High Strangeness by Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Arkadiusz Jadczyk The High Strangeness of Dimensions, and the Process of Alien Abduction Part I by Laura Knight-Jadczyk Part II by Arkadiusz Jadczyk Part I Almost thirty years ago, I received my first formal training in hypnosis. Over the years, I not only sought out additional training, I employed this skill on behalf of many troubled individuals. Until 1994, I had never encountered what is popularly known as an "abductee" - that is, an individual claiming to have been abducted by alleged aliens. I have to admit that when I did, it presented certain problems both in terms of having a well-established technique to deal with it, as well as my own categories of what is or is not possible. I often tell people in a sort of joking way: of all the people who never wanted to know anything about aliens and UFOs, I deserve a place at the head of the line. Very few people really understand how deeply serious this remark is. When I opened the door to consider the possibility - quite remote as I thought - of the possibility of "other worldly" visitors, life as I knew it ended. That was eleven years ago. But then, a completely new life was born from the ashes. And so, here I am producing a book about UFOs and aliens. The road from there to here has been difficult, to understate the matter, and complicated by all the High Strangeness that seems to surround the subject. The term "high strangeness" is attributed to Dr. J. Allen Hynek who addressed the United Nations on the subject of UFOs on November 27, 1978 in the following way: Mr. Chairman, there exists today a world-wide phenomenon... indeed if it were not world-wide I should not be addressing you and these representatives from many parts of the world. There exists a global phenomenon the scope and extent of which is not generally recognized. It is a phenomenon so strange and foreign to our daily terrestrial mode of thought that it is frequently met by ridicule and derision by persons and organizations unacquainted with the facts. [...] I refer, of course, to the phenomenon of UFOs... Unidentified Flying Objects... which I should like to define here simply as "any aerial or surface sighting, or instrumental recording (e.g., radar, photography, etc.) which remains unexplained by conventional methods even after competent examination by qualified persons." You will note, Mr. Chairman, that this definition says nothing about little green men from outer space, or manifestations from spiritual realms, or various psychic manifestations. It simply states an operational definition. A cardinal mistake, and a source of great confusion, has been the almost universal substitution of an interpretation of the UFO phenomenon for the phenomenon itself. This is akin to having ascribed the Aurora Borealis to angelic communication before we understood the physics of the solar wind. Nonetheless, in the popular mind the UFO phenomenon is associated with the concept of extra-terrestrial intelligence and this might yet prove to be correct in some context. [...] We have on record many tens of thousands of UFO reports... they include extremely intriguing and provocative accounts of strange events experienced by highly reputable persons... events which challenge our present conception of the world about us and which may indeed signal a need for a change in some of these concepts. [...] Mr. Chairman, any phenomenon which touches the lives of so many people, and which engenders puzzlement and even fear among them, is therefore not only of potential scientific interest and significance but also of sociological and political significance, especially since it carries with it many implications of the existence of intelligences other than our own. [...] Speaking then for myself as an astronomer, and I believe for many of my colleagues as well, there is no longer any question in my mind of the importance of this subject. [...] Mr. Chairman, I have not always held the opinion that UFOs were worthy of serious scientific study. I began my work as Scientific Consultant to the U.S. Air Force as an open skeptic, in the firm belief that we were dealing with a mental aberration and a public nuisance. Only in the face of stubborn facts and data similar to those studied by the French commission... have I been forced to change my opinion.