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Sept. 26, 2004 - Art Bell
02:51:15
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Dr. David Darling - Aliens in the Solar System
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Time Text
Music playing...
From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon,
wherever you may be in the universes of...
of Well, we're the universe, right?
25 time zones here in the world or so, and every single one of them covered like a great big warm blanket by this show, this program, Coast to Coast AM.
I'm Art Bell, honored from joining being with you for the weekend, and there's quite a bit of news to report, of course.
Gene, Which you're probably sick of hearing about, and the people in Florida are totally sick of all the way around.
Florida's fourth hurricane in six weeks piled on destruction, destruction on destruction.
And move the piles around in already ravaged areas Sunday, as you now know.
Slicing across Florida like a hot knife through butter.
And there's at least six dead in Florida now.
It was kind of a cruel rerun for many still trying to recover from the earlier hurricanes.
Gene came ashore in the same exact area hit three weeks ago by Hurricane Francis and then headed quickly for the Panhandle where 70,000 homes and businesses are still out of power even before Gene arrives.
They still don't have power and I'll tell you something.
They were saying last night, people might be out of power for three weeks.
Baby, you're out of power for three weeks and you know it.
We depend, in this modern world, a whole lot on power.
And when you don't have power, you've got sort of a casket inside your house.
That's about it.
Politically, Democratic presidential candidate Kerry arriving Sunday at a remote resort to practice for this week's debate.
You've got to always wonder how they do that.
They practice.
Do they go find the meanest Republican they can find, hire them, and have them just pepper Kerry with questions that he otherwise probably couldn't answer, and then you practice answering them?
I guess.
He did leave a quote with us as he disappeared in for practice.
Quote, I will never be a president who just says, mission accomplished.
I will get the mission accomplished, said Kerry, and went away to practice.
This is one you might want to note from the Associated Press, so mainstream stuff here, folks.
Headline, St.
Helens activity may signal explosion.
A strengthening series of earthquakes, we've been talking about those for a while, at Mount St.
Helens, has now prompted seismologists, in fact, today, to warn that the once devastated volcano may see a small explosion soon, The U.S.
Geological Survey issued a Notice of Volcanic Unrest in response to the swarm of hundreds of earthquakes that began on Thursday.
and on that note we'll break and be right back with the rest of the news as Mr. Harvey would say.
One of the family is gone.
One of the family, Bill Balance, who had a lot of controversy, you'll recall, with Dr. Laura.
And Bill and I go back a little ways.
He's dead at 85, age 85.
And I'm so sorry to hear it.
Another one of the old radio guys, gone, folks.
Bill Balance.
We had a kind of a competitive show and there were some fun years.
This is an interesting story from a couple of points of view.
Headline is, faulty oxygen supply threatens space crew.
Astronauts may have to abandon the space station later this year if a generator, an oxygen generator, cannot be repaired.
Yes, you cannot operate without oxygen.
Crew members may have to abandon the International Space Station late this year if astronauts can't somehow fix Already weeks old oxygen supply problems, according to NASA on Friday, while space program manager Bill Gerstenmaier said that NASA was a long way, his words, from making the unprecedented move.
The assessment reflected concerns over multiple attempts to figure out what's wrong with a Russian-made oxygen generator.
Something.
The station has a 162-day supply of backup oxygen.
If the Russians cannot launch an unmanned capsule by Christmas to replenish oxygen supplies, the astronauts could be recalled.
But that's only if the scientists and the two-man crew don't repair the generator.
Gerstenmaier said Friday, if for some reason we need to return the crew, we are prepared to return the crew at the right time.
Under that scenario, that station would remain empty perhaps for months.
From the Guardian, where you get a lot of your news that you don't get here.
A new super strain of the flu virus capable of triggering a global pandemic might emerge from East Asia, according to health officials.
Listen to this.
Scientists working at the World Health Organization fear the arrival of flu season in Asian countries could see the human flu virus merge with, up till now, a lethal less... No, make that.
A lethal strain of bird flu.
You've heard about that, right?
That's already in circulation, producing a more deadly flu virus that could rapidly infect humans.
Recent cases of flu in Thailand have been reported in areas already struggling to control the spread of bird flu.
That's a virus that mostly affects poultry, but has claimed the lives of at least four human beings in recent months.
Health officials warn that people living in regions where the viruses are circulating could catch both at once.
Raising the prospect of a new and highly virulent form of the flu emerging.
The reality, as his head of the WHO influenza program quoted here, the reality is that if these two viruses meet, they'll exchange genetic information and a new virus could emerge that's as pathogenic as the bird flu virus, but as infectious as human flu.
Yikes.
Does it seem to you that we are facing an increasing danger from Mother Nature with regard to what she's doing?
She's getting increasingly complex in trying to find new ways to even the balance out there.
And I don't think we need to help her because from the Arizona Daily Star, here's another headline.
Danger seen in plan to resurrect deadly 18 influenza virus.
Now that would be 1918, folks.
University of Washington scientists plan to infect monkeys with a killer flu virus grown from cells exhumed from the victims of the 1918 epidemic.
Now they of course hope the insight will gain Something in the nature of new information about why millions of people worldwide died from that flu strain, which led to development of better vaccines and drugs that may save lives in the future.
So that would be the upside to digging up the 1918 virus, which they have, and infecting Simeons with it.
Now, the downside Well, a skeptic, for example, of resurrecting and enlivening the 1918 flu virus said, it's rather critical to first make sure that we are adequately protected against creating a man-made pandemic.
Quote, this project could create a new bug that infects someone in the lab who then walks out at the very end of the day and literally kills tens of millions of people.
That was, let me see, Ed Hammond, Director of Biotechnology and Bioweapons Watchdog Organization.
Though Hammond said he could accept the noble intentions of the UW scientists, he noted that there are no national laboratory standards for dealing with this particular virus.
The lack of regulatory protection, says he, stems from the fact that the influenza is generally regarded as a fairly routine disease.
But this organism, the 1918 virus, is something else, said he.
It's very dangerous, and it's very easily spread.
So, what Mother Nature does not do, perhaps, we're working on now in labs.
A little environmental news?
Mussels.
Mussels.
Now, look at this.
They found mussels growing on the seabed about 1,300 kilometers.
That'd be about 800 miles from the North Pole, in what they're saying is a very likely sign of global warming.
The blue mussels, which normally favor the much warmer waters off France or the eastern U.S., were discovered last month off waters Near Norway, that are normally covered with ice most of the year, the climate is changing fast, said Georg Johnson, professor of the Norwegian University for Science and Technology, who was among experts who found these mussels were a very good indicator the climate is warming.
And if you look north or south in the world, that's where you'll see the climate changing quickly, very, very quickly.
Where there is normally ice, there is not ice anymore in many locations.
In fact, glaciers, once held up by a floating ice shelf off Antarctica, are now in the business of sliding off into the sea.
And they're going rather fast, according to scientists, on Tuesday.
Two separate studies from climate researchers and the space agency NASA, that's ours, show the glaciers are flowing into Antarctica's sea Freed by the 2002 breakup of the Larson B ice shelf.
So you see, that wasn't the end of it.
When Larson B went, that was but the beginning.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers said their satellite measurements suggest climate warming can lead to rapid sea level rise.
The teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, and NASA's Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt said, The findings also prove that ice shelves hold back glaciers.
Well, how about that?
We really didn't think there was much to Larsen B. Everybody said, oh, so what?
Well, ice shelves hold back glaciers.
Important post point.
Many teams of researchers are keeping a close eye on parts of Antarctica that they say are melting, steadily melting.
Large ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula have disintegrated in 1995 and then 2002 as a result of global warming, but these floating ice shelves didn't affect sea level as they melted.
Glaciers, on the other hand, do.
They rest on land, you see, and when they slide into the water, they instantly affect sea level.
Just like that.
And here's another one to worry about.
Glaciers in Antarctica are thinning faster than they did in the 1990s, and that was very fast back in the 90s.
Researchers have discovered, though, an unexpected folded section.
This is a folded section of ice beneath the ice cap.
Findings, they say, indicate the ice would be much less stable than they had thought previously.
Glaciers in West Antarctica are discharging 60% more ice into the sea than they are accumulating from snowfall.
That will have a very predictable result, right?
Think about it.
Sending off 60% more ice into the sea than they are accumulating.
So, just thought I had one more item and then we'll go to the phones.
Korea?
North Korea?
The United States and Japan have detected some signs that North Korea may be preparing to launch a ballistic missile with a range capable of hitting almost all of Japan.
Tokyo and Washington had detected the signs after analyzing data from reconnaissance satellites and radio traffic.
North Korean military vehicles, soldiers, possibly missile engineers were converging on several Good evening, Art.
It's Larry from Fort Lauderdale.
I wanted to comment about what you said about being stuck in a home with no power.
shortly. Long Card Line, you are on the air. Good evening.
Good evening, Art. It's Larry from Fort Lauderdale. Hello, Larry. I wanted to comment
about what you said about being stuck in a home with no power. That's fact. Last night we
escaped it with Gene in South Florida. There's about still 21,000 people in Broward
County in the Fort Lauderdale area that doesn't have power.
But in Hurricane Francis, I was out for like seven days, and I jotted down a few things that you take for granted and you don't really think about it.
It starts with the garage door opener.
When you go to push it, you realize that you've got to disengage it and lift it up by hand.
Right.
No TV, radio, no stove, no hot water, no lights, no refrigerator, washing machine.
But the biggest thing in South Florida is after a hurricane, it seems to be so hot.
It's the air conditioning that you actually miss the most.
Right.
Well, because it's very humid, of course, with the fresh rain on the ground that adds to it.
It's already humid anyway in Florida.
So yes, sir.
Basically, we have big caskets when the power goes off because we depend everything in the house just about depends on power.
It's true.
You start to feel like a fool when you start hitting light switches after the third day and you start to think about all the shows and all the guests that you've had on it.
You know, talk about sort of a doomsday scenario, and you start to look around and darken home.
There's some good parts.
Everything's very quiet.
There's no electromagnetic field, and you can pick up good radio stations, you know, a.m.
far away, but other than that, there's nothing nice about it.
It is hell, and you start to reflect on some of the guests that you've had that said, you know, we could be heading for that someday.
Well, I too, sir, thank you very much.
I listened to my own guests on this subject, and I don't know, it was a few years ago, I, one day I went and said, hun, I'm gonna try something.
I went out and threw off the master switch.
Came in the house.
And I probably have more electronics than just about anybody you know.
And so, for me, it was particularly dramatic.
But I mean, even the things, the very basic things that he just mentioned, I mean, it's an eerie, strange, quiescent sort of You know, stands the hair on the back of your neck up.
Kind of feeling to go into a house like that.
It's D-E-A-D Dead.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi Art.
This is Neil from San Diego.
Yes, Neil.
I wanted to talk about the track of the three hurricanes, Ivan, Francis, and Charlie, that I was looking at a website, and they stated that the tracks All followed a pattern through all the counties that were won by George Bush in the election in 2000.
And then up on top was a quote from a high-ranking general from the Pentagon, and I guess he said, to paraphrase, Something that the public should not rule out, that the Defense Department has the ability to control the weather, and so what I've come to the conclusion is that the people in the Pentagon might think that this
The present president is in bad taste, so to speak.
So the Pentagon, in a demonstration of power to the American people, and demonstrating their feelings about the current sitting president, just took those hurricanes over the exact counties that had gone for Bush.
Well, some things are a little bit too much of a stretch for even me to embrace.
So I'm not going to grab that one, but if you want to, you're welcome to it.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, how's it going?
It's going fine, sir.
Where are you?
I'm in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Welcome to the program.
What's up?
It's a great honor to be able to talk to you, Mr. Bell.
Thank you.
I know you have an interest in time traveling.
Just wanted to let you know I'm a time traveler.
You're a time traveler?
I've done it once, I would say.
Well, once, hey, once counts.
Travelers.
Once absolutely counts.
What was the manner of your travel?
Machine or...?
I'm on it right now.
You're on what?
My trip.
Actually being here at this time is my trip.
Oh, wonderful!
So you're here in 2004, and you came from whence?
in 2004 and you came from whence?
3030.
3030, 3030.
Well, boy, you've got just all kinds of things you could tell us, or... Oh, I... Or can you not tell us for fear that, you know, you would set off some sort of terrible time twist?
Well, um, to safeguard against that, they've come up with a lot of things.
Uh, I'm set up here, like, kind of like your radio station is, your seven-second delay.
Yes.
That's kind of like what I'm on.
And if I tried to say or do anything that it would influence anything in any way, then your handlers would bleep you out.
Like that.
Just like that.
And the large amount of money I put in as a safety feature will be gone.
Basically I would go home broke and go to jail.
So what are the kinds of things you can't talk about?
Basically anything.
But it's really cool to be able to talk to you anyway.
You mean you can't tell me... I mean, look, we've got a big presidential election coming up.
Now that's just a little bit into the future.
I mean, couldn't you give us some idea of what's going to happen?
Believe me, I'd love to, but...
but they'd be much better at the kind of trouble i'd idea and my little over like
that and i think i paid a lot of money to come on total bummer so
are you basically on a kind of a i don't know
but times long i've got a yet what i could have a big group
A seven-day... Hey, you know what?
You hold on for a minute, alright?
Alright.
You stay right there.
Remember, sir.
Chick, chick, chick, chick.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
I think it's time to get ready.
To realize just what I have found.
I have been on the hill, above my head.
It's all clear to me now.
My heart is...
It's all clear to me now.
Nothing but a heart is ever a thing.
But if the tears that fall away Keep a bad guy such a thing.
He's like me, oh why did I get him?
Nothing but a heart is ever a thing.
But if the tears that fall away Keep a bad guy such a thing.
He's like me, oh why did I get him?
Oh Man, these girls can belt out a song, can't they?
Alright, listen very closely.
The numbers are different on the weekend.
And here they are.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
775-727-1295. The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from East of the Rockies call toll-free at 800-824-727-1292.
From West of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
800-893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM
The year 3030.
Man, that's way ahead of 2525, 3030.
25, 30, 30. You'd think there'd be a little something he could tell us, would you?
