The Irrepressible Jim Moseley Holds Forth on The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
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. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.
You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, December 5, 2010: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Co-host Christopher O’Brien presents the UFO field’s famous “trickster” himself, Jim Moseley, editor and publisher of “Saucer Smear,” a thought-provoking publication that emphasizes the unique personalities in the field, and their eccentrics.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Jim Moseley's Wikipedia Entry: Wikimedia Error
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Arsenic and ET
By Gene Steinberg
The news spread far and wide, and it seemed spectacular at first glance. A NASA astrobiology team had made a breakthrough that might help us find previously unsuspected clues to the presence of ET on Earth, or out there. No doubt the Exopolitics people were salivating for eventual vindication that ET is truly among us, perhaps already engaged in dealings with our own governments.
Unfortunately, the Exopolitics people have a nasty habit of being utterly wrong about most everything they expect to happen, and when it’s going to happen.
When I heard the news conference featuring the scientists who made this discovery, I was anticipating some sort of huge event. Maybe they’d even reveal that UFOs were real, although I held out little hope for that. After juicing the story for a couple of days, the 24/7 cable channels cut away within minutes after the initial announcement, to give a wrap up with the science writer du jour they invited for the task. Then they went on to their regular fare of partisan politics and gossip.
Depending on your point of view, your expectations were vindicated – or dashed. While this discovery certainly expands our conception of what life truly is, I can’t say that it should necessarily come as a surprise, or represent an admission by the authorities that we have at long last found proven sources of intelligent life form
But the specialty of the scientists should have delivered the clue. Astrobiology. Indeed, it was all about microbes, the building blocks of life, DNA, and all that stuff.
Without going into the raw details about science that I will freely admit exceed my pay scale, let me just say that, up till now, we assumed living creatures were assembled up from these elements: hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous. Now they have discovered evidence of rudimentary microbes where phosphorus is replaced with arsenic.
So maybe ET is poisonous to Earthlings? That’s a simplistic viewpoint, I admit. But if life can arise from different chemical makeups, there’s no telling what form it might take. Furthermore, life could thrive in environments that would be quite hostile to us. This simply means that we may not need to concern ourselves quite as much with discovering one or more “Goldilocks” planets to find advanced civilizations. Other planets, whose atmosphere and other conditions may be inimical to life as we know it, could nonetheless provide usable chemical compounds.
What creatures with a different chemical composition may look like is another question entirely. I suppose it’s possible that they’d take a humanoid form as well, or would perhaps appear so alien to us that they’d have to mask their real form in order to interact with humans. That may make my reference to the communication between a human and an alien in the movie “Contact,” which I mentioned in a previous commentary, far more credib
It may also explain the need for deception on the part of our visitors. If their real form is frightening, or they are unable to have physical contact because it would harm us (or them), you may never see ET. You’d see their avatar, their spacesuits; perhaps they’d otherwise masquerade their actual shapes as well.
If UFOs are from outer space, if those gray aliens are real, perhaps they are but projections of the real thing, or robotic entities that are assigned to the task of simple exploration and evidence collection. The real creatures stay aboard their spaceships, or perhaps watch us from even farther distances.
One thing is certain, and that those who believe life has flourished in our universe now have far more compelling evidence to ponder. But it’s remains just a tantalizing beginning, and there’s so much more to learn.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2010 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Holiday Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough, and we don't want to overwhelm the show with them, so we hope you'll be willing to help fill the gap if you can to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch. No contribution is too small (or too large
. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, December 5, 2010: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Co-host Christopher O’Brien presents the UFO field’s famous “trickster” himself, Jim Moseley, editor and publisher of “Saucer Smear,” a thought-provoking publication that emphasizes the unique personalities in the field, and their eccentrics.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Jim Moseley's Wikipedia Entry: Wikimedia Error
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Arsenic and ET
By Gene Steinberg
The news spread far and wide, and it seemed spectacular at first glance. A NASA astrobiology team had made a breakthrough that might help us find previously unsuspected clues to the presence of ET on Earth, or out there. No doubt the Exopolitics people were salivating for eventual vindication that ET is truly among us, perhaps already engaged in dealings with our own governments.
Unfortunately, the Exopolitics people have a nasty habit of being utterly wrong about most everything they expect to happen, and when it’s going to happen.
When I heard the news conference featuring the scientists who made this discovery, I was anticipating some sort of huge event. Maybe they’d even reveal that UFOs were real, although I held out little hope for that. After juicing the story for a couple of days, the 24/7 cable channels cut away within minutes after the initial announcement, to give a wrap up with the science writer du jour they invited for the task. Then they went on to their regular fare of partisan politics and gossip.
Depending on your point of view, your expectations were vindicated – or dashed. While this discovery certainly expands our conception of what life truly is, I can’t say that it should necessarily come as a surprise, or represent an admission by the authorities that we have at long last found proven sources of intelligent life form
But the specialty of the scientists should have delivered the clue. Astrobiology. Indeed, it was all about microbes, the building blocks of life, DNA, and all that stuff.
Without going into the raw details about science that I will freely admit exceed my pay scale, let me just say that, up till now, we assumed living creatures were assembled up from these elements: hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous. Now they have discovered evidence of rudimentary microbes where phosphorus is replaced with arsenic.
So maybe ET is poisonous to Earthlings? That’s a simplistic viewpoint, I admit. But if life can arise from different chemical makeups, there’s no telling what form it might take. Furthermore, life could thrive in environments that would be quite hostile to us. This simply means that we may not need to concern ourselves quite as much with discovering one or more “Goldilocks” planets to find advanced civilizations. Other planets, whose atmosphere and other conditions may be inimical to life as we know it, could nonetheless provide usable chemical compounds.
What creatures with a different chemical composition may look like is another question entirely. I suppose it’s possible that they’d take a humanoid form as well, or would perhaps appear so alien to us that they’d have to mask their real form in order to interact with humans. That may make my reference to the communication between a human and an alien in the movie “Contact,” which I mentioned in a previous commentary, far more credib
It may also explain the need for deception on the part of our visitors. If their real form is frightening, or they are unable to have physical contact because it would harm us (or them), you may never see ET. You’d see their avatar, their spacesuits; perhaps they’d otherwise masquerade their actual shapes as well.
If UFOs are from outer space, if those gray aliens are real, perhaps they are but projections of the real thing, or robotic entities that are assigned to the task of simple exploration and evidence collection. The real creatures stay aboard their spaceships, or perhaps watch us from even farther distances.
One thing is certain, and that those who believe life has flourished in our universe now have far more compelling evidence to ponder. But it’s remains just a tantalizing beginning, and there’s so much more to learn.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2010 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
