FROM STANFORD A CALL TO THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD: LET'S STUDY THE UAP PHENOMENON TOGETHER
After the Sorbonne in Paris, Stanford University also hosted a high-profile scientific event dedicated to the UAP phenomenon.
Videos of speeches from the symposium organized last November by the SOL Foundation have just gone online.
Eminent scientists propose that the world of science participate in research that could change the course of human history forever.
Last Nov. 17 and 18, the prestigious Stanford University (Calif.) hosted the first international symposium of the Sol Foundation, a think tank established in Palo Alto last Aug. 15 to promote a broader understanding of the UAP phenomenon and serve as the main source of research on the topic.
Board Chairman Dr. Garry Nolan (Professor of the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and co-sponsor of the event with the Nolan Laboratory he chairs) and Sol Foundation Director Dr. Peter Skafish (who was a professor at the Collège de France, UC Berkeley, and also McGill University) invited dozens of academics, as well as representatives of the military and intelligence apparatus, and researchers from various fields to agree on a kind of "state of the art" on the study of the phenomenon.
"Welcome to Stanford," began Garry Nolan, Ph.D., "The objective here is to legitimize and professionalize and then to seek from you your ideas."
Starting from the premise that after decades of undeserved marginality, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena ("UAP") are enjoying unprecedented levels of public interest and new legitimacy in academia, government, media and even venture capital, it is clear that this sudden turn is deepening rather than mitigating the enigma of the phenomenon, revealing not only that all questions about it have gone unanswered but that many more must now be asked.
The Sol Foundation mobilizes intellectual insights and policy expertise to address scientific and policy challenges, seeking to align Science, Policy and Public Education for the Post-UAP World.
Last month (February 2024) videos of all the talks were made available by the Sol Foundation on its YouTube channel, which we warmly recommend.
As declaimed on the Sol Foundation website, "The time has come for serious, well-funded, and cutting-edge inquiry into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Sol’s research agenda cuts across the natural sciences, the social sciences and humanities, engineering, and policy to consider the implications of UAP for our understanding of aspects of nature, such as physics and energy, as well as human institutions like politics, economy, law, and religion”. With this vision, the Foundation aims to be a leading research center on UAPs. Under the leadership of academic and government experts already professionally engaged in the study of UAPs, the Foundation is gathering teams of renowned specialists in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering, information sciences and other technological disciplines. The seriousness and rigor of the research that the teams involved in the Sol Foundation are well represented by the papers collected during this first symposium.
We would like to emphasize here that one of Sol Foundation's commitments is to develop a socially responsible approach to the issue, outlining three goals:
the establishment and maintenance by the governments of the United States and other countries of informed democratic oversight of their commitments to UAPs, including through the creation of public transparency.
the promotion of UAP-related research that is commercially and environmentally responsible.
the promotion of a greater sense of common humanity across cultures, faiths, nations and political structures, including by supporting the development of UAP-focused initiatives at international institutions.
Among the available Videos, we particularly suggest talks by Garry Nolan, Christopher Mellon, Avi Loeb, Kevin Knuth and Beatriz Villarroel.
Instead, this is the full list of speakers who spoke at the symposium:
Speakers:
Jeff Kripal - J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University
Dr. Avi Loeb - Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University; Director, the Galileo Project
Dr. Kevin Knuth - Associate Professor of Physics, University of Albany
Larry Maguire MP - Member of Parliament, House of Commons of Canada
Karl Nell - US Army (Retired), former Deputy Chief of Staff, US Africa Command
Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka - Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Dr. Hal Puthoff - CEO, Earthtech
Dr. Paul Thigpen - Retired Professor of Theology
Dr. Iya Whiteley - Director of the Centre for Space Medicine, University College, London
Dr. Jacques Vallée - Computer scientist, venture capitalist, author.
Peter Skafish - Ph.D. on Anthropomorphism & Ontology
Massimo Frera
“ARRIVAL” (Denis Villeneuve, 2016) - Our Film Review
“Arrival” is all you can ask to Cinema and much more: great script, sublime director, music, sound design, mise-en-scène, actors and photography just to name out what we can immediately see, hear and feel during the film. And for anyone with a serious and intellectually-rigorous interest in UAPs it has much more to offer.
