Question: Hey Bill. So there are many videos online claiming to be extraterrestrial sightings. It just seems that the government is aware of extraterrestrials yet they reject the idea. Possibly they’re hiding the truth from us in fear of the knowledge greatly changing our daily lives. Do you believe these aliens exist and if so would you tell us?
Bill Nye: No I don’t believe the aliens exist coming to visit you and the government knows about it and hasn’t told you. No. Start with that. Two more things. First of all the whole alien thing really got revved up in 1947. There was a project called Sky Hook and the U.S. Government had these very cool super high altitude balloons and they were going to have a constellation of them or an armada of these balloons off the East Coast of the former Soviet Union with microphones tuned to listen for nuclear weapons tests. This was going to be big fun. And so they were testing the balloon in New Mexico and it was complicated and the winds blew the thing around and it crashed and it was impractical. The idea was kind of cool but it was a cold war idea that just didn’t work. Now this project was secret so yes, government people showed up. The U.S. Army swept up all the debris from the crash and took it away because it was secret.
And they also experimented with parachuting dummies from very high altitudes in the same area. And this has led to all these fabulous myths about aliens and the government knows stuff you don’t. Now I look like nobody and I am but I had an engineering job, several of them over the years, and during one of them I had security clearance. And I worked on a secret airplane for a little while and I never went myself but I worked with several guys, they were all men, who went to Area 51 to Groom Lake which is an Air Force base in Nevada where we fly around these secret airplanes. And it’s a real place. And these guys went there and when I was doing it it was called level five security clearance. I only had level four. I never went to Groom Lake. But the big thing they wouldn’t talk about was how fast these planes could go. That was a big secret. But anyway these are people that worked on the F117, a stealth fighter. If you ever go to the Air Force Museum in Ohio you can see the Have Blue secret planes, very cool.
As a kid I always asked myself why don’t they paint spy planes light blue to blend in with the blue sky. Well sometimes they do. Anyway you can see one of those there. So it’s a complete myth that the government knows. Just think how hard it is for the government to keep anything secret. With all due the government kind of sucks at keeping secrets. So they couldn’t possibly keep the secret with 10,000 people in on it. So let’s just set that aside. But with that said you may very well be alive when we discover life or evidence of life rather on Mars. This would literally be alien life. If we find it, if we find some ancient microbes still alive in some icy layer under the Martian sand it would change the world. It would change the way everybody thinks about being a living thing. Do these things on Mars if they exist do they have DNA or did they have DNA if they have been fossilized? Or are they a whole other completely different type of life that we’ve never thought of. Did life start on Mars? Mars got hit with an impactor and you and I are a descendent of Martians? That is amazing. It’s not crazy. It’s extraordinary but it’s not crazy. Then furthermore you may be alive when we send mission to the moon of Jupiter called Europa which has at least twice as much seawater as the earth. When you have seawater for 4.5 billion years is there something alive on Europa? Whoa like dude, that’s out there. It would change the world. It would utterly change the world. This would be real alien life discovered with tax dollars by people who are intellectually curious who decide to devote some of our intellect and treasure to exploring our nearby planetary worlds.
And that’s the real stuff that I encourage you to support and follow. And for that of course I encourage you to join the Planetary Society. Think about that. You don’t have to, I’m just suggesting because we really do advocate for the real exploration of nearby worlds really looking for alien life. Also the James Webb space telescope is going to launch in 2018 and it may have the capability – it is hoped that it will have the capability of exploring atmospheres of extraordinarily distant planets by having sunlight from those stars that those planets orbit pass through the atmospheres. If we detect water vapor and methane it may mean some day that we’ve detected evidence of life on another world. Do, do, do, do – do, do, do, do. It’s all the real stuff is what I’m saying, the real exploration for alien life is more exciting than speculating about a nominally secret Air Force base in Nevada. Carry on.
Peel off your tin-foil hat like a Hershey’s Kiss, because Bill Nye has a reality check for the alien conspiracists out there. Roswell? Area 51? Vincent D'Onofrio as the roach alien in MIB? Bill Nye shoos them away, deeming each as unrealistic as the next.
Nye has some experience when it comes to classified information – not much, he admits, but a little. He once had security clearance while working as an engineer on secret government planes, and although he did not visit Area 51 himself, colleagues with one level higher security clearance than him did go, and what did they find there? Planes. Lots of people, lots of planes, and zero trace of alien life.
The origin of alien conspiracies go back to 1947, when something mysterious fell out of the sky and crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. It spurred curiosity and panic; claims emerged that the unknown object was an extraterrestrial spaceship. The government eased people’s minds by revealing that it was nothing but a standard weather balloon that had crashed – and of course, that was a filthy lie. The intrigue was quieted until the late 1970s, when UFO enthusiasts rediscovered the story and images and amped up the interest once again, developing conspiracy theories about alien crash landings. There was no closure until the 1990s, when the US military published reports disclosing what really happened in Roswell: it was an experimental US government spy balloon that had crashed, part of Project Mogul, an attempt to listen out for Soviet murmurs of nuclear testing.
