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UFOs Help Innovative Thinkers Look to the Future
Jan 22, 2011 – 12:00 PM


Lee Speigel

Where should forward-thinkers look when they seek innovative ideas? Perhaps to someone -- or something -- that's more innovative than they are.

From Saturday to Tuesday, more than 100 of the world's leaders in business, politics, education, sports, entertainment, the environment and technology are gathering for a conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Nothing too weird about that. But among the many discussions of how to break new ground through global innovation, they'll be talking about UFOs.

That's right. Unidentified flying objects and the ongoing interest in finding life in outer space are on the roster at this unique event.

Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman has devoted more than 50 years to pursuing the scientific truth of UFOs and is part of the UFO panel at the Saudi Arabia Global Competitiveness Forum.
"I think because they recognize that if you want to look for innovation, look for somebody who's way ahead of you," explained nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, one of the invited panel members of the fifth annual Global Competitiveness Forum, or GCF.

"Even if UFOs and aliens weren't real, just thinking about it is a big thing, enlarging the scope of our thinking to include a larger part of the galactic neighborhood instead of the planet," Friedman told AOL News on the eve of his departure for Saudi Arabia.

Sponsored by the official Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, the vision of the GCF program is to bring together business leaders, politicians and intellectuals who share a common interest in how competitiveness can be used to find real solutions to global challenges.

And GCF organizers think UFOs might offer some inspiration.

"Using knowledge gained from research in the fields of ufology and the search for extraterrestrial life, what might we possibly learn about hindrances to innovation in other areas of inquiry?" That's one of the topics described on the official GCF website, where the UFO panel theme is listed as Contact: Learning From Outer Space.

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THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth’s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.
Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.

During a talk Othman gave recently to fellow scientists, she said: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.


"When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”

However, he thinks humanity’s first encounter with any intelligent aliens is more likely to be via radio or light signals from a distant planet than by beings arriving on Earth. And, he suggests, even if we do encounter aliens in the flesh, they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent.




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