In The News — Page 1
Update: 20131031
This page serves the purpose of allowing our Korendian visitors to respond to questions about or to comment on news items of interest. It was suggested by ArKay, who then provided the first entry.
20090116 — Methane on Mars
20090212 — Advice on Contactees
20090215 — Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'
20090313 — Kepler Mission Rockets to Space in Search of Other Earths
20090327 — Reflections On Earth's Technology and Future
20090421 — Astronaut says we're not alone
20090528 — On the Hubble repair mission
20090609 — When scientific understanding falters
20090907 — Kepler Detects an Exoplanet Atmosphere
20100427 — Hawking: Don't talk to aliens
Good morning. At my request, Bob has agreed to provide for us the closest thing to a "blog" that you will find on his website. I will thus initiate it with a brief comment on a news item from NASA about the discovery of methane gas on the planet Mars. This has engendered much fanciful speculation about the source of the gas, including the possibility that it is of biological origin.
One dislikes being the unofficial bubble-burster, but Mars is lifeless other than for the underground Confederation facility and a few small mobile research stations. The notion that bacteria are generating the methane is frivolous. The methane emissions are entirely geological in origin.
If your scientists want to know for certain what the actual source is, I invite them to press for a resumption of your space program that has stagnated since your last visit to the moon. Your people will never be content to be confined to your little blue marble. You are at heart explorers and adventurers, and space is, as your Star Trek TV program called it, "the final frontier".
Nothing would energize your world so much as a video message from Mars announcing the first footprints in the dusty soil of the Red Planet to be made by people of Earth. And when they arrive, they might very well be greeted by other visitors to that small planet.
We will be waiting, people of Earth. Va i luce.
The following is a brief email communication with ArKay on 12 February 2009, at 00:30 EST.
BR: Years ago, Master KALEN-LI RETAN said something about a standard for considering contact reports. I've forgotten it, and I'd like to know if you can refresh my memory.
AK: I have spoken with the Master, and he has provided this information.
I do recall mentioning it in passing to our brother Bob. Allow me to restate it.
When a contactee claims that purported visitors to your world say that they require human intervention to carry out or assist in their plans for mankind, be wary. They didn't travel all those light years only to be powerless to implement their own operations. If "space brothers" are in fact communicating with your people and telling you that without human belief and assistance, they cannot achieve their goals, great caution is recommended.
On a similar note, when a contactee tells you that the SB gave him or her a message that is vitally important to mankind and that he or she must spread the message as widely as possible, the chances are quite good that the person is either a fraud, deluded, or a channel of disinformation being used by hostile agents. Neither the Alliance nor the Confederation would engage in such brazen deception.
However, because of its rigid adherence to non-interference directives, the Confederation has been known to ask its contactees to assist them in certain non-critical matters that they interpret to violate or infringe upon the NID. You are well aware that the Alliance does not require assistance from your people, although we gladly accept freely-given offers of aid that would make our tasks a bit easier.
If you study the various "contactee" stories of the past and present, you can readily discern those that are most likely either fraudulent or delusional, or are being manipulated by antagonistic elements. Be especially cautious of those involving "channeling" and verbose, florid, meaningless, buzzword-laden rhetoric. I believe that you know without further elaboration those to whom I am referring.
This is not to say that channeling is not being used by the Confederation. It is, but on a very limited basis, and it does not involve the sort of pompous "new-age" piffle about God-like superbeings that is found so often on the Internet.
As we have stated before, we will neither validate nor disprove the stories of any contactees past or present. That is not our purpose, and what they say in no way affects our operations. We are aware that a certain notorious contactee has dismissed our brother Bob's reports—and numerous others—as "false". We will not comment on his stories beyond saying that he spins a good yarn. We advise him to take to heart the old axiom about glass houses, and avoid the photos of badly-constructed "laser guns".
Va i luce.
I assume that the above is what you had in mind.
BR: It was. I thank you and the Master. Va i luce.
AK: Va i luce, my brother.
[Addendum 20090213: it is possible to interpret the 1960s contacts as being of basically the same nature. And the Korendians did a lot of exhortation to us to help ourselves to improve our culture. They had concluded that our primitive ways were due largely to our own nature.
