Like the strange, intoxicating brew in the caldron in the fourth act of MacBeth, the subject of unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) keeps threatening to boil over in spite of the three “Weyward” Sisters’ best efforts to contain it. However, just as you think that the storm has passed and there are finally clear skies ahead, all Hades breaks loose! This post is not on Hades, however but on Michio Kaku on UAP’s & Type III Civilizations.
I’ve followed the subject since I was a teenager in the early sixties. When others boys my age were trying to sneak into upstate bars with false identification, I was wandering through the halls of the Pentagon looking for the Project Blue Book office after being invited to visit. But in the interest of full disclosure, by that time I was no stranger to intoxicating brew myself and I often joined my friends back home when I was not otherwise occupied. That’s another story for another post however, assuming I can remember any details.
Back then, former President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the topic of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by saying that those Americans who encountered them were “credible witnesses of relatively incredible things.” There was widespread secrecy in government circles in the sixties and subsequent decades and whispered accusations of a coverup. Despite the best efforts of Congress to uncover the truth these past few years, this secrecy persists to this day. So, while some people have testified under oath with hearsay evidence of alien bodies and crashed ships that have been recovered, no one can or is willing to produce them and the “powers that be” steadfastly deny this, though often unconvincingly.
Absent such evidence, we are left only with personal testimony and stacks of mostly (though with rare exception), fuzzy photos. No credible scientist will stake his or her professional reputation on what these objects are, without hard evidence. We only have conjecture, and that is the basis of this post.
WHAT WE KNOW FOR CERTAIN
The nature and performance of these objects have changed since 1948 when Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell crashed his P-51 Mustang chasing a UFO. Today, they are much faster, perform aerodynamically impossible turns, appear and disappear out of, or into, thin air, can hover without drifting and without visible engines in gale force winds, and can travel underwater with equal ease as well. They range in size from three feet or less to that of a football field–or more. However, unless these alien pilots are the size of Muppets, the smaller craft are probable uncrewed drones.
I truly believe that as many as 95% of reported lights in the sky or moving objects during the day are from earth or quickened in the eye of the beholder. The remaining 5% seems almost trivial in number were it not for the rapidly climbing sum of sightings the past decade. Thanks to Elon Musk, many of the “false positives” are Starlink satellites or booster rockets falling to earth. And, there are more nations than in the past launching satellites into orbit. Amazon is pioneering the use of drones to deliver parcels and law enforcement, realtors and insurance adjustors use drones regularly, themselves. So, the once friendly skies are now becoming the crowded skies (witness the crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 in Washington D.C. last January with 67 souls lost.)
The UFO/UAP literature runs the gamut from skeptics to people who believe they can summon UAPs telepathically. I agree with forty percent of the U.S. population who believe that “some [reported objects] have been alien spacecraft.” That’s about as far as I’ll go, without substantial proof, though I have done a good deal of independent research on the topic.
What’s left is a core of amazing, even alarming reports of “something” not of this world. My personal thoughts are that these objects are from another dimension as I discuss here. I say this because of the sheer distances and travel time needed (even at light speed) between the stars. However, physicist and educator Michio Kaku is of a different opinion. Whenever I hear or read his name, I pause what I’m doing because I’ve learned to appreciate his contributions to science and abilities to explain difficult theoretical concepts to his students. Dr. Kaku believes that these objects may come from a Type III civilization.
I understand that this raises additional questions. Who exactly is Dr Kako? What is a Type III civilization? I hope to answer these questions below.
MICHIO KAKU
Michio Kaku has one of the most brillant minds in American physics today. He was inspired by Albert Einstein early in his life while growing up in California. By the time he was in high school, he was hooked on physics. Says Futurism:
“For a high school science fair, Michio built a 2.3 eV “atom smasher” in his garage. Using scrap metal and 22 miles of wire, he created a magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s, as well collisions powerful enough to produce antimatter.”
Edward Teller, known for his work on the Manhattan Project and called “The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb” took notice of young Michio and helped him procure a free ride at Harvard University. Kaku completed his doctoral work at UC Berkeley and then immediately went to Princeton to teach. He went on to co-found String Field Theory. He currently holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York. Nor is Dr. Kaku solely absorbed with physics. He sees terrorism and climate change as threats That might keep Earth from transitioning from a Type 0 civilization to even a Type I civilization (see discussion below under the heading “The Kardashev Scale.”)
