An Astronomer Bleak Prediction
August 11th, 2010 06:01pm
An astronomer's bleak prediction
by Billy Cox
Last month, when The Christian Science Monitor decided to uncork another UFOs-are-stupid piece, it didn't even bother to pick up the phone. Instead, it dusted off some two-year-old quotes that Christine Pulliam of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics made to National Public Radio. It was a tired old yawner about mirages and how "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Harvard astronomer Rudy Schild suspects 'UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record' will make little difference in U.S. policy/CREDIT: xprezz.dk
To be fair, it's doubtful The Monitor even heard of Pulliam's H-SCA colleague, Dr. Rudy Schild. It probably didn't know he performed detective work on celestial puzzles such as wormholes and black holes, or that his research had produced more than 200 published scientific papers. But were it aware that Schild's curiosity had also led him to study UFOs, or that he used to confer with the late Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard Med School psychiatrist John Mack - the alien abduction expert - no doubt it would've run screaming in the opposite direction.
Nevertheless, Schild decided to stick his neck out this week with an endorsement of Leslie Kean's UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record. If you don't think that takes a little brass, even in a tenured position, consider the fact that another scientist who also publicly lended his support to the same book declined to elaborate further with De Void. And no wonder.
"We've got 300 scientists here studying everything you can think of. Everything but UFOs," the Harvard astronomer tells De Void. "I've developed a schizoid personality. There's Rudolph M. Schild, and then there's the UFO Rudy Schild."
Schild has never had a problem with attempting to connect UFO propulsion systems to the oblique engines of astrophysics. He lectures at UFO conferences about it. But within academia, Schild has already discussed the adjustments he'd be willing to make if his public lectures become an embarrassment for administrators.
"I don't have an axe to grind, I'm not an experiencer, I don't have any UFOs in my pocket," he says. "But it's totally unacceptable for me to raise my hand in a(n academic) seminar room and ask about UFOs. I would just as soon keep quiet about it."
So why go on record - again - this week?
"I know there are some safety in the sky issues raised in the book," Schild says, "but they are trivial and minor compared with what we're losing on an intellectual level. We are losing an understanding of how profound and how deep the universe really is than is presently understood."
Schild commends Kean's work, and the international players she brings to the table. But he suspects after the initial run of publicity, the climate of receptivity will remain unaltered.
"I appreciate what Leslie's done. She's put in a lot of hard work and she's careful not to get into government conspiracies," he says. "I hope it brings us closer to the truth, I really do. But the forces opposed to it are too powerful.
"What the French are doing, the Russians, China - it doesn't make any difference. Our government's official position is self-contradictory and absurd. They're lying to the American people. And everybody knows it."
Schild's prediction: Only a new generation can end the blackout. "I wish I could be more upbeat and positive," he says. "But this society is progressing one funeral at a time."