January 14, 2002: An Astronomer Examines the Science of UFOs - Dr. William R. Alschuler

Trucker Mark's vanishing burning car on I-40Art reads a long listener letter from a Brayman, Oklahoma trucker who in 1999 stopped on icy I-40 outside Flagstaff to free a couple trapped upside down in a burning car, only to have car, smoke and victims vanish. A waitress later told him a couple had burned to death in that exact spot years earlier.

300 billion suns, two-thirds with planetsAlschuler walks through how spectroscopic detection has now confirmed about 70 extrasolar planets and estimates that roughly two-thirds of nearby sun-like stars have planetary systems, with 300 billion stars in our galaxy.

Alschuler describes how a warp-drive UFO would lookAsked what a craft using a space-warp drive would look like to an observer, Alschuler describes a luminous rim where stars are pulled toward the hull, fading to red as it accelerates away. Art replies that this matches countless reports he has heard.

Art retells his Pahrump triangle sightingArt recounts the night he and Ramona pulled over near Pahrump and watched a silent black triangle, two football fields across, drift overhead at about 30 mph and 150 feet up, blocking out the moon and stars without a sound or a breath of wind. Nellis later claimed it was a C-130.

First contact will come by message, not handshakeAsked how first contact will likely happen, Alschuler says he believes it will be by detected signal, not a physical visit, because he is not convinced any feasible way to travel between the stars actually exists.