Thursday, April 10, 2014
Earthquakes, UFOs, and all that stuff
Some new research has been published in a scientific journal about the relationship between UFOs and earthquakes. Ostensibly, however, the research is about luminous objects called earthquake lights are observed at or around the time of significant seismic events. The paper is available at:
http://srl.geoscienceworld.org/content/85/1/159.extract
This is significantly different in scope from the Tectonic Strain Theory of UFOs, proposed many years ago by Michael Persinger, a Canadaian neuroscientist who believes that most UFO reports can be explained as energy releases from tiny seismic events deep underground. (He's also the guy who says UFO abduction experiences can be explained by electromagnetic effects on the temporal lobe in the brain.)
Anyway, I had originally thought this made some sense, until I began studying the data and the evidence to support the theory, in detail. In short, I found it lacking. I prepared a long treatise on why this was so, in my opinion. It's available online at:
http://psican.org/alpha/index.php?%2F20130514760%2FUFO-News-Articles-and-Editorials%2FThe-Tectonic-Strain-Theory-of-Geophysical-Luminosities.html
Supporters of the TST didn't take kindly to my criticisms, so a bit of a heated exchange erupted in scientific journals regarding whether UFOs really could be explained as energy from seismicity. (This was actually quite significant: to debate a theory of UFOs in a recognized scientific journal!)
Curiously, I was the only critic of the theory among all of ufology. Practically everyone else seemed to think it made perfect sense, apparently.
http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1984.58.3.840?journalCode=pms
The TST theory continued to chug along, and I continued to voice concerns, until it seemed to have reached its peak... or nadir. Proponents claimed that UFO investigators were at risk of dying of cancer because the energy released by the seismic events - which are what were reported by witnesses as UFOs - would cause the cancerous cells to multiply in people frequenting UFO hotspots. And those, of course, would be UFO investigators.
A medical researcher found this as absurd as I did, and we published a note about this in a major medical journal.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1269166/?page=2
So, are UFO sightings and earthquakes related?
You be the judge.
Labels: TST tectonic UFOs earthquakes lights
# posted by rutkows @ 2:07 PM 