[...] The UFO phenomenon, as studied by my colleagues and myself, bespeaks the action of some form of intelligence... but whence this intelligence springs, whether it is truly extra-terrestrial, or bespeaks a higher reality not yet recognized by science, or even if it be in some way or another a strange psychic manifestation of our own intelligence, is much the question. We seek your help, Mr. Chairman, in assisting scientists, and particularly those already associated with the many formal and informal investigative organizations around the world, by providing a clearing house procedure whereby the work already going on globally can be brought together in a serious, concentrated approach to this most outstanding challenge to current science. I would like to draw your attention to particular remarks made by Dr. Hynek in the passage quoted above: ...a global phenomenon ... so strange and foreign to our daily terrestrial mode of thought... it carries with it many implications of the existence of intelligences other than our own ... [It] bespeaks the action of some form of intelligence... but whence this intelligence springs, whether it is truly extra-terrestrial, or bespeaks a higher reality not yet recognized by science, or even if it be in some way or another a strange psychic manifestation of our own intelligence, is much the question.. These remarks address the "High Strangeness" factor. "High strangeness" describes those UFO cases that are not only peculiar but that can often be utterly absurd. In some cases, there are events before, during, and after the "sighting proper" imbued with elements of time and space distortion, bizarre synchronicities, strange states of consciousness, beings that act absurd, strange ‘creatures’ associated with the sighting, but not necessarily part of the sighting, anomalous phone calls, electronic glitches, paranormal events including poltergeist type activity, and what are popularly known as MIB - Men in Black. French scientist, Jacques Vallee writes in a paper about High Strangeness: A primary objection to the reality of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena events among scientists is that witnesses consistently report objects whose seemingly absurd behavior "cannot possibly" be related to actual phenomena, even under extreme conditions. [...] Skeptics insist that superior beings, celestial ambassadors or intelligent extraterrestrial (ETI) visitors simply would not perpetrate such antics as are reported in the literature. In one case, a farmer in Minnesota, Mr. Simonton, claimed that a craft hovered in his barnyard and strange swarthy oriental looking men offered him a jug which he filled with water and they gave him pancakes. Dr. Hynek had the little cakes analyzed and found they lacked any salt content. French Scientist Jacques Vallee noted that saltless cakes are often a feature of fairy myths. Another case was that of a Belgian farmer who saw a UFO land in his field. He approached the craft and a small "alien" came up to him and asked him for the time! The farmer replied with the requested information. The alien told him he was wrong and pointed a wand at him which paralyzed him until the alien had departed in his craft. When the authorities investigated the case, they found a circle of destroyed flora on the landing site, and it was reported that even the soil was damaged from something like extreme heat exposure. When you read enough raw data from the many thousands of cases, you get the deep impression that the witnesses are telling the truth about what they have experienced. Why would a couple of farmers make up such ridiculous, nonsensical stories? Testimony was obtained to show their mental stability and competence. They never made any money from their stories, and they certainly weren’t after fame. In fact, they suffered more from telling their stories than if they had just kept quiet. Such cases are not isolated. There are many with such bizarre elements. Something is certainly happening to these people, and it is something that has both physical and psychological components. Nevertheless, this High Strangeness factor is a problem because it’s all too easy to dismiss or ignore such "reports" because of these ridiculous claims. One has to wonder if this "High Strangeness" isn’t deliberate - and for that very reason. This brings us to consider the signal to noise factor. Dr. Hynek wrote in a paper presented at the AIAA 13th Aerospace Sciences Meeting Pasadena, Calif., January 20-22, 1975, entitled "The Emerging Picture of the UFO Problem": But one element that is common to all scientific endeavor is the problem of signal-to-noise ratio; in the UFO phenomenon this problem is a major one. The UFO problem is, initially, a signal-to-noise problem. The noise is, and has been, so great that the existence of a signal has been seriously questioned. Isaac Asimov, whom no one could accuse of lacking in imagination, writes: "Eyewitness reports of actual space ships and actual extraterrestrials are, in themselves, totally unreliable. There have been numerous eyewitness reports of almost everything that most rational people do not care to accept - of ghosts, angels, levitation, zombies, werewolves, and so on... The trouble is, that whatever the UFO phenomenon is, it comes and goes unexpectedly. There is no way of examining it systematically. It appears suddenly and accidentally, is partially seen, and then is more or less inaccurately reported. We remain dependent on occasional anecdotal accounts". (From the December 14, 1974 issue of TV Guide, a media magazine with a very great circulation and hence powerful in forming public opinion.) Here