“Arrival” is all you can ask to Cinema and much more: great script and sublime director, music, sound design, mise-en-scène, actors and photography just to name out what we can immediately see, hear and feel during the film. And for anyone with a serious and intellectually-rigorous interest in UAPs it has much more to offer. There are no flying saucers, Area 51, Men in Black and secret government agencies so, if that’s what you are expecting to see you may be disappointed.
Like all great stories “Arrival” offers multiple layers of meaning and storytelling.
First of all, it is a universal and timeless plot since it narrates the story of each of us: a story of pure love, suffering, birth and death, a story that we lived, we are living or we will live someday.
It is not a coincidence that the inspiration for the film was a 1998 short story by author Ted Chiang titled “Story of Your Life”.
It goes without saying that you don’t need to be a sci-fi enthusiast to enjoy the film; it will speak to you no matter what your favorite genre is.
Then, there is the obvious story of the “moment of contact” between humanity and an alien species with all that comes with it: fear, hope, opposite emotions, fascination and rejection, intolerance and acceptance, trust and suspicion.
Both stories are narrated in an exquisite way, both (audio)visually and from an acting point of view.
If “Arrival” was “just” that, it would already deserve its own place in the list of the best films ever made.
But the more you dig the more you are going to find.
There’s another, much more important story that filmmaker Denis Villenueve wants to tell us: what is language?
Everybody would feel pretty confident to answer this “simple” question in a matter of seconds but are we really aware of what language ultimately is?
In “Arrival” language is the supreme maker of the very fabric of our reality.
Spacetime is created by language itself. Therefore gravity is created by language.
What? What does this even mean? In order to find it out we need to take a step back and, first of all, summarize the synopsis of the film: 12 extraterrestrial spaceships show up in 12 major countries and hover over them, completely silent, with no apparent intention to leave or to attack.
US military hires a team of scientists led by Louise Banks, a linguist, and by physicist Ian Donnelly. They are asked to translate what it’s believed to be a message from the aliens and decipher their language in order to be able to communicate with them and understand their motives and intentions. All other countries are doing the same with their own scientists.
Louise and Ian enter the spacecraft multiple times to meet the aliens of whom we apparently see the extremities only, suggesting that the beings may be much bigger. In the film the beings are called heptapods and they looks like cephalopods. We get to meet only “2” of them and the scientists gave them the nicknames “Abbott and Costello”, like the characters of the famous American comedy duo, which is, by itself, a further nod at the paradoxical nature of (our) language, whose result is the Beckett-ian and inevitable failure of communication and the creation of a parallel, artificial world. "Who's on First?" is a brilliant comedy routine made famous by the comic duo.
Below the transcription of the first part of the sketch:
(Lou Costello is considering becoming a ballplayer. But Abbott wants to make sure he knows what he’s getting into.)
Abbott: Strange as it may seem, they give ball players nowadays very peculiar names.
Costello: Funny names?
Abbott: Nicknames, nicknames. Now, on the St. Louis Team we have Who’s on first, What’s on second, I don’t know is on third—
Costello: That’s what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team.
Abbott: I’m telling you. Who’s on first, What’s on second, I don’t know is on third.
Costello: You know the fellow names?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: Well, then who’s playing first?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: I mean the fellow’s name on first base.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The fellow playin’ first base.
Abbott: Who
Costello: The guy on first base.
Abbott: Who is on first.
Costello: Well, what are you asking me for?
Abbott: I’m not asking you— I’m telling you. Who is on first.
Costello: I’m asking you—who’s on first?
Abbott: That’s the man’s name!
Costello: That’s who’s name?
Abbott: Yes
__
Going back to “Arrival”, our Abbott and Costello use a language of pictograms, both mathematical and pictorial in appearance with lots of evolving, circle-like symbols.
Louise works hard to decipher the language and meanwhile she starts to have peculiar and disturbing visions about a child of her she has never had who got cancer and eventually dies.
She gradually realizes that no individual country is gonna be able to decipher the language alone since the message is spread among the 12 ships. Therefore, global cooperation must be adopted to solve the mystery. Villenueve touches here on a very important point: what would be the outcome of an alien communication for humanity? Will it unite us or divide us even more?
