Stanton Friedman seems to have been a fixture of the world of UFO research since forever. It’s hard to pick up a book on the subject from my extensive ufological library that doesn’t refer to Friedman’s research in some context. So it was with some sadness that I read the following communication from the Mutual UFO Network:
| May 2019 Stanton Terry Friedman 1934 – 2019 Researcher, Member, Friend The world lost a UFO Icon Monday, May 13th with the passing of Stanton T. Friedman. As a longtime member of the MUFON family he will be sadly missed by all who knew him. Stan began his career in ufology in 1967 and this year marked his 52nd year of touring the world sharing the good news that “UFOs Are Real.” We wish him Godspeed in the new journey before him and thank him for all the worldly good he did in sharing what he knew about the reality of the UFO phenomenon. Thank you Stan! The world is a better place because of you. We will honor Stan at this year Symposium in Irvine. Stan was also a long time columnist for the MUFON UFO Journal. This is his last article – October 2018 issue. Enjoy! Thoughts of the Future It is tempting to think that a planet is a planet is a planet. But one word-planet-surely covers a multitude of entities. Just as satellite does. Planets vary all over the place, not only in their size and density and composition. In our own solar system, variability is great. Earth is the densest of the nine planets (I still think of Pluto as a planet). Jupiter is the largest. Venus is the hottest. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, stars vary a great deal with regard to their size, temperature, age and composition. They vary more than people do. Shouldn’t the same processes pretty much apply everywhere concerning planets? Apparently not. I was looking up a table of planetary properties. Mighty Jupiter has a diameter 11 times that of Earth and Venus, but has a density only one-quarter as large. Venus takes 243 days to rotate on its axis. Jupiter and Saturn take under 11 hours, with Earth and Mars at around 24 hours. Jupiter’s magnetic field is almost 20,000 times that near Earth. I think our solar system would be of great interest to astronomy graduate students from other solar systems because of the large variation in characteristics. These would be of interest to mining engineers, biologists, and agricultural organizations. Think of all the reasons Earthlings cross the oceans. Think of the enormous increase in the number of trans-oceanic jaunts in the past 20 years-and the past 100 years.If we take into account that it is currently estimated that there are 1.6 planets per star, this suggests 16,000 planets within 100 light-years and a very much greater number within a mere thousand light-years. We must also note that the Earth is 4 billion years old, so we might expect an enormous number of interstellar flights in our local neighborhood. We are prob-ably the most recent additions to the interplanetary tourist (or marauder) trade. Elon Musk is talking seriously of setting up a base on Mars. The point here is that progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable way, and, that given our lack of true social progress, we are bound to be of interest and concern to other life in the local neighborhood.Military activity is certainly a major activity on Earth. Who could blame aliens for being worried about us? The younger generation may have forgot-ten that we killed 50 million of our own kind in relatively recent times and have developed newer and “better” weapons. I can understand governments not wanting to discuss such matters along with the media. Frankly, I am concerned about the future of my great grandson and other people when I see so little progress being made towards an Earthling orientation. It would be nice to know what our alien visitors are planning for the future of Earth. I think if they had evil intentions, they would long ago have made them clear. But, surely, I am as an American, Canadian, Earthling, intrigued at thoughts of the future for us. I will watch from the sidelines as I expect this will be my last column. I am very grateful to MUFON for providing me this pulpit. I am considering compiling my columns in a book. Comments would be appreciated. |
