George Noory swallows a turkey

        About half way through the first-hour interview last Monday on Coast to Coast AM, George Noory asked his guest "When you first heard this story from Bill Ryan, did you believe it?" The guest replied "I realized intuitively that it was a true story."

        LOL, as they say. Bill Ryan, the former squeeze of Kerry Cassidy, is about as unreliable a source as can be imagined, as this blog has written before. As for "intuitive realization," that and 25¢ will get you a short phone call. The guest was Len Kasten, and the "story" was none other than Project Serpo.

40 × C
        The story of Project Serpo, in a nutshell, is this: One extraterrestrial being survived the "flying saucer crash" at Roswell in 1947, and retrieved a communication  device allowing him to talk to his home planet Serpo, a planet of the ζ Reticuli binary system 39 light years from Earth. This led to an exploration of Serpo by 12 U.S. military astronauts, traveling at 40 times the speed of light. Both wikipedia and rational wikipedia have articles on this hilarious sci-fi fantasy, and both point out the obvious logical objections to the narrative. Perhaps chief among them is that distance. How do you have a conversation with somebody 39 LY away? How do you travel at 40 × C? Kasten, having no education in relativistic physics, confidently states that it's all done by a wormhole, but what exactly is he asking us to believe? Is there just one wormhole linking our solar system to ζ Reticuli, or is there a network of these things in the universe? Are they labeled? How would an expedition find the entrance to the appropriate one, given that a wormhole has never been actually observed and probably never could be? FYI: A wormhole is a purely theoretical solution to some advanced equations in relativity, and the primary benefit therefrom is an exciting way to teach a difficult subject. If wormholes exist at all, they are most likely transient and an excessively unreliable way of traversing the universe.


        Kasten was on hand last Monday not only to reaffirm his faith in this fantasy but to provide updates. The classic version of the story has it that all 12 astronauts died a long time ago, but Kasten now says that one, called "Mr. Euro", survived until 2014 and met with Pope Benedict. Not only that, but diplomatic relations between Earth and Serpo are flourishing, and nine other expeditions have taken place since the original one. The originator of the Serpo story, who was only known as Request Anonymous, was in fact a high-ranking DIA official, and editor of the Red Book of Presidential briefings. Numerous valuable technical secrets have been derived from Serpo, most notably the key to free energy. Kasten explained that we could all be benefiting from free energy right now, but the Illuminati, "who run this planet," won't allow it. So here we go again with that adolescent rage I wrote about in my last post.

Fact vs. fiction
        Well, of course this is all poppycock. Even the gullible Bill Ryan finally admitted he'd been hoodwinked and partly repudiated the story. George Noory himself may have had doubts about it, but he conducted the interview exactly as if he believed every word. He called it "this incredible story" and that's just what it is. There's a key to understanding this bullshit, and it's this. Len Kasten has a book to sell. "Request Anonymous" is not a high-ranking DIA official but Richard C. Doty, a former security guard with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Doty had a book to sell as well. Bingo.

       Why do I care? Why not let C2C-AM get on with its campfire yarns and stop snapping at their heels? There are two reasons. One is that yarns like this seriously devalue real science. The terrible danger is that impressionable people believe them, and since they are incompatible with real science, the real science gets rejected in their eyes. The other is that I feel a duty to remind the consumers of this rubbish that it's really all about selling books and conference fees. This is just how chat radio works--radio gets interviewees for free (and they lose a night's sleep, often) in return for flagrant  book marketing. Welcome to the real world.