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Contactees
Contactees are persons who claim to have experienced contact with extraterrestrials. Some claimed ongoing encounters, while others claimed to have had as few as a single encounter. Evidence is anecdotal in all cases. As a cultural phenomenon, contactees perhaps had their greatest notoriety from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, but individuals continue to make similar claims in the present. Some have shared their messages with small groups of followers, and many contactees have written books, published magazine and newspaper articles, issued newsletters or spoken at UFO conventions. The contactee movement has seen serious attention from academics and mainstream scholars. Among the earliest was the 1956 study, ''When Prophecy Fails'' by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, which analyzed the phenomenon. There have been at least two university-level anthologies of scientific papers regarding the contactee movements. Contactee accounts are generally different from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Adamski
George Adamski (17 April 1891 – 23 April 1965) was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of alien spacecraft, claimed to have met with friendly Nordic alien Space Brothers, and claimed to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets. Adamski was the first, and most famous, of several so-called UFO contactees who came to prominence during the 1950s. Adamski called himself a "philosopher, teacher, student and saucer researcher", although most investigators concluded his claims were an elaborate hoax, and that Adamski himself was a charlatan and a con artist. Adamski authored three books describing his meetings with Nordic aliens and his travels with them aboard their spaceships: ''Flying Saucers Have Landed'' (co-written with Desmond Leslie) in 1953, ''Inside the Space Ships'' in 1955, and ''Flying Saucers Farewell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Van Tassel
George Washington Van Tassel (March 12, 1910 – February 9, 1978) was an American contactee, ufologist and author. Early life Van Tassel was born in Jefferson, Ohio in 1910, and grew up in a fairly prosperous middle-class family. He finished high school in the 10th grade and held a job at a small municipal airport near Cleveland; he also acquired a private pilot license. At age 20, he moved to California, where at first he worked as an automobile mechanic at a garage owned by an uncle. While pumping gas at the garage, he met Frank Critzer, an eccentric loner who claimed to be working a mine somewhere near Giant Rock, a 7-story boulder near Landers, California in the Mojave Desert. Frank Critzer was claimed by others to be a German immigrant During World War II, however, he was born in the US. Critzer was under suspicion as a German spy and killed himself by a dynamite explosion during a police siege at the Rock in 1942. Upon receiving news of Critzer's death, Van Tassel applied ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extraterrestrial Life
Extraterrestrial life, colloquially referred to as alien life, is life that may occur outside Earth and which did not originate on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected, although efforts are underway. Such life might range from simple forms like prokaryotes to intelligent beings, possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more advanced than humankind. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology. Speculation about the possibility of inhabited "worlds" outside the planet Earth dates back to antiquity. Multiple early Christian writers discussed the idea of a "plurality of worlds" as proposed by earlier thinkers such as Democritus; Augustine references Epicurus's idea of innumerable worlds "throughout the boundless immensity of space" (originally expressed in his Letter to Herodotus) in ''The City of God''. In his first century p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emanuel Swedenborg
Emanuel Swedenborg (, ; born Emanuel Swedberg; 29 March 1772) was a Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, ''Heaven and Hell'' (1758). Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741, at 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions, notably on Easter Weekend, on 6 April 1744. His experiences culminated in a "spiritual awakening" in which he received a revelation that Jesus Christ had appointed him to write ''The Heavenly Doctrine'' to reform Christianity. According to ''The Heavenly Doctrine'', the Lord had opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes so that from then on, he could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels, demons and other spirits, and that the Last Judgment had already occurred in 1757, the year before the 1758 publication of ''De Nova Hierosolyma et ejus doctrina coelesti'' (English: ''Concernin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goldbach Conjecture
Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in number theory and all of mathematics. It states that every even natural number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers. The conjecture has been shown to hold for all integers less than 4 × 1018, but remains unproven despite considerable effort. History On 7 June 1742, the German mathematician Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to Leonhard Euler (letter XLIII), in which he proposed the following conjecture: Goldbach was following the now-abandoned convention of considering 1 to be a prime number, so that a sum of units would indeed be a sum of primes. He then proposed a second conjecture in the margin of his letter, which implies the first: Euler replied in a letter dated 30 June 1742 and reminded Goldbach of an earlier conversation they had had (), in which Goldbach had remarked that the first of those two conjectures would follow from the statement This is in fact equivalent to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fermat's Last Theorem
