PART SEVEN -- On The Road To Roswell 2007: A Discussion With Dr. Tom Van Flandern

Editors note: This is the seventh in a special series of Raiders News Network interviews focusing on the 60th Anniversary of the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO Incident. Tom Horn is joined by Dr. Tom Van Flandern, Ph.D. degree in Astronomy, specializing in celestial mechanics (the theory of orbits), from Yale University in 1969. He spent 21 years (1963-1983) at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., where he became the Chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch of the Nautical Almanac Office. During the past decade, Tom has been a Research Associate at the Univ. of Maryland Physics Department in College Park, MD, and a consultant to the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, MD, working on improving the accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS).

HORN: Dr. Van Flandern, it is a privilege to speak with you today. We have been conducting this special series of articles in the lead up to the 60th anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident. Your research covers a wide spectrum including areas we might associate with Roswell. Before we get to that, please describe your organization, Meta Research (http://metaresearch.org). What does it do and why does it exist?

VAN FLANDERN: In the 1970s, astronomy funding from universities and industry became centralized under NASA and NSF (National Science Foundation) control. In the 1980s, funds became limited, so certain theories were “adopted” and research into alternatives was cut off. By the 1990s, it became evident that decision was a huge setback to the advancement of science. Meta Research was founded in 1991 under a 7-member Board to look into puzzles and anomalies in the field of astronomy and try to find the best models to explain all the new data pouring in, as contrasted with simply force-fitting the data and existing models into each other.

Peter Lipton recently described this change in the behavior of science with an archery analogy. Suppose one archer draws a bull’s eye on a barn and shoots an arrow into it, while another archer shoots his arrow first and draws the bull’s eye around where it struck the barn. The end result appears to be the same, but we properly give more archery credit to the first archer than to the second. Yet modern science has migrated into imitating the second archer by modifying theories and reinterpreting data as needed to maintain the adopted theories already in place. Meta Research’s goal is to reverse that trend by developing theories that fit the data without need of modification or reinterpretation, at least for the field of astronomy. We have had some modest success in that effort.

HORN: In 1999, you published a book that challenged some of the standard models of gravitation and General Relativity. What caused you to write this book and has it been repudiated or supported by recent advances in our understanding of physics?

VAN FLANDERN: The book you reference is Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets published by North Atlantic Books. It is now in its second edition and fifth printing as more and more people discover the major iconoclastic work of the past 15 years in the field of astronomy. It proposes a revolutionary new vision of the origin and nature of everything from humans to the whole universe. Our solar system in particular will never seem the same after seeing it in this new light.

The book describes models deduced from first principles or basic facts, rather than theories induced from observations. It reports many predictions so the new models can be tested and judged. To date, the prediction success rate for all models combined has been over 90% despite very long odds against success either by chance or if the standard models now in vogue were correct. I’m sure we will be discussing some of those models in this interview, although time constraints may allow us to only scratch the surface of what’s new in the universe.

HORN: The American Spectator, Salon Magazine and others have quoted you regarding challenges to Einstein's theory of relativity. Others have said Einstein cheated by adjusting arguments around the values he wanted. Do you think that is true, and in what ways if any do you believe relativity is incorrect?

VAN FLANDERN: Einstein was a bright and humble physicist, whom I admire for many reasons, but especially for his willingness to admit his own mistakes. I have tried to emulate that practice, which requires that the individual not get too attached to his/her own ideas, then continually exposes them to new possibilities of falsification, and welcomes such falsifications when they happen as opportunities to learn new things about the world around us.

Regarding the relativity of motion, both Lorentz (1904) and Einstein (1905) published competing theories a year apart. Today, we would conclude that the truth lies somewhere between the two theories. Apparently, neither Lorentz’s universal aether (the hypothetical space-filling, light-carrying medium) or Einstein’s total absence of aether is correct. In 1920, Einstein conceded the need for some kind of aether to carry light waves. Then Lorentz conceded that Einstein’s approach was perhaps simpler than his own. Today’s relativity of motion is much more like that of Lorentz than Einstein, but Lorentz is still given little credit for this.