we see a very important part of the UFO problem, that of the presentation of data to men of science, and to men, like Asimov and others who excel in writing about science. Scientific efforts can be seriously hampered if the popular image of a subject is grossly misleading. Funds can be curtailed and good men of science who wish to give time to the subject are apt to face misrepresentation whenever their work receives any public attention. Ball lightning is just as much an unknown as the UFO phenomenon, yet scientists can openly discuss these "balls of light" but are likely to be censured if they talk about similar unidentified lights which last much longer, are brighter, and move over greater distances, but are labeled UFOs. Proper presentation of the UFO phenomenon to the media may not seem an integral part of the UFO problem, per se, but its effects loom large. The signal-to-noise aspect of the UFO problem is aggravated to a high degree because the signal is a totally unexpected signal, and represents an entirely new set of empirical observations which do not fit into any existing framework in any of the accepted scientific disciplines. One may even contemplate that the signal itself signals the birth of a new scientific discipline. I return to the out-of-hand dismissal of the UFO phenomenon by persons like Isaac Asimov, in part, because of the poor presentation of the data to such persons. This is an important facet of the UFO problem itself and must be taken into account if we are to make any progress with the study of the signal. An analogy may be useful here: In the isolation of radium, Mme. Curie was obliged to work through tons of pitchblende to obtain a minuscule amount of radium. Yet there was no question of the signal in the "pitchblende noise". The radioactivity of the pitchblende was unquestioned. Let us suppose that instead there had been a rumor - an old wive’s tale, or an alchemist’s story - that there existed a miraculous unknown element which could be used in the transmutation of elements, and which had miraculous healing powers and other exotic properties. Would any scientist, on the basis of such an alchemist’s tale, have done what Mme. Curie did to lift the signal out of the noise of tons of pitchblende? Hardly. Mme. Curie knew that there was a signal - it wasn’t a rumor. And although the labor was immense, there was a definite, scientifically accepted methodology for separating the signal from the noise. Now, in the UFO problem we did not know at the start that there was a signal - there were merely tales, unacceptable to scientists as a body. Only those of us, through a long exposure to the subject, or motivated by a haunting curiosity to work in the field and to get our hands dirty with the raw data, came to know there was a signal. We know that we cannot find a trivial solution to the problem, i.e., a common sense solution that the phenomenon is either entirely a matter of misidentification, hallucinations, and hoaxes, or a known phenomenon of nature, e.g., of a meteorological nature. We know that there exists a subset of UFO reports of high strangeness and high witness credibility for which no one - and I emphasize - no one, has been able to ascribe a viable explanation. But the Isaac Asimovs and the trained scientists, as well as large segments of the public, do not know this. And we cannot expect them to know this unless we present data to them properly and thus provide motivation to study the subject. We who have worked in the UFO field are somewhat in the position of Einstein who wrote to Arnold Sommerfeld in response to Sommerfeld’s skepticism of the General Theory of Relativity: "You will accept the General Theory of Relativity when you have studied it. Therefore I will not utter a word in its defense." Emotional defense of the UFO phenomenon is pointless; the facts, properly presented, must speak for themselves. With the noise level so high, and with the popular interpretation of UFOs as visitors from outer space rather than simply what their initials stand for, Unidentified Flying Objects - an unidentified phenomenon whose origin we do not know - it is very difficult for one to be motivated to study the subject. The noise in the UFO problem is two-fold. There is the obvious noise, and also the more "sophisticated" noise, which might even be part of the signal. The obvious noise is akin to that well known to any scientist. An astronomer recognizes the noise of errors of observation, of instrumental errors, or that introduced by atmospheric distortion, by photon statistics, etc. In our problem the noise is likewise comprised of errors of observation (though to a much greater degree), but also to wishful thinking, deliberate substitution of interpretation of an event for the event itself, as, "I saw a space ship last night" for "I saw a light in the sky last night", and the totally extraneous noise of the unbalanced imaginations of the pseudo-religious fanatics who propagate unfounded stories and who uncritically