Reminding you, if you would like to communicate with me, there are two methods to do so.
with me there are two methods to do so I am artbell, A-R-T-B-E-L-L, lowercase, at mindspring.com.
Art Bell at Minespring.com or Art Bell at AOL.com.
With that in mind, back to our time traveler, 3030.
Surely there must be... I just couldn't let you go without really trying here.
I mean, skirts!
Do skirts go up?
I'm sorry, does what now?
Skirts!
Are they up or down?
I mean, if you can't talk about the stock market, I doubt the world will crash in if you tell us how... For females?
Yes!
Yeah.
I don't even like that question.
I'm not allowed to talk about fashions at all.
I know, but um, I don't know.
Let me just say how, it's just really cool to be able to talk to you.
I mean, and uh, I've seen a lot of bands.
A lot of what?
Musical bands.
Uh, yes.
That's probably been one of the greatest things.
I mean, so in other words, you came back here to like go to concerts and stuff.
No, no, no.
I came back for a lot of reasons just to be here.
But I mean, that's been one of the coolest things.
I mean, could you imagine, like, you being able to go back and see Frank Sinatra in concert, or something like that, you know?
I'm not sure.
Well, no, okay, no, no, that's a fair analogy.
I'll accept that, yes.
Except for that, I think it's my mess-up, not theirs, that I was going to be able to see Elvis.
And I guess I'm a little late, from what I understand.
Well, yeah, you're late.
Yeah.
You're late, but I mean, one more little hop.
Can you even tell us, is it expensive to travel in time?
Yes, very expensive.
Relatively.
It's hard to make the transfer of money to, you know... The future currency.
Right, but basically I only have one chance in my lifetime for the amount of money I have.
This is it.
Sorry.
I have a great time in 2004 is all I can say.
Oh, I am.
Definitely one of the coolest things is driving a gas-powered car.
This thing in the world, I mean, I understand the damage they do and how dangerous and everything, but get out on the road and be able to... All that power, that power is fun, isn't it?
And you go wherever you want.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for the... Well, you didn't give us a peek into the future, really.
You just sort of...
Yeah.
Well, you seem to be enjoying being here in 2004.
East of the Rockies, you are on the air.
Hello.
Hey, Art Smiley.
Good honor to talk to you.
Well, I'm glad to have you.
Hey, I'm calling from Cleveland here, and I don't know what you heard about this, and I'm not getting much detail here.
Listen, I've been getting all these emails about something being up in Cleveland.
What the hell's going on in Cleveland?
All I know is, it's strange, only the station, which is TAM, which airs your show here, Yes.
the waiting report it was one afternoon talk show host and one of local news
channel yes anything but but on the last three days there have been uh... a
goofy green light in the air uh... which i think was
who they might it was cited and ever since then they're actually been at sixteen
fighter plane all over this
last three days and i don't know if there's a lot of money you're not the
only person who's I've had a lot of emails.
So, a goofy green light.
Can you get a little beyond goofy green light?
Well, what I saw that's quick, I haven't seen it myself, but what I saw on the news was that it was almost like a contrail, but it was a greenish, as I think the sun was setting.
So, it was kind of mixed with the orange and some clouds.
It was just a green light looking like a long trail, almost like a contrail, but it was green.
And ever since then, we had the Turnpike shutdown for a couple hours.
I think it was Wednesday afternoon.
There was military moving stuff.
Friends of mine have at least seen that.
Sixteen fighter jets flying around for the last two and a half days.
And after that, today was kind of calm here on Sunday.
But other than that, I don't know what the heck's going on.
I don't know if it was a threat to the power plants or if this was actually a UFO that was sighted out here.
Nobody's saying nothing.
Well, I appreciate the call and I would look for more on this topic.
Now, the reason I took that is because, indeed, there have been weird things going on in Cleveland.
As you mentioned, I think one of their local talk show hosts has talked some about it.
So, I'd like to hear more from Cleveland.
Wester the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yes, hi.
Hello.
You know, the apocalypse is an allegory that recycles.
And I think that the recycling period is 300 years.
And I think that the last, we're in the one that started with the French Revolution.
I think it ended, the last one ended with our revolution.
But the biblical apocalypse would be more significant than a 300 year event, I think.
No, I'm saying that the biblical apocalypse, if you examine it, bad things happen.
In a cycle.
Every 300 years.
Theologians believe that it's recyclical.
So I believe that... Well, what happened 300 years ago that you would classify as an apocalypse?
Well, I'm saying that the end of the... it was apocalyptic.
Alright, what apocalyptic thing happened 300 years ago?
Well, I think that that one started in the 1500s with the breakup of the church.
And then we go up to around 1800, and we have the French Revolution.
Okay, but again, sir, thank you, but, you know, I don't... I don't know, the word apocalypse, to me, and apocalyptic in the biblical sense, carry a much heavier meaning than the things that you named, you know, wars come and go, and I don't think they're generally referred to as apocalypses.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air, hello.
Hello.
Hi.
How are you doing?
It's a pleasure to talk to you, sir.
I've listened to you for about seven years now.
My father died about ten years ago, and he told me a great many things about the aliens.
He was stationed on a White Sands Air Force Base.
Would you turn your radio off, please?
Yes, I can.
Okay, wonderful.
That's something everybody should do when they get on the air because of our delay.
No, off, sir.
Turned it up, actually.
Great.
There you go.
Go all the way off.
So what did he tell you?
Well, I remember as a kid, about seven years old, and we watched the movie, The Day of the Earth Stood Still.
And he goes, son, do you really want to know about the aliens?
And I said, yes.
And he told me about the greys.
And he said, you know, son, how about the eyes that are black?
He said, no, they're contact lenses that they wear because they come from a very dark part of space.
How is your dad in a position to know these things?
Well, he was a retired Air Force colonel.
He was stationed down in White Sands Air Force Base in the 40s.
Right, and worked with this sort of thing, apparently.
Well, he was a radar operator.
I'm kind of nervous right now.
No, I understand.
He was a radar operator.
Right.
I wonder how that would bring him into contact with alien beings.
Well, he was in Korea, and he was all of a sudden Moved up to the radar domes in Canada and he told me he was like demoted because he was kind of hushed up.
And he said... You're telling me this happened in Canada?
No, no, no.
This was after that.
But he was very...
Okay, I'm kind of nervous.
Just take a nice deep breath.
This happened at White Sands, is that what you're saying?
Um, no.
He was stationed at White Sands Air Force Base.
Okay, where did this happen?
Um, he said he was called out to secure an unsecure location, um, probably around, you know, 1947.
That's what I gather, 1947, because he was in there in the 40s.
in 1947 because he was in there in the 40s and he told me that the aliens are real.
All right, sir.
That's what I'm trying to say.
I think I've got that part.
Thank you very much.
And maybe what you ought to do is, rather than trying to get it out on a national talk show where you're obviously really nervous, is to, you know, write me a detailed email.
Because you obviously had more that you wanted to say.
I understand you get nervous when you get on the radio.
It's just a sort of a hazard of suddenly finding yourself on the air like this person.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi, this is Wanda from North Carolina.
Hi, Wanda.
And about several weekends ago, right at the end of the show, I was called and I was telling you about the Tesla.
Oh, that's right, yes.
Remember?
Yeah, oh, of course.
And so, what I did was I sent you an email, but you probably get so many you didn't get it.
Unless it said something like Tesla box or something that would catch my attention.
It's possible I missed it because I don't recall and I was looking for it.
Yeah, well, it didn't come back.
It came the next day.
Alright, well, let's forget about that.
Tell me about the Tesla box.
Well, what I had done, I opened a medical bookstore in the area.
And there had not been but one in the state of North Carolina.
And about three months after I had opened, I first got interested in pyramids and things like that.
How do you know it's a Tesla box?
A man brought it into my store.
A very strange little man.
And he asked me if I knew what it was.
And I told him no.
And so he asked me if I could find out what it was because it had something to do with an old scientist.
So liking Einstein and all that, I said yes.
So he left it with me for quite a while and I guess it was the next day that I actually opened it up and inspected it and everything and it was like a suitcase.
And it was, you could tell it was very old because it had very refined leather like they used to make these suitcases on the travel trains.
Sure.
Sure.
I understand.
Under the handle, um, it was thicker than, wide than the width of it.
And under the handle that you would hold it was an oval plate that was engraved, um, with Nicole Tesla's name.
Oh, my.
A year.
That would do it all right.
And it also had the name of the machine.
And that name was?
The Violet Flame.
The Violet Flame.
Flame.
The Violet Flame.
When I opened the box, it was very beautiful velvet.
Like, really old, soft, soft velvet.
Right.
And you could tell that it had something under it that was making you know, the wood pieces that were making the impressions
for these tools to lay.
All right, there were five different tools, and they were all made out of some glass.
The strangest shape, it did have a switch in it and a cord.
I remember looking at that cord that would plug into the wall, the electric.
all right so you you tried to find out ma'am i i presume what this box was
You consulted with some people in the time you had?
I asked everybody, and only once I asked a fellow who had studied a lot of Nicole Tesla.
Then I got into it, and I studied more, and I got the Colorado Springs papers, and you know, just everything I could get my hands on.
And we couldn't figure out what it was, except for it must have been There were some samples in those big, if you've ever seen those volumes of the Colorado Springs papers that he did, that showed a lot of his inventions.
I used it on myself.
I plugged it in.
Whoa!
You plugged it in?
To the wall?
Yes.
It had a 110 volt plug on it?
Yes, but like the kind that my Grandmother had on an old iron fan that was bent on the floor.
I remember those plugs.
Believe me, but they'd still work today.
So what happened?
Well, there was an arc in it that went from this little box that had, it actually was a dial.
It went and flipped like a light switch.
It was a little dial.
Yes, ma'am.
And it had an arc, a purple arc.
That was really more the color of violet, like in a rainbow.
That went from that little box, and I was holding one of these little instruments.
The particular one I had was shaped like a long spoon you might stir iced tea with.
Right.
But the end of the spoon was molded in a very flat on the inside of it.
Okay, so we're going to have to rush to this, but what happened?
Well, I rubbed it across my hands, and I could just feel all this tingling and sensation.
You could see all these arcs of light.
It was the strangest thing, kind of like the fiber optics of today.
And the odor on my hands would not go away for about four weeks.
Any other effects?
Yes.
After that, I had this tingling in the palm of my hands, and I could I want to call it laying on hands or whatever, but a lot of heat would generate out of my hands.
Understood.
I take it the man came and retrieved his Tesla box?
He did.
I wish I had taken a picture of it.
I wish I had too.
I so often think of it, and I gave him all the information I had, but they weren't all, and until you said they were all retrieved, I did not know that they had tried to scoop them all up.
And was very naive because I just opened the store about some of these things.
Well, that's incredible.
So a lady opens a store.
She's delivered a box from Nikola Tesla.
And she uses it.
Brave.
I must say, brave.
And then she ends up with some sort of powers to heal.
Or at least the heat that's normally associated with the laying on of hands.
It was a phrase she used.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello, you sound like you're at the bottom of a barrel.
Pick up that phone.
I'm on a speakerphone.
I know, pick it up.
California.
Pick it up.
What?
Alright, now we'll go.
The speakerphone doesn't work from Death Valley?
Well, speakerphones don't work from up here in the high desert.
So anyway, what's up?
No, you're back on the speakerphone again.
Get off that.
Sorry.
Alright.
Oh, anyway, I thought I'd call in and confess that I'm a time traveler.
Did you say you were calling from Tacopa?
Yeah, your backyard.
Yes, my backyard indeed.
And you're listening to... K-9.
K-9.
The king of the airwaves.
And you're telling me you're a time traveler, right?
Yes, since 2006.
From 2006?
Yes.
Do you have any rules that prohibit you from disclosing stuff?
None whatsoever.
I have a mission, and I am willing to tell you some things about my mission.
I was sent to witness the Watergate conspiracy.
Boy, did they miss.
Well, you know, we had to make sure we got it first hand.
So you mean you've been here since Watergate?
Well, you're kind of stuck, aren't you?
No, no, no.
I've got until July 4th, 2006 to accomplish my mission.
Which is?
To tie up some loose ends in preparation for the paradigm shift that was kick-started by the inevitable 9-1-1 attack on the heart and belly of the beastly Bush conspiracy.
There's going to be a what?
Some sort of revelation that comes to everybody?
Well, no, this is just what we know in the year 2006.
There's government's business of conspiracy.
Well, you were saying that there's some sort of paradigm shift that's going to happen.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It's a quickening effect, you know, that visceral quiver that we all feel.
I've got news for you.
That one's already underway.
Yeah, it's happening, isn't it?
Quickly.
Loose ends need to be tied up.
Hence the name, the quickening.
All right, dear.
I gotta run.
Thank you very much.
We're gonna be talking to an astronomer in a moment.
And he thinks we're looking in the wrong place for aliens, if they are here.
Hangin' down around her knees All the cats in district tees Prayin' for a little breeze Her long, long hair Falling down across the rocks
Hiding all the ladies charms Lady Godiva
She found fame and made her name Hollywood director came into town
And said to her Lady Godiva
Lady Godiva Lady Godiva
Lady Godiva Take a ride?
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Incidentally, the webcam shot up there is the infamous Yeti, of course.
In a moment, I'll throw another one up there that was kind of cute.
Caught that also earlier today.
He's a very photogenic little devil, and he knows it, too!
Alright, coming up, this has the potential to be a Class 3 type show.
David Darling is an astronomer.
A British astronomer.
He's got a PhD from the University of Manchester, England.
He is author of more than 40 books on subjects ranging from life in the universe to life after death, and from cosmology to consciousness.
My kind of guy.
His latest book is the Universal Book of Astronomy, a 600-page A to Z of astronomy.
His website, The Worlds of David Darling, tackles everything from silicon-based life to UFOs.
Listen to the books he's written.
The Universal Book of Mathematics, that was a novel, just kidding, to Life Everywhere, the Maverick Science of Astrobiology, to the Complete Book of Space Flight, from Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity, to his latest, I presume, the Universal Book of Astronomy, from Andromeda Galaxy to Zone of Avoidance.
