Russian Alien Spaceship Claims Raise Eyebrows, Skepticism |
The new ET claim is "a rather
stupid hoax," one scientist said today. And it's one with a rich history.
The latest claim was written up by news wires and was making the Internet rounds Thursday morning. According to Agence France Presse, the scientists say they've found "an extra-terrestrial device" that explains "one of the 20th Century's biggest scientific mysteries," a catastrophe that flattened some 800 square miles of Siberian forest in a region called Tunguska.
Various other news reports told of
a "technical device" and "a large block made with metal."
The researchers were said to chip a piece off for laboratory study.
Most scientists think the Siberian
devastation was caused by a large meteorite that, instead of hitting the
ground, exploded above the surface.
'Plan to uncover evidence
The Russian research team is called the
Tunguska Space Phenomenon Foundation and is led by Yuri Lanvin. He said in late
July that an expedition to the scene would seek evidence that aliens were
involved.
"We intend to uncover evidence that will prove the fact that it was not a meteorite that rammed the Earth, but a UFO," Lanvin was quoted by the Russian newspaper Pravda on July 29.
"I'm afraid this is a rather stupid
hoax," said Benny Peiser, a researcher at Liverpool John Moores University
in the UK. "The Russian team stupidly stated long before they went to
Siberia that the main intention of their expedition was to find the remnants of
an 'alien spaceship!' And bingo! A week later, that's what they claim to have
found."
Peiser studies catastrophic events and
related scientific processes and media reports. He runs an electronic
newsletter, CCNet, which is among the most comprehensive running catalogs on
the subject.
"It's a rather sad comment on the current state of the anything-goes attitudes among some 'science'
correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported -- without the slightest hint of skepticism," Peiser told SPACE.com.
Longstanding mystery
Asteroid experts don't have all the answers
to what happened at Tunguska. There were few witnesses in the remote region
and the explosion left no crater.
But the available evidence, along with
modern computer modeling and general knowledge of space rocks leaves little
doubt in most scientific minds as to what happened.
Author Roy Gallant spent 10 years
investigating the scene of the event for his book, "Meteorite Hunter: The
Search for Siberian Meteorite Craters" (McGraw-Hill, 2002).
In an interview with SPACE.com when
the book was published, Gallant said scientists are gathering
"accumulating evidence to support the notion that the exploding object was a comet nucleus. This is the collective opinion of most Russian
investigators; although some say they cannot confidently rule out a stony
asteroid."
Peiser said there is a "general
consensus" among experts worldwide that the culprit was an exploding comet
or asteroid.
"Not surprisingly, the blast did not
leave any remains of the object intact," Peiser said. "However,
researchers claim to have found evidence of increased levels of cosmic dust
particles in Greenland ice cores which are dated to 1908 and which they link to
the Tunguska event of the same year."
Longstanding speculation
Speculation about aliens and Tunguska goes
way back. And there is a reason: No other visitor from space -- natural or
otherwise -- has had such a well-documented impact on daily life in modern
history.
The explosion on June 30, 1908, was
equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT.
"Witnesses twenty to forty miles from
the impact point experienced a sudden thermal blast that could be felt through
several layers of clothing," writes Jim Oberg in "UFOs & Outer
Space Mysteries" (Donning Press, 1984). The blast was recorded as an
earthquake at several weather stations in Siberia."
In Europe, it didn't get dark that night.
People said they could read the newspaper in the light of the mysterious blast,
Oberg reports. Telescope operators in America noticed degraded sky conditions
for months.
No crater was found, and wild speculation
ensued.
Enter sci-fi
Struck by the similarity of Tunguska and
Hiroshima decades later, a science fiction writer named Kazantsev wrote a story
in which the Tunguska blast was the exploding nuclear power plant of a
spaceship from Mars, according to Oberg.
A few Russian scientists took up the cause and claimed to find various bits of evidence -- never substantiated -- for a civilized alien explanation. Oberg wrote in 1984 that even then, as evidence built for a natural cause, a handful of "spaceship buffs seem to have grown more desperate, but no less effective, in corralling the public's attention." He said that some unsuspecting journalist would stumble on the claims and write about them annually, setting off a fresh round of public speculation.
On that front, little has changed since
1984.
Astronomer Philip Plait, the author of the
myth-debunking book Bad Astronomy (Wiley & Sons, 2002), agrees with Peiser
that the Russian researcher's intention to find ET evidence hurts their
case.
"They are not undertaking a scientific
expedition, that is, an unbiased investigation to see what happened,"
Plait said Thursday via e-mail. "They are going to try to prove their
preconceived ideas. That's not science, that's religion. And it almost
certainly means that they are more willing to ignore or play down any evidence
that it was a comet or rock impact while playing up anything
they find consistent with their hypothesis."
Prove it
Whatever anyone believes, Plait points out
that proof is what's important.
"I am not saying they didn't find an
alien ship. I am saying that it's a) unlikely in the extreme, and b) they are
predisposed to make such claims, which means we need to be very skeptical, even
more so than usual in such cases. If they provide sufficient evidence, then
scientists are obligated to investigate, of course. But given everything I've
read, their evidence to even consider a non-natural cause is pretty weak."
Plait has even thought about what evidence
might be necessary. A chunk of debris would help, but not just any sort of
material.
"It would need a weird ratio of
isotopes, for example, or clear evidence of long-duration space travel,"
he said. "Even then they must be careful; manmade space debris rains down
on Earth all the time."
Plait, a naturally skeptical person, is willing to wait and see.
"Let's see what these guys bring
back," he said. "In the end, it's not what they can claim but what
they can support with factual evidence that counts. The burden of proof is
clearly -- and heavily-- on them."
By Robert Roy Britt August
12, 2004
( Keywords )
Post a Comment