Let's take the lesser extraterrestrial threat first: The New York Times, in the last month of the truly strange 2017, ran a much-attention-getting article on "The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program," detailing how 22 million of those tax dollars you're working right now to generate were given to "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification"--which is to say, flying saucers.
Which is really to say, "Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of [Senator Harry] Reid's, Robert Bigelow," who is "absolutely convinced" aliens exist, and have visited earth--settling one of the biggest foundational issues right there. And, indeed, resolving the Fermi Paradox in the bargain, although--to get sidetracked for a minute--I was reflecting recently on how the Paradox would still exist even in the demonstrable presence of an alien visitation to Earth, because everything we know about stellar evolution, planetary accretion, the evolution of life in habitable zones, the age of the galaxy, and so on, leads to the conclusion that there should not just be one confirmed case of aliens, but lots of them, obvious ones, in every direction. But I digress.
Anyway, UFOs have long been a staple of media outlets where science isn't, shall we say, a high priority. (Here's Megyn Kelly asking the foreign desk, in all earnestness, whether a UFO over the Dome of the Rock means Jesus is back.) Even when LGM get mention in credible media, it's usually a popular interest piece starring the same cast of characters: someone interviewed the good-hearted but gullible Edgar Mitchell; there's mention of Jimmy Carter having seen something in the sky he couldn't personally identify at the time, and so on. It's a bit like the way Francis Collins is always mentioned in articles on how science and religion don't really conflict, because, you know, Francis Collins.
This article was different. The United States' DOD itself has been running this Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program for years, and with "black money," no less; the spending committee that backed it included Reid, Ted Stevens (R, AK) and Daniel Inouye (D, HI); and I suppose the Nimitz video making the year-end rounds may indeed show something important, though it actually looks pretty sketchy as evidence, the aerial equivalent of a Bigfoot sighting. A new generation of Chinese drone? Unidentified, as the article rightly notes, means just that. Despite public enthusiasm, the options are not alien spacecraft or YOU GOT ANY BETTER SUGGESTIONS? In any event, whatever we're looking at here, I, and clearly a lot of other folks, were intrigued.
Then things get sketchy: "Under Mr. Bigelow's direction, [Bigelow Aerospace] modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes." ( . . . )
"We're sort of in the position of what would happen if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a garage-door opener," said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program. "First of all, he'd try to figure out what is this plastic stuff. He wouldn't know anything about the electromagnetic signals involved or its function."
Let me just interrupt the responsible reportage here to giggle. Come on, Bigelow Aerospace; no you don't. I'll bet 22 million tax-payer dollars right now that the number of tech objects built by aliens in those Las Vegas hangars is exactly zero.
Anyway, the weird eventually takes over altogether. The DOD program was cancelled in 2012 when "It was determined," according to the Pentagon, "that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding," but Mr. Elizondo, a true believer, kept at it. Now he and a few others, including the guitarist from a band called Blink-182, are somehow involved in a "public benefit corporation" called To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences that has plans to make great profits for you, investor, and all your investor buddies off alien tech, just invest now!
I admit I can't quite get my head around To The Stars, but they appear to be FQ(x)'s evil twin. "What if scientists were given resources to investigate the boundaries of traditional theory?" the pop star inquires in their home-page pitch. Hear, hear! I say: FQ(x) has been trying to fill this gap for years. What follows, though, is a puzzling melange of foundational science issues, pseudoscience, actual names evidently associated with the CIA and DOD, and ready-made History Channel filler. Honestly, it's hard to understand quite *what* this is. The Pyramids at Giza are shown as voice-over describes "mysteries of the universe," ancient astronauts come into it, and we are told the company's ambitions include such things as "[pulling together] unified study from religious scholars" and funding "warp drive metrics." ESP, telepathy--it's all in there. ("Quantum theorists" get the usual nod, though for some reason they are listed separately from "physicists.") In any event, with my mysterious powers of precognition, I will now predict the actual scientific output from this venture . . .
But, break my heart, New York Times! I read your article and thought: Is this it? We have talked since I was young, at the dawn of the "space age," about the tantalizing possibility of visitors--is this what it feels like, the morning of that day when it actually happens? That day when everything changes, and the new year will be truly, profoundly new?
Not yet. Though we did get also get a taste, late in 2017, of just how such a day will likely feel. Someone on the news will say something a lot like this: "It's definitely from outside our solar system, it's not shaped in any way you'd expect, indeed it's cigar-shaped, it has no comet tail, it's big, it's bigger than a skyscraper, it's half a mile long, actually we don't know what it is . . ."
At the beginning, it wasn't at all outrageous to wonder whether 'Oumuamua was something manufactured. (Its name means "forward scout" or "first messenger.") A generation ship? The planet killer? Lots of people called it Rama, in honor of Arthur C. Clarke's centennial, but I prefer the Hawaiian name, having just recently been to the beautiful and cold Haleakala Observatory myself (as a tourist). Everyone pointed telescopes, including FQ(x) familiar Avi Loeb, and SETI with the Allen Array: nope, not broadcasting, apparently covered by a foot and half of reddish crust and showing signs of millions of years of cosmic ray bombardment. It's just ("just") a truly weirdly shaped piece of planetary debris that happened to be brushing our neighborhood.
So as we ring in the New Year on earth, we wish 'Oumuamua well on its long flight through the emptiness. That fuzzy video of something being chased by fighter jets left me intrigued, but finally unmoved. But, just for a second, seeing the first artist's renditions of 'Oumuamua, I felt myself in the position of a Wampanoag tribesman seeing some kind of impossible ocean-crossing vessel emerge on the horizon, and wondering whether this was it--the moment when everything was about to change.
