WE’RE BAAACK: UFOs and Science with Ancient Aliens’ @denninmichael

They are illegal, they're un-American, and they're only happening because the regime has failed the country and has no good ideas and has to cheat. So that is my disclaimer It's not in jeans, not Michaels, not anyone else, but I had to get it out there because This is that kind of a space. So Having said that we're not gonna dwell on that today We're gonna have a great conversation with a great person who I'm proud to call a former colleague at UC Irvine and Somebody who I love his writing his commentary very lucky to have him His Michael Denon he is the vice provost for teaching and learning and the Dean of undergraduate education at my former Place of work the University of California Irvine and Possibly more relevant to this discussion a longtime contributor to the TV series ancient aliens Who brought us the hair that we all have in the film that Eugene made. Thank you for the film Eugene Michael brings material science complex systems and physics of the possible perspectives He has described himself as a friendly skeptic finds the idea of life elsewhere highly plausible on Cosmological time scales, but may or may not be convinced that visitors have reached Earth. We will certainly ask him He just described himself as a physicist. I would say that's the minimum Qualification because of everything else I just read so welcome Michael. Thank you for joining us Great to be here. I found the unmute Excellent Yeah, no, and I appreciate the broader definition physicist would be my working title, but yeah It's fun to do a lot more and think about a lot more other stuff And before we get into the meat of things Michael how did you How did you make the acquaintance of ancient aliens and and what is your participation there been like over the years? It's been great. It's Excuse me. It's an interesting Story with it's kind of what something I tell our students a lot you never know what you're gonna get to do in life So always be open to surprises Many many years ago I was asked by some students to do An event for them when we watched the original Superman movie Christopher Reeves and talked about the science of it a lot of fun They gave me a book that they had found on science of superheroes That I then turned into a freshman seminar which here at UC Irvine is a one-unit course That actually led to the Attorney Register science reporter finding the course and doing an article on it Which led to the LA Times science picking it up? Which led to Prometheus productions Many years later they were doing a science of Superman for when Superman was rebooted on National Geographic and They they were looking for you know Physicists to talk about it. They saw my course they interviewed me They actually liked what I had to say so I got to do the interview It turned out I Shockingly have the talent to talk about science and short sound bites who would have known Which is which is a very rare and valuable thing it is a rare and valuable thing I discovered and So I've been working with Prometheus on a lot of things ever since then and when they decided to do Anson aliens They thought of me and I was more than happy to be one of the science skeptics on it. That was a lot of fun And I've just stuck with it. That's why I described myself as the last remaining Friendly skeptic on ancient aliens So the rest are not friendly or not skeptics. I'm not there anymore That's cool. I'm sure that they a lot of people have learned a lot from you and it's interesting Michael I'm barely old enough to have Seen the original Star Trek when it aired in the 60s. I didn't actually But my brother was a huge fan and so he kind of forced me to watch all the reruns and I've been it been a trekky I guess since since those days and it is kind of remarkable how much of the technology That they imagined on that show has become in some ways real and also how many Astronauts and physicists and astrophysicists and inventors say that they were inspired by that TV show I will you answer for me. I have very many fond memories of watching the reruns with my dad That's it was one of his favorite shows and I would and I love watching it and I'm a huge science fiction reader You know obviously I was the perfect age of 11 when the first Star Wars came out so And to your point the only thing we haven't invented yet as far as I can tell is warp drive and I haven't given up hope um and and lightsabers so And that's I know that's not Star Trek everyone don't start getting angry comments No team jerseys in here guys come on. Yeah But I've always felt and it's one of the things I like doing and sort of talking and teaching and when I teach physics you know human imagination is often imagining around things that are the possible and So it's not surprising how much of science fiction we eventually make real Well just on the I don't want to spend too much time with this but just on the lightsaber point It seems to me that the the way that the All the the modern militaries are going in directed energy weapons now Lightsaber seems plausible, but why like why would you build a weapon that you have to be three feet away to use? Well, you know, it's an interesting thing and that's kind of one of the things I find fun about Star Wars is It is a world Where the main weapons are I mean a lot of people think of them in those lasers. They're clearly not lasers. They're clearly plasma energy weapons Um, which means there's charge particles of magnetic fields associated with it. So if you are fast enough um a lightsaber is actually Very good at what you see them do the most which is deflect blasters um and so It's not totally inconceivable in a world of Star Wars where the weapons are of a certain type That the lightsaber would become the personal weapon of choice For close combat if you haven't already been wiped out Perfect answer. Well not only for close combat, but also just for defense from the people who are shooting at you for individual combat Right like yeah, if you're gonna get hit by a major planet destroyed weapon the lightsaber doesn't help you I don't know it just reminds me of the scene in Indiana Jones where the the the guy pulls out very ostentatiously the sword and then Harrison for shoots him from 20 feet away Well see see Brian the thing you're