It has been thoroughly investigated and officially debunked, but seeing as the government lied once, the heat on the theory has never really died in the hearts of passionate conspiracy theorists.
But Nye does not believe the government is concealing aliens from us for an even simpler reason: as we can see from the daily political scandals in the media, it is so hard for the government to keep anything a secret.
But he’s not quick to dismiss alien life, and is excited at the prospect of traces being discovered in the next 50 or 100 years, under the icy layers of Mars, or on Jupiter’s intriguing moon Europa. whether that’s a sizeable organism or a mere cell, or fossil.
So there's no reason to narrow your eyes at the government when you ponder alien life. Then again, it’s possible Bill Nye’s body was commandeered by the government using alien technology for the duration of this interview. Or maybe Nye is an alien. And he hangs out with Tupac and Elvis drinking green slime mojitos in a secret ET spa club way out in desert Nevada.
Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
The U.S. Navy controls patents for some futuristic and outlandish technologies, some of which, dubbed "the UFO patents," came to light recently. Of particular note are inventions by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, whose tech claims to be able to "engineer reality." His slate of highly-ambitious, borderline sci-fi designs meant for use by the U.S. government range from gravitational wave generators and compact fusion reactors to next-gen hybrid aerospace-underwater crafts with revolutionary propulsion systems, and beyond.
Of course, the existence of patents does not mean these technologies have actually been created, but there is evidence that some demonstrations of operability have been successfully carried out. As investigated and reported by The War Zone, a possible reason why some of the patents may have been taken on by the Navy is that the Chinese military may also be developing similar advanced gadgets.
Among Dr. Pais's patents are designs, approved in 2018, for an aerospace-underwater craft of incredible speed and maneuverability. This cone-shaped vehicle can potentially fly just as well anywhere it may be, whether air, water or space, without leaving any heat signatures. It can achieve this by creating a quantum vacuum around itself with a very dense polarized energy field. This vacuum would allow it to repel any molecule the craft comes in contact with, no matter the medium. Manipulating "quantum field fluctuations in the local vacuum energy state," would help reduce the craft's inertia. The polarized vacuum would dramatically decrease any elemental resistance and lead to "extreme speeds," claims the paper.
Not only that, if the vacuum-creating technology can be engineered, we'd also be able to "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level," states the patent. This would lead to major advancements in aerospace propulsion and generating power. Not to mention other reality-changing outcomes that come to mind.
Among Pais's other patents are inventions that stem from similar thinking, outlining pieces of technology necessary to make his creations come to fruition. His paper presented in 2019, titled "Room Temperature Superconducting System for Use on a Hybrid Aerospace Undersea Craft," proposes a system that can achieve superconductivity at room temperatures. This would become "a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology," conveys Pais.
High frequency gravitational wave generator.
Credit: Dr. Salvatore Pais
Another invention devised by Pais is an electromagnetic field generator that could generate "an impenetrable defensive shield to sea and land as well as space-based military and civilian assets." This shield could protect from threats like anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles that evade radar, coronal mass ejections, military satellites, and even asteroids.
Dr. Pais's ideas center around the phenomenon he dubbed "The Pais Effect". He referred to it in his writings as the "controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma) via accelerated spin and/or accelerated vibration under rapid (yet smooth) acceleration-deceleration-acceleration transients." In less jargon-heavy terms, Pais claims to have figured out how to spin electromagnetic fields in order to contain a fusion reaction – an accomplishment that would lead to a tremendous change in power consumption and an abundance of energy.
According to his bio in a recently published paper on a new Plasma Compression Fusion Device, which could transform energy production, Dr. Pais is a mechanical and aerospace engineer working at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), which is headquartered in Patuxent River, Maryland. Holding a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Pais was a NASA Research Fellow and worked with Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. His current Department of Defense work involves his "advanced knowledge of theory, analysis, and modern experimental and computational methods in aerodynamics, along with an understanding of air-vehicle and missile design, especially in the domain of hypersonic power plant and vehicle design." He also has expert knowledge of electrooptics, emerging quantum technologies (laser power generation in particular), high-energy electromagnetic field generation, and the "breakthrough field of room temperature superconductivity, as related to advanced field propulsion."
Suffice it to say, with such a list of research credentials that would make Nikola Tesla proud, Dr. Pais seems well-positioned to carry out groundbreaking work.
A craft using an inertial mass reduction device.
Credit: Salvatore Pais
The patents won't necessarily lead to these technologies ever seeing the light of day. The research has its share of detractors and nonbelievers among other scientists, who think the amount of energy required for the fields described by Pais and his ideas on electromagnetic propulsions are well beyond the scope of current tech and are nearly impossible. Yet investigators at The War Zone found comments from Navy officials that indicate the inventions are being looked at seriously enough, and some tests are taking place.
If you'd like to read through Pais's patents yourself, check them out here.
Laser Augmented Turbojet Propulsion System
Credit: Dr. Salvatore Pais
A woman on her phone in Havana, Cuba. Mobile phones have become ubiquitous the world over — and so has the divide between Android and iPhone users.Credit: Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images.