Long story short and since we don’t want to spoiler more than necessary, Louise finally understand that language is the real message. The alien are here to teach us their language. They tell Louise that the help of humanity will be needed in a distant future but in order for humanity to be able to communicate with them and properly respond to the problem they must understand and integrate another language, and, consequently, another Thought Process.
Because language is finally not different than thought itself. The 2 are just manifestations of the same thing.
While Thought is the fabric of our inner world, Language is the fabric of our physical world.
Moreover, it is not a coincidence that the answer to the human problem is provided by the “marriage”, first professional and later on, factual, between linguistic and physics. This reminds me of the beautiful conversations at Brockwood Park about language and time between Jiddu Krishnamurti, a mystic, and David Bohm, one of the greatest contributor to the quantum theory.
According to Krishnamurti, Language is Thought. and Thought creates Time, or better said it IS time.
Time, in the sense of linear-time as we know it, only exists if Thought exists.
Louise will learn to feel and experience non-linear time: past, present and future are one, coexisting at the same… time. There is no real separation between them, not “a” before, “a” now and “a” after.
So, the film is not about flying saucers, grey aliens, secret bases under the ocean and nevertheless, it gives a nod to anything related to the UAP topic. Let’s see why:
1- The spaceships are oval-shaped, dark and elongated like many of the reported cigar-shaped objects (ghost rockets, eggs-like crafts, tic-tacs). Moreover, they don’t show any means of propulsion, exhaust, or any aerodynamic parts like wings for example. They looks more similar to big rocks than the Millenium Falcon or the Star Trek Enterprise. They may very well be like Oumuamua would look like it it were finally proven to be an alien artifact. The material doesn’t look like anything we possess on earth. On the contrary it reflects what many witnesses reported: organic, raw and opaque in appearance, like a crafted rock possibly made of some unknown meta-material. In this regard, it seems that Villeneuve did his homerwork studying the Phenomenon.
2. Once inside we don’t see any control surface, steering wheel, joystick of some sort, computers, not even windows! Nothing that reminds us of a device used to fly or to move aerodynamically. The space inside is aseptic and looks like a masterpiece of geometrical architecture. Moreover, sizes and orientation are not so clear inside. The craft is enormous but the inside could be even bigger than what we perceive from outside since we can see nothing but the extremities of the beings, if they are, indeed, extremities.
3. The ships hovers with their belly on a side exactly like Bob Lazar and many other witnesses, like the students of Westall, Australia, reported.
So what are we looking at? An advanced technology or, maybe another type of technology, if that’s even the case? Is it really technology?
This clearly hints at all hypothesis on Consciousness and UAPs. Are we seeing crafts that are able to distort time and space through the means of a a new physics- as we know it - that manipulates gravity, or are we witnessing an “alien” kind of technology, which is both organic, biological maybe and technological at the same time, assuming the three realities were even separated in an hypothetical alien, non-human world.
Language is, eventually, fragmentation. A tree is not a sum of its many infinitesimal parts. Parts only exist after dissecting the tree. The very act of dissection is what creates the parts, manufacturing a new reality. Putting the parts together won’t bring the tree back as it was. Couldn’t we say the same for the creation of life itself? Maybe the very reason why we, as opposed to Prometheus, could never create life from scratch? Marry Shelley’s modern Prometheus, Dr. Frankenstein puts together parts of dead bodies and manages to give them life but in a very unfortunate way like we may aspire to do by reassembling a dissected tree.
Is not language doing the same thing?
The very moment we name something we fragment its true nature, we create an alter-ego which only exists in our minds since we create a totally new reality which separates what’s been named from the name itself and, therefore, its authentic nature. Like the dissection of the tree, Language and Thought create parts that didn’t previously exist and from that point on, those parts have their own life, separate from the rest, not faithfully representing anymore what they were but, instead, what they have become, like Frankenstein’s creature.
This dissection is what we need to do on our everyday life in order to function. We couldn’t probably survive without it. But the price to pay is the creation of a world what travels in parallel with another world we are not able to see and perceive anymore.