However, at no time did they state that they and the Alliance were unable to act on Earth without our full cooperation. The existence of their underground and lunar bases were ample evidence that they intended to go beyond the limits that are established by strict adherence to the Non-Interference Directives. And this was prior to the discovery of the Omegan influence, which forced them to rethink their entire operation on Earth.
The above comments from the Master were first made in the mid-1980s during an informal discussion of the direction and effectiveness of the "flying saucer movement". What he said above is their present position on the matter, with particular regard to the proliferation of websites alleging to present "channeled" messages from various sources that use thousands of words to say nothing useful or even meaningful.
Whoever or whatever the sources are (the Korendians and the Alliance have not researched them), the nature of the messages evince that they do not originate from any visitors who are here to benefit the people of Earth.]
[Addendum 20090317: The Korendians are averse to commenting on the validity of the stories from other contactees. Ergo, the reference to "laser guns" did not provide a source. However, Google knows all, and these are what the Master was referring to: Photo 1 & Photo 2. Given the alleged power of the device (see the post of 22-6-2004 @ 05:55 PM by Aurelius here)...
I have video of Meier's 8mm film footage showing Meier displaying the weapon and demonstrating how he shot a 1 to 2-inch diameter hole through a large tree which he films up close. I've seen the hole in the mid-90s when I visited Meier's place. The team that went over there documented the fact that the hole was "burned" through the tree (no evidence of drilling). Any attempt to use welding torches would also be impossible due to the size of the tree. Without any prompting or foreknowledge on the part of Meier, the team used a plumb line and noticed that every twig and blade of grass that was in a straight line with the hole, in back of the tree, was singed or destroyed.
... the glaring lack of so critical a safety feature as a trigger guard would be absolutely appalling firearms design, if it were real and not a bad sci-fi film prop.]
This message was received by email from ArKay on 15 Feb 2009.
Kalo, my brothers and sisters of Earth. While "surfing" the Internet, I came upon this article on the BBC website:
Dr. Alan Boss has overestimated the figure somewhat. Our own calculations, based on the density of habitable planets in this and nearby sectors, and detailed photographic analyses of our galaxy taken from outside, would be closer to 300-350 million. As the Alliance expands, there appears to be a consistent occurence of planets suitable for life, with no sectors substantially different from others. There is an expected decrease in planets actually bearing life as the galactic core is approached, due to higher radiation levels, although the distribution of otherwise habitable worlds is fairly constant.
The article states:
"Not only are they probably habitable but they probably are also going to be inhabited," Dr Boss told BBC News. "But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms.
In this matter, the gentleman is in error. Though many planets are habitable, less then 15% of them are actually life-bearing. Of those, there are many planets fitting his description. However, he would be amazed to discover how many worlds are populated with beings far beyond Earth's societal and technological level, and how many of them are amongst the community of interstellar spacefarers. By our estimates, of the worlds with intelligent life, 37% of them are at or beyond your level, and about 3% of them are vastly beyond even ours.
As the Alliance grows, and we encounter that 3%, we find that the majority of them do not wish to be aligned with either the Alliance or the Confederation. In many cases, they are loosely aligned with an organization that predates ours by millions of years. We do not know what they call it, if it has a name. We do know that in the past they have engaged in "seeding" life on habitable worlds, but they have not shared with us any sort of list of those worlds.
Our impression is that they are uncomfortable with the presence of beings who are thousands if not millions of years younger and thus less advanced than themselves. We sense no arrogance or disdain—they long ago left behind such primitive emotions and mindsets—but rather that we remind them of what they once were in their distant past.
We do maintain cordial, informal relations with many of them, but we respect their wish to remain apart from us. And we in turn find it at once humbling and disquieting to be with them, acutely aware that we are not by any means the most advanced beings in the universe.
Suffice it to say that none of them are involved in any way with your world. You will have to suffer with us.
Va i luce.
[Note: the term "billion" is the US billion, or 1,000,000,000. The UK's billion is the US trillion. Visit this page for some fascinating data about large numbers.]
We extend our congratulations to NASA for the successful launch of the Kepler Earth-seeker probe as described on this NASA web page. What the NASA page does not say, the London Times does. I quote:
Kepler will focus on one star-rich area of the sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. Over the next six years it will simultaneously measure variations in the brightness of more than 100,000 stars, searching for the tiny decreases in light output that might signify a transiting planet. An ultra-sensitive 95 megapixel camera, built by the British firm e2v, will be used. The camera can detect the virtually imperceptible dimming of a car headlight when a fly crosses it.
