Saving Schrödinger's Cat

Signal to Noise

Last year, a theoretical physicist and intellectual whom I respect, Michio Kaku, said this about UFOs:

"The burden of proof has shifted," he said. "It used to be the burden of proof was on the people who believe in UFOs. Now the burden of proof has shifted to the Pentagon, to the military. Now they have to prove that these aren’t extraterrestrial."

I’m not sure what was going through Michio’s head, other than a misrepresentation of what burden of proof is. I'm not even sure what he means by "believe in UFOs." Believe what about them, exactly? He was always a bit on the fringe, with his contributions to hypotheses like string theory. But since then, the volume on the UFO conversation has cranked up quite a lot. You might say there is a lot more noise now.

The term “signal to noise ratio” comes from radio engineering, and it refers to the ratio of an intelligible information on a broadcast to the amount of background noise on the carrier signal. Simply put, the worse your signal to noise, the less intelligible your signal is.

Colloquially, this term could apply to the current UFO discourse. To date, there has always been, in my opinion, a whole lot of noise in the conversation about UFOs, or as the military calls them, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Either of these rather mundane terms describe things we perceive, but cannot identify, hence the name. For many years, the nature of these phenomena has been left to cranks, wingnuts, and conspiracy loons to hyperventilate about, inspiring media offerings like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The X-Files. While I have enjoyed these shows, some people out there take them a little too seriously. Now, with respected scientists, government officials, and even military pilots adding their voices to the din, the UFO craze is reaching War of the Worlds levels of fever pitch.

I’m here to lend a little bit of sanity to the conversation, if that’s even possible with my tiny bit of signal in this ocean of noise. There is a corollary to this signal business: the more signals, the more noise. More radios, more cameras (on every phone!), more weather events from climate change, more airliners, more trash making its way into the sky, and most of all, more voices howling into the interwebs and raising the temperature. That’s a recipe for a whole lot of noise.

And what are we supposed to take away from this? Aliens? Ghosts? The Second Coming?

I don’t know what these fuzzy blobs are that always seem to be just outside the resolving power of our cameras, despite the continuing improvements in camera technology. But I do know about mistakes, optical illusions, and misperceptions. The atmosphere plays some eye-popping tricks when it gets into the mood. In all my years at sea, I have seen some weird things, like a ship sailing upside down in the sky, or a plane seeming to disappear from view in a clear blue sky, only to reappear at another location. I have seen crews wracking their brains trying to figure out what a strange light dancing on the horizon was, only to learn that it was somebody’s cell phone screen reflecting off the glass. I have seen things I can’t explain at all…and that’s it. I can’t explain it and there is no more to say. Should I engage in flights of fancy imagining what it could be?

Which brings me to the current UFO craze. There are videos, pictures, and a whole lot of statements from supposedly credible people authenticating this media. I have seen speculation all the way to Pluto and back as to what they are. What I haven’t seen are any facts. Blips, blobs, fuzzy balls and disks, blurry lights, but absolutely nothing definitive. But that doesn’t stop the speculators. The volume is so high, that last year, the US government actually got involved. Yes, decades after Project Blue Book was closed, taxpayer money is again being spent to run these phenomena down. Tasks forces are being stood up and directed to investigate. Congressional hearings are being held. The military is also investigating. I like to think that all of this is in response to a perceived threat to US airspace, but that’s not the vibe I’m getting. It sounds more like the cranks and wingnuts have gained sufficient political pull that the government is going to behave as if E.T. is pranking our military aviators. And what are we supposed to believe? That little green men traveled trillions of miles to dance just outside the range of our cameras and set off the more unbalance members of Earth’s population? Or is the explanation more mundane?

All of this comes back to the noise. There’s a lot of it, and very little signal. But the human brain doesn’t like silence, so it grabs ahold of the noise and treats it like gospel. And the noise is everywhere. It’s inescapable, so much so that I have to shut off my computer and run outside to touch grass lest it take over and drown out every other thought. I’m skeptical by nature and I like to think I wield Occam’s Razor like a katana (or more realistically, like a whiffle ball bat). But lately I feel like I’m using it to fight off a zombie horde. It would be so much easier to turn off my brain and follow Fox Mulder down the rabbit hole.

If someday, something extraordinary is revealed, that would be great! I’m here for it. But in the meantime, don’t listen to the noise.