All of Professor Kaku’s books are easy to read and understand, even if and particularly if you do not have a background in mathematics and physics. He has won the Klopsteg Memorial Award (2008) and the Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award (2021), and he has authored many books and appeared in many television programs.
UAP’s
MYTHOS OF UAP’s
UAP’s or as they were formerly known, UFO’s were something of a cultural phenomena. Much of this early activity had been based more or less loosely on the writings of Charles Fort who recorded unusual celestial events dating back centuries. When I first became involved, the momentum was just beginning. Once a year, “UFOlogists” would meet at Giant Rock in California for a convention. People like George Adamski was a featured guest at similar events as he described “Nordic” appearing aliens who took him on trips to other planets. Edgar Cayce who had died several decades before was also revered. I was friends with James Moseley of New Jersey and Jim had a rival named Gray Barker, known today for the Mothman genre. Moseley and Barker would trade shots at each other in their respective publications, one of which I contributed to. Jim kept trying to talk me into appearing with him on the Amazing Randi or Long John Nebel radio show, but my mother would have none of that. Author Donald Keyhoe who had a modest office in Washington was trying unsuccessfully to get Congress to hold hearings on UFOs. The movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was a popular film for late night television.
Over time, with close encounters of the third kind (contact with an extraterrestrial being or entity, either through direct view or interaction) and fourth kind (alien abductions) being reported more, the genre started to involve psychology, philosophy, mysticism and the paranormal. At this point I dropped out.
THE DARK FOREST
Dr. Kaku in an interview with NBC News explained the problem of UAP’s.
“We now know that these objects can travel between Mach 5 and Mach 20, up to 20 times the speed of sound. They can drop 80,000 feet within a matter of a few seconds. Not only that, you (sic) can also fly underwater. Not only that, we have videotapes of them diving into the oceans and then swimming underwater. Now, we don’t have that capability with our rocket ships. They are not maneuverable like that. They cannot go between Mach 5 and Mach 20 within a few seconds. But these objects are now on the tape.”
He notes that over time, the burden of proof has shifted. Decades ago, if someone reported seeing a UAP (née UFO), the burden of proof lay with the observer who had to prove in some way that these objects were, in fact, real. Today, however, the burden of proof is on the Pentagon to show that these objects are not real. Not every skeptic accepts that logic, but in the eyes of the general public, it has come to that.
Personally, Dr. Kaku is excited about the prospect of extraterrestrial life within our solar system, most likely in the oceans of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. He calls that a “game changer.” But Dr. Kuku believes that it is a “bad idea” for humans to advertise our existence. Speaking to Stephen Colbert “I think it is a good idea to keep our presence a secret, that the aliens don’t put us in their sights.” He uses Cortez and the Aztecs as a prime reason. The Aztecs were a Bronze Age civilization with no steel, no gunpowder, and no immunity to smallpox, which is why they lost to Hernán Cortés. This notion is called “The Dark Forest.”
ORIGINS OF UAPs
INTERDIMENSIONAL
String theory calls for ten or possibly eleven dimensions. Three are the spatial dimension which we know (longitude, latitude and altitude), one is time (the 4th) and six others are thought to be compactified or curled up. These are too small for anything to exist in as far as we know now. They are thought to be involved with the four fundamental forces: the strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism, and the gravity. Currently, UAP’s in some cases are being described as “morphing” or changing shapes. This and their sudden appearance and disappearance in other cases is consistent with crossing dimensional boundaries. Here is an interesting link that explains this projection effect that David Grusch referred to in his testimony to the House Committee two years ago.
PARALLEL WORLDS
This theory was laid down by Hugh Everett III in 1957. He suggested that immediately after the Big Bang, the universe experienced exponential expansion. However, the expansion was not uniform. Different parts of space stopped expanding at different moments, creating an unknown number of universes, each with its own physical laws and constraints which may or may not resemble ours. It is possible that UAP’s come from another “universe” just a hop, skip and jump from ours. Or, it might be superimposed on ours where the UAP’s enter through portals, like Alice entered Wonderland.
String theory posits that there are membranes in space (called “branes.”) These are like long, uni- or multi-dimensional threads. Branes can collide and interact with each other, producing matter and energy. However, the Second Law says that matter cannot be created or destroyed—only transformed. This assumes, of course, that the First and Second Law are true in other hypothetical universes. These universes (multiverses) can have their own dimensions as well as we do. However, there is no empirical evidence for branes and multiverses. They only exist in mathematical modeling.