Einstein also gave us “general relativity”, which was a new theory of gravity. From the earliest days, this theory had two different physical interpretations for the same math. One was called the “field interpretation”, in which gravity is a traditional force, but is modified by the presence of a “potential field” (equivalent to a localized “aether”). The other is called the “geometric interpretation”, in which gravity is not a force but a “curvature of space-time”. Only this latter interpretation is currently being taught in schools. But the geometric approach cannot explain either the mechanism that initiates motion in bodies at rest or the latest findings about the propagation speed of gravitational force, whereas the field interpretation can explain both.

So the criticisms I have levied are about variations of Einstein’s model adopted by modern relativists. For example, these post-Einstein relativists have used the geometric interpretation to predict exotic phenomena such as “black holes” and “string theory”. Yet Einstein himself not only denied the physical possibility of such mathematical oddities, but he wrote a paper in 1939 proving that such things could also not exist in his theory. However, modern relativists have found that invoking Einstein’s name and donning his mantle opens doors to funding and getting published. My position is that Einstein was right in more ways than he was given credit for, but modern relativists have introduced new concepts and interpretations in Einstein’s name that the great physicist would never have approved. In my opinion and that of a few colleagues, Einstein’s field interpretation was right and modern relativists claiming Einstein’s authority and using the geometric interpretation have strayed from the cause-and-effect spirit of true physics.

HORN: I want to discuss the planet Mars and the possibility of artificial structures there. First, what have all the space program's new discoveries taught us about the origin and evolution of the solar system?

VAN FLANDERN: The current mainstream theory is that the Sun, its planets, their moons, the asteroids and the comets all originated as condensations from a primeval cloud of gas and dust that was compressed by a nearby supernova explosion 4.6 billion years ago. This formation process took about five million years to complete, and the theory indicates that not much of significance has happened to our solar system since then. But this theory leaves many unanswered questions such as how the solar system acquired its rotational energy. Most of that “angular momentum” is in the planets even though most of the mass is in the Sun.

The best model to address all those unanswered questions is the “fission model”. In it, as the forming Sun in the primeval cloud contracts from gravity, it spins up. The spin first flattens the Sun, then elongates it into a football shape. When the spin is fast enough, the two ends of the football break off forming a pair of twin planets and slowing the Sun’s spin. But the Sun continues to contract and the process continues through several cycles of spin-up, overspin, and fissioning planets. The same contracting, spin-up, fissioning process happens to the rapidly cooling planets, which periodically reach overspin and fission their own satellites. Three of our smaller “planets” were originally satellites of larger planets: Mercury escaped from Venus, Mars escaped from now-exploded “Planet V”, and Pluto escaped from Neptune.

HORN: What evidence is there that any planet exploded?

VAN FLANDERN: There is evidence all over the solar system. Tens of thousands of asteroids orbit the Sun in the gap between Mars and Jupiter. Probably at least as many of these apparent fragments orbit beyond Neptune. These orbits show “explosion signatures”, patterns similar to those found in orbits of fragments from Earth satellites that exploded in orbit around the Earth. Comet orbits have similar characteristics unique to an explosion origin. The distribution of surface blackening on major satellites is consistent with an explosion blast wave spreading through the solar system. Chemical compositions of asteroids, comets, and meteorites are consistent with their once being part of a planet-sized body. The assumption of an explosion origin yielded the best predictions of meteor storms. Some mass extinction events on Earth are consistent with global bombardment as would follow a planet explosion. Etc. My book Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets lists 100 such lines of evidence and cites where each is documented.

HORN: What are some examples of genuine predictions made by the exploded planet hypothesis, or EPH?

VAN FLANDERN: Here is a list of ten major predictions that have now been validated but for which the results were unknown at the time the predictions were made:

·       that asteroids and comets should be identical types of bodies except for asteroids losing most of their volatiles because of long-term solar heating.

·       that these asteroids and comets would have “numerous and commonplace” satellites of their own.

·       that the water in meteorites would be salt water rather than pristine water.

·       that high-resolution views of irregular asteroids would show numerous boulders and roll marks from the tidal decay of satellite orbits.

·       that predictions of meteor storms would be possible if one assumes the meteors escape from orbit around a comet nucleus instead of by ejection from the nucleus.