That alone jacks up a big question.
Zone of avoidance.
What is a zone?
Is that like the forbidden zone or something?
Well, that's one of the questions we'll ask.
But what we're going to explore with this astronomer is the fact that while he thinks we may be looking for life in all the wrong places, and he's got some thoughts about it, in a moment As promised, here is David Darling.
David, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Art.
It's great to have you.
Remember to stay good and close to the phone because of the nature of phones.
Okay.
David, you are and have been an astronomer, obviously.
Pretty impeccable credentials.
For how long?
Well, I qualified in astronomy back in the 70s and did some research.
The past almost 30 years now, I've been actually writing on astronomy, so combining the two.
I'm a freelance writer and work in astronomy itself.
Oh, when you say working astronomy, you mean behind a telescope, right?
No, I don't, actually.
You know, people think that I can, you know, look at any star in the sky and tell you what it is and tell you what's happening next month, but I'm not really a sky-at-night guy.
I'm more of a theoretician, I would say.
Oh, that's interesting.
I used to have a telescope when I was a kid, but I haven't had one for many years.
So, you would call yourself then a, um, a what?
A theoretical astronomer?
Yeah, yeah, and I kind of like to look at the big picture, you know?
That's why I didn't go into research in a big way, is that I like to, I like to kind of float around and look at the big questions, and even get into philosophical issues, as you know from my books.
So, in research you tend to focus on a very narrow little area, and you get super expert on that.
And I don't really have the patience that I like to sort of zoom out and see the whole deal.
So that's really why I like to write about it.
Alright, well how would most hardcore behind-the-telescope astronomers regard what you do?
Well, I like to try to span the divide, if you like, between the very orthodox scientist who has to present a certain Yeah, I think so.
and adopt the kind of party line and then the people who like to explore more adventurous
ideas. So I like to try to form a bridge between the two.
So I hope in a way that I'm acceptable to both sides of the divide.
Has that been so? I mean, you've written enough surely to have some reactions. Are you generally
accepted do you think on both sides?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I do work a lot with university people and NASA engineers
and scientists.
It's good enough for me.
On the one hand.
And I do deal with people who explore, as I say, wider ideas on the other front.
I hope so.
All right.
A lot of times I don't put much stock in the stock questions they send along, you know, to ask a guest.
But these are really good ones tonight.
In the past, we've spent a lot of time looking for radio signals from other stars.
And that's true.
We have with SETI.
Now scientists are beginning to think there may be some better ways to search for signs of alien intelligence closer to home, here in the solar system, maybe even on Earth.
And so the question written is, are we about to come face-to-face with extraterrestrials on our own very doorstep?
Yeah, I think it's...
I'm very positive about that.
I think there's a very good chance somewhere within the solar system there is material evidence of other intelligence.
This is prime real estate for life.
Any intelligence or civilization out there will have been watching us for a long period of time, be aware of what's happening here on the Earth, just as we're starting to discover other planets elsewhere.
Well, that would mean, though, that they would have space travel and would have been either here or near, right?
Because we've only been transmitting radio and television waves so long.
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
Those radio waves are probably only going out, you know, maybe 50 light years or so, or 60, 70 light years, not very far.
Exactly.
But nevertheless, you would be able to detect life signs, you know, signs of advanced life, even plant life, for example, by detecting the gases in the atmosphere that are released by, for example, oxygen-producing plants.
At what distance do you think an advanced civilization might be able to detect that there would be life on Earth?
Oh, right across the galaxy, with sufficiently large equipment.
Certainly, easily over thousands of light years.
So, a substantial part of the galaxy, even with the technology that we'll have within a matter of decades.
Alright, what... You know, we'll be able to look at Earth-like planets within a few hundred light years.
And be able to see things like chlorophyll, molecular oxygen, which are all life indicators.
We'll be able to spot where those life-bearing worlds are within a pretty good distance.
Okay, so then it would be your position that a civilization sufficiently advanced, just a little bit past us, or even a lot past us, certainly would be able to figure out we're here.
Yeah, absolutely.
If not in person, you know, not humanity itself, at least advanced life would focus their attention on us.
Okay.
All right.
Why do you think, when you say on our doorstep, you mean... I mean within the solar system.
Within the solar system.
Yeah, within the planetary system around the sun, you know, which would obviously include the Earth itself and the planets and the satellites going around the sun.
All right.
Well, we have been, except for some very recent excitement regarding the hydrogen frequency, which I'm still trying to find out about, there was a signal, they thought.
But minus that and how that turns out, that's current news, we haven't heard anything from anybody else as of yet.
That's right.
As far as conventional SETI goes, you know, looking for radio signals from other stars.
It's been a long search.
It's been going on since about 1960 now, so over 40 years.
And there have been a few kind of promising signals.
I guess the most exciting one was back in 1977.
That was the so-called WOW signal.
Right.
It was picked up by Ohio State, one of their big-year radio telescopes, it was called.
And that was kind of like a spike, you know, a localized frequency that, well, really is still unexplained.
I mean, it could either be a natural radio source of which we don't understand, which is exciting in itself, or the other possibility is an artificial source outside the solar system, which is even more exciting.
So either way, it's kind of neat.
Well, David, there's something to remember.
We sent out a very, very, very short burst.
We turned Arecibo from a receiver into a transmitter one time, but it was a little tiny burst.
If some SETI astronomers way out there somewhere were to have caught that burst, they'd have reacted about like the WOW signal, because it would have come and gone, and they'd have said, wow, what the hell was that?
Precisely.
Exactly.
Other than that, we've never sent anything.
Well, we have actually sent a few more recently.
There's a transmitter in the Ukraine that has sent out a number of signals.
I've got details about it on my website that I can give you later.
Oh, just tell me as much as you can.
Now, see, I had no idea that was going on.
You're saying from the Ukraine, they've been transmitting signals that are intended to be picked up by other life if it's out there?
Yeah, and they've been directed towards newly discovered planets.
So we've actually, of course, now discovered about 130 or so extrasolar planets.
So we kind of know that these planetary systems are out there, and they're going around unlike Stars, so they're kind of potentially, the planets themselves that we've found are not, you know, particularly interesting as far as life's concerned, but maybe there are other planets within those systems.
So we send out the signal broad enough to be heard by that system?
It's a localized, you know, it's a focused signal.
It's not like, you know, just a broad, you know, directional signal.
It is a targeted signal.
Got it.
You know, beamed at stars within about a hundred light years.
And I think there's been maybe, oh, I don't know, maybe a Half a dozen or ten signals.
I'd have to check the details.
Because might I ask, you mean ten transmitted signals?
Yeah, to specific stars.
When did they decide to do this?
This has been within the last three to four years.
It's a once-in-a-lifetime encounter and it's done by a Ukrainian astrophysicist who's actually head of the effort.
And, uh, I'll give you the pages on my website, and you can look at it, and people can look at it, and I can give you some more details later in the show when I just, uh, check into them, you know?
Well, Doctor, you know, um, really, in the past, um, I had heard that we humans here on Earth had settled on a psych- uh, the following psychology.
That, yes, we sent out that one thing, and the reason we haven't done anything since is because A lot of people figured it might not be such a good idea to let somebody else know that we're out here, because who knows what they might intend.
So when did that fall apart?
Apparently when the Ukrainians began transmitting.
I hadn't heard about that.
There were one or two scientists who really kicked up a fuss.
I think Martin Ryle, who was a British...
Astronomer really got upset. He thought well, let's not draw attention to ourselves here
We are poor as weak humans, you know All these guys are gonna be way ahead of us and they're
just gonna beat up on us basically Which I think is not a very good argument frankly who's
gonna cross hundreds of light-years just to you know Grab hold of a little planet
Kick our butts!
It's far-fetched to me, you know, but, and in any case, they're gonna know, they're gonna find out we're here soon enough, you know, whether we broadcast or not.
So I don't take that line of argument very seriously, and I don't think it's the reason that we have stopped broadcasting this.
You know, the one you were talking about with Arecibo was Carl Sagan and Brian Drake back in the 70s.
That's right.
And they targeted a globular cluster 25,000 light-years away, so we've got a long Wait until we get any kind of reply from that.
Yes.
Yes, well, the Ukrainians are targeting something much... They're targeting something that maybe we wouldn't hear within a lifetime, but within a few lifetimes, you know.
But I don't think that's... I don't think the reason is that we stop broadcasting is that, you know, that they're worried about getting invaded.
I think it's just the lack of willpower, basically.
Do you have any idea what the Ukrainians transmitted?
I guess it was a fairly complex message.
I don't know the exact structure of it, you know.
Let me get back to you later in the show on the details.
I'm still a little, you know, I don't carry that information right at the front of my mind.
Hopefully not how to construct hydrogen bombs or, you know, whatever.
Oh, I think it was, and I think it was kind of fairly much like the original signal, and perhaps even closer to the information that was put on the Voyager probe.
You know, it's about our literature and our art and our music.
I think there's quite a lot of music on it, basically.
Because they figure these kind of things might be universal.
You know, what's the point in sending a message in English, you know?
But if you send music, maybe that's a universal, you know?
Well, music is sort of mathematical, isn't it?
It's mathematical, and also, even if you can't appreciate the music, at least you know that it's artificially constructed, you know?
Well, I hope we didn't send rap.
I don't think we did.
You know, I hope not, too.
That's one thing I can't stomach, either.
On the contrary, for that matter, I think that would maybe... I mean, talk about something that could get a planet wiped out.
You don't want to... You know, that's going to cause an invasion right away.
Yes, yes, indeed.
So, there have been a few tantalizing possibilities, things that might have been seen as well since we're on the subject.
Did you... Have you heard about this latest... Yeah, this was the SETI at home thing, wasn't it?
Yes, yes, yes.
And this was...
This was a story that was put out in New Scientist magazine, which again is a British, you know, I don't really want to kind of own up to that, but that was a British magazine.
No, it's all quite all right.
You go ahead and toot your own horn.
A lot of things come from British publications and broadcast media that we don't get here in the U.S.
And you're here in the U.S., it should be said, right?
Yeah, well, I put this story on my website, so I'm not, you know, I've been kind of promulgating this story right from the start.
It came out on September the 1st, and The title of the story was Mysterious Signals from 1000 Light Years Away, which grabbed your attention right away.
Absolutely got mine.
And it's not really the sort of thing you normally see in a, you know, kind of a, well, New Scientist is pretty mainstream.
You bet.
And that was a really far out title, you know, and I think maybe Maybe the headline writer went a little bit over the top with that.
Perhaps so, but I believe the article quoted two separate sources of detection of the signal, right?
Yeah, well, what they do of course is, again, it's the Arecibo telescope that's used to pick up this data.
It's always panning the sky, and some of the data from that is then processed by, you know, Zillions of home computers all around the world have signed up for it.
Yes.
And it's basically gathering data.
It's piggybacking on other observations.
So while astronomers are going around their business, SETI at home is picking, you know, is kind of tracking these things and looking for anything that's suspicious.
And then, you know, if there's a... So every six months or so, it'll scan the same bit of the sky.
And if you see the same signal again, then that becomes a candidate signal.
You know, kind of a potential.
Yes.
Well, in February, Arecibo was deliberately pointed at those candidate signals, and all but one failed to show again.
All but one?
And this was the one that was reported in the New Scientist magazine.
Oh, so in other words, once Arecibo itself registered the signal, then alarm bells began to go off.
Well, where do we stand with it now?
Well, where we stand with it now, you know, according to the The guys in charge of the SETI Home Project, Dan Wertheimer, who's the chief scientist of the project, basically said right from the start that the story was blown up out of proportion.
You know, that really the reporter had picked up on the fact that it was a double repeat signal.
But he's saying, well, that's going to happen.
You know, you're looking at Thousands, hundreds of thousands of signals, and occasionally you're going to get a repeat just because of noise in the system, basically.
Yeah, I heard them.
There were several disclaimers in that story.
Well, it could be internal in the telescope, they said.
It could have been a satellite.
It could have been a lot of things.
Yeah.
You see, the thing is, today... But they didn't say it wasn't.
They, they, they, they... Well, you can never, you can never disprove a negative.
You know, I mean, the thing is, We don't know what it is, but what he's saying is that statistically it's not significant, and that, you know, the story got all around the world within half an hour.
You know, it must be reported everywhere.
Well, one thing I noted about the story, David, was that it broke, I mean, it was all the way back in February of 2003, and then was just now reported, what, two, three weeks ago, right?
Yeah, well he was, the reporter was picking through the data and then, you know, he kind of noticed that there had been this repeat signal and then got excited about it and produced the story.
Without really consulting, you know, the scientists involved in the project.
So, wait a minute now.
The reporter noticed... The reporter was going over the raw data and noticed the same signal repeating himself?
Well, not necessarily the raw data, but they list the candidate signals on their website.
I see.
And if one is repeated, then... I see.
You know, you're not looking through thousands of pages of data.
Fairly obvious, which have been repeated.
Well, do you know if they're back, um, avidly searching to try and get yet another repeat, or what?
Well, yeah, I've heard they're going to go back.
I mean, I don't know whether they have the capability to just, you know, zoom on it right away.
Arecibo is one of the, it's dug into the ground.
It's like a, it's a bowl in the ground, basically.
It's a natural crater.
So you can't just point it wherever you want.
That's quite true.
They, they only have so much latitude by moving the, uh, Well, I wonder if they found it yet again, Dr. Weather.
dish around the feed point that's right you can wait till the earth kind of
moved it back into position again which probably won't be for another six
months or so and then they do I guess plan to you know look at this again well
I wonder if they found it yet again yeah doctor whether then would that be a time
to begin jumping up and down then they then they'd start to you know yeah
Then they start to get a little bit excited, I think.
I think one more time on that one, that would really... Do you know anything of the nature of the signal that had been received at all?
Why it was... I mean, was there something about the signal that was particularly interesting?
Well, any of these signals, the reason they're interesting is that they're kind of like narrowband signals.
Right.
Professor, hold on.
We'll be right back.
David Darling, an astronomer, a British astronomer that, is with us.