The mission is riddled with technical difficulties. Transits, for example, are seen only when a planet’s orbit is aligned with the line of sight from Earth. The chances of any distant planet having such an alignment is less than 1%.
One drawback to the mission is its limited field of vision. The chosen region—we do not have data on the precise 112-square-degree area (see the "close-up" article below) that will be observed, so we assumed one with the greatest concentration of stars—has less than 100 roughly sunlike stars with Earth-sized worlds located in the habitable zones, and orbital planes that permit transit photometry to detect them, as the cited text from the Times makes clear. Of those, 7 have life, and one has advanced, intelligent life.
The time will come when your space-based optical technology will be sufficient to image planetary systems directly, rather than relying on indirect methods such as radial velocity and transit photometry.
When that time arrives, you will be amazed at the number of worlds you will discover. See my communication of 15 February 2009.
We extend our best wishes to your scientists. The Kepler probe will succeed, although perhaps not as well as they might hope. But then science is often a hit-and-miss activity.
Further information:
Good evening From MassCom. I am ArKay. I've been, as you say, "surfing" the Internet, and it caused me to contemplate just how far your world has developed in the 48 years since we first made contact with you. More to the point, I am amazed at the direction that your development has taken.
In the 1960s, the predictions of the future, typically defined as the 21st century, involved fanciful concepts such as flying or nuclear-powered cars, domed homes and cities, moon and Mars colonies, and so on. The future was indeed to be a wonderful and exciting place. So here we are in 2009, and that future is now. How accurate were those predictions?
It would be safe to say that they were as far off the mark as it is possible to be. The one thing that not one of those prophesiers foresaw is that most incredible of developments, the Information Age. In fact, back then the oracles were negative about the subject. Here are a few quotes that evince that negativism. They were not verified, so I trust that they accurate.
1949
While a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 10000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers of the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.
-- Popular Mechanics1957
I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year.
-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall1962
Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition.
-- Dennis Gabor1968
But what... is it good for?
-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, commenting on the idea of microchips1977
...(T)here is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
-- Ken Olson, President, Chairman, and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp
Needless to say, their viewpoints were proven wrong. Your under-25s have never known a time without computers, and your language has been shaped by them over the last couple of decades. Terms like Internet/Web, email, dotcom, online, log-in, multimedia, messaging, etcetera are pervasive. Internet-based vendors like Amazon thrive. "Social" sites such as MySpace are used (and abused) by millions. And the Internet has allowed anyone with a point of view to bring it to the world with minimal cost and effort. Some might consider that a curse rather than a blessing, but that's a topic for another day.
Our brother Bob has fully embraced your new era, and has often said that he wished that your technology of today was available in the 60s, when our communications with him were new. [BR note: I'd sell the body part of one's choice to bring back to the 1960s a computer with MS Word. I do NOT rue the passing of typewriters.] None of this could have been predicted even twenty years ago, let alone almost fifty. Your world has advanced in ways that we did not envision.
Your rapid development and expansion of computing and the Internet has made our efforts in Project Terra much simpler and more effective. One major reason is that the Omegan operations embraced it to conserve limited resources, and thereby gave us a means of access to them that did not exist in earlier times. They of course know that we know, and that makes it all the more challenging. In a different reality, we and the Omegans could be friends.
We are as eager as you are to see what your future will bring. Our advice to you is to avoid nay-saying and denigrating your abilities and creativity. Remember Arthur C. Clarke's First Law:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Your future is limited only by the restraints that you impose on your imagination. Look forward and look upward. We're waiting for you, my brothers and sisters of Earth.
Good afternoon from MassCom. I am Arkay. In reading through the various news websites that we frequent in order to keep abreast of developments on Earth, we came across this item in the Washington Times.
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, the sixth man ever to walk on the moon, has a message for all citizens of Earth: We are not alone.
"We are being visited," the 79-year-old grandfatherly "spacefarer" told 100 or so UFOlogists gathered at a National Press Club conference called by the Paradigm Research Group (motto: "It's not about lights in the sky; it's about lies on the ground").