THE KARDASHEV SCALE
Our world is currently Stage 0 on the Kardashev scale (and the scale actually starts with “Stage I,” so we are technically and technologically not even on the scale yet.) We could be on the thresh hold of Stage I in a hundred years from now, but that would take some major investment and reimagining by the countries in the world. A Type I civilization, is defined as a “society that can harness and utilize all the energy available on its home planet.” This involves exploiting sustainable energy sources such a wind, solar, geothermal and hydro sources of power vis-à-vis oil and coal. However, at the moment, the current U.S. administration is backtracking from this trend as it retrofits and returns to fossil fuels. Thus, it is questionable whether we can advance to Stage I in the next century. Another requirement to reach Stage I is to reduce the overall carbon footprint of the planet by making global energy much more efficient that it presently is. In addition to the unrestrained destruction of the rain forest in South America, elsewhere in Asia the same sort of eco system is being gnawed at as millions of villagers destroy trees for the sake of producing heat for their homes.
A Type I Civilization would also have the ability to store this solar and planetary energy in super powerful batteries or banks for future use.
These are just a few of the innovations that must be met and the burden must be shared by all countries, rich and poor alike on the Earth. This consensus is a long way off as evidenced by the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Energy Accords earlier this year.
TYPE II CIVILIZATIONS
Just as a Type I civilization is able to harness the energy of its planet and to make full use of its resources, a Type II civilization is one that has likewise harnessed the energy of its star, allowing the inhabitants of the home planet to colonize the other planets in its solar system. I used to ask my classes to envision what life on Mars might look like. I mentioned that people would likely live in glorified cargo containers launched from Earth. But that was before the days of 3D printers. The future of Martian living might not be nearly as spartan now. But a Type II civilization would not confine itself to the planets in our solar system. In terms of our own system, this would include the 421 known moons circling the planets, perhaps mining the asteroids for precious metals as well. This conquest will require great energy resources to provide the power needed for space travel, communications, terraforming planets like Mars to make them more Earth-like.
One way to capture the energy of a star may be with a Dyson Sphere. A Dyson Sphere, named after Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) is a theoretical super-sized (star-sized) structure designed to capture the radiant energy produced by that sun. Our sun is ten times larger than Jupiter and Jupiter is eleven times larger than Earth. But to build a sphere approximating the size of Jupiter is well beyond our foreseeable abilities in the centuries ahead. Then again, to magnify this planet sized sphere by a factor of ten to the size of our sun is even more expensive and remote. In the illustration shown, each part of the sphere is roughly the size of the planet Venus, so a 3D printer (or a million of them) would not be particularly useful.
Some scientists are proposing a network of more manageable heat traps (in terms of size) which remain at precise intervals around the star, This is called a Dyson swarm and is pictured above or at right. How the components of a Dyson sphere could withstand the heat, resist the gravitational attraction of the sun and be constructed in the first place are questions currently unanswered as far as I know.
A Dyson sphere would emit a certain signature because of the effects of the sphere on the normal output of the star. There are several team currently investigating stars for that same signature. Whether another species in another part of our galaxy or another galaxy altogether might think of such a approach as to construct a sphere is an entirely different matter.
While a Type II civilization is not something our great, great, great, great, great grandchildren would ever see, Professor Kaku says this would still not be advanced enough to allow aliens to travel to Earth. That travel could only be realistically achieved by a Type III civilization.
TYPE III CIVILIZATIONS
Just as Type I civilizations were planet wide in scope and Type II civilizations were system wide in scope (i.e., the immediate neighborhood to a planet including its sun(s), a Type III civilization is galaxy-wide. Given the current consensus that the age of the universe is no older than 14 b.y., I’m not sure there are any Type III civilizations, but for the sake of this post and Dr. Kaku’s point, we’ll assume that there are.
Having a galaxy-wide control of events means that you could very likely generate wormholes (Einstein-Rosen bridges), harness black holes, fold space and so on which would mean you could travel across 500 light years in less time than flying from New York to Los Angeles. In that case, aliens visiting Earth would not even break a sweat do so (assuming they perspire.) It might also mean that you could travel through time as easily as space. That would mean you’d be virtually invincible.
In an interview with Newsweek, Dr. Kaku describes it this way:
“Now, if you want to build a flying saucer that can go between stars, you probably have to be Type III [civilization.]
Now why is that? Because the energy scale that you need is the energy scale called the Planck energy. The Planck energy is the energy of the big bang, is the energy of a black hole—it is the energy at which space and time become unstable.
