studying such reports, by examining original source materials," or "Have you actually spent a sufficient time studying such evidence and accounts to have a well-informed opinion"?  It is usually the case that the professors being questioned have never bothered to seriously study the reports they are being asked about.  So asking for their opinion on such reports is like asking a philosopher about how to fix your car, or like asking a professor of medieval history to analyze an IPO investment offering.  

When people think of an explanation for hard-to-explain UFO sightings, they tend to think of "nuts and bolts" spaceships from another planet.  But while there are quite a few very hard-to-explain UFO sightings, which may be signs of some utterly paranormal phenomenon, the evidence for UFOs specifically being spaceships from other solar systems seems weak. 

If UFOs were physical spaceships from other planets, we might expect to observe one or more of these things:

(1) Physical evidence of intelligent life in other solar systems, such as signs of distant "technosignatures" or distant "astroengineering." 

(2) Deliberately designed radio signals from other solar systems.

(3) Evidence of some type of spaceship entering into our solar system. 

(4) Evidence of some type of spaceship entering into our atmosphere from outer space. 

But the things above have not been found. It has been pointed out by many that a craft for traveling between stars would probably be much different from a craft for exploring a planet's surface or atmosphere.  But no astronomer has ever detected a "mother ship" in our solar system that looked like an interstellar spaceship. Searches for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations (conducted for decades) have come up empty, as have searches for optical signals from such civilizations. No sign has been found of "technosignatures" or god-like "astroengineering" in other solar systems. 

Supposedly some US intelligence report on UFOs will be delivered to the US Congress next month.  We read this in an Associated Press story:

"Investigators have found no evidence the sightings are linked to aliens — but can’t deny a link either. Two officials briefed on the report due to Congress later this month say the U.S. government cannot give a definitive explanation of aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots."

The quote is consistent with my comments above. Something inexplicable seems to be involved in some UFO sightings, but there is little evidence connecting the phenomena with visiting spaceships from other planets in our universe. 

Why do we always assume that UFOs are metallic spaceships from other planets? They might be from some realm of existence unobservable by our telescopes.  UFOs might be from some mysterious unobservable realm of existence that can be called the paraverse. 

Scientists sometimes imagine the existence of many other universes, none of which interact with our own universe. Such a concept is sometimes called the multiverse.  Since it imagines causally disconnected universes that do not interact with each other, the concept of a multiverse is of no explanatory value.  Those who claim that the concept can help explain the seemingly fine-tuned fundamental constants of our universe are very much mistaken.  You do not increase the likelihood of any one random trial succeeding by increasing the number of random trials. So if you imagine that there are a million billion quadrillion other universes, or an even an infinite number of other universes, that does not affect the likelihood that our universe would by chance have the conditions necessary for it to be habitable. Similarly, if you spend years buying lottery tickets, that does nothing to increase your chance of winning when buying any one of those lottery tickets. People who think the concept of a multiverse has some explanatory value tend to be people who make the simple mistake of confusing the concept of "the likelihood of some universe being habitable" with the concept of "the likelihood of our universe being habitable."

The concept of a paraverse is very different from the multiverse.  A paraverse may be imagined as some mysterious realm of existence that is not normally directly observable from our universe.  But there may rarely or perhaps even frequently occur interactions between our universe and such a paraverse.  Such interactions may consist of an agent from such a paraverse visiting or contacting or influencing someone or something in our universe.  Such interactions might also consist of someone in our universe briefly visiting (in some mystical or psychic experience) such a paraverse, or perhaps permanently migrating to such a paraverse (by means of a soul passing from the earthly realm to the realm of the dead). 

The term "paraverse" is best used in a general and non-committal way. The term does not presuppose any belief about what happens after death. The term simply means some other universe or realm of existence not normally observable by people in our universe, which can interact with our universe in some way.  When we adopt the concept of the paraverse, we throw away the never-justified dogmatic principle of "there can be no mysterious invisible or spiritual influences," and perhaps (after sufficient scholarship) acknowledge that possible signs of such influences have been extremely widely reported for centuries by a host of respectable witnesses. 

The diagram below illustrates the difference between the multiverse concept and the paraverse concept.  The arrows represent causal interaction. There is no causal interaction between any of the universes in a multiverse, but there may well be causal interaction between our universe and a paraverse. 

How might UFOs fit into the paraverse concept? UFOs may be manifestations of mysterious powers existing in some paraverse that can interact with our universe, powers that might either be influencing matter in our universe, or briefly visiting our universe. A paraverse power producing a UFO manifestation might be divine, angelic, psychic, spiritual or material.  Such an idea is consistent with the fact that observations of UFOs seem to usually report something that does not look technological. A UFO will be typically described as a sphere of light or a bright light or a disk or something else that does not particularly look like some "nuts and bolts" flying machine. 