·       that most asteroid orbits will have a lower limit to eccentricity that increases to either side of the explosion distance from the Sun.

·       that “new” comets will all appear to come from a similar great distance, arriving on orbits with period equal to the time since the most recent explosion: 3.2 million years.

·       that the velocity with which comets appear to “split” at various distances from the Sun will be consistent with the escape velocity of objects previously orbiting the comet’s nucleus.

·       that very slowly rotating moons will get blackened by the blast wave on only one side, and those with tilted rotation axes will get blackened on only one pole.

·       that the first sample return from a comet would show evidence of minerals found typically on planets in the inner solar system, not just minerals that can form in a very cold environment in space far from the Sun.

HORN: How about prediction failures? Even widely accepted theories can have those also.

VAN FLANDERN: The EPH has made many more predictions for which the results are not yet in. But to date, none of its predictions have been wrong, even when they were contrary to expectations of the many mainstream models the EPH would replace.

HORN: What are the latest astronomical discoveries that bear on the exploded planet hypothesis?

VAN FLANDERN: The two most recent missions were Deep Impact smashing a probe into a comet in July 2005, and Stardust returning a dust sample from a comet to Earth in the spring of 2006. The former mission showed that comets are very similar to asteroids inside and out; and the latter mission showed that comets were formed in a hot environment rather than a cold one. Both of these favor a planetary explosion origin for comets over the traditional idea of “leftovers” from the coldest parts of the primeval solar nebula.

HORN: Astronomers have been finding planets around other stars. Is there any evidence of extrasolar planets exploding?

VAN FLANDERN: There is. Classical novas are usually thought to be explosions of invisible companions of visible stars. We now have cause to suspect that the invisible companions are planets rather than dwarf stars.

HORN: What effect would there be on Earth if a planet in our solar system explodes?

VAN FLANDERN: The K/T boundary in geology is found all over the Earth and dates from 65 million years ago. Its features include an iridium layer, microdiamonds, meteorites, shocked quartz, and carbon ash; at least 16 major impacts globally; mass extinction of 70% of all species; inland seas drained; numerous “hot zones” of radioactivity; an extended period of unparalleled global volcanism; atmospheric and ocean compositional changes; and a single global fire. These are the kinds of things expected after a distant planetary explosion. They are more than the single-asteroid-impact-in-the -Yucatan theory can explain, although that is still the leading mainstream theory at present.

HORN: What would cause a planet to explode?

VAN FLANDERN: We have three known mechanisms. The simplest is changes of state in a planet’s core, which can cause explosions or implosions. But we now think that gravitons, the carriers of gravitational force, are the most probable cause of both planetary and stellar explosions whenever something collapses the body’s core because the heat deposited by graviton impacts would be trapped by such a collapse and would continue to build up until the body exploded.

HORN: What is the connection between the exploded planet hypothesis and Mars?

VAN FLANDERN: Mars shows the scars from close proximity to two explosions. One was of its parent “Planet V” when Mars was still a moon. This was probably the same event that produced the K/T boundary on Earth, and saturated one side of Mars with craters while leaving the other side flat and smooth. It also tilted the pole of Mars, tore away much of its atmosphere, and left certain radioactive isotopes that can originate only in a violent explosion. After that first event, Mars and another moon of Planet V were left orbiting each other as they orbited the Sun. The other moon, a “water world much like Jupiter’s moon Europa”, apparently exploded 3.2 million years ago, producing an unprecedented flood on one side of Mars. This violent history of Mars is the subject of a dramatic 5-minute video on our web site at http://metaresearch.org.

HORN: On your website there is also a page where high-resolution spacecraft photos of Mars appear to show artificial structures. Tell us about these.

VAN FLANDERN: The biggest surprise of the space program to date has been the finding of several categories of anomalies on the surface of Mars that, if seen on Earth, would certainly be attributed to human activity. These include an abundance of special shapes not normally found in nature, such as closed triangles and pyramids; vehicle-like tracks and trails across otherwise featureless desert terrain; mostly underground networks of huge “glassy tubes” apparently extending for hundreds of miles, visible in places where the surface is cracked, and seeming to connect interesting surface places; odd patterns and symbols; and an abundance of large-scale “artistic” imagery such as the five known faces on Mars and some geoglyphs reminiscent of those on the plains of Nazca in Peru.

