This time, I’m taking a break from “The Promise of Controlled Nuclear Fusion” series to focus on one aspect of the “They Are Out There” hypothesis that increasing numbers of people from a wide range of disciplines are now seriously considering.

This hypothesis, which we might describe as “TAOT”, has it that extraterrestrial beings have arrived in at least the vicinity of Earth and are, at the least, actively observing us and the Earth itself. Some also contend that they have been doing this for many decades, centuries or even millennia and, further, that they may have played a very active role in our history, even to the extent of assisting the building of the pyramids and other stone megaliths, supposedly using anti-gravity. Others claim to have been physically abducted and probed.

But it would be fair to say that most people who believe in TAOT have actually seen what they believe to be an alien craft. At this point, I should repeat the “5% Theory”. This has it that 95% of all sightings have simple or, at least, scientifically reasonable explanations. So here we are talking planes (including drones and man-made experimental craft), helicopters, weather balloons, Chinese lanterns, birds, super refraction (aka mirages), meteorites, Venus, hoaxes and many other sources of UFO reports.

All the above still leave 5% of observations that are very difficult to explain and especially when many of the observers are highly trained military pilots. And there may well be more in this category, were it not for the fact that many of these pilots are afraid to report the encounters for fear of ridicule, demotion or even dismissal. That is certainly the case in the USA, although some other countries are more open. All these points can, of course, be googled and discussed further at length in other forums.

In any event, the main purpose of this post is to contribute what I believe to be a previously ignored point. It occurred to me in response to a claim by sceptics that there are, nowadays, fewer cases of UFO’s being sighted, photographed or videoed, apparently exploring the planet’s remote and less remote regions. This despite the ever-increasing ubiquity of mobile phone cameras and videos.

I’m not entirely sure about the accuracy of that claim in the first instance but, conceding it for the sake of argument, its underlying assumption is that the ET’s, if they exist, would surely still be hovering around, exploring, mapping and analysing the Earth and its inhabitants in an ongoing, unbroken sequence.

But this claim ignores what, to me, is an obvious new factor – the Internet! The ETs (yes – if they exist!) would find tapping into the Internet an extremely trivial task compared with that of navigating interstellar distances, nullifying mass itself and all the other highly advanced technologies they would need to have mastered in order just to be “out there” in the first place!

So if “they” are out there, they would now have all the Internet access that we also have. Thus they could read all the online news, browse Wikipedia, watch YouTube, Google any question and generally become totally informed and up-to-date on everything known to any and all of us humans!

So, I contend that from about 20 years ago “they” would no longer need to explore and analyse the Earth, nor the extent of our knowledge –  because we are doing it for them and openly recording it! No more exploratory flights would need to be made, with perhaps the occasional exception to cross-check some of our own more patchy information. Neither would “they” any longer need to abduct hapless people and probe their insides as they are also alleged to have done in the pre-internet past.

One final point would be that “they” might still be locked out of some of the more classified information that the super-powers posses. However, that would need to assume that our ET friends could not match the abilities of our best human hackers who, we are given to understand, have indeed penetrated many of these databases. As the philosopher, McEnroe might say of that highly unlikely possibility: “You cannot be serious!!”.

P W Power

April 2018