In article <3008-3F026B22-558@storefull-2377.public.lawson.webtv.net>, E. L.
says...

Re: SETI Institute Site - for assholes
Group: alt.alien.visitors
Date: Tue, Jul 1, 2003, 10:51pm
(EDT+6)
From: o_wester@planet.nl
(Onno=A0Westerman)

OsamaBinGarrry@hotmail.com>
schreef in bericht
news:ffd76b6e.0306290914.727307ab
@posting.google.com...

E. L. <nyceddie@webtv.net> wrote in
message
news:4987-3EFCA941-476@storefull-2
375.public.lawson.webtv.net...

Anyone associated with SETI IS a kook,
nay, an asshole.

And why would this be ?
Onno

A question deserves an answer.  SETI has NEVER produced anything
worthwhile as far as ETs.  It is a dream factory.  A fantasy.  A
bottomless pit as far as manpower and money.  It's been going on far
longer than it should have been allowed to.  Salaries are being paid and
real estate is being used up and, so far, no returns.  There will never
be results from this venture.  Other ventures were stopped when nothing
came back from investment of time and money.  For some reason, SETI has
been allowed to continue due to the romanticism associated with the
premise of finding other beings in creation.  It ain't going to happen.
We are all that there is in creation.  I say, close up shop and put the
money and equipment to better use.  But as long as it is allowed to
continue, everything associated with SETI is strictly assholeness.

UFO�s and the Fermi Paradox by Stanton Friedman

It has become fashionable for various SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence) Specialists (SS) to invoke the "Fermi Paradox" as an indication
that there are no aliens visiting earth. Paradox is defined as "a statement or
proposition seemingly self contradictory or absurd, and yet explicable as
expressing a truth."

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was one of the top physicists of the 20th century. He
was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work on the interactions of
neutrons with many elements, including uranium.

He moved from Italy to the United States right after his Nobel award because of
Mussolini's anti-Semitism, and directed the construction of the first nuclear
chain reacting pile on the squash court under the stands at Stagg Field at the
University of Chicago on Dec. 2, 1942.

He then became an associate Director at Los Alamos National Lab and was present
at the first Atomic Bomb explosion at Trinity site in New Mexico in July, 1945.
After the war, he went back to teach physics at Chicago, and this was one of the
reasons I transferred there in 1953. He had exploratory surgery in late 1954 and
died 6 weeks later of cancer that had been found, but could not be treated.

He was, judging by the reactions of my other physics profs, a physicist's
physicist. He was equally at home with theoretical and experimental work. The US
Government even issued a postage stamp in 2001 to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of his birth.

The story goes that Fermi, in many discussions with his associates at Los
Alamos, had noted that it shouldn't take very long, perhaps 10 million years,
for any advanced civilization to colonize the whole galaxy, which is about 1000
times older than the colonization time. His question was "So where are they?" or
"So where is everybody?"

SETI Specialists and others have interpreted his comments as meaning that since
we obviously haven't been colonized, either there is nobody else out there or
they must be out there and we just have to listen long enough with better and
better equipment and we will discover them.

Both groups assume Fermi was saying nobody is coming here. I don't think that is
true. Fermi was famous for his teaching skills, and often asked questions to get
students to think through difficult problems.

Obviously there are many possible answers, such as "We are the remnants of
colonies planted here thousands or millions of years ago." One would think they
expected an advanced civilization to land and make a beeline for the nearest pub
or TV station or SETI Institute.

Perhaps Earth is a penal colony at which they dumped bad guys and girls-sort of
the Devil's island of this corner of the galaxy. They certainly would not have
been left a means for escaping. Georgia and Australia were first settled by
prisoners.

One popular answer from some of Fermi's close associates: "They did colonize
earth, and we Hungarians (Teller, Szilard, etc) are they." Hungarian is a
language like no other on Earth. A number of brilliant scientists were
Hungarian.....

Another answer, and the one I prefer, is "governments have collected all kinds
of data in secret, including crashed saucers and alien bodies, proving that they
(aliens) have been coming here, but do not want to tell us because of the
potential technological advantage that might accrue. .. And the possible
reduction in power if the people on the planet start thinking of themselves as
Earthlings."

