The UFO phenomenon exists. There are too many unexplainable sightings, they are too similar to each other, and their behaviour is too intelligent to be natural phenomena.

The UFO phenomenon has apparently accompanied mankind throughout its existence. It has left traces in legends, in folk tales, in shamanic traditions, in religion, as well as in many ancient texts. We can find these traces everywhere in the world and obviously in sightings, traditions and faiths of various regions of Romania: Transylvania, Moldavia, Walachia, Maramureş, Banat etc.

Nobody knows, with certainty, what the origin of the UFO phenomenon is; we have only assumptions. I ask your permission to present, in the following, one of these possible explanations. It is rooted in the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but trying to overcome its traditional layout.

Only in the Universe accessible to our instruments, there are at least 150 billion galaxies. One of them is our galaxy, the Milky Way. It has around 200 billion stars. But we have strong reasons to believe that our Universe is not unique. There could be many others too, maybe “parallel” ones, maybe from other states of matter, or parts of a “Multiverse” etc.

More and more specialists admit that the basic components of life are travelling throughout space, “infecting” immediately all appropriate planets upon contact. But, once “infected”, the favourable conditions should last three-four billion years, for the random game of mutations and the subsequent changing of the environment to produce the abundance and complexity of life we see on our Earth. On November 2013, astronomers estimated that, only in our galaxy, there could be as many as 11 billion Earth-sizedplanets, orbiting in the habitable zones ofSun-like stars, providing the basics of these conditions. In some cases, eventually, such a complex life system can give rise to a “technological civilisation”. That means intelligent beings capable of building spaceships to travel to other inhabitable planets.

How many such “technological civilisations” could be in our galaxy? There are many estimates, starting with the formula of the astronomer Frank Drake, proposed in 1961. My own estimates were that, to date, in the history of our Galaxy could come into being a number of technological civilisations, of which, only a few hundred, survived the childhood diseases (that we face now on Earth) and still exist.

But these civilisations have not arisen simultaneously. There are Sun-like star systems billion years older than ours. That means that the first technological civilisation in the Milky Way could appear a billion years ago, or even earlier. What will become of our civilisation (if it will survive) over millions (or billions) of years? It is impossible to imagine. We do not forget that we are not able to predict our future, even in a perspective of just several hundred years. How would the inhabitants of a civilisation that has outstripped us with millions of years look like? Maybe they became immortal, maybe time and space do not matter to them, they may have moved into a pervasive virtual reality and so on. But the real answer is probably even much more complex and defies our logic and imagination. We can accept however that they have been transformed into something else, beyond our understanding; into something we can name as a “hypercivilization”.

Consequently, we understand that the possible civilisations in the Cosmos are far apart from each other not only in space, but also in time. In our Galaxy, these several hundred surviving civilisations, estimated above, have appeared, most likely, one in a several million years. So, in the Milky Way there is no civilisation close to our level.

If hypercivilizations exist (and they exist, with a probability of 99.999999%) they explored, in the smallest detail, our Galaxy, millions of years ago, so they have known, for a long time, about our existence. The representatives of hypercivilizations could be here, among us, but could look so different from our expectations that we cannot recognise them. Arthur C. Clarke stated: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

Therefore there are two “extraterrestrial hypotheses”: the first is what we might call the “primitive extraterrestrial hypothesis”, the other that of hypercivilizations. The “Primitive Extraterrestrial Hypothesis” assumes that all cosmic civilisations are more or less at the same level of evolution, close to ours. This primitive view is completely implausible.

School and science fiction, but not only, set our minds on patterns ignoring completely the possibility of hypercivilizations. What prevents us to see their presence is, also, a set of widespread and deeply rooted prejudices, such as those below.

The preconception of equal rights. A difference of millions of years, or even hundreds of millions, is as huge as between us and a lizard or even an ant. If they are here (as it is highly probable), they can examine us, monitor our evolution, even contact us in some form, but they will never put them selves at the same level with us.

The preconception of conversation. We interact sometimes with a lizard; but this will never be a conversation, said a researcher. As far back as 1959, Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison argued that if the difference between two civilisations is of millions of years, the probability that they could exchange ideas is zero.