I'm Art Bell, and of course, in the middle of the night, which is where we do biz, this is Coast to Coast AM.
Don't touch that thought.
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The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing Option 5, and dialing toll free 800-825-5033.
8 9 3 0 9 0 3 from coast to coast and worldwide on the internet this is
coast to coast am with art bell indeed so David Darling who is a British
astronomer and does actually think they might be out there I mean most
astronomers after all both Oh, art!
It's the art fair too, right?
And his merry band of alien followers.
But not this astronomer.
He tackles this one straight on.
We'll be right back.
You have a computer and if you're on our website and you're so inclined, you can send
a fast blast to me, which is a question, hopefully one relevant to...
The guest I have on right now, and Roger in Post Falls, Idaho, has done so with a very good, I think, question because we've discussed this so much on this radio program, Professor.
Many people have noted the similarity of the timeline between when the United States began exploding atomic bombs and when U.S.
citizens began seeing UFOs on a very regular basis.
And the exact question from Roger Can you ask, please, how far radiation signals have traveled from the nuclear bomb tests of the 40s?
In other words, would setting off a nuclear weapon in any way be something that would be particularly detectable from afar?
That's a good question.
I haven't thought about it before.
I guess the thing that would be You wouldn't get any radioactivity, you know, from the explosion spreading outside the atmosphere, even.
But what you would get is some gamma radiation, which is the really, really short wavelength.
And that would go sailing right through the ionosphere?
Yeah, right.
Clear out into interstellar space, you know.
At the speed of light?
Of light, yeah.
I mean, it's like light, but it's just a very, very short wavelength.
And that there are no other sources of gamma radiation on the Earth.
There are no intense sources.
So, you know, if you suddenly got a... and you need pretty powerful equipment.
We don't have that kind of equipment on Earth that we could see, you know, a gamma burst like that.
But you don't rule out that possibility.
No, no.
The sort of equipment that we're developing now and extended, you know, a few hundred years, even into the future, you would be able to detect.
You know, gather radiation of that level from, you know, hundreds of light years away, even if not right clear across the galaxy, if you have the right equipment.
Very good point.
Yeah, I suppose, then, if there really is a Federation out there somewhere, somebody's at a control point and he sees something and goes, damn, there's another planet.
Look at that.
So, I mean, could that have been...
We humans tend to think of that kind of a signal, that kind of a presentation, as a definite announcement at an arrival point of, you know, atomic energy.
Yeah.
And a reason definitely, perhaps, definitely, perhaps, there's a... Definitely, perhaps, for aliens to say, all right, there's one we need to go check out.
Because, I mean, that's when we started getting all these UFO sightings.
Yeah, yeah, that's...
One explanation for it.
The other, of course, is that people were spooked at the time.
They were expecting, you know, the Russians to be lobbing missiles over at any moment, and we're looking up at the skies in a kind of worried fashion.
Well, yes, but you know...
People were equally spookable before that, and since, we've had constant... I mean, you would think that, you know, the thing would wear off, right?
And you wouldn't get the sightings anymore if that was the reason.
Right.
I'm just saying that, yeah, I mean, I'm open to that idea.
I'm just saying there's an alternative explanation as well.
The other thing, of course, is that now we're wrecking the environment, and that equally is detectable from afar.
And I would think that, sure, I mean the pollutants and things that we're putting into the atmosphere, you can detect those as well.
Well, certainly from space you can see the fact that the North Pole ain't what she used to be, and that's putting it mildly.
I mean, you know, what's going on on planet Earth right now is incredible.
Exactly, and those sort of changes will be easily detectable over a great distance.
I will tell you that there is a species that's messing up his planet, and another reason to put it under heavy surveillance, either from afar or locally with probes or even inhabited spacecraft.
So yeah, I'm open to that idea.
I think that there are more reasons for an extraterrestrial to worry about the way we treat our planet than Maybe lobbing missiles around, but you know, both of them are causes for concern.
And to worry about letting the species infect the rest of the galaxy until it's mended its ways.
You think they could then be in our backyard, which raises the question, I mean virtually in our backyard, so that raises the question, why are we searching everywhere but?
Well, you know, there's no really good reason for that.
It's just that that's the way we started out.
And, you know, the early SETI, Search for Extra Trusted Intelligence people that started out back in the 60s, they were radio astronomers, you know, and they were communications engineers.
And this was the year when we first built giant radio telescopes.
So we had the capability for listening for signals at that period.
So we started doing it.
And it just became the paradigm.
You know, it just became the way SETI went.
You know, this whole field was inhabited by people who were brought up on, you know, ham radio, and they just liked listening for signals from afar, and that's what they did.
And it just became center stage, and we ignored our own backyard.
And the other reason I think that scientists have tended to look away from our own solar system for evidence of alien presence is the very fact of ufos
you know and and the way you know ufos have been you know elevated in some ways and in the popular
mind well most of the rumors often powerful answer yeah yeah scientists don't like to be associated with anything
that they consider to be fringe or marginal because the jobs are
at stake So if they found it several thousand light years away, that'd be cool, but finding it here would just lose you your career.
Well, no, looking for it, looking for it locally would cause your colleagues to think, what the heck are you doing?
And it was the same with astrobiology until recently.
If you were involved in looking for any kind of life within the solar system, you were out on the fringe, you were out on the margins of orthodox science.
That's only just become respectable.
So, you know, getting local SETI respectable has taken even longer.
But it's now becoming OK.
Here's a really serious question for you, Professor.
If you want to try to answer, you can.
But, you know, we've had controversies about the moon missions that the U.S.
did.
We've had controversies about trips to Mars.
And then when you consider trips to other possible Planets that could hold life, for example.
You've got to go a very, very long way for a very long time under conditions that some would suggest the human body will never, ever be able to sustain.
That's a very important question.
In other words, we're never going to be spacefarers.
We're not cut out for it physically.
We couldn't make long trips under any circumstances.
What do you say to that?
Well, just as in the solar system, the first thing we're going to do if we ever travel to the stars is send out robot probes first.
Robot probes, alright.
So, you know, that's almost inevitable that it'll be dominated by robot explorers for quite a while before any humans set foot.
The biggest problem, really, is speed, you know?
To get to the nearest star, the nearest star, that's the Alpha Centauri system, which is just over four light years away.
If you were able to get to one-tenth the speed of light, you know, light is pretty fast, 186,000 miles every second.
If you could get to one-tenth the speed of that, which is a heck of a lot.
Right.
It would still take you half a lifetime to get to the nearest star.
That just gives you some idea of how, it just blows your mind, even as an astronomer, you can't get your head around it.
Okay, but even the time aspect aside for a second, because maybe we will learn to go fast.
Yeah.
Forget, throw away that one for a moment.
I'm talking about our physiology, our human physiology being unable to sustain itself for long periods Way out there, not in low-Earth orbit, but way out there.
I don't think that way out there makes any difference.
You're still in space, you know.
There's really no more dangers to being in interstellar space than there is in interplanetary space.
In fact, it's safer in some respects, because there's less... Muscles?
Atrophying?
Well, you'd have to have artificial gravity.
There's no question about it.
you'd have to have some part of the spacecraft that was rotating to give you, you know, like
in 2001 they have that spinning part of the spacecraft, you know, and it gives them this
gravity. You need that. You're going to need something like that to get to Mars, for goodness
sake, you know. You can't be away from the Earth for years and in virtually zero gravity.
This is a lot, this is something people miss about the trip to Mars, you know. You can't
do it without artificial gravity. There's just no way. The human body cannot, you know,
the bones waste away, the muscles, the heart shrinks, everything. It's a major, major issue.
So there's no question about it.
If you're going to go on, unless you've got like warp drive where you can get there in a few minutes or something, you know, you're going to have to have artificial gravity.
But that's not, that's not really such a big deal.
I mean, if you can fly to the stars, you can rotate part of the spacecraft.
All right, so you're saying physiologically it could be done.
Physiologically, yeah, I think so.
I think the biggest issue as far as survival goes would be protection from radiation, you know, cosmic rays and that kind of thing, which could really damage the cell structure, you know, and you're going to get exposed to a lot of that in space.
But again, radiation shielding would hopefully block some of that.
All right, well let's come back to Earth for a moment.
What probability do you attach to the view that they are already here, that we are in fact being observed or have been observed at some point?
What probability would you attach to that?
To actual extraterrestrials in person having visited the Earth?
Either observing us now or having visited at some point during human occupation.
I personally, you know, would rank it higher than probably most scientists would.
I don't know kind of how percentage-wise, but maybe slightly less than 50-50, but somewhere around that I would say approximately 50-50.
That's pretty high.
It's pretty high because for the very reason that within the past few years we have Realize that we have the capability to identify life on extra-solar worlds, and even advanced life, eventually, and other, you know, beings that are, say, a million years ahead of us, which isn't that much in terms, you know, galaxy terms.
Uh-huh.
Are going to know that.
They're going to know we're here, or there is advanced life here, so there's something of interest on the Earth.
And therefore, you know, it becomes a focal point of attention, you know, for, like, anthropological studies.
You know, for aliens who are interested in how intelligence evolves, you know, they might want to be here in person to track that.
All right, well, if you've imagined all of this, then have you imagined there would be the equivalent of a non-intervention kind of policy?
Sure.
Yes?
I think that's most likely.
I think that if, you know, I would really say that's almost certain.
The case where extraterrestrials do intervene or are present watching, they will not want to affect us in any way, just as we do on Earth.
If you're doing an anthropological study of a native tribe or something, you don't want to disturb them.
You have to, to some extent, if you're there, there's bound to be some involvement, but you want to just observe and not affect.
So yeah, I would say that probably is very much the case.
Well, that leads to all kinds of other questions, but it begins to get awfully speculative, you know, about, for example, our environment, if we're about to go off a cliff with the environment, and it sure feels like we're about to go off a cliff, or about to blow ourselves up, you know, exchange missiles with the Russians, or whatever, some biological disaster, I don't know, but whether there would be intervention at some apocalyptic point Yeah, I think that's a very good point, and I was actually going to come to that.
I think we are at a crisis point.
I'm very much of the view that this planet doesn't have very much longer unless we change our ways.
You know, a few centuries perhaps at most before we make it uninhabitable.
That's a very strong statement.
Uninhabitable as a result of what, do you think?
The destruction of the ozone layer, exposure of the surface to, you know, intense solar ultraviolet.
Global warming, which is going to, you know, melt the polar ice caps, which is happening already, raising the sea level, therefore making most of the low-lying areas of the Earth uninhabitable, therefore causing massive overcrowding.
Well, Professor, a lot of scientists, politically-minded ones, are saying, oh, pooey.
These are all some sort of natural cycles that we're attributing to human behavior, and it's all baloney.
And that itself is baloney and is dangerous thinking and it's delaying the remedy.
It's unfortunate and it's motivated by the fact that a lot of these scientists are involved with political groups that have interests in the oil industry and so forth and don't really want to curb it and don't want to curb consumerism and unfortunately it's all retarding, you know, the eventual cure.
This is a very dangerous approach. Most environmental scientists know very well what's happening.
The global changes are afoot and they've been going on for a number of
decades now.
And it's time that these other scientists got on it. It does seem as though some aspects of
the environmental erosion, particularly at the north and south
parts of the world, are accelerating.
As though we've gone past a certain kind of a trip point or something and there has been an acceleration because
man, I'll tell you every week, professor, I read more and more stories that are profoundly disturbing
about what's falling apart and melting.
I am absolutely with you on that.
It is incredible that not everybody is realizing this.
I personally think that most people are, and that they have other motivations for turning a blind eye to it, but it's happening.
Absolutely, it's happening.
Whether it's those or not is irrelevant.
It's happening.
And we have to try and do something about it, or else we're destroying our habitat, basically.
And the habitat of other species, too.
You think, then, there might be some sort of intervention, and then we might not be but a couple of centuries from it at most, or even sooner?
Well, I think there's two possibilities.
Either we're simply under surveillance, and there is simply a non-intervention policy, and that if this species is so stupid and so dangerous that it's going to destroy itself, well, let it, because we don't want it out of its own planet doing the same thing elsewhere.
What they would think of as an infestation.
Infestation, right.
So we're kind of like a virus that might infect the galaxy.
Or it may be a phase, and I think this is perhaps the case, that all technological civilizations go through and maybe elder ones give a helping hand to get you through it.
So yeah, it could go either way, I guess.
I mean, what do I know?
But I think I can see both possibilities, you know.
But either way, you think we're not very far from Going off the cliff or having somebody intervene and saying, well, you're about to go off a cliff here.
Either way, we're within a couple of centuries of that.
Yeah, or maybe and hopefully we'll come to our own senses and do something about it, too.
So that's a third possibility in there, in which case, you know, maybe they'll watch and hope and we'll sort it out ourselves.
The coming to our own senses one doesn't seem the most probable as I look around.
I actually...
When I was younger, I tend to get a little bit more cynical as I get older, but when I was younger, I was quite optimistic that we wouldn't.
I actually still am.
Well, when you're young, you can change the world.
Yeah, you can change the world and you're immortal and everything, you know, but I still think, you know, because we're part of the system.
We're not, you know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, humanity is destroying nature, but we're actually part of nature, of course.
We're part of the whole global system.
And we have a very strong survival instinct, actually, because, you know, we're top dogs, you know.
You don't get to be top dog if you don't.
Well, you know, the Romans were top dogs.
Now, my point is that I'm reading all of these stories every week, and these seem like big stories, you know?
Antarctic glaciers melting, ice flows falling apart, and the North, you know, polar bears disappearing.
I'm reading all these stories every week, but I'm not seeing them on the ABC Evening News, CBS Evening News, NBC.
Not on our doorstep yet.
It's not our doorstep, you know.
Well, it depends on how you consider our doorstep.
Does our doorstep begin, you know, in the East Coast and the West Coast?
Literally.
Almost literally, our doorstep.
I think until the garbage starts piling out outside your door or, you know, maybe the Floridians are starting to get some kind of message.
Professor, hold on.
We're at the top of the hour.
I'm Art Bell.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
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You'll come to like the feeling.
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And astronomer David Darling.
Very good morning to you.
