David Delgado Shorter, University of California, Los Angeles; Kim TallBear, University of Alberta, and William Lempert, Bowdoin College

We’re only halfway through 2023, and it feels already like the year of alien contact.

In February, President Joe Biden gave orders to shoot down three unidentified aerial phenomena – NASA’s title for UFOs. Then, the alleged leaked footage from a Navy pilot of a UFO, and then news of a whistleblower’s report on a possible U.S. government cover-up about UFO research. Most recently, an independent analysis published in June suggests that UFOs might have been collected by a clandestine agency of the U.S. government.

If any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life emerges, whether from whistleblower testimony or an admission of a cover-up, humans would face a historic paradigm shift.

As members of an Indigenous studies working group who were asked to lend our disciplinary expertise to a workshop affiliated with the Berkeley SETI Research Center, we have studied centuries of culture contacts and their outcomes from around the globe. Our collaborative preparations for the workshop drew from transdisciplinary research in Australia, New Zealand, Africa and across the Americas.

In its final form, our group statement illustrated the need for diverse perspectives on the ethics of listening for alien life and a broadening of what defines “intelligence” and “life.” Based on our findings, we consider first contact less as an event and more as a long process that has already begun.

Who’s in charge of first contact

The question of who is “in charge” of preparing for contact with alien life immediately comes to mind. The communities – and their interpretive lenses – most likely to engage in any contact scenario would be military, corporate and scientific.

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By giving Americans the legal right to profit from space tourism and planetary resource extraction, the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 could mean that corporations will be the first to find signs of extraterrestrial societies. Otherwise, while detecting unidentified aerial phenomena is usually a military matter, and NASA takes the lead on sending messages from Earth, most activities around extraterrestrial communications and evidence fall to a program called SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

SETI is a collection of scientists with a variety of research endeavors, including Breakthrough Listen, which listens for “technosignatures,” or markers, like pollutants, of a designed technology.

SETI investigators are virtually always STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – scholars. Few in the social science and humanities fields have been afforded opportunities to contribute to concepts of and preparations for contact.

In a promising act of disciplinary inclusion, the Berkeley SETI Research Center in 2018 invited working groups – including our Indigenous studies working group – from outside STEM fields to craft perspective papers for SETI scientists to consider.

Ethics of listening

Neither Breakthough Listen nor SETI’s site features a current statement of ethics beyond a commitment to transparency. Our working group was not the first to raise this issue. And while the SETI Institute and certain research centers have included ethics in their event programming, it seems relevant to ask who NASA and SETI answer to, and what ethical guidelines they’re following for a potential first contact scenario.

SETI’s Post-Detection Hub – another rare exception to SETI’s STEM-centrism – seems the most likely to develop a range of contact scenarios. The possible circumstances imagined include finding ET artifacts, detecting signals from thousands of light years away, dealing with linguistic incompatibility, finding microbial organisms in space or on other planets, and biological contamination of either their or our species. Whether the U.S. government or heads of military would heed these scenarios is another matter.

SETI-affiliated scholars tend to reassure critics that the intentions of those listening for technosignatures are benevolent, since “what harm could come from simply listening?” The chair emeritus of SETI Research, Jill Tarter, defended listening because any ET civilization would perceive our listening techniques as immature or elementary.

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But our working group drew upon the history of colonial contacts to show the dangers of thinking that whole civilizations are comparatively advanced or intelligent. For example, when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers came to the Americas, those relationships were shaped by the preconceived notion that the “Indians” were less advanced due to their lack of writing. This led to decades of Indigenous servitude in the Americas.

The working group statement also suggested that the act of listening is itself already within a “phase of contact.” Like colonialism itself, contact might best be thought of as a series of events that starts with planning, rather than a singular event. Seen this way, isn’t listening potentially without permission just another form of surveillance? To listen intently but indiscriminately seemed to our working group like a type of eavesdropping.

It seems contradictory that we begin our relations with aliens by listening in without their permission while actively working to stop other countries from listening to certain U.S. communications. If humans are initially perceived as disrespectful or careless, ET contact could more likely lead to their colonization of us.