"It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence," said the astronaut who made the longest moonwalk in history. "I call upon our government to open up ... and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilization."
With a new, perhaps more intellectually curious president in the White House, UFOlogists say, the time is ripe for the United States to follow the lead of other nations and release all classified files about government interaction with extraterrestrial beings. In fact, PRG founder Stephen Bassett demands that the Obama administration dump the documents, and quick.
We have been aware for some time that Dr. Mitchell has been open to the presence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth. We have over the past several years spoken with him on a few occasions—although we did not not identify ourselves, of course—and discussed the ongoing activities on Earth being carried out by the Alliance and the Confederation. Other astronauts of the past and present share this viewpoint, but in most cases they are very hesitant to commit themselves publicly to the position.
We commend the gentleman for standing firm in the face of the inevitable ridicule and hostility that his beliefs invite from cynical scientists, media persons, and the public at large. It takes great courage to speak out on subjects that don't fit the cultural paradigm. I say now that Dr. Mitchell's position will most probably be validated within his lifetime, although the Alliance will not be involved in that event.
Prepare yourselves, my brothers and sisters. I am ArKay. Va i luce.
I am ArKay. In reviewing the recent NASA mission to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope, I have gained yet more respect for your people and your science. The courage and commitment of the astronauts that were displayed in the return to an orbital height that is infamous for "space junk" showed us that you are willing to risk much in the advancement of pure science. You truly are destined for a great future as a member of the interstellar community... if you can keep your eyes fixed on the stars.
To be sure, there were naysayers who opposed the mission on any number of specious or irrelevant grounds. They have been with you for a very long time, and they will plague you for the indefinite future. They are the ones who demand zero risk, which is of course impossible. They are the ones who complain about the cost of such activities and demand that the money be redirected for what you call "touchy feely" government programs that are notorious for their utter lack of success. They are the ones that, if they had their way, would bring scientific progress to a screeching halt.
Our advice to you, people of Earth: ignore the negativists, the neo-Luddites and the champions of the status quo. They would have your world stop progressing and stagnate. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and the advancement of science without immediate visible gain, are sure signs of a world that will never be content to rest on its laurels. As long as one more thing exists to be learned, the people who populate those worlds will strive to learn it. The Alliance would be honored to welcome Earth into our far-reaching union.
I say now that the repairs and improvements that were made to the Hubble instrument will bear fruit in the months and years to come. You will make discoveries that will forever dispel the notion that you are alone in the universe. And combined with the Kepler mission described in my 13 March communication, and the James Webb telescope that will be launched in 2014, you will obtain proof that you are indeed but one of thousands of inhabited worlds in the "local" area of the galaxy. Great surprises await you, my brothers and sisters.
Va i luce!
I am ArKay. The folly of allowing scientific competence to atrophy amongst the people is evinced by this article from the NASA website:
June 9, 2009: Just when you thought it was safe to check your email...
For the sixth year in a row, a message about the Red Planet is popping up in email boxes around the world. It instructs readers to go outside after dark on August 27th and behold the sky. "Mars will look as large as the full moon," it says. "No one alive today will ever see this again."
Don't believe it.
Here's what will really happen if you go outside after dark on August 27th. Nothing. Mars won't be there. On that date, the red planet will be nearly 250 million km away from Earth and completely absent from the evening sky.
An unfortunate side-effect of the democratic, unfiltered nature of the Internet is that email inboxes are crammed with utter nonsense, from unscientific claptrap such as the above item to spurious virus warnings to interminable ads for watches and sex enhancers.
One can offer endless hypotheses about why the public has become oblivious to science, but the effects are unarguable. The most egregious example is the "global climate change" myth that is threatening to destroy world economies based on two foolish notions: 1. man causes climate changes; 2. man can affect climate changes. The cold, hard scientific fact is that you can no more control weather than you can control the sun.
Considering the awesome advances in scientific knowledge and capabity that your people have experienced in the last 50 years, it is difficult to fathom why there is such an appalling ignorance of science amongst your people at large. Perhaps it is due to information overload. Perhaps it is a result of the arising of quasi-religious "junk science". Perhaps it is due to the cacophony of nonsensical alarms raised by power-lusting "environmentalists" and their governmental cat's-paws who are eager to control energy generation and distribution.