How are you?
It's just now, of course, become morning here on the West Coast and morning will now rush
west toward the Hawaiian Islands, but we'll be back in just a moment.
It's absolutely apparent the professor thinks that instead of men, if we wish to contact another civilization, he thinks we would send machines, I believe.
And so then, by extension, it seems to me that another civilization would Send machines!
Send machines here in search for life, or in monitoring life, but not send biological entities, but rather machines, or perhaps sort of biological entities engineered to run the machines.
So, I guess, Professor, I'm asking if some of these UFOs that we see might not be alien probes, machines?
Yeah, and I think that's something that We need to start taking really seriously.
I mean, UFOs must include a whole slew of phenomena, you know, from hoaxes to natural phenomena like, you know, ball lightning.
And I think we really do have to consider the possibility that some of them are these very probes that we've been talking about.
You know, I think scientists tend to shy away from that possibility, but I do know that quite a few of them in private do consider that to be a possibility.
In private, you say?
Yeah, exactly, because, you know, the word, the term UFO is still kind of a no-no in scientific circles.
Oh, I know.
You know, the way it goes.
Yes, I do.
And, you know, it's just It used to be flying saucer, now it's UFO, whatever you call it, you know, it just carries that stigma as far as mainstream science is concerned, but there is a phenomenon there, there's a range of phenomena, and one of them, one possibility, and science should consider every possibility, and it shouldn't be afraid to, you know, tread into ground that is perhaps considered controversial, but there is that possibility that some of these
Good.
It's sure nice to hear people saying that.
Here, recently, a team from Peter Jennings came to interview me and they promised it's going to be a two-hour special with Peter Jennings on exactly this.
So we need to take this data seriously.
Good.
It's sure nice to hear people saying that.
Here recently a team from Peter Jennings came to interview me and they promised it's going
to be a two hour special with Peter Jennings on exactly this.
It's not frequently you see the mainstream media stepping in and taking a hard look and
that's what they promised and they better deliver.
Anyway, they were here, and so they're beginning to take a look at it.
But here's an extension question, Professor.
If these machines have been here, or are here now, and one of them perhaps crashed, or whatever, we have these very strong stories, as I'm sure you're well aware, of retrieval of what are called alien artifacts or alien craft some of them stories that include
biological entities with them and all the rest of it now i don't know about you but to me it is possible that one of
them crashed in if it did
on don't think our government would tell us do you it's uh...
it's a bit it's a very good question i mean that the thing i don't have any inside information that i can
pass on unfortunately so i can't really sort of i'm just speculating
is like everyone Of course governments keep secrets, we know that.
They do that habitually, all the time, and they do misinform, and they do things to manipulate the situation to their own end, we know that.
That's just the way governments have always worked, you know?
The thing, the part of it that I find a little bit difficult to believe is that you couldn't do this without involving scientists.
I don't know whether you could keep it under wraps.
I'm not sure it has been kept under wraps.
so now they do keep secrets because of course you've got people working on
military projects and they're not allowed to disclose information but
something like that uh... i don't know whether you could keep it under wraps
uh... i'm not sure it has been kept under wraps i mean i've interviewed a
lot of very credible people who have said incredible things and and but you know all these things pile on top of each
other and they're all sort of thrown into the same
Well, all I could say is that, you know, a true scientist does not, you know, throw out any possibility, you know, until you've really, really researched into it.
And just to say, oh, I can't believe that, it just couldn't possibly happen, just because you don't personally like the idea, you know, is not true science, you know.
If you want my personal opinion, I would kind of lean towards the opinion that it's less likely than more likely, and I know some people will say, oh, there he goes, another scientist, but, you know, that's my personal view, is that, you know, I'll keep an open mind on it until somebody comes forward with some evidence that I can... Alright, let's talk about evidence for a moment.
If somebody claimed to have an alien artifact, or maybe, let's say, a piece of a ship, or some material that wasn't of Earth, from their point of view, it was from a crash or something like that, how would you, or could you, absolutely verify the artifact is alien?
You'd first of all have to get it into a pretty sophisticated materials Uh, lab and, and put it under spectrometers and all the rest of it and, and you'd be looking for a material that, uh, you know, an obviously artificial material, some alloy or, or, or, or, um, you know, there's other substance, crystalline substance, or, or what have you, that, that we knew nothing about on Earth.
You know, so you'd be looking for something unusual.
That kind of is obvious, but it is the first thing you'd look for.
Um, if you could demonstrate conclusively that this was an artificial material, And that wouldn't be too difficult to do.
And then go beyond that and look at the catalog of known materials and say, well, this doesn't correspond to anything we know.
Then the lights start to go on and you think, maybe... I had such a piece of material, David.
I had such a piece of material.
It went to Carnegie.
It emitted... I've got the report somewhere.
It emitted a whole bunch more of something than it was supposed to have.
It was layers of bismuth, and I've got to go back now.
Some years ago, bismuth, I believe in magnesium, it made in such a way that it couldn't be duplicated, and there were many who tried.
But still, over the years, yes, then it was declared, it's anomalous.
We don't know where it is.
We don't know how to make it.
We couldn't duplicate it.
So it's anomalous.
It just, you know, it slips through the years.
So would it really be identified?
And would somebody yell out alien?
Could they be that sure?
I'm not so sure.
Well, the first thing is that scientists, you know, they're kind of hidebound characters.
You know, unless somebody produces an actual paper published in Nature or Science or some, you know, reputable, what they call reputable journal, you know.
They're not going to get too excited about it, so I don't know if Carnegie Mellon or the researchers involved actually wrote a paper that was published, but if they didn't, then it would enter, in the scientist's opinion, the realm of hearsay and be dismissed in that fashion, you know?
So, the questions would be, well, what's happened to the material now, and is it available for further research, and what happened to the original research, and who wrote what, You know, he gets muddied water.
So that's what the position of a scientist.
And when we use this general term scientist, of course, we're talking, we would have to be talking about chemists who would, you know, have the qualifications to do this kind of analysis, you know.
Yes.
And most scientists are just journeymen, you know.
They're doing pretty routine stuff, you know.
They're not looking for extraterrestrial samples or philosophizing.
They're just kind of going into their labs day after day looking at Well, let us get philosophical for a moment.
you know, in this narrow little field, like I say.
Well, let us get philosophical for a moment.
If contact was made, no matter how it came, whether it came as a SETI signal
or it came through some sort of actual contact from another civilization.
How do you think it would be handled by the masses?
You know, there's the old Brookings Report suggestion of how it might unfold not so pleasantly.
Yeah, I guess it would depend on the nature of it, you know?
I mean, if it was, you know, the old classic of the flying saucer landing on the White House lawn, you know, obviously it's sensational, but even so, even if that happened, you'd still get this period of uncertainty, you know?
Is it really a Alien spaceship, is it somebody filming a movie, is it a hoax, you know?
There's always, you know, and the media would get it, and all of a sudden, it would be everywhere, a little bit like the Sete story.
Well, if it happened today, I'm sure the President would claim that we've met a new civilization, and Kerry would say it's a big stunt.
Exactly.
It would be manipulated somehow.
You bet.
Absolutely.
And of course, with it being election year, that's exactly how the public would view it.
That's right.
It would always be that.
But in the general case, it would just depend on what it was.
How spectacular was it?
How certain were the scientists that this was the real McCall?
It's hard to say.
I think if it was really strong, strong evidence that was almost indisputable, I don't know if you'd get panic.
I mean, it depends.
I mean, if it was like an invasion threat, maybe.
But if it was just like a really strong signal and, you know, a sort of encyclopedia galactica or something coming over the Radio waves, people would get excited, but it wouldn't.
It wouldn't tear apart civilization.
No, maybe it would change in the long term, I think, but it wouldn't cause panic, you know.
If the flying saucer descended from the sky, then you'd see people running for the hills.
I think you're right.
I really do think you're right.
Alright, off on another limb here.
Could there be any alien in us?
In our genes.
In our genetics.
In fact, I believe that there's still a big missing link, and they are not exactly sure how man leaped forth, leapt forth onto the planet.
We don't exactly have that nailed down yet, right?
Exactly, yeah.
And it was a spectacular flowering.
A big leap, right?
Yeah, we just sort of came from nowhere, as it were.
I mean, certainly civilization It happened just in a blink of an eye, really, in, you know, geological terms.
Yes.
Fantastic.
So, yeah, I mean, that's one possibility that you've got sort of some... Well, this is kind of like the 2001 scenario, isn't it, where you get the black monolith that passes on some kind of... But, you know, it has been suggested by one pretty mainstream scientist, Paul Davis, who's at the Australian University, that You know, there's a lot about DNA that doesn't seem to do a whole lot.
It's called junk DNA.
That's right.
And it's just there, you know.
And he said, well, that would be a great place, a great place to put a message.
You know, you can store a heck of a lot of information in DNA.
I mean, enough to, all the instructions for a human being.
Oh, brother.
We've already got the Bible code, you know, and so now they're going to start looking at the DNA and they're going to find heaven knows what.
Well, you know, it's a possibility.
And what better way to store it if you want to pass on information, right?
Yes.
Put it, encode it, you know, millions of years ago in this junk DNA that's eventually going to get passed down to whatever intelligent species evolves on that planet.
And only when they have the technology to analyze that DNA, which is just about where we are now, are they going to be able to read the message.
I never even thought of that.
A message in our DNA.
It's the most compressed way in nature of storing information.
It's a perfect solution.
Maybe that's where the junk DNA is, the message from the stars.
We just have to get to that.
Has anybody taken a look at DNA from that perspective?
I'll bet not.
Not on a practical basis, not on an experimental basis.
Just a kind of suggestion.
Nobody's really taking that seriously.
Because you'd be looking at it from a whole different perspective.
Instead of programming proteins to do this and that, you're looking for actual binary, maybe, Data in there, you know, and it's a whole different ballgame.
How did you arrive at this?
This is fascinating.
Not really my idea.
Like I say, Paul Davis, this Australian astronomer, cosmologist, initiated the idea, but it just, I kind of just extended that to, you know, from what I just told you there.
It just seems like a pretty neat solution.
And I think the idea that You really do need that technology.
You know, you have to be able to analyze the DNA.
You have to be at a certain level in your technology at the point, you know, and that's when alien intelligence would be interested in you, you know?
So there it is for millions of years and all of a sudden you crack the code.
What an incredible concept that there is a whole message there.
Just, well, let's go further out on a limb.
If there was a message there, what do you even Hypothesize that message might mean, or might be... Well, it could be like a series of instructions because it may be that all technological species go through the kind of crises that we're going through right now, and it will be at the point where the technology, you know, first reaches roughly where we are.
You know, when you start to get these kind of advanced technologies and you're able to pollute the planet and cause all these environmental crises,
that's the point at which you need the warning. Maybe it'll just say if you can read this, you're dead.
I don't know why I'm laughing.
I have no idea why I'm laughing.
I'm sorry.
That would be a sick message, wouldn't it?
Yes, it would.
You've obviously advanced technologically to the point where you can now read this, which means you've done the following.
And your ice is melting, and your oceans are swelling, and your hurricanes are getting bigger.
Basically, bye-bye.
That's right.
Congratulations, you're dead.
Or here's the solution to how you get out of it.
There you are.
Well, probably, you know.
Or perhaps, as in the movie Contact, the instructions for reaching out from Earth way past the speed of light would be encoded... Oh, man, what a concept.
And then you kind of join the Galactic Club, you know.
We're talking movie here.
Right.
We're really talking movie here.
I've never heard this, I've never considered this, but what a concept.
And it would be by our... The problem with the concept is, it would be by our designers.
Well, you mean they've altered our DNA so they've created us?
Is that what you're saying?
Well, I guess.
Well, not necessarily if it's in a part of the DNA that doesn't actually encode us.
You know, it's kind of a surplus.
Well, yes, but to most, Professor, there's only one designer.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that, you know, it might not be readily accepted, but it still is a whale of a concept.
And it's a perfectly reasonable one.
You know, each step of it is okay.
It's perfectly scientific, if you like.
It makes sense, you know.
So, you know, maybe that's what we'll do eventually when we get to be very advanced, a million years, and we might be seeding Either that or maybe it instructs us how to breathe and enjoy large amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and all sorts of chemical mixes.
Right, right, so you don't have to get rid of the pollution, you just get used to it.
You learn to love it, like the bomb.
But the whole, anyway folks, drifting away, but the concept of a message within our DNA, within this so-called, we call, junk DNA, maybe it's not junk at all, Maybe, maybe, oh, well, some would say it once had a purpose, or it may, in our evolutionary path, yet have a purpose, or maybe it's just a message.
Ha!
All right.
That would also suggest, Professor, that we are the aliens.
That we were designed in the fashion you suggested possible, and that we basically Are the aliens, right?
Well, that we are part alien at least, yeah, that we are not entirely of this world as
it were, yeah, yeah, certainly that whole aspect to it, you know, I mean, we are extraterrestrial
after all, I mean, we come from stardust, what the heck, you know, we do come from the
stars in that sense, and maybe information-wise we are...
Stay close to that phone for me.
Okay.
Oh, there you go.
Okay.
A big difference.
Right.
You know, we are materially extraterrestrial, and maybe also, you know, as we say, part of our actual information makeup is alien as well.
Entirely possible, yes.
Yes, indeed.
All right, Professor, hold on.
We've got lots more territory to cover.
My guest is Professor David Darling, an astronomer and a British astronomer at that.
And we're discussing the possibility of life.
Life.
Just period life, I guess.
Here or there.
Martha.
Oh, and then riding and sleeping and sliding, it's magic.
And you, as you see yourself in my eyes, you are going higher and higher, baby.
It's a living thing.
Oh, oh, oh.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
Once upon a time, once when you were mine...
I remember your sight, reflected in your eyes...
I wonder where you are, I wonder if you think about me...
Once upon a time, in your wildest dreams...
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Astronomer David Darling is my guest.
This is such an incredible concept, it really is, that our junk DNA It contains a message, perhaps from our designers, that it's not junk DNA at all, but like the Bible code, there's a message encoded.