Histories of contact

Throughout histories of Western colonization, even in those few cases when contactees were intended to be protected, contact has led to brutal violence, pandemics, enslavement and genocide.

James Cook’s 1768 voyage on the HMS Endeavor was initiated by the Royal Society. This prestigious British academic society charged him with calculating the solar distance between the Earth and the Sun by measuring the visible movement of Venus across the Sun from Tahiti. The society strictly forbade him from any colonial engagements.

Though he achieved his scientific goals, Cook also received orders from the Crown to map and claim as much territory as possible on the return voyage. Cook’s actions put into motion wide-scale colonization and Indigenous dispossession across Oceania, including the violent conquests of Australia and New Zealand.

The Royal Society gave Cook a “prime directive” of doing no harm and to only conduct research that would broadly benefit humanity. However, explorers are rarely independent from their funders, and their explorations reflect the political contexts of their time.

As scholars attuned to both research ethics and histories of colonialism, we wrote about Cook in our working group statement to showcase why SETI might want to explicitly disentangle their intentions from those of corporations, the military and the government.

Although separated by vast time and space, both Cook’s voyage and SETI share key qualities, including their appeal to celestial science in the service of all humanity. They also share a mismatch between their ethical protocols and the likely long-term impacts of their success. https://www.youtube.com/embed/5gZwLGrJQrM?wmode=transparent&start=0 This BBC video describes the modern ramifications of Captain James Cook’s colonial legacy in New Zealand.

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The initial domino of a public ET message, or recovered bodies or ships, could initiate cascading events, including military actions, corporate resource mining and perhaps even geopolitical reorganizing. The history of imperialism and colonialism on Earth illustrates that not everyone benefits from colonization. No one can know for sure how engagement with extraterrestrials would go, though it’s better to consider cautionary tales from Earth’s own history sooner rather than later.

This article has been updated to correct the date of James Cook’s voyage.

David Delgado Shorter, Professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California, Los Angeles; Kim TallBear, Professor of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and William Lempert, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Bowdoin College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/

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Ben Zeller, Lake Forest College

Heaven’s Gate – also known as the “UFO cult” – burst into American consciousness on March 26, 1997 when law enforcement discovered 39 decomposing bodies in a San Diego, California mansion.

Each detail that emerged from the scene stunned a rapt public: Adherents had committed suicide in waves on March 22 and 23, ingesting a lethal mix of barbiturates and alcohol; they lay under purple shrouds, with five-dollar bills and rolls of quarters in their pockets; all wore simple dark uniforms and Nike tennis shoes.

Bizarre as these details may seem, if you actually look at the group’s beliefs and history, Heaven’s Gate has far more in common with American culture than you might expect.

In my book on Heaven’s Gate, I argue that the group drew from broad trends in American culture – religiosity, apocalyptic thinking and an interest in fusing science and religion.

But one theme has become even more evident since I wrote the book. The group’s embrace of conspiratorial thinking reflects a culture of conspiracy that has long existed in the margins of society – and has re-emerged at the center of American life.

Christian, New Age origins

At the time of the suicides, Heaven’s Gate had been in existence for over two decades.

It was founded in 1972 when two Texans, Bonnie Lu Nettles and Marshall Herff Applewhite, bonded over shared interests in alternative spiritual exploration, astrology and biblical prophecy. They came to believe that the Bible foretold an extraterrestrial rapture wherein some individuals would be saved from life on this planet and journey to what they called the “Next Level,” a physical realm in outer space where they would live as an immortal, perfected species of space aliens. They gained their first significant attention and converts in 1975 among alternative spiritual seekers in California and Oregon.

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Nettles and Applewhite drew from Christian sources, particularly prophetic and apocalyptic material. They were also inspired by the New Age movement, which emphasized meditation, diet and the channeling of spiritual beings. Like many religious people, members of Heaven’s Gate sought salvation from what they considered a corrupt world.

