The Magician, the Pool Table and the Blue Marble

When I turned 11, my dad arranged for a magician to put on his show at my birthday party. His final trick consisted of two panels with slide-on covers. One panel had the silhouette of a white rabbit and the other panel had the silhouette of a black rabbit. The magician would cover the panels, spin them around, and tap the covers with his wand. Next, he would remove the covers and the rabbit silhouettes had appeared to change position. We were having none of it and jeered, "We know how you did it!"

We shouted for the magician to turn the panels around because we knew that on the backside of the white rabbit panel would be a black rabbit and likewise with the other panel. The magician resisted turning the panels around until we were dismissing the trick as easily solved.

Then, with the tips of his fingers, the magician relented and turned the uncovered panels around. On the back of the white rabbit panel was the silhouette of a red rabbit and on the other panel was the silhouette of a yellow rabbit. We sat dumbfounded. Clearly, we had seen something that was beyond our understanding. Such is the case with UAPs (UFOs).

Four years later, I was attending a large birthday party, held for a girl I hardly knew, at a swimming pool and clubhouse. Bored, I found my way to the pool table in a dark corner in the clubhouse. An Army Colonel in his dress uniform, also bored, was passing the time at the pool table. He was the father of a girl at the party. It was just the two of us and we played game after game for about two hours.

In the conversation, he claimed to work with an advanced projects group; basically he oversaw a group of engineers and physicists, ensuring that the work fulfilled the Army's interests. He never said what they did, but he kept repeating, "Our physics are all wrong." It was clear that the Colonel was referring to physics as it was being taught in school and generally accepted by the public.

At that time, as an obnoxious teenage punk, one of my few accomplishments was playing pool and I won most of the games. Sadly, my knowledge of physics at that age was mostly limited to what I learned watching reruns of Star Trek. Fortunately, college would add to what I learned from Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock.

The Colonel left me with a wisdom that I have never forgotten. After I sank the 8-ball in the declared pocket of the final game, the Colonel said, "That is the definition of success; accomplishing what you set out to do."

From the 1960s to August 2023, people who claimed to have seen a UFO, believe that extraterrestrials exist, or believe in any of the myriad associated phenomena, were promptly labeled kooks, con artists, or worse. While the release of previously classified videos to the public has provided evidence, the Congressional testimony by witnesses served as a catharsis. Those who had claimed to have encountered UFOs, and who had been much maligned, could no longer hold back their proclamations of "I told you so!"

When people evaluate that which they do not understand, they try to reconcile it with what they do understand. If they cannot reconcile the mysterious with their scientific beliefs, they tend to dismiss it as a fake, an optical illusion, or as stories told by crazy people. Thus, the topic of UAPs/UFOs languished for six decades.

Like my friends at my birthday party, I could not resolve how the magician did his trick. Are not mankind all the same as were we children? Have not humans opined that UFOs fly by aerodynamics? Or electrogravitics? Or magnetic fields?

We opined those answers because they were concepts within our understanding.

If gravity is the tendency of masses to follow the path of least resistance on the space-time continuum, perhaps the answer is there.

It seems the Colonel was right again.

Over the last three centuries, we have transformed from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics to Quantum physics. Before we injure our shoulders patting ourselves on the back, let us consider the recent re-translation of Sir Isaac Newton's first law of motion. Sir Isaac's words "nisi quatenus" did not mean "unless," but meant "insofar." This simple correction showed that Newton's equations could incorporate previously disregarded influences of the real world on an object at rest or in motion.

Finally, Newtonian physics has been resolved with Quantum physics. Isaac Newton understood a lot more than we realized.

We are wrong to think that we live alone in a "sea" of universe, too vast to cross. Little oddities, like time dilation and a non-constant speed of light, mean that the clock on the wall of the UFO probably runs a lot slower than your kitchen clock, and makes the trip to Earth much more practical.

In all of human history, every advancement, every invention, every civilization, every war, every love, every moment great or small, has taken place on this blue marble we call, Earth, or on its dusty companion, the Moon. We have no place to run. Sooner or later, a "Non-Human Intelligence" will become known to us, and we have a lot to get done before they do.