And we're simply supposed to get to the point, and we are very close to that, having just unraveled the human genome, where we can read the message in the junk DNA.
Let's have a little contest, shall we?
What do you think of the ten most likely things that our junk DNA will say when it's unraveled?
I await your email.
Once again, Professor David Darling.
Professor, I have again, you know, watched American movies and, oh, I don't know, endless television programs on the subject and done a million radio programs myself, and the popular view across America, probably across the world, has been developed By E.T.
You know, with the little warm fuzzy little thing, you know, that hides in the kid's closet and all that.
It's very friendly.
Just loves kids and little dogs.
Then there's another side presented by people like Dr. David Jacobs and others who say, now wait a minute.
There's no guarantee that these intelligent beings will necessarily be friendly.
Yeah.
What do you think about that?
Well, we've only got ourselves to go off, really, but if you look at us, you know, we're the products of 4 billion years of live-and-let-die evolution, right?
We haven't survived by always being nice.
We're tribalistic, we're confrontational, we're really the most dangerous creature on the planet in many ways, you know, and we haven't changed.
We've not changed over the past 10,000 years, say.
We are at war a lot.
Yeah, we like it.
That's what we do.
We look after ourselves and there's always an other-them situation.
We're very tribalistic.
So then you think that an alien race would probably notice that.
Yeah, but they might also be like us.
Maybe that's the way evolution always goes.
You've always got that streak of violence and confrontation and looking after your own species first.
So I'm kind of in that camp of that an advanced alien probably has overcome some of those tendencies, you know, and isn't going to be just invasion mad.
They're not going to be Klingons necessarily, but even the Vulcans have wars, you know, in Star Trek, so I think they've probably, they'll have a little bit of both, you know, they'll be kind of human in that sense.
Potentially dangerous and they will tend to put themselves first because that's how they've got to be top dogs and, you know, so.
There'll be a little bit of both.
And because that's how the universe works, not just the world, but probably the whole universe.
The universe is a tough place to live.
It's a tough place to survive.
And if you've got to be top dog after billions of years, you've got that streak in you.
And I don't think unless you kind of genetically engineer it out of yourself, and I don't even know that's possible.
And if you do, well, maybe it is possible.
But if you did that, then you'd have a bunch of very compliant, going nowhere kind of creatures.
It's that very aggression.
Yeah.
Exactly, and the kind of creature that's going to colonize the galaxy or explore between the stars is going to have that sort of pushiness about it, that sort of ambition.
So it's possible that when they land they'll be all like New Yorkers?
Well, yeah, maybe so.
Anyway, I think it's important to at least keep in mind that They would probably develop along a similar evolutionary line.
Life would tend to do that, and so they would be top dog, and we might not be.
And we almost certainly wouldn't be, because, you know, we've only had, well, we've only been flying for a century, for heaven's sake.
You know, this is the centenary of flight, isn't it?
Yes.
And we've gone a long way in that time.
Of course, we've got Jupiter probes now, and, you know, but still, we're going to be right at the bottom uh... bladder in terms of uh... technological development
for any any extraterrestrial we come across intelligent extra it
could be more advanced dot
and in many cases way way way at you know millions of years how much of a
problem probability professor do you attach to the at least
possibility that when we do encounter
some other intelligence what we consider to be intelligence it will not be
biological it'll be artificial it'll be machine it'll be artificial intelligence.
Yeah, I think there's a high probability, very, very high probability that it will at least be partly artificial, you know, because that's, again, you know, we're going off what's happening here, you know, we've got computers, we've got robots, we're developing brain-computer links, It's not going to be long before, you know, you're not going to be tapping away at the internet on your keyboard.
You're going to actually be, you know, connected neurally to the internet, you know?
That's going to happen within probably decades, I would say.
So all you've got to do is think Google.
Think Google, right.
Yes, exactly.
That's where they're going.
That's why their stock's flying so high.
If you could ask three questions of an extraterrestrial This is one of those pre-programmed questions.
What would they be?
That's really intriguing.
If you could ask three questions, and only three, what would you ask?
Personally, the first one would probably be, is time travel possible?
Because that's always been something that fascinates me.
Oh, God bless you.
You know, I would want to know, is it physically possible to travel backwards and forwards in time?
You know, not just using relativity, and that was kind of, you know, A little bit short circuit and things like that, but genuine time travel to anywhere you want, you know?
That'll be the first one, which I would think an advanced extraterrestrial would have sorted out.
Let's come back to time travel, okay.
And then the second one would be... Do you believe there's a cosmic intelligence, or a god, or whatever you want to call it, you know, but some kind of omniscient being, you know?
The designer, to use your own term, you know?
That would be number two.
that's the union just just the border religion is basically yesterday meet
you know yes what they believe so and then i can
but my third question is good at sheeting but my third question would be
if you had three questions what would they be in other words what are their
own uh... uh... uh... uh...
uh... my first two questions would be would be the same as yours
I don't know if they'd be in that order, but they'd be the same.
I'm such a fan of the whole concept of time travel.
Yeah, it's such a...
It is just so intriguing, and it would give you such a power as well.
Well, the other thing is that a lot of theoretical physicists now, Professor, really are beginning to talk about the possibilities of time travel more seriously all the time.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
And various ways of doing it, too.
That's right.
Going into the past is a little bit more problematic than going into the future because, you know, the whole business of changing things and then what happens.
Well, that's the popular view, isn't it?
And if you couldn't go to the past, and you could only go to the future, then you'd never be able to go home.
Possibly, yeah.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe.
I don't know how it would work, but certainly if you use, like, relativity, you know, just if you travel really fast, you know, we know that you can sort of get into the future.
If you travel near to the speed of light, you effectively Jump into the future relative to where you were.
Well, there are theoretical physicists now who believe that the paradox is not a problem because if you were to go back in time and do something that was a catastrophic paradox, simply another universe, another bubble would form and everything would unfold in a different way.
Right, right.
Yeah, that would be the perfect way around the paradox.
It's not a very economical way, you know, because Just going back and you suddenly create a whole universe, it seems fantastic, but of course that's not really fantastic because, you know, astronomers, cosmologists are talking about that all the time, that we're just one universe of many, you know, perhaps an infinite number of universes out there.
So, you know, that isn't a particularly far-fetched idea in terms of even just mainstream physics these days, you know.
If we do encounter another intelligence and we ask them about a God, what would you expect their answer to be?
Well, I've got very complicated views about God, which would probably fill an entire separate show.
And I've written several books on it, like Zen Physics and Soul Search and stuff, and I'm constantly revising my own ideas, which I think is what you should do, actually.
It's kind of like an adventure, really.
Um, I would think they would probably respond somewhat in the positive, you know?
I think they would, that, uh, that I personally believe there is some sort of intelligence behind the whole thing.
I find it hard to believe there isn't, but whether it would correspond to any of our traditional gods, a Christian god or what have you, I've no idea.
I'd be fascinated to know if it did.
Uh, you know, if it, if it sort of made one of our religions the winner in a sense, you know?
Uh-huh.
I think it might actually Possibly disprove them all and there might be you know, they might have come to some totally different conclusion, but Couldn't close to that phone.
Yeah, I'm trying to okay.
There you are.
All right Yeah, I think I'll be really kind of extend this whole nature of this whole business of comparative religion You know way out into the galaxy.
I think it would be it would be neat to compare religions between planets But you feel that they would have some kind of belief, some kind of something in something.
Yeah, I really think that, you know, many scientists think this too, you know, whether they're Christians or Buddhists or what have you.
I think, you know, even science in many ways points to, not necessarily design, but, you know, an orchestrating force behind everything.
Well, I interviewed this really wonderful fellow.
Uh, who wrote a book called The God Part of the Brain.
Alright.
He contends that we are programmed to worship.
That, uh, the human brain is programmed to worship.
And sure enough, you know, he's right.
If you go and you meet with a jungle tribe that's never been exposed to modern civilization, you know, they're sacrificing something to something, or worshiping the sun, or worshiping something.
That we're programmed to worship, and I wonder if that might be in some of that junk DNA?
Yeah, possibly.
That's an idea I hadn't thought of before.
You know, I mean, I think that we have to, most people anyway, I guess, you know, atheists would be the obvious exception, but I mean, most people have to believe in something.
The possibility that when you die, that's it, you're just snuffed out like a candle, I think, is just not acceptable to most people.
Somebody in the past once said, if there isn't a God, we'd have to invent him, or her, or it.
And that's probably true.
But that says nothing about whether there really is a God or not.
That's just what we would have to believe anyway.
Do you believe there is some form of conscious existence following physical death?
Yes, I do.
And that really is the core of my books and physics.
My personal belief is that the brain The brain does not actually produce consciousness.
This is an old idea.
I'm not the creator of this idea, but I certainly support it.
The brain doesn't create consciousness.
It actually filters it.
The consciousness is a field, if you like, like energy and radiation.
But it's out there, basically.
There is a sea, a field of consciousness, into which each brain taps and filters it down into our individual state of existence.
I do believe that.
So that consciousness is something all together separate from the rest of the function of our brain?
Yeah, well I mean the brain obviously does a whole lot.
It handles memory, intelligence, and all those kind of things, you know, survival, you know.
But too much consciousness is not good.
I mean, we only need to be aware of the little bit that's going on.
It doesn't help us to survive to know in detail what's happening throughout the universe, you know?
We just are kind of evolved to just tap into a small bit of what we need to to survive.
And I think that's what the brain's primary function is, is to reduce the consciousness that's available.
And then when you die, when the brain effectively ceases to operate, that safety valve, if you
like, is then no longer needed and is discarded.
And all of a sudden, you cease to exist.
So the language becomes difficult here.
But instead of you, there suddenly is everything.
And that corresponds with many near-death experiences where people...
Yeah, instead of, you know, because what you'd expect at death, if there's nothing after death, is you get a narrowing of consciousness, and it would be kind of like, you know, it would be like the James Bond shutter, you know, where it kind of closes up, and that's it.
Yes.
And blackness.
And instead, people give entirely the opposite testimony, that in fact, the one universal characteristic of near-death experiences is that consciousness widens.
Why should it do that if the brain is closing down?
So that kind of fits in with what I believe about nature.
Have you read a number of books on life after death?
I've read a few of them, yes.
I've not had a near-death experience myself.
I suppose it's kind of a minority experience, but we obviously all will in the end.
Excuse me, did you say you did have one?
So I'm kind of having to go off other testaments, but so many of these are told with such conviction that they're not... I can't believe they're hoaxes.
I don't believe they're hallucinations.
I think people are actually telling what has really happened.
I do, too.
I do, too, but I'm not sure that translates to concrete proof.
No, it doesn't.
No, it doesn't.
And if we had concrete proof, then, you know, we wouldn't need religion.
But it is such a powerful experience that people have.
And why should the brain produce that experience when it's dying?
Why should it bother to produce any experience when, you know, you're only going to live for a few more minutes anyway, it thinks, you know?
Endorphins?
I'm just saying, living off of what they say.
That would kind of make it pleasant, but why should a person, instead of suddenly having this narrow, you know, selfish, private view of the world, all of a sudden, when the brain is just about to shut down, All of a sudden they say, I wasn't there, but everything else was, and I was just suddenly, I couldn't put into words, but everything was suddenly there.
That seems to me a very, very striking experience.
And yes, you could explain it in terms of chemicals, and maybe you can always reduce it to physical terms, you know?
That doesn't take away from what may be the higher reality of it.
I have wondered for a very long time if what we call the metaphysical now, Other kind of thing we're talking about right now, and science will ever actually find a place where they need.
Yeah, and I believe they will, but maybe we won't call it science and we won't call it spirituality anymore.
We'll just call it knowledge, you know?
Because science is not really science these days.
Science is kind of reducing things down to its nuts and bolts.
It's a reductionist thing.
And it misses the big picture.
Science cannot deal with issues like consciousness.
It tends to Try and analyze it in terms of little compartments in the brain, and it tries to, you know, take it to pieces, and it loses the big picture, you know?
Professor, you are aware there are some very serious experiments beginning to go on at places like Princeton and elsewhere with regard to consciousness.
Yeah, I'm actually involved in some discussions with people who are doing those sort of experiments.
Oh, are you?
Yeah, that's right, yeah.
Gary Schwartz, Arizona, and a few others.
Oh, yes.
Some of it's quite remarkable.
Some of it's very, very remarkable.
I'm fascinated by it.
What I'm trying to do is to look at the methodology.
I really want to know how they gather their data because I want to exclude all possibility of extraneous Boy, some of it sure does seem like hard science to me.
Yeah, some of it looks really, really interesting.
I'm more kind of interested in, at the moment, in the near-death experience than I am in, like, mediums and things like that, but the whole business interests me, because I think some of these people are tapping into this field of consciousness.
Well, one large looming question about these near-death experiences would be that only a small percentage Who code, and then come back, have them?
That's a big, looming question.
Yeah, but there's enough commonality, I suppose.
Of the ones who do.
Well, there is that, that's right.
Yeah, you might expect that, you know, and even between cultures, you know, it doesn't matter whether they're, you know, Hindu or a Jew, or, I mean, a lot of these experiences are common.
They're not sort of parochial to whatever you happen to believe in.
They're just, you know, they're just there.
And I think that's kind of telling.
There's all sorts of reasons why people may not have the experience.
They may have them and not remember them, for instance.
It's hard to say.
Possible.
And there's even a small percentage of them that are negative, not positive.
They didn't go out and embrace the universe.
They went virtually to hell.
Yeah, yeah.
A small number, but they're there.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's the best data we have.
You know, these people are like, you know, you send a sample return probe, maybe to the moon or Mars, and you bring back a little piece of information.
They're like sample return probes into the region of death.
They are.
They're the best we have, you know, unless, unless anybody's prepared to volunteer.
What was that film called a number of years ago?
Was it Flatliners?
It was called Flatliners.
Yeah, they were volunteers, student volunteers.
Right, right.
Listen, now, hold on, professor.
We're going to come back and go to the phones here in a minute.
I'm Art Bell.
Professor David Darling is my guest.
You get a shiver in the dark.