HORN: What stands out to you the most as special shapes on Mars that do not normally arise in nature?

VAN FLANDERN: Closed triangles with sharp vertices and straight sides are not normally seen in nature. 3, 4, and 5-sided pyramids are also rare. Yet many of these are found on Mars, but not on any other planet or moon yet examined in similar detail. On the Elysium plains of Mars there may be an entire field of pyramid-shaped objects laid out in linear arrays.

HORN: I've also read about signs of present-day vegetation on Mars.

VAN FLANDERN: Yes, we see objects that look very much like vegetation and trees in a few special places. The “trees” have a central trunk-like shape with large, medium, and small branch-like appendages extending radially outward, and they cast shadows on the ground indicating a height of at least 50 meters. In at least some places, these objects change appearance with the seasons in patterns similar to terrestrial vegetation. One color photo showed a predominately green coloration in the warmer months. The Martian atmosphere is supposed to be too thin and cold for vegetation. But on Earth, we have special places such as “hot springs” where warm liquid water can bubble up from underground and support vegetation in an otherwise hostile environment.

HORN: Describe the objects on Mars you called "glassy tubes".

VAN FLANDERN: From an examination of hundreds of these objects, we know that they are tube-like shapes typically 50-100 meters in diameter. White bands wrap around the tube about every ten meters along its entire length. The material between bands is translucent, and we can faintly see the white bands on the underside through the tube. When direct sunlight is available, it reflects from the tube in a mirror-like way instead of just scattering the light. Where a boulder has damaged a tube, we often see a collapsed tube section, where broken white bands lie flat on the surface, and sharp, spine-like portions of broken bands jut out from an intact-but-torn tube section. Tubes are visible mainly in fissures or where a flood has eroded away the topsoil. In some places, they can be traced underground in infrared images that can detect such things if they are not too far below the surface. Some tubes cross one another (one above, one below) in perpendicular intersections, while others have junctions where one tube becomes two or vice versa. In a few places, many tubes come together in patterns suggestive of “terminals” for train stations.

HORN: What else is seen that might be of special interest?

VAN FLANDERN: In certain places on Mars, especially near the location of the former equator of the planet, we see “artistic imagery”, sometimes in abundance, although not always with distinct clarity. Moreover, the shapes seen are not random, but depict familiar terrestrial images in organized groupings. For example, in one region of Mars named “Cydonia”, we see an apparent mosaic scene showing impressions of sky, land, and water, with animal shapes organized in appropriate sections of the mosaic. Amphibious creatures are in the water area, animals on the land area, and aviary creatures in the air area. However, millions of years of dust storms and erosion have left many of the images more impressionistic than life-like. Had the images been as distinct as the words I must use to describe them, the shock waves from this discovery would have already traveled around the world.

HORN: What distinguishes the many artistic faces and other familiar shapes on Mars from faces and shapes seen in clouds and natural landscapes here on earth?

VAN FLANDERN: It is possible to see even very detailed shapes in random, noisy backgrounds. But some of the Martian shapes appear against flat, featureless backgrounds. The context and relationship appropriateness is additional evidence these are not products of geology or random processes. But the most compelling proof, to a scientist at least, is the fulfillment of what we call a priori predictions. For example, if you are dealt a 13-card hand and get all 13 spades, you might wonder if that was an accident or the result of a fixed deck because the odds against that happening by chance are 635-billion-to-one. Yet every specific randomized deal of 13 unique cards had the same odds against happening by chance. So unlikely events, like unlikely card hands, can and do happen by chance. Yet if I predicted that on the next deal, your hand would contain 13 spades, and it did, you could be sure at odds of 635-billion-to-one that was not a lucky guess but the result of a controlled process. That’s how the a priori principle works – through the power of predictions.