If you have, for example, an ice cube and you put it in a microwave oven, you turn it on, well, the ice eventually melts, turns into water. The water eventually vaporizes and turns into steam. The steam eventually decomposes and ionizes into quarks and subatomic particles. Now let’s boil space! If I take a microwave oven and heat it up to the Planck energy, which is a quadrillion times the energy of the large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland, eventually space becomes unstable. It begins to boil holes, and bubbles begin to form inside your microwave oven. These bubbles are wormholes, they are gateways to another universe.”
Obviously, you cannot create wormholes in your microwave. This is just a useful example of the process. In another example, he refers to the looking glass that Alice used to enter Wonderland.
“The looking glass was created by a mathematician. Charles Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. The looking glass is the wormhole. It is a gateway connecting two universes together, such that when Alice put her hand through the looking glass, she entered another universe.” Ibid.
CATASTROPHIC COLLAPSE
So, the more advanced a civilization becomes, the more energy resources it theoretically has at its disposal and–all other things being equal–the better the chance of that civilization mastering space travel to other stars. Yet, we have not conclusively heard from such a civilization.
The Fermi Paradox attempts to explain why with so many hypothetical planetary systems in the universe, we have not heard from someone yet? Another popular scenario at the moment is the Dark Forest hypothesis made popular by Liu Cixin’s series of novels built on the Three Body Problem. This states that neighboring extraterrestrial civilizations consider our universe to be a dangerous place to live, so it’s best not to let anyone know that you exist. You may listen, but don’t speak. You would not give your address to some strange on the Web. Why would you broadcast our location into space?
Catastrophic collapse is the notion that at some point in a society’s evolution, it turns on itself in some destructive way. But before a civilization can reach Type I and then Type II and Type III, it must face challenges that threaten it. These challenges involve the appearance of prebiotic life including proteins and amino acids. Once primitive, microscopic life takes root, there needs to be the emergence of complex life and then intelligent life if Darwin’s theory rings true in that remote, alien environment. From there, you need the development of technology, else space travel would be virtually impossible. And, the tensions within the apex life form would have to be managed to avoid self-destruction. We’ve had two global wars in the past century or so and we’re fairly close to a third war. So, it is possible our planet will never reach a Type I civilization. If we don’t wipe ourselves out in a nuclear war, then catastrophic climate change may destroy the agronomy of countries around the globe. Or, ionization from space will make humanity sterile, or some deadly plague will emerge. This is why the late Stephen Hawking and others spoke repeatedly of the urgency of colonizing Mars; so that if our planet is destroyed, people will still be around to preserve our race.
What could cause the anihilation of life on Earth? A collision with an asteroid, a plague, either naturally evolving or synthesized disease produced in a lab, nuclear war, or an environmental catastrophe to name just a few possibilities.
NONHUMAN INTELLIGENCE
This term speaks for itself and is commonly used today. It does not apply exclusively to extraterrestrial lifeforms. It can just as easily apply to a race of robots, or artificial intelligence, or even prosaic life forms already on earth such as what is found among primates, whales, problem solving involving dogs, octopi and birds, etc.
When we consider the highly advanced technological capabilities of UAPs, it raises questions about their intellectual capabilities and their intentions towards us as well. How do they communicate? Are they vocal or telepathic or do they communicate in other ways. Would they even bother communicating with us?
In terms of cognition, questions arise about their brain and neural network, how might they reason and reach conclusions in contrast to humans. Other questions dealing with their values, emotions if any and so on are worth considering. Absent any concrete information, fear probably will probably remain.
ALIEN LIFE
There are many possible variations of life that can be imagined. Life might be carbon-based or silicon-based (or based on some other element.) It might form hundreds of miles deep in the ocean of a water world or in the atmosphere of a gas giant like Saturn. It could well in caves or in igneous environments. I cover a good deal of this in other posts such as here. Rather than repeat myself, I’ve included the links so you can browse for more information if you wish.
AFTERWORD
It is difficult for me to imagine some earth-shaking disclosure or event apart from a UAP landing at the United Nations, or being found trapped in the ice at one of the poles. If we can believe in reports going as far back as Roswell, there are wrecked ships or alien bodies at Wright-Patterson AFB or Hangar 18 or Area 51 or the Skinwalker Ranch or . . . Certainly a hundred or more people over the past seventy-five years must have had first hand (eye-witness) access to these exotic machines and alien cadavers. Why were there no death bed confessions by people who wanted this terrible secret off their conscience before they died and met their Maker?