It's raining in the path of me time Cause I love the river, you're stopping, you're holding
everything A band is going Dixie, double ball time
You feel alright when you hear the music play You find out you step inside, but you don't see too many
things I got hay, I got hay, I got hay, I got hay, I got hay, I
got hay .
.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Well, we've obviously got a professor here, Professor David Darling, an astronomer who thinks outside the box, way outside the box, so this should be interesting.
Any questions?
You may have.
this would be the appropriate time for them and we just gave you the numbers so if you'll
stay right there, it's about to be all yours.
By the way, I promised I would change the photograph up on my webcam and I did.
Earlier today, the cat you saw up there first, Yeti, who's a new one in the bunch, I kicked a rock off the porch, and he thought he saw this rock moving, so the other cat in the photograph, that's Abby.
That's had a, you know, near-death experience.
Abby.
13-year-old, 14-year-old cat now.
Really an old cat now, but healthy as hell.
Just great.
And when Yeti thought he saw this rock, he climbed over Abby, and he was looking at this rock, and Abby had an expression on his face like, Get that body off me, or the next move you make will be your last one.
Well, the Egyptians worshipped cats, you know, and they remember that today.
All right.
Professor, welcome back.
Nice to be here.
We're going to go to the phones now, and you're liable to encounter anything.
That's fine with me.
You sound pretty much open.
Sure.
All right, then.
Here we go.
First time caller on the line.
You're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Hello, Art.
How are you this evening?
Quite well, sir.
First-time caller, long-time listener.
I want to applaud you for your ability to bring alternative thinking to kind of a myopic populace, for the most part.
I hope so.
Anyway, what's up?
Well, I was curious if the professor had any knowledge as far as alien I'm calling from the desert in Arizona.
I've spent a lot of time on the reservation and Native American ceremonies.
Several medicine men that I'm familiar with and spend a great deal of time with are of the thought that an alien presence, they call them star people or star nation people, are trying to save the planet with crop circles And using symbols in Wales and in the British countryside in an effort to heal the planet.
I was wondering if he'd had any thoughts on that.
All right.
Let's ask that.
Doctor, what about it?
There are crop circles and many do say they are signs or messages that we can't interpret yet.
And maybe they're just a couple guys in a field with boards and chains.
But some of them, frankly, don't look like they could have been done by boards and chains.
It's kind of like UFOs, you know?
Some, obviously, are explained, and some, some are not.
Yeah.
I mean, I look at some of these very elaborate ones, and I wonder, how the heck could you do that with a lawnmower, you know?
So I keep an open mind on that.
I think crop circles are interesting anyway.
I mean, they're very historical.
They go back centuries.
We know the word lawnmowers in those days.
Whether they were that elaborate in those days or not, I don't know.
So there's certainly some phenomenon there we don't understand, but I'm particularly interested in the link with the Native American beliefs there, because I've just started up a project with an astrobiologist at Washington State University, and this is really exciting, because it's bringing everything we've talked about tonight, in terms of aliens and the solar system, right into the scientific mainstream.
We're just starting a project, also including one of his post-docs, where we're trying to, you know, treat this whole subject scientifically and build a kind of catalogue of what kind of signs would we expect to find from alien presence, you know, and how would we go about verifying if those, if we did find those signs, that they actually were extraterrestrial.
Exactly.
And so we, and I'm kind of keeping it anonymous at the moment, partly because we're just starting the project, we don't know where it's going to go, Secondly, because it is so controversial that the researcher in question, who just moved to Washington State, wants to keep it private until we... I can imagine.
You know, and because he's open-minded enough to do it, he doesn't want ridicule from his colleagues, and so we're just moving privately on it at the moment, but we do have that.
So if a caller would like to email me with details, I could feed that into the project.
Really?
Oh, by the way, how does somebody do that?
You're going to get a lot of emails.
Yeah, you go to my website, and you'll see it right at the top, a little bar that says email, and it's just daviddarling.info.
But you can do it through my website, and that's fine.
Daviddarling.info?
Yeah, daviddarling.info is the website.
www.daviddarling.info is my website, and then you just stick David Darling in front of that, and you can email me.
I didn't know there was an info domain.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alright.
I set it up a couple years ago, so that's been... I was getting it at Com, but there's another guy called David Darling who's a cellist, and he's got that, so I've got info.
Alright, Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hi.
Hi, how are you doing?
Quite well, sir.
My question is this.
I'm a graduate student at Embry-Riddle in aeronautical science, and through the research that you do as a student, I came across some information regarding the closing days of World War II, that the Germans were in fact experimenting with anti-gravity generators, and they did build three saucer-like craft to test them out in.
And the SS, German SS, was sent I think in March of 1945 to destroy them, they were in Romania, so that the Soviets wouldn't be able to compensate them.
And I just wonder if there's any truth in this, because this was due to British intelligence and the OSS, which was the forerunner of the CIA now.
There were a lot, a lot of rumors about what the Nazis may have done, that sort of thing.
Professor, you hear anything about that?
And probably nothing more than the general public on that.
I know there was a book written on that subject recently.
I'm not sure who did that, was it Nick Pope or someone who covered that whole business of anti-gravity, including secret Nazi experiments on it.
It wouldn't surprise me if they were looking at saucer-like crafts, because of course the US Air Force was doing All right, stay close to that phone for me.
car and other things that were sort of like in design.
There's no question that you can make something like that fly. Whether they were actually
making any progress on anti-gravity research is an entirely different question. They may have
been trying to, whether they actually got anywhere.
Alright, stay close to that phone for me. Now, what about our anti-gravity research
or anti-gravity research going on in the world in general right now?
I know there was some interesting stuff done in Scandinavia somewhere.
Yeah, and also I think it's been, you know, some of the aerospace companies over here, I'm not sure if it's Lockheed or Boeing, but one, Boeing actually, were entertaining the concept, you know, and have had a group looking into it now, whether they're actually doing any practical Experiments on it are not another matter.
There has been some... You know, there's been some research around.
I just don't know how far it's gone.
You know, anti-gravity in conventional physics is pretty way out there.
Well, maybe so, but I'll... Alright, Professor, I'll tell you something.
I saw a craft that was defying gravity.
Now, maybe it was ours, maybe it was theirs.
I'll never have any way of knowing that for sure, but one thing's for sure, it was defying gravity.
Right.
I saw that.
Millions of Americans have seen it.
Something's up there doing that.
So, I guess it's not so much of a surprise.
Governments really can keep secrets.
They kept the secret of the atom bomb.
They kept the secret of the F-117 and a lot of other aircraft while they were under development.
So, I saw a program, I don't know, the other day on Discovery, I think it was, on what we've got right now that we don't talk much about.
Well, then you've got to imagine, what do we have Really in the real secret, you know, Area 51's of the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's true.
That's true.
I mean, yeah, obviously they're further ahead than anything we visited out in the open.
That's quite clear.
I mean, the stealth aircraft, you know, suddenly appeared from, you know, the shadows.
Well, I mean, you're a scientist.
Do you ever get other scientists whispering things in your ear about stuff they know?
Yeah.
Oh, you do?
Yeah.
You know, you get involved in groups with people who are, I mean, I'm involved in a group with a JPL engineer, a guy from Goddard Space Flight Center who's also an engineer out there, and he's had some wild private experiences in terms of abductions and things like that.
He's very, very convinced that, you know, he's been sort of He's cold, as he describes, by beings.
He doesn't know.
He calls them angels sometimes.
Sometimes he calls them extraterrestrials.
He doesn't know.
But, you know, these are guys who, during the day, they're building spacecraft communications equipment.
Well, you'd better not tell that story at JPL.
Huh?
You'd better not tell that story at JPL.
No.
Well, you know, that's right.
Well, you know, the guy I was telling you about got out, but yeah, he wouldn't be able to talk in the lunchroom, even with his fellow That's quite right.
Ease to the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
My name is Meg.
And where are you?
Louisville, Kentucky.
Oh, okay.
My question was, he got me thinking when he was talking about the possibility of DNA being programmed with a message.
Yes.
My question was, since Aboriginal tribes were pretty much around long before the white man.
Wouldn't they have a higher instance of that in possibilities?
I mean, it's just a possibility, I know that, but... Yeah, the Aborigines, there are all kinds of interesting legends about sky gods, you know, they're a really fascinating culture from that point of view.
They sure do!
You know, and that's one of the things we're feeding into our project, because we want to look into sky legends, you know, and Really look what's out there, and what's actually been said, what's been documented, and you know, get to the bottom of these things.
Well, I mean, there were pictures of helmeted figures in caves, and craft, and saucer-like craft in the sky, and all kinds of things from very, very ancient times, right?
Exactly, yeah, and it's looking at those scientific eyes and saying, first of all, can we explain them in any other way?
If we can't, what the heck are they, you know?
You know, when I brought up the subject of DNA and coding, I was thinking way back.
I'm going back pre-human.
I was thinking that, you know, maybe our mammalian ancestors.
So I was thinking before humanity, so it wouldn't make any difference whether you're aboriginal That's right, or a modern man, it would be.
Yeah, I was thinking of going back way before that, but, you know, I suppose it could have happened at any point in our evolution, but I was thinking millions of years ago.
All right.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Hello.
Going once, going twice, gone.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hi.
Yeah, I've got a question.
You had a doctor, somebody on about five years ago, about an alien that was in the freezer that he'd got that killed his dog?
Yes.
Yes.
And if the doctor tonight needed hard evidence, do you have audio tape and photos of the alien?
It's not enough.
I thank you for the call, but you see, it's not enough.
We were talking about that earlier.
How would you know an alien artifact or an alien or anything When you met up with it, and the answer is, well, gee, you might not, or if you do, and it's just classified weird, science has a way of just putting things up on the shelf that it doesn't understand, and it says, like, we'll look at this later or something, because it doesn't fit into what we believe.
Right, Professor?
Yeah, and I think...
You know, you've got to be reasonable about it, too.
I mean, in some ways, that's a sensible approach.
If you want to get at the hard truth, you want to be a little bit careful about what evidence you are prepared to tolerate.
What I'm saying is that most science is a little bit too intolerant.
If a guy's got a video of an alien in his freezer, well, you know, Let's have a bit more than that.
You know, why can't we actually have a sample to deal with as well, you know?
So I think a reasonable scientist would say, OK, now I've got the video.
That's interesting.
Now, if you've got this guy in your freezer, can I have a little bit of sample of his tissue to look at as well, please?
You know?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
First time caller line.
You're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Yes, I was wanting to talk to Art about the black triangle.
Well, we have a guest right now, sir.
Do you have a question for my guest?
I'm sorry.
No, I don't.
All right.
Well, thanks for the call.
And Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
All right.
Yes.
Oh, OK.
Great.
I finally got through.
A week ago this night, I saw a craft way up in the sky.
Well, actually, I went in my back porch just to look at the sky.
It was clear and beautiful.
Yes.
And I thought, I was looking at the, um, it looks like a triangle.
One star to the south and two are... There have been many triangles seen, yes.
Okay, and it was the southwestern part?
Yes.
And I thought, oh, look, I'm seeing a whole bunch of stars.
I thought, oh, maybe this is the night that they said, you know, you're going to see a whole bunch of stars come out.
You had a sighting?
Well, I certainly did.
And I'm skeptical.
And I looked and I went, I saw, like, a hue, like a, um, uh, a red hue star or whatever and it moved diagonally, went up,
down, real fast.
Got it.
And I went, oh God, I started to get scared.
And I'm staring, I'm like, what is that?
And I'm watching it between this area.
And it was like planets were lighting up.
Yes, okay, I've got it.
Look, millions of people like the one we just talked to, millions and millions of them, Professor, see these things
and sure, we can take, I don't know, maybe we can take 90% of them and dismiss them somehow or another, maybe even a
higher percentage.
But it does seem reasonable that something is happening.
The flying triangles, the black triangles, are really interesting.
I mean, they've been on the increase.
Since the 1990s.
That was my signing.
Black Triangle.
I could have thrown a rock at the damn thing.
Yeah, and I know people who have seen these things.
I know somebody personally who is very much involved in the SETI community who has regularly seen these things out in, I think his home is in New Jersey.
And he's totally convinced of them.
He's plotted the flight paths.
He knows they're not regular airliners or anything, and they fit this classic description.
You've got to stay close to the phone for me, please.
There you go.
Of a large triangle, you know, maybe 200 feet across, something like that.
Yes.
The typical size.
Yes.
Lit up like a Christmas tree.
Not hiding, that's the interesting thing about them, they don't seem to be... Well, actually, even beyond that, Professor, NIDS did a study on these triangular craft and found that they tend to frequent the interstate highways!
I know, and populated areas, like, they're going out of their way brazenly to expose themselves, and that's weird.
I mean, if it's a covert military operation, why would they do that?
They wouldn't.
If it's extraterrestrials, why would they do that?
So, it presents a huge mystery.
Because, you know, they're putting themselves out in plain view, apparently, and they're on the increase, and it's difficult to explain why something would flaunt itself in that way.
But obviously people are seeing things, and they're not You know, not regular planes.
They block out this part of the sky.
Well, that's what I was trying to make earlier, Professor.
I saw this thing.
It was defying gravity.
It wasn't flying.
It was defying gravity.
Oh, OK.
That was your anti-gravity joke.
I guarantee you it was defying gravity.
Now, the only question is, theirs or ours?
Well, yeah.
I mean, obviously artificial.
That's the point you're making.
And, you know, who knows?
You're talking about low-flying, large, well-lit Aerial craft that is well seen by people in highly populated areas.
Yes.
Okay, so apparently they're carrying some kind of surveillance.
Well, alright.
But look, either way, it's a monstrous story.
If it's theirs, it's a monstrous story.
Hello?
It's aliens.
If it's ours, well, then we're defying gravity.
And to defy gravity means that you have essentially discovered a magnificent new source of energy that the world, at this moment, needs Much more desperately than we need some weapon that would mystify our enemies.
Wouldn't you think?
Yeah, I question the use of anti-gravity.
I mean, obviously, yeah, it's hovering.
There are ways to defy gravity without actually anti-gravity.
Lighter than air?
Maybe?
Yeah, I mean, you know, it obviously employs some propulsion system that is not in general use.