Is this very act of dissection what created gravity, time and what we perceive as our physical world, with its physical laws as we know them?
Is there another possible world, which is not in a far-away galaxy but lies here so close but impenetrable for us, its artificial parts? Only What and Who is the Whole can penetrate the true reality. We may never be able to do so, unless, maybe, as Villenueve seems to suggest, we embrace a totally different Thought and Language. But how could we? Is it not the very existence of Thought what keeps us from understanding and adopt a different one? Can a new liquid enters a bottle which is already full of water unless we manage to empty the bottle first?
And what if the only thing capable of triggering this process of emptiness was something coming from elsewhere, making us realize in a snap of a finger that we are living a sort of illusion or, an incomplete version of the reality.
Can we really succeed in understanding a new possible reality without seeing it first?
Maybe not and that is precisely what being human means and what we would need to awake to un upper state of mind.
Only the clear manifestation of a non-human intelligence could model and regenerate our own.
In Villeneuve’s film Language is, finally, the message and the Agent of Change and (R)Evolution.
We don’t need a specific, written message. That’s just the human way, so open to dangerous misunderstandings (see the aliens not being able to distinguish between “gift” and “weapon” in the film). Human language is doomed like the Who’s on first sketch. It barely serves the purpose of everyday communication.
Likewise, could UAP Researchers stop asking themselves “what is the “alien” message?” “What do they want?” “What are their intentions?” and ponder for a second, if it was just a second, on the possibility that what we perceive as their “technology” could be, simply, the message, the revelation, the apparition. Not different from the apparition of a god for ancient cultures, a non-human entity, a “miracle”, an epiphany, insight or enlightenment induced by meditation or, since we are living the Space Age, a sighting of a spacecraft from a distant galaxy.
Walter Beltrami
EchoEvent 2023: a new era for the Study of UAP in Europa has just begun at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
Save the date: November 4, 2023. It was the opening day of the first European Congress for UAP Studies and Research (Echo Event), held in Paris and entirely dedicated to the scientific study of the UAP phenomenon. The two-day event took place at the Sorbonne, […]
Save the date: November 4, 2023. It was the opening day of the first European Congress for UAP Studies and Research (Echo Event), held in Paris and entirely dedicated to the scientific study of the UAP phenomenon. The two-day event took place at the Sorbonne, one of the oldest universities in the world (founded in 1257), which agreed to host a panel of highly respected international experts: from the astrophysicist and computer scientist Jacques Vallée to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, from the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the United States during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, Christopher Mellon, to the physicist and engineering researcher at the CNRS Philippe Guillemant, and with important contributions and round tables involving lots of very important guests such as 747 pilot Christiaan Van Heijst and Michael Vaillant, who worked at GEIPAN (part of the French space agency CNES) for 15 years.
A high profile panel for an event that was made possible thanks to the commitment of the tireless Sarah Witeneim and Deïmian, supported by UAP researcher and podcaster, Vinnie Adams from Disclosure Team and UAP Media UK.
We, at UAP Education, wanted to be there, choosing this very occasion to formally launch our activities and recognizing in the Echo Event the same values and objectives at the core of our project: reduce the stigma around the topic to allow scholars, academics and researchers from different disciplines to approach it with no fear of ridicule and career damage in order to actively contribute to the research of a phenomenon that concerns the whole humanity, to the point of being able to mark a turning point in our evolution.
“Choosing the Sorbonne is part of the message - Sarah Witeneim confirmed to us - first of all because it is a center of universal knowledge, whose prestige we hope will contribute to, at least, partially evaporating the stigma surrounding the topic”.
The Sorbonne thus enters the group of a still limited list of universities that have seriously approached the UAP topic, such as Harvard - where Avi Loeb works - and we hope that this event could be a beacon capable of guiding other European institutions in allowing their researchers to take part in studies relating to UAPs”.
“I think this was one of the most prestigious events I’ve attended- confirms Vinnie Adams, who superbly hosted most of the events on stage, often interacting with the various guests and favoring (as in his style) a fluid and open channel with the public that showed up in such large numbers. The Echo Event was already sold out several weeks before its occurrence - and having 500 people enter the University to learn about a topic like this is certainly a sign that this is an a historical moment.
