NASA's Unexplained Files on the Science Channel

[landrew]

I approached this show a bit trepidaciously at first, but I am finding it to be quite reasonable and fairly balanced. Most of their stories are in fact explainable, but a few remain unexplained. I approve of this approach; you can't have an answer to everything. It doesn't mean it's unexplainable or supernatural, but it's an honest admission that no one has yet been able to explain it.

I prefer this approach to the hostile negative approach where it's assumed that any lame or pejorative answer is better than no answer. It's not woo to regard some of these things as future knowledge. It's not unreasonable to assume that we simply lack the means to explain some things, so we should leave them in the category of unexplained. Space is a new frontier, and it makes sense that we will be seeing things to which we currently have no explanation. An example was when Apollo 10 astronauts heard "weird music" as they orbited around the far side of the room. It was subsequently explained as radio noise generated by solar particles interacting with the magnetic field of Saturn. It's similar to when Europeans began exploring distant lands, and they came back with all sorts of outlandish tales about things which they didn't understand. Give science a break; sometimes it takes a long time to find the answers.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

c"It's not woo to regard some of these things as future knowledge." No, just silly.

[landrew]

c"It's not woo to regard some of these things as future knowledge." No, just silly.

I should have said "possible future knowledge or just nonsense." It can go either way. The "space music" on the far side of the moon turned out to be real knowledge eventually.

It's just the skeptical approach that I prefer.