The temporal provincialism (term used by J. Allen Hynek). It states that, in opposition with the previous dark centuries, the last three-four hundred years brought us finally to the light of real truth and science. In this light, now we can decide what facts can be accepted and what will never be possible. If one hundred years ago or so we started to use the radio, some believe it will last as the best means of communications forever. If one hundred years ago Einstein postulated that the speed of light is a limit, no other physical law will be discovered until the end of times to avoid this limit and so on. As a peculiar example, we have the SETI preconception. According to it, even if the radio signals need thousands of years from one inhabited world to other, the cosmic civilisations will consider that signalling by radio waves will be, forever, the most appropriate means of contact and that we should search for them.

The preconception of invasion. For many people (I suspect some of them are linked with the interests of the military-industrial complex) it should be normal if a cosmic civilisation arrives on Earth, it will attempt to conquer us by force (and maybe even to eat us). But the hypercivilizations probably knew, millions of years ago, that we are here; therefore they could invade us at any time and, in a certain sense, probably we have already invaded by them, for millions of years. Some out of the place artefacts could be a hint of that.

The preconception of intervention and of aid. Some hope that the ET will help us (or at least some “chosen”) to overcome future catastrophes. But even us, if we discover a valuable piece of land, which has escaped from the human intrusion, we try to declare it a reservation, permitting only a very limited intervention, for scientific reasons. This attitude seems to be strengthening in time. A hypercivilization observing the Earth and the human technological civilisation should act in a similar manner, avoiding to interfere in our evolution, but taking samples, making some experiments, having very limited contacts (not at all officially or as between equals) with only some individuals, selected upon their and not our criteria.

Therefore no settlement, no destruction, on one hand and no official contact, conversation or substantial help, on the other hand, are to be expected from highly advanced cosmic civilisations, even if they are here now.

It could be that around us there is ahierarchy of hypercivilizations and of intelligence, potentially with no end. The difference between the denizens of a hypercivilization and us could be as high as that between us and ants. Some entomologists who would propose to study an anthill will try to disturb, as little as possible, its life. They could of course make experiments, examining or modifying some ants, or even taking them in remote laboratories, trying to create new “races” and so on. They will certainly try to find out, as much as possible, about the life of the anthill, but will not “present credentials” to the queen of the ants. If the entomologists have the technology, they will create some robot ants, sending them in to the hill and watching from a safe place, for example “on the computer screen”, the data transmitted by them. And if a robot ant would be lost in that mission, the incident would add a bit to the costs of research, without being a tragedy. A hypercivilization could do with us something similar, but, of course, with a very different technology.

This hypothesis could explain the close encounters, including alleged genetic engineering, not only now, but also in all the human history, for example, in the biblical note: “In those days, divine beings and human daughters had sexual relations and gave birth to children. These were the ancient heroes” (Genesis, 6, 4).

But obviously the comparison above – of mankind with an anthill – is slightly forced, as mankind is, nevertheless, a potential future hypercivilization. The arising of a technological civilisation could be a very rare event in our Galaxy, occurring probably once in several millions of years. So it is normal for us to be of interest to the higher intelligences. But what could they expect from us?

I mentioned that a hypercivilization will not give us its technologies; even more, it will forbid that. This is not, only, because of human aggressiveness and xenophobia, making from all new technology new weapons, nor only to avoid a “cultural shock”, which could virtually destroy all our social, scientific, religious, economical, political, military and cultural structures. I suppose they have also some other reasons for that. Hypercivilizations could wait (and maybe harvest even now) our original ideas, viewpoints, creations (in art, science, philosophy, ethics etc.), produced as a result of millions of years of our independent evolution. And all that expected crop could be destroyed by a premature contact.

Some old, apparently absurd, stories may be an indication of such an attitude: the punishment for the apple of the forbidden tree of knowledge, the chaining of Prometheus, or the fallen angels (from Book of Enoch), thrown into a pit full of fire, because they were taught earthlings different skills.

There are some signs that events occurring on Earth are permanently recorded in a virtual reality kind of “memory”, and that some people appear to have access to that “memory”. That could be associated with the idea of “harvesting”. Also, in that way we can explain: channelling, “xenoglossia”, “walk-ins”, “reincarnation”, ghosts, etc. In such a virtual reality, time is different. We can travel in the past, live events, without changing the real past, or we can see scenarios of the future (sometimes apocalyptical), without accepting fatality.

Obviously, this assumption raises more problems than it solves: What is the “physical” support of this super-memory? Is this support natural or installed by somebody? How are the events recorded? Who writes in it the future scenarios? Under what conditions may someone have access to the records of others? And so on.