The fact that this was an historical moment was also confirmed by Christopher Mellon who, opening the conference, underlined how on one hand, science confirms that life in the universe is not only possible but also very likely and very close to us (11,000 habitable planets within a radius of 326 light years and, at just 150 years from us, K2-12B proved to have molecules of life on the ground), and on the other hand, the number of UAP reports is increasing: cases in the US only have risen from 144 in 2021 to well over 800 this year.
We owe Christopher Mellon all we have achieved so far in terms of UAP transparency: he was the one responsible for the beginning of the process by delivering the three famous videos of the American Navy to the New York Times in 2017 which led to the game-changing article co-authored by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal. However, when asked about a possible timing for disclosure - that is, the admission by his government of the true nature of the UAP phenomenon - Mellon was more cautious: "We didn't have a plan when we delivered the videos, but we didn't expect that they could lead to where we are today. However, we are talking about the political side of the “disclosure” issue, which is always influenced by the administrations that are in power, the duration of which is five years.” It is understood that at the end of each administration everything can change, in one sense or another, and the Biden administration is coming to an end.
Jacques Vallée, great protagonist of the event - both for his long and prestigious career and for representing his native land (he now lives in California) - underlined the need for scientists to step forward: ”The stigma around the topic in France has been a problem. We need people with a diploma, a degree who then dedicate themselves to study the phenomenon. This will take at least 20 years, and that’s why we have to start now.” During the same round table Mellon recalled a recent event to show the magnitude of the stigma still going on today, specifically, when NASA initially refused to reveal the name of the new director of their UAP Study Panel for fear of reprisals of the scientific community itself! And all of this took place during the same press conference where Bill Nelson, current director of NASA, had repeatedly underlined the necessity and urgency of removing the stigma around the topic and how Nasa was pioneering in that effort.
Boeing pilot Christiaan Van Heijst, who, since 2021, became an outspoken voice on the topic, talked about his own UAP sightings (one of which was documented by photos) and how his coming forward encouraged many other private pilots to tell him about their own experience and, in some cases, to make their stories public. He echoed the words of the first guests: “Of course there is stigma! It is often a self-imposed stigma, which presents itself as a blanket of shame and manifests as the fear of revealing oneself. It is sad. You don't know what relief many of my colleagues feel after telling me their experiences... some even cry liberatingly. These are exciting moments." Christiaan reminded us that “there is no reporting channels or protocols for civilian pilots encountering UAPs, while there is one for safety systems. This way the stigma that gets created is of a cultural nature.”
Who, on the contrary, seems not to have been restrained by stigma is the well-known astrophysicist, Avi Loeb (selected in 2012 by Time as one of the 25 most influential people in Space Studies), who connected via video call with the room to present the Galileo Project and his studies on phenomena involving interstellar objects.
Three events have occurred since 2014: two with anomalous characteristics and one with parameters compatible with known objects (Borisov's comet). The first two are the famous Oumuamua which Loeb thinks could be an alien artifact, while the second object was classified as "IM1" and impacted Earth in 2014, showing some anomalous behaviour not immediately attributable to a common meteor event, primarily speed, changing along the journey. Avi Loeb raised $1.5 million for an initial expedition off Papua New Guinea to collect material released by the impact of IM1. And he succeeded! In Paris he presented to the audience the first results on these microspherules (about 500 of them with an average diameter of half a millimeter) collected on the seabed during a six-day expedition. The analysis of the objects shows non-terrestrial iron isotopes and ratios of some components (he mentioned Beryllium and Uranium) up to 100 times higher than those normally recorded on terrestrial rocks and NASA’s database of objects from Space.
Loeb rightly highlighted not only the difficulties he encountered in getting his articles on the topic published and peer-reviewed, but above all the potential points of failure of the mission in Papua. Doing science means taking risks. His words are a message for all scientists of today and tomorrow: fear of failure should not keep them away from researching UAP. On the contrary, they should be triggered by the pleasure of discovery, governed as always by the tireless engine of curiosity. Whatever the result, each failure would help science and humanity to advance and make the next colleague aware of what was already attempted with no success.