In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been known since antiquity to have infinitely many solutions.Singh, pp. 18–20. The proposition was first stated as a theorem by Pierre de Fermat around 1637 in the margin of a copy of '' Arithmetica''. Fermat added that he had a proof that was too large to fit in the margin. Although other statements claimed by Fermat without proof were subsequently proven by others and credited as theorems of Fermat (for example, Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares), Fermat's Last Theorem resisted proof, leading to doubt that Fermat ever had a correct proof. Consequently the proposition became known as a conjecture rather than a theorem. After 358 years of effort by mathematicians, the first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles and form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect.Extract of page 14 Initially an assistant professor at [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Vallée
Jacques Fabrice Vallée (; born September 24, 1939) is an Internet pioneer, computer scientist, venture capitalist, author, ufologist and astronomer currently residing in San Francisco, California and Paris, France. His scientific career began as a professional astronomer at the Paris Observatory. Vallée co-developed the first computerized map of Mars for NASA in 1963. He later worked on the network information center for the ARPANET, a precursor to the modern Internet, as a staff engineer of SRI International's Augmentation Research Center under Douglas Engelbart. Vallée is also an important figure in the study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), first noted for a defense of the scientific legitimacy of the extraterrestrial hypothesis and later for promoting the interdimensional hypothesis. Early life Vallée was born in Pontoise, France in 1939. He completed his undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Paris in 1959 and received the equivalent of an MS ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunatic Fringe
Lunatic fringe is a term used to characterize members of a political or social movement as extremists with eccentric or fanatical views. Theodore Roosevelt is widely credited with having popularized the term, which he used with gusto: "There is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement." "Then, among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it — the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements." It may refer to: * "Lunatic Fringe" (song), a song by Red Rider from the 1981 album ''As Far as Siam'' * LFNG, a gene in the Notch pathway * "Lunatic Fringe", an episode of ''The Net'' (TV series) * a screensaver that is part of the '' After Dark'' screensaver pack * a nickname given to WWE wrestler Dean Ambrose * a slogan for radio station WEBN * a level in the video game Duke Nukem 3D ''Duke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and Skills, skill, north of Ancient Athens, Athens, Greece. Etymology The word comes from the ''Academy'' in ancient Greece, which derives from the Athenian hero, ''Akademos''. Outside the city walls of Athens, the Gymnasium (ancient Greece), gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had formerly been an olive Grove (nature), grove, hence the expression "the groves of Academe". In these gardens, the philosopher Plato conversed with followers. Plato developed his sessions into a method of teaching philosophy and in 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ufology
Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and fringe science investigations of UFOs, ufology is generally regarded by skeptics and science educators as a canonical example of pseudoscience. Etymology Ufology is a neologism derived from ''UFO'' (a term apparently coined by Edward J. Ruppelt), and is derived from appending the acronym UFO with the suffix ''-logy'' (from the Ancient Greek ''λογία'' (''logiā'')). Early uses of ufology include an article in ''Fantastic Universe'' (1957) and a 1958 presentation for the UFO "research organization" The Planetary Center. Historical background The roots of ufology include the " mystery airships" of the late 1890s, the "foo fighters" reported by Allied airmen during World War II, the "ghost fliers" of Europe and North America during th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortean Times
''Fortean Times'' is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing (from 1991 to 2001), I Feel Good Publishing (2001 to 2005), Dennis Publishing (2005 to 2021), and Exponent (2021), it is now published by Diamond Publishing, part of Metropolis International. In December 2018, its print circulation was just over 14,800 copies per month. This now appears to include digital sales. The magazine's tagline is "The World of Strange Phenomena". History Origin The roots of the magazine that was to become ''Fortean Times'' can be traced back to Bob Rickard's discovering the works of Charles Fort through the secondhand method of reading science-fiction stories: :" John Campbell, the editor of '' Astounding Science Fiction'' (as ''Analog'' was then titled), for example," writes Rickard "encouraged many authors to expand Fort's data and comments into imaginative stories." In the mid-1960s, while Rick ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