Whether it's actually technically anti-gravity or not, I don't know, but it is defying gravity in a sense.
Well, one of the main reasons that a lot of the people who are looking into this want it all to break open is because they feel we need a new energy source, and we do, very desperately, don't we?
Absolutely.
So, either it's Big Story A or Big Story B, which is a secret and ought not be a secret.
Anyway, hold on, Professor, and we'll be right back.
Professor David Darling, who is an astronomer, a British astronomer, is my guest.
And we're talking about a whole universe of things.
Join us if you dare.
This is a video of the first time I've ever seen a ghost.
I'm not sure if it's a ghost or a human.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
It is... How are you doing this morning?
David Darling is our guest, and he is an astronomer, a British astronomer, Who really does think outside the box.
So if you'd like to challenge that, stretch him a little bit.
You've got the numbers.
let's rock once again professor darling uh... professor
adam in cincinnati Says, hey, I've got a question for Professor Darling.
I find the most important question about aliens are not who they are, if they're here or not, or why they could be here, but rather what we're going to do about their presence.
In other words, he's somebody who totally is convinced they're here.
Yeah, well, if they're here, then they're obviously more advanced than us, because we don't travel to the stars yet.
I'm not sure there's a whole lot we can do about them.
They're going to be calling the shots in terms of what they're capable of doing.
I suppose the question is how they are here.
Are they just simply monitoring us from space?
Are they actually mingling among us?
Are some of the people you see actually aliens?
That would be a good way to study us.
But what we can do about them in terms of repelling them or communicating, that seems to be the ball is in their court.
Very clearly.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Hi.
Yeah, great show.
Been listening to it from the beginning.
Nice to talk to both of you, gentlemen.
Thank you.
I was intrigued when you were talking earlier about your own theories of consciousness and how the brain was more of a filter.
And I had a traditional background and a disbashful level of both psychology and philosophy.
And I was kind of curious, with both your knowledge of physics and your own personal theories on consciousness, where would you put the whole idea of how obviously there's a cause and effect level of reality, and then there's a freedom of choice issue.
It's kind of a classical question, but I wanted to Throw that out there to see how you would fuse it with your knowledge of both consciousness and of physics, and how you think that... How do you answer that question?
Whether there's free will or not, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, in terms of physics, you know, as you say, there's always a cause and effect.
The only place where there isn't is kind of in quantum physics, where sometimes things can arise just because they arise just randomly without a prior cause at all.
So possibly free will If it exists, truly exists, maybe arises at the quantum level, you know.
But even so, do you think that's a possibility?
Because that's always been sort of my interest is sort of at the quantum level.
And you look at some of the real early like aboriginal myths where they talk about Consciousness itself may be potentially being able to affect the universe or the shape of the universe.
Yes.
And I wonder if at some point there might not come a day where we can find a connection between that consciousness and something at a quantum level.
Yeah, well, I would think that's where it would be.
You know, you'd have to be able to trace the origin of everything, including consciousness, right down to that level.
And I would think that is where any kind of possibility for free will goes because if you treat the
brain just as a machine you're going to end up with, well, you know, we don't really have
free will, it's just the brain ticking through its motions and coming up with whatever
response is appropriate at the time.
We don't have any say in it, you know.
So I think that's a Newtonian thing.
So I think, you know, I'm not sure if free will exists truly in the sense that it is
free or not, or whether it's kind of just something that arrives and we think it's free
well but it's not it's already been decided ahead of time.
Oh, what a troublesome thought.
Yeah, well, thank you very much.
One of the questions, just a quick one, was just that with my background, and I'm looking at graduate schools, but I'm very interested in a lot of the more Interesting.
Some people would say far out subjects having to do with anything from cosmology to extraterrestrials as well as traditional questions like the one I just asked you.
Where would you recommend someone who wanted to get involved and wanted to find a way that he could start making it more of a bigger part of his life do that?
That's a big question.
Become a writer maybe.
I don't know.
Yeah, I think, you know, maybe you can have a conventional job and have all these thoughts in your spare time.
It doesn't have to be part of your career, you know.
Yeah, because you could starve to death in today's environment.
All right, let's go here.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Good morning, sir.
I just had a quick question.
Since relativity seems to impose a speed of light speed limit on the universe, how does Well, yeah, special relativity does impose.
You can't actually, you know, start from zero and accelerate up to the speed of light, but general relativity, which is the other aspect of relativity, the theory of gravity, does actually provide short circuits in terms of things like wormholes, There are also ways of engineering space and time.
There's something called the Alcubierre Walk Drive, which was devised by a Mexican physicist, which allows you to create a space-time bubble, essentially deform space-time so you can, you know, travel through it.
You're not actually traveling through it, you're traveling around it, in a sense.
So there are ways to short-circuit without, you know, violating the speed limit, as it were.
That's all mainstream stuff.
It's not too much way out there.
All right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hi.
Yes, hi.
Hi, Professor.
Look, years ago I read a study about using drop tubes and jets to create zero gravity right here on Earth, and it was momentarily able to obtain that particular state, but they were able to combine elements you cannot do on this Earth unless you're in outer space, but they did it here momentarily.
I think it was beryllium, beryllium oxide or something.
And Art said earlier that he had something that was like possibly an artifact or whatever from outside of Earth.
Yes, yes.
Now, could Art have a piece of junk or could he have something that was its reality?
It came from outer space or was it created right here?
And could they prolong zero gravity here on Earth to create that anti-gravity?
Boy, that's a whole bunch of questions.
I don't know.
With regard to what I have, I don't know the answer to that.
I don't think anybody does.
It was studied like crazy for years, and I'm not going to go into all that right now.
But what about the creation of things in zero gravity, Professor, that cannot be created naturally where there is gravity?
What we call zero gravity, for example, you know, if you're in a spacecraft in an Earth orbit, really isn't zero gravity because you're still, you know, you're still in Earth gravity, but you're always falling.
Right.
Totally zero gravity doesn't really exist in the sense that you're always being pulled by something.
So I don't know whether zero gravity experiments have to be done.
I mean, anti-gravity experiments don't depend on being in space or on the Earth.
It seems to me that's an irrelevance.
It's really a question of what we mean by anti-gravity.
You know, physicists sometimes mean something different than that.
Well, let me try it for the general public.
Something that would allow one to neutralize its effects.
That kind of corresponds with the physicists.
You have to actually neutralize gravity, like you can neutralize positive and negative charges.
Yes.
That's really what anti-gravity is.
That's pretty profound stuff, because gravity, according to Einstein, is the bending of space and time.
You've got to re-engineer space and time, which is tough.
That's really advanced physics.
Indeed.
How far along clandestine projects are with that, I don't know.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hi.
Hi.
Thanks, Art.
Mike in Utah, West New England, XM Radio.
On global warming, it seems like there's a couple of different sides to this debate, whether it's we humans that are causing it all, or whether we're just in a cycle, maybe a solar cycle, that's naturally occurring that warms up the planet.
And as I heard on Mr. Bell's program last night, attributable to the magnetic shift towards the geographical pole, which might even be caused by nuclear testing in Nevada.
So this could be a natural event.
I was wondering, is anybody measuring the global warming effects on the other planets in the solar system that exhibit solar change, such as Mars?
I think so.
Professor, they have looked at Mars, haven't they, and other planets where global warming has become runaway.
Well, you know, Venus has got a runaway greenhouse effect, but it's had that for a long, long time, you know, billions of years, really.
Right.
It's an interesting question, actually, and Mars would be a good test of that.
Venus is a lost cause.
I mean, it's a total runaway greenhouse effect on Venus.
It's all carbon dioxide atmosphere, basically.
It's just massive.
But Mars would be a more sensitive test of that, and actually I don't know if anybody has done a comparison between Mars and Earth to see how much of the effect is solar and how much is human.
I'm totally convinced that most of it, simply because of the speed at which it's happening, is human.
I've no real doubt there may be some supplementary effect due to cosmic influences, but I personally have no doubt.
Having read the literature that it's human caused.
It seems to be mounting, the evidence seems to be awfully high.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Professor David Darling.
Hi.
Hello, thank you.
It's an honor to speak with you, Art, and it's a thrill, Professor Darling.
First, I must say that I saw the black triangle two nights in a row, about a year and a half ago, sitting out my backyard as I used to be wacky about looking for tumbling satellites.
But that's beside the point.
Do you have a question?
Yes.
Has he, so to speak, looked into Mel's hole?
Does he have a theory on that?
Oh, my.
I'm just going to pass that one on by, because I don't think so.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Yes, hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Yes, do you have a question for my guest?
Well, yes, sir.
I'd like to share something that happened to me when I was a young man.
Is this a question for my guest?
Yes, sir.
It's regarding the extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.
All right.
Have you heard anything about underground facilities in the New Mexico area?
Because when I was about 17 years of age, I was hitchhiking towards California on Highway 10 West.
And sitting on my suitcase, it must have been around 10 o'clock at night.
The sky was extremely clear.
And about some time later, a vehicle pulled up.
It was a A Ford Galaxy 500.
I don't see too many of those anymore.
Okay, real quick here, because we're short on time, so what would the question be?
Well, the question is if you've heard anything about any of those types of facilities there, because this gentleman that was driving the vehicle and I were eventually taken there by... To a facility, alright.
The question is about Underground bases and facilities that may be around the world for all we know.
There's a lot of speculation and probably some of it is true.
The government probably takes underground those things it doesn't want seen.
Well, yeah, that's the obvious place to go, especially with the amount of surveillance.
I mean, every square foot of the surface of the Earth is now monitored regularly by satellites, and that's available to the public, you know, so... Exactly.
Any facility they wanted to keep totally dark would have to be literally in the dark.
Literally.
But I have no... I can't add any information.
They don't tell me these things.
All right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Yes, I have a question.
Yeah, turn your radio off and proceed.
Yes, that's very important.
All the way?
Yes, all the way off.
I have two questions.
First question is, I have a research project coming up.
Where can I find... Hello?
Yes.
Where can I find the most UFO sightings in the world?
Most information on UFOs?
No, where can I find the most sightings?
At the moment, South America.
South America?
Yes.
And another question.
Did the world change after Roswell?
Like the technology and all that?
Actually, that's a pretty good one.
There are a number of people, many of them I've interviewed.
Colonel Corso comes to mind, Professor.
Colonel Corso was a very credible person who was a colonel who claimed That he was given technology, essentially from the Roswell crash, and that he integrated this technology into the private sector through government programs, and that's how many of today's modern inventions came to be modern inventions, you know?
He siphoned this technology off.
Now, I personally believed the man.
or that he believed what he was saying i guess i should put it that way
that he was giving this technology to private industry did you
and and indeed uh... about that time to technology started leaping forward
yeah there's no there's no doubt about that you know it
kind of post-war period of course a lot of things were developed for military
purposes sure then leaked out into uh... public sector and i think radar and
stuff like that and then we just got very bright very quickly but it does
seem like man Yeah, there's a gray area there, you know, after the war, when a lot of UFO flying saucer sightings, and the link with our own weapons testing and whatnot.
So, you can't discount these things.
I have no extra information to give you on that, but, you know, if a person tells you information like that, that's okay.
Alright, let's try this.
Uh, what's the Rockies?
You're on the air with Professor Darling.
Hello.
Hi Art, great to talk to you.
You have a question about Venus and the viability of terraforming.
Since it's mostly carbon dioxide, could you drop a bunch of algae on it and have that start creating oxygen?
Well, I would think Mars would be a more likely terraforming candidate, but it is a good question anyway.
Professor?
Yeah, Venus is an incredibly hostile environment.
You know, the surface temperature is way up there.
You know, you drop algae on there, you'd have fried algae before they would get a chance to.
But you may genetically engineer something, you know, that could survive, say, in the atmosphere and convert it.
Terraforming is going to be a reality on Mars and Venus and many other planets eventually.
Whether that's a good thing or not, considering the mess we're making of our own planet.
Well, we may need it.
Yeah, we should probably, yeah, I don't know whether we should test it out on Mars first, or make sure we can live on our own planet before we start going elsewhere.
But, yeah, terraforming Venus and Mars, and definitely using some form of low plant life would be definitely an option.
But you would think, wouldn't you, Professor, that a civilization capable of terraforming a planet could somehow manage to keep its own house in order?
I don't know.
Our technology seems to be running way, way ahead of our ability to do benign things with it all the time, you know?
I wonder about that.
I try to be optimistic, but I've not seen a turning point yet.
Nor have I. But again, by the time you could terraform a planet, why, you could probably take care of your own planet.
Let's see if we can squeeze one in.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yeah, I have a few questions since y'all talked about some brain topics.
Yes.
Sleep paralysis.
Why do I see sometimes under sleep paralysis shadowy figures, strange noises, and I even feel a sensation of floating sometimes.
Well, because it's an altered state.
Professor You were earlier talking about the near-death experiences.
Well, they do kind of parallel.
Yeah.
It's a similar sort of out-of-body experience.
You bet.
It falls into exactly the same category of the body being left behind as a shell and possibly linking with a higher consciousness.
It sounds like a similar type of phenomenon.
Listen, very quickly, because we're about out of time here, is your latest book the Universal Book of Astronomy from Andromeda Galaxy to Zone of Avoidance?
That is.
One of my most recent ones is the Universal Book of Mathematics, which just came out.
Oh!
That's the one.
The next book will be on teleportation, and that's coming out in May.
Teleportation?
I can't wait for that to come out.
Well, you should have mentioned that a little earlier.
I'm extremely interested in teleportation.
I want to save that for a show that's near the publication date of May.
Fascinating subject.
Secrets to be told, eh?
That's right.
All right, my friend.
Listen, I want to thank you so much for sharing with myself and the audience tonight.
It's been wonderful, and I should apologize ahead of time for this, but I've got to say good night, darling.
I've got to go.
Thank you, Professor.
Good night.
Here's Crystal.
Just the right words.
See you next weekend from the high desert.
Night all.
Tonight in the desert Shooting stars across the sky This magical journey Will take us on a ride Filled with the longing Searching for the truth Will we make it till tomorrow Will the sun shine on you
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