THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 11, 1995 TAG: 9505110036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROY A. BAHLS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
ASTRONOMER Jim Mullaney has learned infinite details about the universe during his more than 20,000 hours of telescope time.
He has studied the planets' waltz around our sun, and the symphonic swirl of our pinwheel-like Milky Way galaxy. Peering through the eyepieces of several thousand telescopes, he has observed glittering star clusters and the eerie glow of nebulae - the star nurseries where suns and planets incubate.
What he has seen has strengthened his belief that not only are other intelligent life forms in the universe but also that they pay regular visits to our planet.
``It isn't whether the phenomena exists,'' said Mullaney, 55, during a recent telephone interview. ``There is overwhelming evidence that it does. It's the interpretation of the source and its purpose. We may be dealing with something far beyond extraterrestrial contact. We may be dealing with interdimensional creatures.''
A lecture by Mullaney will open this weekend's ``The UFO Experience: Transformational Encounters in Consciousness'' conference at the Association for Research and Enlightenment Conference Center in Virginia Beach.
Other lecturers include author Ray Stanford (``UFOs: Miracle, Myth, Magic''); Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack (``The UFO Phenomenon Cross-Culturally'' and ``The UFO Abduction Phenomenon: What It Means for the Evolution of Human Consciousness''); author Budd Hopkins (``Unearthly Visitations - Evidence Mounts'' and ``Symptoms of Hidden UFO Abductions''); and author John Van Auken (``Edgar Cayce's Vision of Aliens and UFOs'').
Mullaney, a writer, lecturer and consultant, will present ``A Documented Search for Extraterrestrial Life.''
``It'll be a journey starting here on the Earth and ending up at the edge of the observable universe,'' Mullaney said. ``It'll be a look at the prospects for extraterrestrial life and the beauty and power of the universe and how we are interconnected with it.''
Mullaney feels that these visitors are here to teach us and that they have something to do with our evolution and the expansion of our consciousness.
``This may be in preparation for something else,'' he said. ``Maybe that something else is going back into space and joining in the galactic community. There's no question we are star children. We have star stuff in us. All the elements in our bodies have been cooked inside of super nova stars.''
At an outdoor astronomy meeting in 1968, Mullaney observed what he believes to have been one of these visitors.
``There was this large object which appeared over downtown Pittsburgh,'' he said of his encounter. ``It just turned on its side and became a line and went up. It was seen by at least 600 to 1,000 witnesses, including all of the people at the meeting. That really convinced me.''
For Mullaney, it's not only the avalanche of credible sightings, and his own encounter, that have convinced him of these visitors' existence. There's also the sheer magnitude of the universe.
``None of us can really comprehend such incredible numbers and sizes and densities,'' he said. ``In the bowl of the big dipper alone, which is a very small part of the sky, there's more than a million galaxies, and each of those has anywhere from 500 billion to a trillion suns.''
Speaking about the examination of the heavens with such refined instruments as the Hubble Telescope, Mullaney said, ``The farther out they go, the more they find. They're getting out now to where in these clusters of galaxies there are more galaxies than there are stars in galaxies. We are just beginning to wake up to the universe.''
Mullaney, like many other astronomers, believes that most stars have planets revolving around them. He feels that many of the civilizations on other worlds would be billions of years more advanced than our own.
``The solar systems out there would be, on average, 10 billion years older than ours,'' he said. ``So if life appeared on any of those worlds, and they haven't exterminated themselves, they could be five to 10 billion years in advance of us.''
Concerning the vast distances confronting cosmic travelers, Mullaney said, ``There has to be a faster way to get from here to there than traveling in a straight line and blasting our way around the universe. These things certainly seem to be able to appear instantaneously. They look like they are moving at the speed of thought.''
Mullaney also speaks of the therapeutic, meditational and spiritual aspects of stargazing.
``It's like communing with nature at its highest level,'' he said. ``You get a feeling of reverence.''
For Mullaney, the possibilities the universe holds are truly limitless.
``After all of those hours of observation, over all of those years,'' he said, ``I can go out on any clear night with a small backyard telescope and see things in the sky that I had never seen before.'' MEMO: ``The UFO Experience: Transformational Encounters in Consciousness''
will be Friday through Sunday at the Association For Research and
Enlightenment Conference Center, 67th Street and Atlantic Avenue,
Virginia Beach. Admission is $255 for the entire conference, but tickets
also are available for individual lectures. For more information, call
428-3588.
ILLUSTRATION: Photos by ALAN DRESSLER and NASA
The Hubble Telescope gives astronomers a view of distant galaxies.
by CNB