In the terrifying Doctor Who episode "Listen," the Twelfth Doctor and his companion, Clara Oswald, go as far into the future as possible -- just prior to the heat death of the universe -- to rescue a stranded human named Orson Pink who, during the early days of time travel research, accidentally projected trillions of years into the future and then couldn't get back.
But the Doctor notices something odd almost immediately. It is -- allegedly -- a completely dead universe. The barren planet Orson's spaceship landed on has breathable air, but he has been, up to that point, the only living entity there. So why does he have the magnetic locks activated on the hatches, and a message written on the wall saying "DON'T OPEN THE DOOR"?
Reluctantly, Orson tells them that -- impossible as it sounds -- "there's something out there." He says he's been having auditory hallucinations, and the message is to remind him never to unlock. And soon they hear it -- a loud knocking, in increments of three. The Doctor, ever curious about anything mysterious, orders Clara and Orson into the TARDIS, and then shuts off the magnetic locks on the hatch.
As soon as he does, the door handle starts to turn...
The suggestibility of the human mind is almost certainly responsible for a good many claims of the paranormal. We hear an odd creaking sound upstairs when we're by ourselves (or think we are), and quite understandably, get spooked. In that state, we're more likely to attribute the noise to something scary or dangerous. A ghost, an intruder, some thing upstairs waiting for us to say those famous last words from horror movies -- "I heard a noise. I'm going to go investigate."
That same sound, heard on a sunny day when the whole family is home, might just elicit a shrug and a comment that "old houses make noises sometimes." Our emotional state, and the context we're in at the time, make a great deal of difference to how we'll react.
This is probably the explanation for the "high strangeness" reported by astronauts, as recently recounted by "paranormal investigator and esoteric detective" Paul Dale Roberts. These apparently have included:
- UFOs, one "shaped like a beer can" and the other a "long, white, snake-like or eel-like object"
- what looked like "swarms of tiny glittering fireflies" near the viewport
- a sensation of a mysterious presence, there but unseen, with the astronauts on the ship
- visions of ethereal, semi-transparent "angels" following them
- disembodied voices, repeated knocks, and scratching sounds coming from outside the spacecraft (see why I thought of "Listen"?)
The likeliest explanation for the UFO sightings (especially the "fireflies") is space debris. There's a lot of it up there, some natural, but much of it detritus from satellites and other human-made objects. A recent survey estimated that there could be as many as 129 million bits of debris up there in orbit around the Earth (amounting to around eight thousand metric tons), most of it under a centimeter in diameter. The vast majority is no threat to people on the ground; stuff that small burns up in the atmosphere long before it hits. It is, however, a danger to spacecraft, and recent ones have shielding specifically to protect the hull from impacts and punctures due to running into all that assorted floating junk. You may have heard of Kessler syndrome, or a "collisional cascade" (named after astrophysicist Donald Kessler, who wrote a paper about it), where space debris causes collisions that result in more debris, increasing exponentially the likelihood of further collisions -- eventually making it impossible to keep an intact satellite in orbit.
As far as the other "high strangeness" goes, well -- it's probably a combination of the natural noises made by the spacecraft and the overactive imaginations of people cooped up in a tiny metal box hurtling through the vacuum of space. Astronauts are screened for psychological stability and are highly trained, so they know what to look out for -- but they are still human, and prone to all the odd biases our brains come preloaded with. No wonder they report some weird stuff up there.
Of course, we can't be sure. Certainly the universe is filled with mysteries. But the danger comes in leaping from "space can be a weird place" to "anything unexplained we run across up there must have a paranormal explanation." Like I said in a recent post, before you accept a supernatural explanation, make sure you rule out all the natural ones first.
Keep in mind, though, that the Twelfth Doctor and Clara joined a man who was the last creature left alive in the entire universe, and... there was a knock on the door. Even knowing it was fiction, that scene left me shivering. Because who knows for certain what's out there in the dark?
Could be damn near anything.
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