After Nettles died of cancer in 1985, the group’s adherents increasingly rejected their earlier belief in what they called biological metamorphosis, wherein their human bodies would chemically transform into extraterrestrial forms. Instead, they now envisioned abandoning their human bodies on Earth and transferring their consciousnesses – through (unspecified) technological-spiritual means – into new extraterrestrial “Next Level bodies.” (This is roughly analogous to reincarnation.)

Eventually, some members came to believe that they actually were space aliens – that they’d taken on human forms to learn about life on our planet – though this belief appears to have not been universally shared.

The paranoid style of American religion

It may come as a surprise that, until the suicides, Heaven’s Gate attracted little outside attention.

They didn’t face government persecution, angry ex-members or professional anti-cultists eager to destroy them – all of which dogged other new and alternative religions like the Peoples Temple (the group behind the Jonestown massacre) and the Branch Davidians (the targets of the Waco siege).

So what drove Heaven’s Gate to consider collective suicide?

In the final years of the group’s existence, members came to believe in an elaborate conspiracy that leading governmental, religious and economic figures had colluded with a group of demonic extraterrestrials called “the Luciferians.” According to Heaven’s Gate members, these evil forces were all working in concert to cover up the existence of UFOs, and specifically a UFO “companion” that trailed the Hale-Bopp comet, which came closest to Earth on March 22, the day the suicides began.

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The sort of conspiratorial thinking that Heaven’s Gate adopted was nothing new. Their belief in government conspiracies and UFOs could be traced back to popular responses to the first “flying saucer” sightings and the crash of an unknown object in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Religious studies scholar Joseph Laycock has written about how some aspects of the emerging UFO subculture blended scientific and supernaturalist theories, bringing together religion and conspiratorial thinking. Likewise, historian David G. Robertson has documented how UFO conspiracy theories eventually merged with New Age religious thinking to create what he calls “UFO millennial conspiracism.” Heaven’s Gate was part of those trends.

While Heaven’s Gate emerged from ufological culture, they also engaged in a long and storied pattern of conspiratorial thinking by American religious and political movements, a relationship historian Richard J. Hofstadter explored in his famous 1964 essay on the “paranoid style of American politics.”

In the 19th century, this relationship was especially pronounced in a strand of American Protestantism that envisioned an array of nefarious agents attempting to wrest American culture from the values – and control – of white, English Protestants. They initially targeted (sometimes violently) Catholic immigrants – who were neither Protestant nor English – and justified their actions with a blend of nativism and conspiratorial thinking.

And it was this sort of conspiratorial thinking that suffused American political movements, whether it was McCarthyism or the anti-Masonic movement. Hofstadter wrote that proponents of such ideas often felt “dispossessed,” that the country had been “taken away from their kind.”

Today, many fear that external agents, from Muslims to illegal immigrants, have eroded core American “Judeo-Christian” values. Perhaps as a result, we’re now witnessing rising nativism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

When conspiracy goes mainstream

Heaven’s Gate also embraced what historian Michael Barkun calls a “culture of conspiracy,” which divides the world between evil forces secretly conspiring among one another, true believers aware of the conspiracies and the mindless masses who operate without awareness of the truth.

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While Barkun focuses on the religious and cultural margins, today the same elements are arguably at work in American political discourse, whether it’s talk of secret government wiretaps, a deep state, or cover-ups within the scientific community on topics ranging from vaccines to climate change.

The adherents of Heaven’s Gate wouldn’t probably be drawn to these various political conspiracies, though they shared the belief that powerful forces colluded behind the scenes to hide the truth. In order to support their claims of the existence of extraterrestrials and UFO visitations, they embraced this conspiratorial logic.

In the 90s, people laughed off the conspiracy theories that consumed the group and eventual led them to “opt out” of the planet and commit suicide.

But what happens when political leaders embrace a similar logic?

Ben Zeller, Associate Professor of Religion, Lake Forest College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Christopher Nichols, The Ohio State University

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected].

What is most likely going on in Area 51? – Griffin, age 10, South Lyon, Michigan

One of the reasons people can never be entirely sure about what is going on at Area 51 is that it is a highly classified secret military facility. It was not until 2013 that the U.S. government even acknowledged the existence and name “Area 51.”

