Extraterrestrial Guests
By Steven J. Grisafi, PhD.
The Preliminary Assessment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena is not as sanguine regarding the possibility that Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are the result visitations to Earth by extraterrestrial life forms as has been the commentary resulting from it among the pundits of news media. But the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is also neither sufficiently dismissive of the possibility such that it has spawned new legislation. Senator Kristin Gillibrand’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 has been praised for its effort to promote serious scientific inquiry meant to circumvent suspected obfuscation from the upper echelons of the military services regarding such matters. Yet I am at a loss to understand the lack of faith Senator Gillibrand, and others like her, have in the ability of the highest ranking military officers to assess the evidence accumulated by more junior officers. A skeptical public is led to suspect concealment of the truth regarding such matters which foments wild conjecture regarding visitations from outer space. With this essay I seek to put such conjecture to rest.
I debated this matter with a childhood friend during the just passed Thanksgiving holiday. When I suggested that our knowledge of the vicinity of our solar system within the Milky Way galaxy indicates that the distances extraterrestrial life would need to travel to reach Earth precluded visitation by any life form that we can imagine, he responded with the conjecture that some have made regarding travel across vast distances of the universe through gravitational wormholes. Such science fiction conjectures are unworthy of two highly educated engineers, which my friend and I are, but since my government seeks to throw tax-payer dollars at any boondoggle members of Congress can imagine, I thought it best to address the matter here and now.
Let me suggest that the reader view the 1944 motion picture starring Ray Milland, The Uninvited. In that film you will see depicted the only “life” form that one can imagine traversing a gravitational wormhole. Any such being could not be possessed of any matter because all mass entering a gravitational wormhole would be ground asunder until it vanished as a flash of electromagnetic radiation. The ghost depicted within the motion picture would be the only creature capable of traveling across galaxies through a wormhole. The extraterrestrial being would need to be composed solely of electromagnetic radiation. Nothing else can traverse a gravitational wormhole. So if we wish to pursue the conjecture that the observed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are the result of the activity of extraterrestrial life then we must expect that life to be organized electromagnetic radiation.
Is it possible that life can exist as nothing more than organized electromagnetic radiation? I don’t know and your guess is a good as mine. But if such is the case there are some things of which we can be certain. Any such life form would not require a spaceship to reach the Earth. It would simply propagate as a wave across interstellar space. Upon reaching Earth’s atmosphere it could conceivably be able to create sound by alternated heating of air molecules through interaction of its own electromagnetic radiation with that of the electron clouds of the air molecules so as to communicate with us through speech. I suppose one could go on and on with further conjecture of such possibilities. But why? Why can we not accept that all such Unidentified Aerial Phenomena can only be the result of either instrument malfunction, atmospheric illusion, or some other Earthlings with astonishingly more advanced scientific achievements than that of the American people? Where are such people and how could they have hidden their achievements from the rest of the world for so long?
This brings me to the second topic I discussed with my fellow engineer friend this passed Thanksgiving. I mentioned to him a news article I read reporting on the recent visit of the Director of Central Intelligence, William Burns, to Europe and the Ukraine. It was reported that Ambassador Burns had warned his counterpart within the Russian Federation that, if it should be demonstrated, that the Russian government is responsible for the Havana Syndrome suffered by American diplomats, there would be “consequences.” It was reported that Mr. Burns emphasized the reason being that the Havana Syndrome was the result of a deliberate effort to harm our personnel. I interpreted this reported rationale as indication that our intelligence services determined that the Havana Syndrome was not a consequence resulting from an effort to probe any electronic devices our personnel may have been carrying. But was the result of a direct effort to cause physical harm to the victim. To me this meant that our intelligence services concluded that the victims of the Havana Syndrome were not suffering from a probe by transverse electromagnetic radiation meant to read their electronic devices, but from longitudinal pressure waves. This clue, which I suspect the former diplomat William Burns inadvertently made public, leads me to believe we can now solve the mystery.
The Russians, the Communist Chinese, and the North Koreans have made no secret that they have been working on the development of hypersonic rockets. A hypersonic rocket is defined as one that can travel at speeds at least five times the speed of sound, Mach 5. The Russians make no secret of the success of their development having published videos of their successful hypersonic rocket launches. Recently, European news agencies reported that the Chinese succeeded in circumnavigating the globe with a test of their hypersonic rocket. The North Koreans have also made claims of successful tests. Having myself spent a few years as a graduate student in a fluid mechanics laboratory, I am aware that such development requires the careful design and crafting of a nozzle capable of accelerating gases to beyond sonic speeds. Upon achieving supersonic speed of a gas through the nozzle, a shock wave propagates from the throat of the nozzle. The Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans have been for many years crafting these nozzles so as to achieve hypersonic flight. It would be a simple task of dimensional analysis to create a miniature nozzle capable of being placed within a hand-held device. Knowing this, I find it quite plausible, and far more probable than the visitation of Earth by extraterrestrials, that some malignant entity has chosen to aim Mach 5 shock waves at American diplomats.