Rather than entering our atmosphere from outer space, UFOs may instantly enter our skies through some type of instantaneous appearance process, or through some gradual materialization process.  The history of paranormal phenomena (senselessly ignored by most of our professors) is filled with very many hard-to-explain or inexplicable cases in which inexplicable material phenomena and strange energy phenomena seemed to occur through some mysterious interaction between our reality and some eerie other reality. 

When we examine the records of seances (often recorded in credible publications such as the Journal or Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research), we can find many cases of inexplicable lights moving about indoors, and also many other phenomena far stranger.   When we examine modern photographic records of indoor photographic anomalies, we find many inexplicable things, such as 800+ photos of mysterious striped orbs, 700+ photos of mysterious speeding orbs, and thousands of photos of massively repeating orb patterns.  UFOs may have a source similar to such phenomena. They may all be cases of some mysterious unseen mind or minds reaching out to us to produce a sign of their existence. Both UFO sightings and Bigfoot sightings may be manifestations of some unfathomable intelligent influences from some mysterious paraverse.   

A very rough analogy might be a man throwing a little rock into a pond.  A fish in that pond may experience that little falling rock (or its ripples) as a rare strange anomaly.  But that fish would be unable to fathom the mind that threw the stone, just as we are unable to fathom the source of manifestations from some mysterious paraverse. 

There will be some who recoil at such a comparison.  They may say something like, "I'm only interested in baffling inexplicable lights darting around in the sky, not baffling inexplicable lights darting around indoors."  The rationale behind such a distinction is not very clear, and such a statement sounds rather like saying, "I'm only interested when bears and cougars stray into my front yard, not in other weird events like when walruses or giraffes stray into my front yard."

What kind of observations might allow us to distinguish between UFOs coming from other planets in our universe and UFOs coming from some mysterious paraverse, perhaps instantly? We would not be able to distinguish between the two ideas merely by verifying something physical associated with a UFO.  That is because the idea of a paraverse does not specifically entail a purely spiritual, non-physical realm, or some realm producing only spiritual effects in our universe. A paraverse might be largely material, and manifestations from such a paraverse might consist of physical, tangible evidence.  In fact, the history of paranormal phenomena includes many reports of tangible evidence produced by some mysterious spiritual or invisible reality (examples include the widely reported phenomena  called materializations and apports).  

On the other hand, you might be able to distinguish between the competing UFO explanations if a UFO encounter included some extraterrestrial claiming to have come from some specific other star in our universe, and producing evidence for such a claim, such as photos or videos of the cities on a planet revolving around such a star. Even in the case of such evidence, it would not be sufficient to rule out either the "UFOs from other planets" or "UFOs from a paraverse" explanations for other UFO sightings.  It would still be possible that some UFOs are produced by spaceships from other planets, and other UFOs arise from some mysterious paraverse, a reality capable of instantly producing physical effects in our universe. 

The Possibility of a Paraverse

Some of our modern physicists and cosmologists are infatuated with the idea of the multiverse, that there may be many other universes beyond our own. There is no sound scientific basis for such an infatuation. For one thing, the multiverse is typically imagined as a group of universes that are completely isolated from each other, without agents from one of these universes entering into or influencing another universe. Given such an arrangement, there is no possibility of someone in one universe being able to verify the existence of some other universe or to make observations of it or to verify that some effect in his universe was produced by some other universe or some agent in that other universe.

Another reason why the concept of a multiverse is not scientifically solid is that it has no explanatory value. If the other universes in a multiverse are isolated from our own, the idea of a multiverse is worthless for explaining any of the phenomena in our universe. We also cannot explain the fine-tuning of our universe by imagining the existence of many other universes. This is mainly because of the simple fact that the probability of success on any one random trial is not increased by increasing the number of trials (for example, you don't increase your chance of winning the lottery with any particular lottery ticket if you buy lots of tickets). So a multiverse would not make it more likely that our particular universe would have been so fine-tuned by chance. The chance of our universe having suitable characteristics by pure chance does not increase by even 1 percent if there are an infinite number of universes. See here for a fuller explanation of why the multiverse idea is not suitable for explaining cosmic fine-tuning.

The idea of a multiverse (as typically imagined) is therefore metaphysical and useless. But is there some leaner and more parsimonious concept we might formulate involving some other universe – perhaps some concept that might be of some explanatory value? It seems there is. Let us imagine what I may call the paraverse.