Certainly Fermi arnd his associates working on the Manhattan Project knew that
secrets could be kept. They were helping to keep them. Los Alamos was a secret
city. It didn't even get mail, but used a PO Box in Santa Fe. Scientists
traveled under phony names. That chain reaction at the U. of Chicago was an
extraordinary scientific achievement, but there was no publication in scientific
journals and no press coverage.

Dr. Michael Hart, a professor at Trinity College, and a small group of followers
did a lot of modeling about Earth, making all kinds of assumptions having no
basis in fact, and concluded that the conditions here were so special for the
development of life, that those conditions have never existed anywhere else, and
we are the only civilization in the universe!! He took the Fermi Paradox to mean
that since there are no colonists here, there has never been any other
civilization anyplace else!!

Dr. Frank Drake, president of the SETI Institute, looks at things differently.
In "Is Anyone out There?"  (Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Delacorte Press, 1992).
"There are several solutions to this Fermi Paradox, for the "fact" that "they"
are not here does not prove that "they" do not exist," Drake states. Not the
slightest basis is given for the "fact" that they are not here. No reference to
the enormous amount of data indicating they are.

He continues, "I don't believe we will receive visits from other planets of
other stars...any more than I believe we have been visited in the past by
ancient astronauts or UFOs that are alien spacecraft....They are there in great
numbers for us to find�via their radio transmissions. That is why I have pushed
continuously over the years for the construction of larger, ever more sensitive
receivers, the better to hear those signals." Not only does he believe that
nobody is coming here, but that they are out there and are stuck at the level of
radio!! Evidence provided? NONE.

Seth Shostak, a SETI specialist colleague of Drake, claims in a recent internet
piece that "Fermi thought there was obvious proof that we could be alone in the
Galaxy." I can't find any evidence for this conviction. Shostak says, "We seem
to have the Galaxy to ourselves. At least that is the obvious conclusion from
the apparent lack of aliens in the neighborhood." I suppose the aliens haven't
called Seth or Frank, but so what. Why should they?

Shostak says, "The evidence for alien visitation has failed to sway most
scientists. To convince researchers who are inherently skeptical, unambiguous
and repeated detection of flying objects by satellites or ground-based radar
would be required. Better yet would be some indisputable physical evidence such
as the landing lights. In other words something better than witness testimony is
necessary since such testimony isn't good enough no matter how credible the
witness."

This is a truly incredible and unscientific claim. In the first place there are
a whole host of excellent radar and radar-visual cases, such as the many
investigated by Dr. James E. MacDonald. There are more than 5000 physical trace
cases that Ted Phillips has collected from 70 countries.

In addition, of course, is the simple fact that the best air and ground radar
cases involve measurements by our best military radar and satellite surveillance
systems. Their data is born classified. The data from the spy satellites
operated by the National Reconnaissance Office is born classified and rarely
declassified. . . and certainly not sent to the SETI specialists.

Our entire legal system involving evaluation of events involved with intelligent
people is based on witness testimony. Murders, rapes, airplane crashes, UFO
landings, aren't reproducible, controllable experiments. They are out in the
real world. Absence of evidence in the hands of the SS certainly isn't evidence
for absence of that data.

The most significant characteristic of the comments made about UFOs by Drake,
Shostak, Jill Tartar, the late Carl Sagan, et al is the total lack of referral
to the large scale scientific UFO studies. At my lectures "Flying Saucers ARE
Real" I discuss 5 large scale scientific studies and ask, after showing slides
of each, how many (many of my audiences are loaded with professional engineers
and scientists) have read this volume? Typically only 1 or 2% have read any.

In short, SETI Specialists are basically saying, "It is OK to theorize in a way
that justifies the work I am doing, but don't bother me with the facts; my mind
is made up." Obviously this applies to their many foolish comments about "you
can't get here from there."

One would think all civilizations were stuck with chemical rocket technology
along with radio systems like ours. The SETI Specialists forget that
technological progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable
way.

The Fermi Paradox doesn't establish that nobody is coming here. It forces us to
recognize that they could have come here ages ago, could be coming here now, and
that most of us wouldn't be aware of past or present visits.

Shostak further says, "SETI Experiments offer the promise of relegating the
Fermi Paradox to the dustbin of historical curiosities by proving that other
intelligence is out there." One would think he could get aliens to send and
respond on his command! In the real world, it is studying the enormous volume of
UFO data that establishes that other intelligence is coming here, even though
"they" are apparently not visiting the SETI specialists.

Stanton Friedman