accept anything and everything that appeals to their warped imaginations. [...] The question of whether the UFO phenomenon is a manifestation of some type of intelligence, whether extraterrestrial, "meta-terrestrial", or indeed some aspect of our own, is a critical one. Certainly, in those close encounter cases in which creatures or occupants, ostensibly the pilots of the craft, are reported, intelligent behavior of some sort seems obvious. Even if the occupants are robots, a more distant intelligence is implied. The almost universally reported response to detection by these occupants is an important part of the picture; upon detection the creatures are reported to disappear quickly and take off. Except in certain cases, there appears to be no desire for any involvement with the human race. [...] Given the elements of the present picture of the UFO phenomenon, it is clear that any viable hypothesis that meets these picture elements satisfactorily will be, according to present views, "far out". There have been other times in the history of science when striking departures from classical concepts were necessary. Since new hypotheses must in some way use present knowledge as a springboard, it is a sobering thought to contemplate that the gap between the springboard of the known and a viable UFO hypothesis might even be so great as to prevent the formulation of an acceptable hypothesis at present. Thus, for example, only a century ago, an inconsequential period of time in total history, the best scientific minds could not have envisioned the nuclear processes which we now feel certain take place in the deep interiors of stars. The question of energy production on the sun capable of maintaining the sun’s prodigious outflow of energy for hundreds of millions of years - a time period demanded by the fossil history millions of years - was simply not answerable by any hypothesis conceivable to the scientists of a century ago. It is indeed sobering, yet challenging, to consider that the entire UFO phenomenon may be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg in a signaling an entirely new domain of the knowledge of nature as yet totally unexplored, as unexplored and as unimagined as nuclear processes would have been a century ago. Dr. Hynek is often referred to as the father of rigorous scientific UFO investigation. He was a scientific consultant for the Air Force’s UFO investigation, Project Bluebook which later research shows to have been intended to debunk the subject. But after studying so many credible cases, Dr. Hynek was to go on to found the Center For UFO Studies (CUFOS). He also invented the classification for UFO sightings, terming the phrase ‘Close Encounter.’ He is the author of the landmark UFO book, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Study. Dr. Hynek served as director of CUFOS until his passing in 1986. Regarding Hynek’s idea that we may be dealing with "an entirely new domain of the knowledge of nature", his friend and associate, Jacques Vallee has interesting comments to make: [...] current hypotheses are not strange enough to explain the facts of the phenomenon, and the debate suffers from a lack of scientific information. Indeed, from the viewpoint of modern physics, our Cosmic Neighborhood could encompass other (parallel) universes, extra spatial dimensions and other time-like dimensions beyond the common 4-dimensional spacetime we recognize, and such aspects could lead to rational explanations for apparently "incomprehensible" behaviors on the part of entities emerging into our perceived continuum. As it attempts to reconcile theory with observed properties of elementary particles and with discoveries at the frontiers of cosmology, modern physics suggests that mankind has not yet discovered all of the universe’s facets, and we must propose new theories and experiments in order to explore these undiscovered facets. This is why continuing study of reported anomalous events is important: It may provide us with an existence theorem for new models of physical reality. Much of the recent progress in cosmological concepts is directly applicable to the problem: Traversable wormholes (3-dimensional hypersurface tunnels) have now been derived from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (Morris and Thorne, 1988; Visser, 1995). In particular, it has been shown that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity does not in any way constrain spacetime topology, which allows for wormholes to provide traversable connections between regions within two separate universes or between remote regions and/or times within the same universe. Mathematically it can also be shown that higher-dimensional wormholes can provide hypersurface connections between multidimensional spaces (Rucker, 1984; Kaku, 1995). Recent quantum gravity programs have explored this property in superstring theory, along with proposals to theoretically and experimentally examine macroscopic-sca… truncated (50,104 more characters in archive)