When the Viking spacecraft saw an apparent face on Mars in the Cydonia region, that was interesting but could easily have been a “trick of light and shadow”. So scientists formulated tests to tell whether the object was natural (a product of geology and illusion) or artificial (a product of intelligences). The first eight such tests initially gave a split decision, 5 to 3 in favor of artificiality. Two of those tests were based on the fact that the Cydonia face-object cannot be seen from the ground but must be viewed from above, for example from an orbiting space station. So if artificial, it would logically be built on the equator of Mars and built upright. But the Cydonia face was far from the equator (latitude 41 degrees north) and was tilted from upright by an angle of about 35 degrees. Those statistics favored a natural origin. Then in 1996 we took a look at the pole shift of Mars to see where the face-like object was before the pole shift. The answer was exactly on the old equator and upright to within two degrees! The odds against that happening by chance were roughly 1000-to-one. So if the builders were active before the cataclysm that tipped the pole of Mars (the explosion of the other moon 3.2 million years ago), then both these tests indicated an artificial origin. By the end of that year, all eight tests favored an artificial origin over a natural one.

As compelling as this conclusion was to any mind open to either possibility, it still needed conformation. So in 1997, the Society for Planetary SETI Research (SPSR), an association of about 30 independent scientists, sent a few representatives to NASA to request priority imaging of the Cydonia face-like object by the high-resolution camera on the newly-arrived Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. SPSR then set down criteria for distinguishing artificial from natural well before any results were known. In brief, if and only if the object was artificial, the impression of a humanoid eye, nose, and mouth in the original images should be supplemented by secondary facial features in any detailed new image. These specifically included an eyebrow over the eye socket, an iris inside the eye socket, nostrils at the large end of a tapered nose, and evidence of lips in the mouth feature. Specifics were set down for the qualifying size, shape, location, and orientation of these features on the mesa. Moreover, the test required that no qualifying features appear in the background so that our minds could form apparent facial features from randomness, as our minds are prone to do.

When the spacecraft images were returned to Earth in April 1998, every prediction was fulfilled. This was like predicting a deal of 13 spades in advance, except that the combined odds against this happening by chance at Cydonia were 1000-billion-billion-to-one. That left no doubt in the minds of scientists familiar with the a priori principle that the Cydonia Face had to be an artificial structure.

HORN: Can you give another example of ruling out a natural origin for some of these artistic features?

VAN FLANDERN: Yes. One of the animal shapes elsewhere on Mars resembled a puma, but it wasn’t detailed enough to be persuasive and the edge of the spacecraft photograph left the hindquarters cut off and unseen. So the scientist who found the image, J.P. Levasseur, predicted that the image was artificial if and only if the missing hindquarters completed an animal hind-section and legs and contained a puma-like tail extending from the right place on the hindquarters. Anything else from an unlimited number of possibilities would indicate a natural origin. A few years later, the spacecraft (by request) took another image that included the hindquarters area, and showed the completion of an animal hindquarters and hind legs and a marvelous tail of the right proportions extending from just the right place.

HORN: So what is the connection between possible artifacts on Mars and the exploded planet hypothesis we were discussing earlier?

VAN FLANDERN: The explosion of the “water-world” body Mars was orbiting until 3.2 million years ago produced the most recent pole shift on Mars that moved the Cydonia Face from the equator to its present location, tilting it by 35 degrees. This tells us that the builders of these amazing surface features predated the explosion, and that their civilization was probably terminated by that explosion.

Moreover, we see no evidence of a primary civilization on Mars, making the exploded water world the most likely location for that civilization. Indeed, that speculation makes sense on several levels. For example, if we project our own civilization ahead a few thousand years, trips to our Moon will by then be routine for tourists. The first thing such tourists will wish to do is board an orbiting space station to get a close-up overview of the entire Moon. It will then be a natural step for the many activities on the lunar surface – telescopes, mining operations, laboratories, communication centers, and all manner of commercial operations – to attract tourists and tourist dollars by building surface exhibits that can be seen from the orbiting space station. So we can reasonably project that the future of our Moon will be not unlike what we are seeing today on Mars – surface exhibits that can be best viewed from an orbiting space station. However, if that was the function of the artistic Mars images, that would imply Mars was the civilization’s moon, not its home world. And the latter was lost by explosion 3.2 million years ago – a date that is reliably determined from the orbital period of new comet orbits.

HORN: What is the significance of that connection for us here on Earth?

