#sightings

Sightings - S3E06 - “S.E.T.I. Resurrected” - October 16th, 1994

“In 1992, on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to the new world, NASA embarked on its own voyage to deep space. They devised a program called SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Their mission? Use the world’s most powerful telescopes to search for signs of life in outer space.”

In 1992 the US government program approved funding for the Microwave Observing Program, a NASA program searching for extraterrestrial signals. Then, only a year later it was cancelled.

NASA engineer James Oberg says "the SETI project was just a sacrifical lamb, a cheap shot for the budget posers, for the deficit hawks. It's always easier to make fun of something you…don't understand." In fact funding for SETI projects had already been cut in 1981 due to the efforts of William Proxmire, whose shtick in Congress was to give out "golden fleece" awards which were largely him cutting funding for any science project he didn't immediately understand. Because let the military pork barrels flow but by god don't let a physics experiment happen if some random guy from Wisconsin can't understand it. Proxmire backtracked after Carl Sagan yelled at him, but SETI funding wouldn't survive the even more aggressive budget cutting of the 1990s. Congress simply said "you haven't found Martians after one year!" and decided it was all trash.

Meanwhile from the vantage point of 2026 it's obvious that all that "wasteful" spending was in truth extremely important. Those seemingly stupid to a layman science projects had a purpose. And as for the rest, to quote noted polisci scholar Judd Hirsch from Independence Day: "You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"

SETI research would continue with private backing as part of Project Phoenix...

...which would complete its mission in 2004. They didn't find alien life, but the SETI Institute carries on today, as do other groups (for instance the Berkeley SETI Research Center, who were the ones behind SETI@home).

Telescope arrays were used at Arecibo, Puerto Rico (which Sightings profiled - Sightings' hiatus was just long enough that it covered the start of the government SETI program and the aftermath of its cancellation, but wasn't there for the middle part where it actually existed) and at the Goldstone Complex in California.

Anyway there's also an anonymous "aerospace engineer" who claims that SETI was cancelled because they found signals the military didn't like. Whatever

Our post-show teases:

The Sentinel, of course, is up next...

Sightings - S3E06 - “Power of Prayer” - October 16th, 1994

“Prayer, a time of meditation and reflection, is part of nearly every belief system in the world. For millennia, people have drawn great strength from these private moments of concentrated thought. Now physician Larry Dossey is finding tangible evidence many forms of prayer can heal not only the spirit but the body as well.”

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Alright. So there's this cool 90s rollerblade kid

who rollerblades into the path of a truck and is squished like a bug

But! His family prays for him! And he lives! And even gets to rollerblade again!

Meanwhile, in Santa Fe, there's a chapel people pray in for healing - and get healed so often they leave their crutches behind (I'm sure the chapel does follow-up on how many people need them again later...)

Larry Dossey tells us about studies into the power of prayer by SCIENTISTS. That's the enemy of religion!

(For some reason this segment frames prayer mainly in psychological terms, but it isn't about the very real way people can psychologically convince themselves to heal in improbable way. It is very clearly about people praying to God or god(s) for a miracle. And, let's face it, all of this is very Christian)

He brings up a study in Oregon in the 1980s that said prayer did something, but I can't find that one. He compares it to penicillin - we knew it worked before we knew how it worked! Just like prayer!

Larry Dossey is of course not a neutral investigator but a real physician turned prolific new age alt-med advocate, who has a broader obsession with "energies" here distilled into a interest in prayer.

Randolph Byrd, meanwhile, conducted a much better documented prayer experiment in San Francisco in the 1980s. This was a double-blind study that tested if people have better results after prayer even if they don't know about it. His result? They do. But later replications discovered flaws in his study (namely, while the patients didn't know if they were being prayed for the staff interacting with them did) and found no significant correlation between prayer and healing. Despite this segment's agnostic psychological framing, Dr. Byrd is himself a Born Again Christian.

As our cool 90s rollerblade kid says, “I think it was a miracle. I think if somebody else had got run over and nobody prayer he would have died.”

And our related series, Early 90s Computers With Ominous Energy

Sightings - S3E06 - “Dragon Project" - October 16th, 1994

“The pyramids. Lourdes. Stonehenge. Places of power that for centuries have an inexplicable attraction. What makes these places so special? Earth scientist Paul Devereux believes sacred sites may give off an energy that affects people subconciously. To prove his theory, Devereux is conducting a long-term experiment called the Dragon Project. He’s documenting the dreams of people who volunteer to sleep at sacred sites.”

“Why do people come from all over the world to stare at this pile of rocks? Why do people spontaneous hallucinations inside this 5,000 year old cavern? Paul Devereux believes it’s not history or superstition that creates a sacred site - it’s something in the rock, some kind of magnetic energy or radiation that changes people physically and emotionally...”

We're back in the UK and back with...

...who we last saw standing outside of Stonehenge to report on the Marfa lights. In Texas.

His theory is that sacred sites can be explained through natural radiation: that it induces psychological visions through dreams, and this makes people declare the sites sacred.

Paul is an interesting guy, invested in "earth mysteries" as a concept but not blindly so. Notably, he doesn't believe in ley lines at all and spent much of the 1970s debunking the concept. He not only holds that the vast majority of UFO sightings are believable, but thinks UFOs are an entirely natural phenomenon.

This brings us to the Dragon Project: a project to get people to sleep in ancient places and record their dreams.

After this, the dream reports will be forwarded to...

Stanley Krippner conducted cutting-edge medical research in the 1970s; in the 1970s, "cutting-edge medical research" meant "research on if telepathy could influence people's dreams". Yes! These results were definitive until someone looked at them. More oddly, on multiple occasions he vouched for psychics after they were exposed as frauds. Like. Years after.

Paul notes that the dimensions of one chamber are an EXACT match for the King's Chamber in the pyramids. Stanley is...impressed.

But what mystic places are they visiting?

The first is a trip to Madron Well, where Paul once had a dream that inspired the project...

Here, he dreamt he saw hands in front of him dipped in the water; the hands massaged around his eyes, and he woke up. He went over to the water and went through the actions seen in the dream - no word on what happened next, but he wants to see if others have the same dream.

Next up is Carn Euny, a "ruined Cornish village"...

...where they place a man underground and record what happens to him. Sweet dreams

finally doing one of these I guess

I'm Nora, she/her, i'm in my 30s. tma, lesbian, all that jazz you know how it is.

you can see my boobs in #my form and face in #sightings and its ok (encouraged) to reblog and give me attention and stuff.

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A UFO/Aliens experience IN ROSWELL!