This information came out as part of a broader set of documents released through a Freedom of Information Act request, which is something regular citizens and groups can do to ask the U.S. government to provide details about government activities. In this case, the request made public formerly classified CIA information regarding the historical development and testing of the U-2 spy plane. The information also revealed where it was tested: Area 51!

As a national security historian, I know there’s a long history of secrets at Area 51. I also know that none of those secrets have anything to do with space aliens.

The place

The base commonly referred to as Area 51 is located in a remote area of southern Nevada, roughly 100 miles (161 kilometers) from Las Vegas. It is in the middle of a federally protected area of the U.S. Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range, now known as the Nevada National Security Site, which is inside the larger Nellis Air Force Range.

Area 51 is the name on maps for the area within the Nevada National Security Site where the government carried out secret operations. The airfield at Area 51 is called Homey Airport, and the overall facility is often referred to as Groom Lake. Groom Lake is a salt flat, or dried-out lake, adjacent to the airport.

The history

In the early years of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, both nations sought new technological developments that might give one country more power than the other. A great amount of information about scientific achievements, such as on rockets or weapons – but also even on ways to grow more food or make fuel more efficient – was kept secret as an issue of national security.

A key part of not fighting another world war was, and still is, developing technologies to see what the other side is doing – that is, surveillance technologies that can spy on the enemy. The information gathered by new and improved surveillance technologies about new innovations with planes and weapons was very important to governments.

This meant that both the surveillance information and the technology to get it were closely held national security secrets. Very few people in the governments of the U.S. and Soviet Union knew about the secrets from the 1940s all the way up until the end of the Cold War in 1991.

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Central to all this was the U.S.’s U-2 spy plane. It could fly higher than other airplanes and was made to travel over targets all around the world to take high-resolution photographs and measurements. Area 51 was selected in 1955 to test the U-2 in part because its remote location could help keep the plane secret.

Area 51 became the test site for other secret new aircraft. This included the A-12, which, like the U-2, was a fast-flying reconnaissance plane. The A-12 was first test flown at Homey Airport in 1962. It had a bulging disc-like center to carry additional fuel. Its shape and shiny titanium body could well have been responsible for some people’s reports about seeing spherical ships, also known as flying saucers.

Another important – and odd-shaped – aircraft first tested at Area 51 was the stealth fighter known as the F-117. It first flew at Homey Airport in 1981.

Secrets and speculation

“More Flying Objects Seen in Clark Sky,” read the June 17, 1959, headline in the Reno Evening Gazette newspaper. Reports like this of unidentified flying objects in the 1950s and 1960s fueled controversy and attention for Area 51. This was for three main reasons:

1. Area 51 was highly secret and not publicly accessible.
2. The area was home to test flights of secret new airplanes that moved fast and in different ways than expected.
3. The Cold War was an era of political tension, and there were many movies and TV shows about space aliens at the time.

When the government does not tell the public the full truth, no matter the reasons, secrets can lead to wild speculation. Secrecy can leave room for conspiracy theories to develop.

Area 51 remains off-limits to civilian and regular military air traffic, a decade after the government acknowledged its existence. The 68 years of government secrecy has helped to amplify suspicions, speculation and conspiracy theories. These conspiracy theories include crashed alien spaceships, space aliens being experimented on, and even space aliens working at Area 51.

There are much simpler explanations for what witnesses have seen near Area 51. After all, the public now knows about what was being tested at Area 51, and when. For example, as U-2 and A-12 flights increased in the 1950s and 1960s, so did local sightings of UFOs. As balloons and planes crashed, and secret testing of new technologies as well as captured Soviet equipment continued, so did reports of UFO crashes and landings.

In fact, many UFO sightings match almost exactly with dates and times of flights of then-classified experimental aircraft. We also know that prototype drones and more recent versions have been tested at the site.

In the end, there is no reason to think that anything other than earthly technologies have been behind the strange sights and sounds at Area 51.

This article has been updated to correct the descriptions of the name Area 51 and the U2 spy plane’s capabilities.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to [email protected]. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

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And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Christopher Nichols, Professor of History, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/

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