Last fall, New Jersey was a hot spot for unidentified drone sightings.
Subsequent investigations determined that what the public witnessed buzzing across the Jersey skies were mostly authorized drones or misidentified aircraft.
The drone sightings caught the attention of John Gertz, a long-time and influential member of SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), the scientific body that for more than half a century has scanned outer space looking for signals from alien civilizations.
Gertz has been with SETI for 25 years, having served three terms as chair of the board of the SETI Institute. He has also contributed to the academic foundation of SETI through multiple peer-reviewed theoretical papers.
While Gertz accepts the official investigation’s conclusions about the drone sightings, he wants the incident to help stimulate public policy discussions about how our military, business and political institutions should prepare for the day when the objects flying around the earth are confirmed as alien in origin.
Right now, he contends, we are “woefully unprepared” for this event.
In his newly published book “Reinventing SETI: New Directions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” published by Oxford University Press, Gertz argues that we need a massive overhaul in how we think about alien life and how we look for it – and the implications of our discovering its existence.
Gertz argues from a unique perspective – that of a businessman and entrepreneur rather than a scientist or astronomer. He heads up Zorro Productions, which owns and manages all of the copyrights and trademarks for the famous swashbuckling character.
Military Matters (MM): How do you apply your expertise as a businessman in determining how an alien civilization might try to contact us?
John Gertz (JG): In my book, more than anything, I am asking these questions of ETs who might be trying to contact us – what’s in it for them? What would make sense to them as a strategy to advance their goals?
As a businessman, I ask questions such as who is paying the alien’s electric bill? Is there a cheaper way for them to communicate with us other than using laser or radio transmitters over interstellar distances? Where is their profit or the result they want going to come from?
I am constantly trying to get into the brain, or ganglia, or central processing unit of aliens to ask questions about what would make the best economic or strategic sense to them.
MM: When you find yourself inside ET’s brain, what do you come to realize?
JG: If ET is interested in us, they are likely not sending radio or laser transmission to us from their home planetary system.
More probably they would send physical probes to our solar system to survey us and to learn about us, and potentially to make contact with us.
MM: SETI and astronomers around the world have been listening intently for a signal from another civilization for more than half a century. Now you say it makes no sense for ET to try to communicate with us this way. Why?
JG: As a businessman, when I look at the best way for ET to get a return on its efforts, it is not from transmitting signals. There are all kinds of problems when you send signals.
First, it is not a good idea to send signals from your home planet. It is dangerous. There are likely some bad actors out there in space and your signal tells them where you are.
Second, when you send signals, you get no information back. When you send a probe, it can survey, and it can do science. You get a return for your efforts.
Third, it is far more economical to send the probe. You can put all your info on whatever ET’s version of a hard drive is. When you send a signal, you have to commit to sending it 24/7 for how long – a dozen years? It is vastly cheaper to send the information on a hard drive.
Fourth is the difficulty of lining up the signal. Our SETI protocol is to look at each star for 10 minutes and then we move onto the next star for 10 minutes and so on. If ET does the same thing and looks at earth for 10 minutes, the chances of their receiver lining up exactly right with our transmission in that short time span is close to zero.
MM: Last year’s drone sightings over New Jersey caught your attention. Is it your contention that these drones were alien probes?
JG: First, I am in the field of astronomy – astronomy begins where the atmosphere ends. Consequently, drones and UFOs are not my direct field.
Having said that, I believe most drones are man-made. There was a lot of speculation that the Jersey sightings were UFOs. I am totally sympathetic to the idea that UFOs – alien probes – are already right here in our solar system. But I have not seen any evidence yet that leads me to say that those drones were UFOs.
MM: What kind of evidence would convince you short of ET landing on your front lawn?
JG: I want sightings corroborated from satellites. They see everywhere in the sky, but they are not seeing UFOs.
I am looking for sonic booms. UFOs are supposed to accelerate to enormous speeds – those kinds of velocities create sonic booms, but we don’t hear any.
I am looking for better visual corroboration. We all carry around pretty nice cameras in our pockets, but we don’t have a lot of good-quality UFO pictures.
I am looking for multiple visuals. When there was a meteorite that crashed through the atmosphere in South Carolina, it was caught on hundreds of dash cams. You don’t see that with UFOs.
MM: There are conspiracists who say the evidence of UFOs is there, but the government is covering it up.
JG: I don’t buy the conspiracy theories. The point is I do not know what the drones over New Jersey were, but I do not believe they were UFOs.
The first major story about UFOs was about the UFO crashing in Roswell, NM, in 1947. People say the government knows all about this and is covering it up.
Well, there have been 14 presidents since Roswell. Do you think everyone of them kept it secret? And in each administration, there must have been dozens of bureaucrats that knew about it and not one leaked it to the New York Times?
And whether you love or hate President Trump, who believes he would keep this a secret if he knew about it?
MM: You wrote your new book to get people to rethink how we should prepare for the day when we connect with alien life. You think we are totally unprepared for this event?
JG: Yes. One thing we will know for sure about ET – any alien we encounter will be well ahead of us technologically.
We have been dealing with SETI as a matter for astronomers and it is not, nor should it be. It is a military matter on many grounds. We must have situational awareness in the military sense of the word.
You could argue that ET could not harm us from far away distances. I would argue you sound like an ancient Hittite. These ancient warriors could not imagine warfare being conducted any further than the distance one of their arrows could fly.
But think of them going up against the 101st Airborne – they would be decimated in seconds. This is our situation with regard to an ET civilization. We have no idea of their capabilities or what their intentions would be.
We have to figure this out and the Department of Defense, not NASA, should lead.
MM: You have also expressed concern about the Chinese role in the search for extraterrestrial life.
JG: We are not just in an arms race or a technology race with the Chinese.
We are also in a SETI race. The Chinese have their own SETI program, and they now have the largest radio telescope in the world.
What are the ramifications of this race?
Let’s imagine that ET sends a signal and the Chinese pick it up. The aliens download an entire “Encyclopedia Galactica” filled with great knowledge and technology and the Chinese get it and we don’t.
You think the Chinese are going to share it with us? They will stamp it top secret and that will be the end of it. We will never even know they got it.
MM: So then, what do we need to do to be ready?
JG: A big point in my book is that the only way to deal with this situation is to set up a group of well-funded international experts to study these issues and I don’t mean by experts just in astronomy – but economists, diplomats, military specialists and emergency planners, biologists, linguists and the like and they should do contingency planning for all of the possible situations we might face.
At the end of the day what I am trying to do it influence public policy. We are totally asleep at the wheel when it comes to understanding the ramifications of SETI.