Loeb closed by announcing that he is working on a software to identify interstellar objects and, once ready, he expects it to be able to detect one object of this category every two weeks!
During the two-day Echo Event, the speakers shared a lot of data for the public in the room (such as those relating to the quantity and quality of the sightings collected, presented by Luc Dini - who included an exhaustive list of study groups active in all 5 continents - as well as those presented by Michael Vaillant who is working on a new software to analyze thousands of registered of cases in search of a recognizable pattern), together with presenting hypothesis to explain the phenomenon: extraterrestrial, multidimensional or multi-temporal presences, whose manifestation may have effects on the consciousness and physique of those exposed to them.
The Swiss researcher Patrice Bonvin superbly outlined the recent history of studies on UAPs, focusing on United States, thus helping the audience to grasp the connection with the Manhattan Project, which began more than 70 years ago with approximately 200 thousand people involved in what is considered as the most famous American "Black Projects”, a term used to describe projects with the highest level of secrecy and whose fundingas do not have to be reported in detail to the tax payers. The Manhattan Project is double-linked both to the development of the H bomb and the UFO files, which share the same level of secrecy: a connection between the two is also corroborated by the high number of UAP sightings near nuclear installations. Michael Vaillant showed several maps as proof of the fact that the number of sightings in France, for decades, has skyrocketed in the vicinity of nuclear power plants or military bases with atomic weapons.
Philippe Guillemant also captured the audience by sharing his work as a physicist and researcher at the French CNES, presenting Wojciech H. Zurek's research on quantum decoherence applied to the study of UAPs. (Zurek presented the theory in 2002 with this article available online).
The theory of decoherence states that all existing physical systems are inherently quantum and that a loss of information occurs in the interaction between macroscopic systems. If the UAP phenomenon were able to act in the state of decoherence, this would explain many, if not all, of the characteristics of the phenomenon: no noise, time dilation in the observing subjects, perception of different spaces (e.g. inside and outside the UAP). In other words, UAPs would move outside of space-time and therefore outside the laws of gravity, which is determined by the latter. And it is decoherence that updates reality, through our brain. To further simplify, we could say that our perception of reality depends on a setting that can be modified. When this occurs, time expands and, therefore, we enter a differently perceived reality, in which most of the experienced events during a UAP sighting which are commonly and constantly reported would be normal and explicable: places around the witnesses that appear as deserted, car engines that stop, voices and sound that get distorted, movements forward or backward in time or space… Ultimately, the study of UAPs can open us up to a new physics, with notable implications for the well-being of humanity.
Jacques Vallée himself, in his speeches on stage, was keen to underline how the so-called disclosure process does not and should not only depends on politicians. By interpreting his multiple interventions, we can only share his hope for Scientists to get more and more involved, adding a fundamental layer to the process of “disclosure” by preparing and educating people to grasp every detail of the phenomenon before it gets revealed politically and therefore, preventing the public for suffering a big ontological shock. Indeed, given the democratic nature of science, thanks to its contribution the whole disclosure process could prove even faster!
We want to end this brief review of the Echo Event 2023 with Jacques Vallée, certainly the most prestigious researcher in the world since 1960s, when he began his collaboration with Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then director of Project Blue Book. Vallée’s speech was vibrant and full of inspiration for the audience. Not only did he share substantial data during the two days ("we could have 500,000 cases of sightings in the last few years alone"), but he also insisted on what doing science means. When he was part of a team of very high level researchers he had brought together during his time at Stanford (in a 1968 photo he showed you could also recognize Peter Andrew Sturrock, a British astrophysicist who continues to be interested in the phenomenon), he investigated many UFO cases, some of which were also included in the Project Blue Book. His team finally came up with an explanation for 90 or 95% of the cases. But once again he remembered how that remaining, unexplained 5% is the fundamental one. “Marie Curie,” Vallée recalled, “won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911 for discovering radium and polonium, working a few steps from here, at the Sorbonne. And she succeeded in her intent because she processed 2% of the waste material obtained from the rocks that she had brought to the laboratory. 2%... and it was that 2% which changed the world."
There are no better words to close this article and refer to the video interviews conducted with some of the speakers during the event that we just published on our Instagram and YouTube channels.
Massimo Frera