The term paraverse is formed from the end of the word “universe” and from the prefix “para,” which means “beside” or “to the side of.” We can define a paraverse as some hypothetical realm of existence that is in some sense connected to our universe in a way that allows information and causes to flow between our universe and this other realm of existence. 
 

The two main differences between the multiverse concept and the paraverse concept are as follows:

1. The multiverse concept postulates many other universes, while the paraverse concept postulates only a single other realm of existence.
2. The multiverse idea typically postulates universes that are completely isolated from each other, without communication or interaction between any two of the universes; but conversely the paraverse concept says there may indeed be interaction or communication between our universe and some other realm of existence, with perhaps causes and effects sometimes flowing between the two.

The visual below illustrates the difference between the two ideas. The arrows represent interaction or communication. 

In imagining a paraverse we should be as flexible and open-minded as possible. A paraverse might be a very physical place such as we know. Or it might be some very different ethereal existence very different from our existence. Beings living in a paraverse might be biological beings, or they might be beings of energy or purely spiritual beings.

There are various possibilities regarding interaction between a paraverse and our universe. Such interaction could flow purely from the paraverse to our universe, without anyone in our universe being able to influence or visit anyone in the paraverse. Or there could be two-way interaction between our universe and the paraverse. Conceivably a mind in our universe could somehow be able to visit or even migrate to the paraverse.

Given such possibilities, you might ask: why even use such a term as “paraverse,” when we might use older terms such as Heaven or the Other Side? One reason might be to be more general and open-minded in your consideration, and to avoid previously established religious associations. The term “Heaven” has all kinds of associations with Christian theology, while the term “the Other Side” has various associations with spiritualist thinking. Without excluding either, someone might prefer to use the word “paraverse” to be more general, without locking into some particular set of assumptions. The term “paraverse” does not specifically imply some belief in life-after-death, although the concept may be quite compatible with such a belief (as life-after-death might possibly occur in some type of paraverse being considered).

The fact that we do not observe such a paraverse with our eyes or our telescopes is no basis for excluding the possibility of such a paraverse. Our eyes can see only a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we can't see much of the substance in our universe. Scientists tell us most of the universe is made of the dark energy or dark matter we can't see. There could be many types of substance or mass-energy, each of which is visible only to beings made of that type of mass-energy. For example, if we are made of the seventh type of mass-energy, we might be able to see  only the seventh type of mass-energy, and no other type. Standing right next to you, unobserved, might be beings made out of the other six types of mass-energy, which might be able to pass through you like neutrino particles are constantly passing through our bodies, unnoticed.

Can we consider this paraverse concept as a scientific hypothesis? Absolutely. Arguments against such a claim do not stand up to scrutiny. One rather ridiculous argument goes along these lines: we must reject the idea of some other world or unseen powers that influence our own world, because once we accept such an idea we would have to throw away our science textbooks and start over. This type of statement is just absurd. I think that 98% of the text in our current science textbooks could be preserved unchanged even if we were to find that some external influence outside our world was influencing our world. Topics such as geology, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, zoology, and many others would need no revision, nor would there be much change in topics such as physics or astronomy.

Another weak argument against the paraverse possibility goes along these lines: in order for scientists to do science, they must make the assumption that the causes of physical phenomena are solely in our own universe. This argument is invalid, and is really just what we may call an argument from inconvenience. The argument refers to a situation of maximum convenience for the scientist (one in which all causes come only from within our universe), and we are kind of nudged to think that because some other situation would be inconvenient for the scientist, it would make science impossible. But that it is not persuasive. A pharmacist could make a similar argument, arguing fallaciously: in order for pharmaceutical scientists to do science, they must make the assumption that bodily conditions are determined purely by the pills patients take. But such an argument would not be valid. The fact that it is inconvenient for a scientist to have to consider a very wide spectrum of causes for things does nothing to exclude the possibility that there may actually be such a very wide spectrum of causes for things, including some causes from some realm of existence outside of our own. The truth or falsity of a hypothesis should not be judged by whether such a hypothesis is inconvenient for a scientist or anyone else.

Could the hypothesis of a paraverse be of any explanatory value? Indeed, it might be. There are a great number of anomalous observations and experiences that we might help to explain through a concept of a paraverse: certain types of UFO experiences, near-death experiences, mystical experiences, photographs of anomalous visual phenomena such as orbs, and perhaps also certain types of mediumistic phenomena. There is significant evidence that people in our universe have encounters with phenomena that are very hard or impossible to explain. Swept under the rug by our reality-filtering skeptics, such evidence may point to the existence of some unseen paraverse that may causally influence our own universe.