Us versus them: it's the archetypal binary. It makes the world understandable by dividing it into two competing halves: labor against capital, West against East, men against women.
These maps are the first to show the dividing lines between one of the world's more recent binaries: Android vs. Apple. Published by Electronics Hub, they are based on a qualitative analysis of almost 350,000 tweets worldwide that presented positive, neutral, and negative attitudes toward Android and/or Apple.
Steve Jobs wanted to go "thermonuclear"
Feelings between Android and Apple were pretty tribal from the get-go. It was Steve Jobs himself who said, when Google rolled out Android a mere ten months after Apple launched the iPhone, "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
Buying a phone is like picking a side in the eternal feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. Each choice for automatically comes with an in-built arsenal of arguments against.
If you are an iPhone person, you appreciate the sleekness and simplicity of its design, and you are horrified by the confusing mess that is the Android operating system. If you are an Android aficionado, you pity the iPhone user, a captive of an overly expensive closed ecosystem, designed to extract money from its users.
Even without resorting to those extremes, many of us will recognize which side of the dividing line that we are on. Like the American Civil War, that line runs through families and groups of friends, but that would be a bit confusing to chart geographically. To un-muddle the information, these maps zoom out to state and country level.
If the contest is based on the number of countries, Android wins. In all, 74 of the 142 countries surveyed prefer Android (in green on the map). Only 65 favor Apple (colored grey). That's a 52/48 split, which may not sound like a decisive vote, but it was good enough for Boris Johnson to get Brexit done (after he got breakfast done, of course).
And yes, math-heads: 74 plus 65 is three short of 142. Belarus, Fiji, and Peru (in yellow on the map) could not decide which side to support in the Global Phone War.
What about the United States, home of both the Android and the iPhone? Another victory for the former, albeit a slightly narrower one: 30.16 percent of the tweets about Android were positive versus just 29.03 percent of the ones about Apple.
United States: Texas surrounded!
Credit: Electronics Hub
There can be only one winner per state, though, and that leads to this preponderance of Android logos. Frankly, it's a relief to see a map showing a visceral divide within the United States that is not the coasts versus the heartland.
- Apple dominates in 19 states: a solid Midwestern bloc, another of states surrounding Texas, the Dakotas and California, plus North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
- And that's it. The other 32 are the United States of Android. You can drive from Seattle to Miami without straying into iPhone territory. But no stopovers in Dallas or Houston – both are behind enemy lines!
North America: strongly leaning toward Android
Credit: Electronics Hub
Only eight of North America's 21 countries surveyed fall into the Apple category.
- The U.S. and Canada lean Android, while Mexico goes for the iPhone.
- Central America is divided, but here too Android wins hands down, 5-2.
Europe: Big Five divided
Credit: Electronics Hub
In Europe, Apple wins, with 20 countries preferring the iPhone, 17 going for Android, and Belarus sitting on the fence.
- Of Western Europe's Big Five markets, three (UK, Germany, Spain) are pro-Android, and two (France, Italy) are pro-Apple.
- Czechia and Slovakia are an Apple island in the Android sea that is Central Europe. Glad to see there is still something the divorcees can agree on.
South America: almost even
Credit: Electronics Hub
In South America, the divide is almost even.
- Five countries prefer Android, four Apple, and one is undecided.
- In Peru, both Android- and Apple-related tweets were 25 percent positive.
Africa: watch out for Huawei
Credit: Electronics Hub
In Africa, Android wins by 17 countries versus Apple's 15.
- There's a solid Android bloc running from South Africa via DR Congo all the way to Ethiopia.
- iPhone countries are scattered throughout the north (Algeria), west (Guinea), east (Somalia), and south (Namibia).
Huawei — increasingly popular across the continent — could soon dramatically change the picture in Africa. Currently still running on Android, the Chinese phone manufacturer has just launched its own operating system, called Harmony.
Middle East: Iran vs. Saudi Arabia (again)
Credit: Electronics Hub
In the Middle East and Central Asia, Android wins 8 countries to Apple's 6.
- But it's complicated. One Turkish tweeter wondered how it is that iPhones seem more popular in the Asian half of Istanbul, while Android phones prevailed in the European part of the city.
- The phone divide matches up with the region's main geopolitical one: Iran prefers Android, Saudi Arabia the iPhone.
Asia-Pacific: Apple on the periphery
Credit: Electronics Hub
Another wafer-thin majority for Android in the Asia-Pacific region: 13 countries versus 12 for Apple — and one abstention (Fiji).
- The two giants of the Asian mainland, India and China, are both Android countries. Apple countries are on the periphery.
- And if India is Android, its rival Pakistan must be Apple. Same with North and South Korea.
Experts point to the fact that both operating systems are becoming more alike with every new generation as a potential resolution to the conflict. But as any student of human behavior will confirm: smaller differences will only exacerbate the rivalry between both camps.
Maps taken from Electronics Hub, reproduced with kind permission.
Strange Maps #1096
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
