Sounds Like a UFO

Whether you labored hard for your Ph.D. or dropped out of high school to pursue a life of crime, be assured of one thing:  When you die, no matter how much time, effort and expense you threw down the UFO or paranormal research rat hole over the decades, most people who remember you (if they do at all) will memorialize you, wealthy or penniless, in their most tender thoughts as that harmless crank.  Me, I'd prefer to flutter into repose known as a dangerous crank, maybe even a psychopathic crank, just for the sake of drama, but it won't happen that way.  I'll be just another harmless crank.  Drat.

We cranks sometimes tend to revisit old habits the way some folks keep wearing their favorite socks despite a few holes, and if one happens to be a writer of sorts, well, it's not uncommon to regurgitate the oldies now and then.

 Last week, I had to disinter a couple of oldies in which I once expounded upon my theory that the properties of ultrasound might be involved with some UFO encounters, because I had forgotten some essentials of what I wrote in 1970 (printed in the March-April, 1971 A.P.R.O. Bulletin) and 1976 (printed in the May, 1976 issue of Official UFO).  But what's my impetus for digging up the past?

 Seems that the science news world was buzzing frantically last week with the revelation that scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about a breakthrough in the world of acoustic science.  Yep, that would be sound and, double-yep, the science involved ultrasound.  Hmm, I thought, where did I hear the word, ultrasound before. . .?  Oh yeah, I remembered at last, it was in something written by me, a harmless crank, many years ago.  Wait a minute. . .they've heard of ultrasound in Switzerland?  Isn't that where wealthy folks hide their money in secret bank accounts so busybody U.S. federal agents can't reach across the globe to find it?  Don't throngs of Swiss folk labor day and night in cheese factories, punching holes in the finished product?  Don't Swiss people ski, break their legs and get rescued by St. Bernards carrying kegs of rum or Quaaludes around their necks?  Lucky them -- if I broke a bone and fell down, and some dog passed by, it would probably just pee on my foot and journey off to continue chasing cats.  No keg, either, just dog urine.

But let's "crank" it up a bit.  Darned if those scientists in Switzerland haven't accomplished not one, but two important discoveries.  First, they found out how to levitate objects and substances and then control the movements of suspended items at their whim.  And second -- unknown to them, their findings put some bite back into my old UFO ultrasound theories.  Don't know, perhaps I can remain a harmless crank and not a discredited crank after all.

Merely using sound waves to levitate liquids or solid objects is nothing new, for the ability was practiced a century ago.  But to take something such as a toothpick, droplets of water or coffee crystals -- as the Swiss scientists have -- and suspend them in the air, have them interact with one another and do exactly what the scientists in control desire, that's the breakthrough.  Otherwise, levitated objects go their own way and liquids explode -- hardly a useful endeavor.

However, acoustic waves directed purposefully can conceivably lift all manner of objects, despite their properties, and allow analysis without contact with a surface, which may compromise results. 

 So -- I thought back on my ultrasound theories and wondered if a connection was bolstered here.  Immediately coming to mind are accounts such as those of abductee Travis Walton, lifted up as a bright, blinding light emerged from the object he claimed would be his captor.  Was an acoustic wave involved here, or had the force of light been harnessed to do the lifting?  Light, as we know it, does have the power to levitate objects, but only very small ones, whereas sound can deal with all kinds of heavier substances without altering basic structures.

 The Walton case hardly stands alone when UFOs are seen to lift things and people into the air.  And what of cattle mutilation incidents, in which the evidence appears to indicate time after time that animals were lifted off the ground and then dropped from significant heights?  Is sound, fantastic waves of sound, the culprit?  Has. . . somebody. . .harnessed acoustic properties to a level as yet unknown by our modern science?

 I find the plausibility of UFO ultrasound involvement even more worthy of consideration in these incidents because, as mechanical engineer Daniele Foresti of Switzerland's  ETH Zurich told Live Science and other scientific media sources, "If you have some dogs around, they are not going to like it at all."  Why is that?  It's because the scientists took their work to a canine level. The thing is, suitable acoustic wave experiments run at a rate of about 160 decibels, equivalent to human eardrums perched -- and instantly ruptured -- next to the ear-piercing launch of a rocket.

However, realizing that the frequency of sound waves can be tweaked, the scientists used a frequency of 24,000 hertz -- literally dog whistle specifications -- and human ears remained untouched by and unaware of the tremendous acoustic forces involved because humans only hear to a high range of about 20,000 hertz.

As I wrote years ago, could sound not be the reason why so many animals are documented to have scurried away from areas of UFO activity, or to have howled seemingly in pain, because their auditory apparatus was being violated painfully?

Perhaps even more intriguing, the new research really solidifies the abilities of sound to overcome gravitational fields.  Don't UFOs, by their peculiar nature, frequently appear to counteract the "nuisance" of gravity?

Since writing my UFO ultrasound articles so long ago (I'm not a scientist, and barely intelligible at times, according to some), I actually gained a great respect for something equivalent to microwave and other electromagnetic influence in UFO encounters, but this new research -- and there have been so many new uses for sound discovered (such as refrigeration) with the progression of time -- causes me to wonder whether sound might not play a larger role in UFO events than even I contemplated. . .way, way back.

(Among the sources referenced for this entry:  Christian Science Monitor, Discovery News, Fox News, Live Science, Nature News and Comment, Science News, The Washington Post.)

 
BENGHAZI  IN A NEW LIGHT:  In a blog entry about the "balloon boy" incident long ago, we added a little footnote and said, Jake Tapper, thank you for being you.  Now we'll say it again because Tapper broke the news on CNN that the CIA is heavily involved in keeping the truth about Benghazi buried.  Even to the point of officials threatening CIA associates' families, apparently.  And polygraph tests administered regularly to make sure nobody has spoken to the press -- or Congress! -- with oaths signed under a cloud.  This outrage, as usual, has the Obama approach written all over it -- and maybe now that a source such as CNN, which can hardly be accused as a "right wing" media outlet, has made the Big Announcement, at least some Americans suffering under the diagnosis of blockhead-ism will start to take the cure.  Our country is being destroyed by lies from the top with powers unwarranted, and someday, unlikely as it seems, maybe we'll put our prisons to better use than locking up low-level drug users.  Jake Tapper, thank you for being you.