missing in that is he's he did not pull out a sword that deflects bullets Fair enough, you know, that's right. That's a Deflux blasters so That's right. Well listen, I have a million questions But I wanted to further my co's Eugene because I've already asked a few of you gene if you want oh wait None and all before we do that. I have to ask And most people in here will get this because they've listened to us for a while um One of the great moments of my later professional life was getting to me uh Edward James almost on a project and and my wife begged me not to fanboy out about Battlestar Galactic but I couldn't help it and um I tend to think that their hypothesis of the interaction between Quote and quote aliens and humans is one of the most compelling I've ever seen but uh What do you think of not the 1970s Lauren green robot dog Battlestar Galactic about the 21st century one? You know, I have to this embarrassing to admit. I did not watch enough of it as I should have It it came out at a time where I was too busy with other things um, but I even like the original one a lot for the um Um the the human robot Challenge and interaction Which is where I thought you were going with it Brian not the human alien because of everyone's fear of AI taking over um So yeah, I We're not on video, but I put alien and air quotes I don't want to spoil the plot of the show for people who haven't watched it But but not in other words the the evolution of humanity and the idea of ancient civilizations No, I Little I watched and even just extrapolating from the original. I found that Um very well done and very clever It was funny in the original because I watched that one also with my dad and he had the The the one comment he had about that from just trying to make a movie out of it It's much harder or I mean a TV show it's much harder to continually come up with stories Where you have the same basic bad guys Where yeah track had from a entertainment point of view Built into it the infinite number of bad guy option Yeah, that's right. That's a good point. Yeah interesting uh Eugene what what what what what would you like to talk about like I um so I've always been interested in I don't know The timelines are anywhere close to what these guys are saying or whatever, but my dad Was turtle mountain band and chipwa native american and One of our big things was um going around and uh discovering different markings and whatever And as I follow this our archaeology this timeline keeps expanding out right of what they're finding here You know it started out you know we'd only been here a while um But I also am noticing that that timeline is Getting uh longer around the world in some of these discoveries um Like the fall and rise of civilizations um like do you Do you actually see a pattern of that or And I mean like a big rise in the civilization and then a toll slam down of it You know that's a great ironically. It's a question. I've been thinking more about lately You know, it's not it's clothing not my area of expertise, you know um but It's You know we focus a lot At least I did so growing up in new England like I did you know there was a lot of focus on You know you start with the Tigris and Euphrates and Civilizations there and the Nioh and the Mediterranean At some point in your education you look at um the civilizations in India and China and the rivers they evolved on and and we think a lot about these sort of agricultural empires and lately, you know, I've been visiting Mexico more and thinking about our hemisphere and what I realized is In the sort of North America South America You you probably had a lot of these rise and falls of civilization that aren't in areas like deserts where everything got preserved um, you know the conditions for saving um the artifacts of civilization Or just not as I don't know robust here Is that I don't know that's right way think about it. So to your point Eugene, I think humans have probably had more civilizations rise and fall than we think of Because it's hard to maintain it um and You know The Odyssey just came out and there's the whole Bronze Age collapse um We see the rise and falls in in in in our sort of middle eastern evolution of humans I don't think we emphasize the rise and falls much when it was taught to me as a kid It was sort of like we had civilization continuously, but I think you had these empires and large structures falling apart more often than we We really think about because I just think it's hard to do anything at scale and to be honest, I think Again, you know not to get this is not meant as a political statement though Brian you did open with one I think part of the trouble we're facing the United States right now is we are really really big And no one You know to have as diverse and bigger country as we are I don't think anyone's figured out how to do that for a really long time So I'm hoping we get through this one and figure it out But I think it's not surprising that we're struggling the way we are right now Well, we have uh, we sorry, Eugene's real quick. We have um what another I'm math is not my thing. Uh, I don't know 10 months or so before we will become the longest surviving democracy in world history And and I think we can make it to that but also I think we should not take our democracy for granted as though It's just automatically going to last forever and that's maybe for another space But to kind of go further a little bit in what you and Eugene were talking about I don't have this in front of me somebody can find it um Uh, one of our friends in the space can find it But I did read recently that there's a group of I want to say they're at JPL in Locke Nialda But I couldn't be wrong, but there's a group of scientists who are now Looking at okay, let's assume that there were technologically advanced civilizations that existed before our recorded time What are there other things that we should look for in geology in Other branches of science that might help us figure that out But we've never thought to look in those places is that kind of what you're getting at or is it a different thing? No, I think so and ironically For me it was one of the more interesting episodes on I it was either unexplained or ancient aliens where they were interviewing me about the idea of How advanced could there