Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon

My special guest is Dr. Michael P. Masters who's here to discuss how it's possible that extraterrestrials could very well be humans that have come back in time for a purpose. Get his book Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon on Amazon.

Could “UFOs” and “Aliens” simply be us, but from the future? 

This provocative new book cautiously examines the premise that extraterrestrials may instead be our distant human descendants, using the anthropological tool of time travel to visit and study us in their own hominin evolutionary past. Dr. Michael P. Masters, a professor of biological anthropology specializing in human evolutionary anatomy, archaeology, and biomedicine, explores how the persistence of long-term biological and cultural trends in human evolution may ultimately result in us becoming the ones piloting these disc-shaped craft, which are likely the very devices that allow our future progeny to venture backward across the landscape of time. 

Moreover, these extratempestrials are ubiquitously described as bipedal, large-brained, hairless, human-like beings, who communicate with us in our own languages, and who possess technology advanced beyond, but clearly built upon, our own. These accounts, coupled with a thorough understanding of the past and modern human condition, point to the continuation of established biological and cultural trends here on Earth, long into the distant human future.

Other investigations of UFOs

Despite the failure of the ETH to make headway with the expert committees, a few scientists and engineers, most notably J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who had been involved with projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book, concluded that a small fraction of the most-reliable UFO reports gave definite indications for the presence of extraterrestrial visitors. Hynek founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), which continues to investigate the phenomenon. Another major U.S. study of UFO sightings was the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a secret project that ran from 2007 to 2012. When the existence of the AATIP was made public in December 2017, the most newsworthy aspect of it was a report that the U.S. government possessed alloys and compounds purportedly attained from UFOs that were of unidentifiable nature, but many scientists remained skeptical about this claim.

Aside from the American efforts, the only other official and fairly complete records of UFO sightings were kept in Canada, where they were transferred in 1968 from the Canadian Department of National Defense to the Canadian National Research Council. The Canadian records comprised about 750 sightings. Less-complete records have been maintained in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, and Greece. In the United States, CUFOS and the Mutual UFO Network in Bellvue, Colorado, continue to log sightings reported by the public.

In the Soviet Union, sightings of UFOs were often prompted by tests of secret military rockets. In order to obscure the true nature of the tests, the government sometimes encouraged the public’s belief that these rockets might be extraterrestrial craft but eventually decided that the descriptions themselves might give away too much information. UFO sightings in China have been similarly provoked by military activity that is unknown to the public.

Evidence for life on Mars has been claimed for more than a century. The first such argument was posed by a French astronomer, Étienne L. Trouvelot, in 1884:

Judging from the changes that I have seen to occur from year to year in these spots, one could believe that these changing grayish areas are due to Martian vegetation undergoing seasonal changes.

The seasonal changes on Mars have been reliably observed, not only visually but also photometrically. There is a conspicuousspringtime increase in the contrast between the bright and dark areas of Mars. Colour changes with season have also been reported. Space probes have found no vegetation on Mars, but seasonally variable dust storms provide a convincing explanation of the colour changes.

Historically, life on Mars was argued for on the basis of the “canals.” This apparent set of thin straight lines across the Martian bright areas extends for hundreds, even thousands, of kilometres and changes seasonally. First systematically observed in 1887 by Italian astronomer Giovanni V. Schiaparelli, the lines were further catalogued and popularized about the turn of the 20th century by American astronomer Percival Lowell. From the unerring straightness of the lines, Lowell argued they could not be natural in origin. Instead he interpreted them as artificial constructs built by intelligent Martians. Lowell suggested they might be channels that carry water from the melting polar caps to the parched equatorial cities. However, many other astronomers were not able to see the canals, and the canals are now believed to be an optical illusion. Approximately rectilinear features do exist on the Martian surface, but these are natural features such as crater chains, terrain contour boundaries, faults, mountain chains, and ridges analogous to the suboceanic ridge features of Earth.

In July and August 1976 two U.S. probes, Viking 1 and 2, successfully landed on Mars with equipment designed to detect the presence or remains of organic material. Analyses of atmospheric and soil samples yielded conclusive results; the data were interpreted as negative. At least in the vicinity of these probes, no evidence for life exists. In 1996 analysis of the Allan Hills Martian meteorite (ALH84001) yielded structures and sedimentary magnetite that some have interpreted as direct evidence for extremely small microbial life on Mars. However, most scientists are very skeptical that the Allan Hills meteorite actually contains traces of past Martian life. The culprits are more likely to be tiny carbonate crystals and abiogenic magnetite. The search for past and current life on Mars continues.

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