Sarah Scoles

An anthropological look at the UFO community, told through first-person experiences with researchers in their element as they pursue what they see as a solvable mystery—both terrestrial and cosmic. More than half a century since Roswell, UFOs have been making headlines once again. On December 17, 2017, the New York Times ran a front-page story about an approximately five-year Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The article hinted, and its sources clearly said in subsequent television interviews, that some of the ships in question couldn’t be linked to any country. The implication, of course, was that they might be linked to other solar systems. The UFO community—those who had been thinking about, seeing, and analyzing supposed flying saucers (or triangles or chevrons) for years—was surprisingly skeptical of the revelation. Their incredulity and doubt rippled across the internet. Many of the people most invested in UFO reality weren’t really buying it. And as Scoles did her own digging, she ventured to dark, conspiracy-filled corners of the internet, to a former paranormal research center in Utah, and to the hallways of the Pentagon. In They Are Already Here we meet the bigwigs, the scrappy upstarts, the field investigators, the rational people, and the unhinged kooks of this sprawling community. How do they interact with each other? How do they interact with “anomalous phenomena”? And how do they (as any group must) reflect the politics and culture of the larger world around them? We will travel along the Extraterrestrial Highway (next to Area 51) and visit the UFO Watchtower, where seeking lights in the sky is more of a spiritual quest than a “gotcha” one. We meet someone who, for a while, believes they may have communicated with aliens. Where do these alleged encounters stem from? What are the emotional effects on the experiencers? Funny and colorful, and told in a way that doesn’t require one to believe, Scoles brings humanity to an often derided and misunderstood community. After all, the truth is out there . . .

UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers

They Are Already Here

Jill Tarter and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

Making contact

Christopher G. De Pree

Using the power of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, this unique, illustrated guide is filled with engaging exercises that deepen your knowledge of the solar system, help you take necessary pauses every day, and foster a renewed sense of presence in the universe. Thousands of years ago, when we humans lived together in communal caves, we told stories about the stars. When we later took to the seas, we used stellar positions to navigate and pinpoint our place in the world. When we eventually stopped migrating and settled on land, we relied on the constellations and the Sun to plant and sustain crops. Yet today, we modern humans have lost this deep connection to the cosmos that was once central to our daily lives. Astronomical Mindfulness helps us reconnect to the solar system once more, guiding us through the fundamental ways in which our planet moves through the solar system and how these motions determine our perception of time and place. Offering a concise yet in-depth look at the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars, it teaches us to observe and understand the elements comprising the celestial sphere—deepening our lives and helping us become more informed, engaged, and mindful every day. The best part: you don’t need to climb a mountain, visit an observatory, or even own a telescope. From an apartment rooftop to a city park, from your backyard to the window by your desk, the skies are accessible to everyone. Astronomical Mindfulness is a unique tool for personal growth essential to coping in our modern world, enabling us to be more present, more connected, and more relaxed simply by looking up toward the stars.

Your Cosmic Guide to Reconnecting with the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets

Astronomical Mindfulness

For anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered, "Are we alone?" A brilliant examination of the science behind the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and its pioneer, Jill Tarter, the inspiration for the main character in Carl Sagan's Contact. Jill Tarter is a pioneer, an innovator, an adventurer, and a controversial force. At a time when women weren’t encouraged to do much outside the home, Tarter ventured as far out as she could—into the three-Kelvin cold of deep space. And she hasn’t stopped investigating a subject that takes and takes without giving much back. Today, her computer's screensaver is just the text “SO…ARE WE ALONE?” This question keeps her up at night. In some ways, this is the question that keep us all up at night. We have all spent dark hours wondering about our place in it all, pondering our "aloneness," both terrestrial and cosmic. Tarter’s life and her work are not just a quest to understand life in the universe: they are a quest to understand our lives within the universe. No one has told that story, her story, until now. It all began with gazing into the night sky. All those stars were just distant suns—were any of them someone else's sun? Diving into the science, philosophy, and politics of SETI—searching for extraterrestrial intelligence—Sarah Scoles reveals the fascinating figure at the center of the final frontier of scientific investigation. This is the perfect book for anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered if we are alone in the universe.

Sarah Scoles

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