As everywhere, in Romania there are a lot of strange phenomena which could be explained as signs of a discrete supervision of a much higher cosmic intelligence. They start with unexplained lights or objects in the sky, reported also by pilots and other qualified persons, and go until encounters with unearthly beings. I include here, also, several stories with folkloric or even holy figures. They appear together with features of classic UFO encounters and can not be separated from them. Many of them are described in my recent book “UFOs over Romania”.

I only mention some examples from these:

- In the year 1517. On November the 8th a great sign was seen in the sky. “It was glowing in the northern sky and looked like a human face”.

- On the 15th of October 1595, when Michael the Brave, prince of Walachia, besieged the city of Târgovişte, the capital of Walachia, temporarily occupied by Turks, above the military camp “a large comet appeared” for more than an hour. No comet was mentioned elsewhere.

- On a mural fresco in the Monastery Church, in the city of Sighişoara (Transylvania), a large disc-shaped object floats above a large building. The fresco is from the 16th or 17th century.

- In January 1913 nine military reports and 14 newspaper articles mention a flying object with a powerful reflector light.

- Ion Hobana, Călin Turcu and some others gathered many sightings, some from the first half of the 20-th century, and more from the fifties and sixties.

- In 1968 it was a “wave” of 94 sightings. The most important were near Cluj, namely in Hoia-Baciu Forest, where Emil Barnea made several good UFO photos.

- After 1968, several times, UFOs were observed entering or leaving Vidraru Lake.

- In 1986 and 1988 a meteorologist observed with radar, repeatedly, a huge UFO.

- In august 1991 an airliner crashed in the Retezat Mountains. Several days before, hikers observed in the same zone, strange light formations, mimicking a city or an airport.

- The first CE of the third kind was in 1939, in daylight, not far from Bucharest

- Another interesting humanoid encounter was in September 1978 in Făgăraş Mountains.

- In 1996, a policeman and a guard had a close encounter with a UFO and three humanoids, at Cerţeşti.

- ASFAN UFO association

- In 2001 a light carousel over the village Năneşti produced a black-out for hours.

- UFOs were filmed at Bucharest Otopeni airport at 13th /14th August 1993, 14th/15th July 1997, and May 11, 2004, 22.50-23.20.

- 05.05.2004, at 21:00, an object appeared in a film made in city of Râmnicu Vâlcea

- On April 13th, 2012, at 14:28, north of the city of Ploiesti, a white, hat-shaped, object was observed. The witness took several photos of the object.

- In 1973, in Romania, in the heart of Transylvania, near the city of Aiud, an aluminium object was extracted from a sand quarry. “packaged” like in a shell, underneath a 10 meters thick layer of hardened sand.

- A strange “honeycomb” was found in Buzău Mountains, in the early 1970s.

- Mihai Bărbuţiu, retired military pilot, had four UFO encounters in 1957, 1966-67 and in 1970 or 71. In one of them he was ordered to fire on the UFO.

- In March 1989, around 21:20, at the Mihai Kogălniceanu military airport, north of Constanţa, a huge V shaped formation was seen by many pilots of the Romanian Air Force Regiment 57.

- In November 1992, three military helicopters were recalled from the military exercise when they encountered an unidentified aerial phenomenon, near the city of Buzău.

- On the afternoon of October 30th, 2007, a “MiG-21 LanceR” fighter, from the Air Base 71 at Câmpia Turzii, performing a training flight, was hit by an unknown object.

- There are several UFO abduction cases and bedroom visits, with healing, tall humanoids, genetic experiments, channelling, and temporal anomalies.

- Circles in grass or in crop are put in correlation with apparition o fairies, as well as with UFOs. In one case, the “maid of woods”, a fairy, common in North Romania, was seen descending from a UFO.

These cases, and many other disturbing ones, including connections in folklore, spirituality or religion, have been widely covered in the book “UFOs over Romania” which is now up for sale.

Of course, all the above is not a proof that the hypercivilizations are the explanation for everything strange and particularly for UFOs. It is only one hypothesis; but one which cannot be easily discarded. We can speculate even further, supposing for example that the spiritual world was before, or that the material world is only a kind of a great virtual reality and so on. And the whole Universe (or rather the Multiverse”) could be much older and much more complex than the part we can observe with our instruments. Was there something before the “Big Bang”? What is beyond the limits of our closed Universe (maybe in another dimension or another reality, maybe in a spiritual state of matter)?

We should recognize our limits in answering such questions; as well the fact that, in the limits of rationality,the human mind cannot distinguish between the activity of an alleged hypercivilization and what we know as sacred, holy, or divine.

Dan D. Farcaş Ph.D.
Chairman of ASFAN Romania

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