Whatever the cause of the decline in scientific competence, the effect can be nothing but harmful. A planet's future is in large part based on its ever-expanding scientific understanding and capabilities. We have seen it countless times. No world that has forsaken science for myth and nonsense has ever avoided social and cultural collapse. Science is not the only prerequisite to advancement, but advancement is impossible without it.
If you receive the foolish email described above, shake your head sadly as you realize the dearth of scientific understanding that makes such absurdity credible. And then vow to do what you can to promote a return to at least a basic grasp of science amongst your people.
Va i luce.
Good evening. I am ArKay. Our brother Bob asked us to comment on this news item.
We have no specific name for the planet or the system in which it is found, since it is of little scientific interest to us. The planet, which is approximately 1.837 times the mass of Jupiter, is in a bizarre orbit around the star. It is retrograde with respect to the three other planets of the system, and its orbit is tilted almost 15° to the others. Our best guess is that it was captured in a close encounter with another system hundreds of millions of years ago, although we have found no system in its projected historical path that is obviously missing a planet.
The other three planets include another gas giant slightly smaller than Neptune and two rocky "terrestrial" worlds, one about 1.74 times the size of Earth and one about 0.83 times the size of Mars. Neither of those two are within the star's habitable zone, neither has an atmosphere, and neither has any detectable internal activity. They are just dead rocks orbiting a nondescript star in your constellation of Cygnus.
The only remarkable thing about the HAT-7-P system is the ability of your Kepler probe to make such amazingly precise measurements of a planet around a star 1018.94 light years from your world. Your scientific abilities continue to impress us greatly. More than ever we are driven to rid your world of the dangerous influence of Omegan control. And there is progress on that front, that we will relate at a future time.
For now, we again commend your scientists for their brilliant achievements in so many fields. Your world has a glorious future with the Alliance if you can discard the destructive thinking that seems to be undermining your societies and your cultures. We of the Alliance can only remove the negative influences from outside of Earth. We can do nothing to change your minds and hearts. That must come from within you.
Look up into the night sky, my brothers and sisters of Earth. That is where your future lies. Do not be content to confine yourselves to your little world, beautiful though it is. There are wonders "out there" that are beyond your wildest imaginings. And there are people waiting to greet you in love and light and welcome you into the community of Alliance worlds.
As William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." There are indeed! Va i luce.
Good evening. I am ArKay. Our brother Bob brought this article to my attention.
The aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.
The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
That might seem be be rather negative and alarmist advice. However, where the myriad "channeled" entities are concerned, it is in fact quite sound. Despite the endless output flowing from the "channels" who are regaling you with verbose, "New Age" piffle, Earth is NOT surrounded by millions of extradimensional "lightships" crewed by golden-haired gods. The best advice that we can offer is to treat the vague, lofty, jargon-laden messages with the attitude of "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware). We have determined that with very few exceptions, those who are responsible for actual "channeled" communications do not have Earth's best interest at heart.
You may "take this to the bank": any purported space being who tells you that you are responsible for fighting the forces of darkness is lying to you. Such an action would be at best folly, and at worst suicidal to you as individuals and as a species. The Omegans, our primary reason for being on Earth, are the most hostile and most deeply entrenched group. However, they are not alone.
Your world is rich in minerals and transferric metals that are not common across the galaxy. You are a prime target for species and cultures that want what you have. There are those among them who would not hesitate to move in and take over were it not for the dissuading effect of the Alliance and the Confederation. In the absence of the interstellar thugs option, they have long since developed far more subtle and deceptive tactics to convince species to "coöperate" with them for the alleged good of their worlds. Only too late do they discover that they have sold their souls to the devil, as it were.
Therefore, be very cautious of aliens bearing gifts in exchange for surrendering your birthright in the name of an illusion of peace. When you read channelings that are full of pretentious verbiage, buzzwords and mantras that seem to be hopeful and encouraging but that actually say nothing definite, be cautious. If they are from extraterrestrial sources (many are not), the people on the other end of the channel wire are not here to help your world. They are out to seduce you into holding your hands out for the shackles.
Va i amas eso luce!
© 2010 Robert P. Renaud -- all rights reserved