VAN FLANDERN: We are deep into the area of speculation now. However, it seems unlikely to be coincidence that the geoglyphs on Mars are so humanoid and terrestrial in appearance rather than alien. And it seems also unlikely to be coincidence that the builder’s civilization on their home world ended about the same time as the dating of the earliest humanoid fossil on Earth, the “Lucy” find in Africa. Both are dated to 3.2 million years ago. So it seems that one civilization was ending about the same time that another was beginning. When these findings are tied in with the most ancient “sacred” writings from cultures everywhere on Earth, the mind is compelled to wonder if those stories are perhaps preserving knowledge of human origins elsewhere in the solar system, and of a species transfer to Earth in an effort to survive the cataclysm. Answering such questions may in the end turn out to be the most important knowledge for our species to acquire in our future as solar system explorers, more important even than the Copernican revolution when we learned that Earth was not the center of the universe.

HORN: We will need to do a part two at some point to focus more on the question of origins. Some of this sounds almost like a Star Trek episode where extraterrestrial civilizations need to escape their doomed planet in order to find a new home elsewhere. Yet doesn't modern physics still hold that nothing can travel faster than light (186 thousand miles per second), so that touring the Galaxy in a human lifetime (as in "Star Trek") is impossible. Is that theory still valid?

VAN FLANDERN: No, it is not. The geometric interpretation of Einstein’s general relativity theory appeared to require that the speed of light was an absolute upper speed limit. However, evidence has gone against the geometric interpretation in favor of the field interpretation favored by Einstein, Dirac, and Feynman, to mention just a few of the great physicists of the 20th century who weighed in on the matter. In the field interpretation, gravity is a classical force that propagates from a source mass to a target body. For example, the force of the Sun’s gravity holds Earth in orbit. All six modern experiments that attempt to measure the speed of gravitational force propagation show that it must greatly exceed the speed of light. From that, we can now be sure that the speed of light is not a limiting speed in the universe. So once our technology discovers “gravitons” and masters controlling them, we will not only be able to listen in on any Galactic conversations that may be occurring, but we will also be able to travel about the Galaxy within human life-spans.

HORN: Have scientists observed phenomenon propagating faster than light?

VAN FLANDERN: Yes, the strongest of the six experiments places a lower limit to the speed of gravity of 20 billion times faster than the speed of light. It also follows that the speed of electric (Coulomb) force is faster than light, and might be as fast as the speed of gravity. Light waves (sometimes confusingly called “electromagnetic waves”) and gravitational waves (which have no more to do with gravity than light has to do with electricity) travel at the speed of light.

HORN: Is gravity a "push" or a "pull"? And what does this tell us about the origin and nature of gravity?

VAN FLANDERN: Traditionally, we have always thought of gravity as something within the Earth and all masses that pull us and other things toward themselves. But we now have a new understanding of the nature and origin of gravity that is quite different. We think the visible universe is filled with innumerable, super-fast “gravitons” traveling in all directions, individually so tiny that they can usually fly through the atoms composing the entire Earth without hitting anything solid. But a small fraction of them does hit solid matter and gets scattered or absorbed.

For us standing here on Earth’s surface, we are not held down by anything from the Earth but by a graviton wind from space pushing us downward. That wind arrives from all directions. But the Earth blocks a small part of the wind trying to reach us from below. So more gravitons strike us from above than from below, and we feel a net push downward. This is known as the theory of “pushing gravity”. It predicts five new properties of gravity, and so far these predictions are in good accord with all observations and experiments. Pushing gravity is also the subject of a 20-author book by that title published in 2002.

HORN: How fast does gravity propagate?

VAN FLANDERN: The experimental lower limit for the speed of gravity is 20 billion times faster than light. Light takes 8.3 minutes to travel the 93 million miles from the Sun to Earth, but a graviton would make the same trip in under 25 nanoseconds (billionths of a second). Light takes about 30,000 years to travel from the center of our Galaxy to our location, but a graviton would make that trip in under a minute. Light from the most distant galaxies we can see takes billions of years to get here, but gravitons would take less than one year.

HORN: Are these new ideas speculative, or are they now published and accepted?

VAN FLANDERN: “Accepted” is always a slow process. Physicist Max Planck once said “Science progresses one funeral at a time”, and that adage remains just as true today. The best new ideas can accomplish in the short term is to expose themselves to peer review and the toughest arguments opponents can muster. If they survive that, get published, and silence the critics, the rest is just a matter of time for the word to spread and the resistance to die out.

The gravity papers were first published in 1996, then more aggressively in 1999 in Physics Letters A. A few challenge papers appeared, and all were rebutted. Then in 2002 I was joined by a senior physicist, the late J.P. Vigier (in whose honor four international symposiums have been held). We jointly published a comprehensive, 38-page paper in “Foundations of Physics” setting out the full story, including every challenge raised and how it is answered. There has been no further scientific criticism since that review paper appeared.

HORN: What are the practical implications of faster-than-light travel for SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and interstellar communications?

VAN FLANDERN: Assuming gravitons exist and propagate billions of times faster than light, no advanced civilization in the Galaxy would be using radio waves to communicate because it takes too long (longer than normal life-spans). So under those assumptions, our SETI program is a waste of time. Only when we can listen in to graviton signals will we start to hear the Galactic conversations that may be going on, and achieve direct communication with any stellar neighbors we might have.

HORN: What about the implications for UFOs and interstellar travel?

VAN FLANDERN: The same principles apply. To get around the Galaxy, one would need to use graviton propulsion systems. That is still far enough ahead of our civilization’s progress that it would appear magical to us. Extraterrestrials and their vehicles could come and go without attracting our attention if they chose to do so. Many UFO reports don’t register on my personal plausibility meter because they envision vehicles that are barely more advanced than the most modern human flying craft, and are so klutzy that they are frequently rumored to crash.

HORN: The Roswell Incident. What do you think happened there in 1947?

VAN FLANDERN: I have never personally investigated that incident. But from the reports on both sides of the controversy I have seen, I think criticisms of the classified Mogul balloon explanation have seemed insubstantial, being based more on a distrust of government sources than on verifiable facts.

HORN: Will you be in Roswell this July? If so, will you be making a public appearance?

VAN FLANDERN: No. The charter of my sponsoring organization, Meta Research, covers everything from “40 km and up”, so UFOs usually remain a bit out of my field as a professional astronomer. But occasionally they do come within it. I did investigate the reported anomalous object photographed by the Russian Phobos 2 spacecraft, and I investigated the alleged UFO sightings over Mexico during the 1991 total solar eclipse because I was there for the eclipse. Neither of those incidents turned out to involve genuine UFOs. Regrettably, the UFO field, always in need of support and supporters, is not as eager to publish explanations of famous cases as it is to publish unexplained aerial phenomena, which in turn hurts the field’s credibility with serious-but-open-minded scientists.

HORN: There is so much more I could ask you, which will have to wait for that part-two if we do it. Please tell people where they can learn more about you and your research.

VAN FLANDERN: Visit our web site at http://metaresearch.org for extensive samples of our research and articles. My book, Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets gives a nice overview of our Meta Science from the solar system to the whole universe, including why the Big Bang theory is wrong and the best bet to replace it. For the latest developments, our quarterly publication, the Meta Research Bulletin, has just gone electronic and open source to begin its 16^th year as the publication with the best track record for successful predictions in the field of astronomy. We also offer a number of CDs with presentation materials and technical details about “Gravity”, “The Evolving Mars Story”, and “A Short Tour of the Universe”. See our web site store for more information about these items and a few books we recommend.

HORN: Thank you for taking time to be part of the special Road to Roswell series.

Some of the speakers at this year's Roswell festivities include Col. Jesse Marcel Jr, Dennis Balthaser, Greg Bishop, Donald Burleson, PhD, Stephen Bassett, Richard Dolan, Adam Gorightly, Stanton Friedman, John Greenewald, Paola Harris, Michael S. Heiser PhD, Tom Horn, Dr. Roger Leir, Guy Malone, Nicholas Redfern, John Rhodes, Peter Robbins, Rob Simone, and many more.

Learn more about the 60th Anniversary Roswell Festivals see both websites: http://www.roswellufofestival.com
http://www.roswellufomuseum.com/festival.htm