Gainesville.com
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Article published May 20, 2005
Astronaut says some events are unexplainable

The sixth man to walk on the moon spoke about his experience with
unexplainable phenomena Thursday to a skeptical audience of about 100
scientists.
Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut on Apollo 14, talked of the experiences
that led him to research the unexplainable at the 24th annual meeting of
the Society for Scientific Exploration at the Best Western Gateway Grand
Hotel in Gainesville.

"It isn't science, but personal experience, that stimulates you to do
good science," he said.
Mitchell, who holds a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked on the first extended
research trip to the moon in 1971. He founded the Institute of Noetic
Sciences to sponsor the study of unconventional scientific models, such
as intuition and feeling, and he was inducted into the Space Hall of
Fame in 1979 and the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1998.

His interest in the unexplainable began on his way back to Earth aboard
Apollo 14. He gazed out the window and realized he was connected to the
stars, his colleagues and the planet through his own molecules, he said.
"You could see the Earth, the moon and the stars with each rotation of
the spacecraft," Mitchell said. "The stars were literally brighter for
me. It was an awesome, awe-inspiring view of the heavens."

He could not find scientific literature on his experience, and he had to
delve into Sanskrit literature to define his personal moment, inspiring
him to begin scientific research on unexplainable occurrences.
Further incidents spiked his interest in topics that traditional science
labeled as hoaxes.
Mitchell said a telepathic partner "teleported" tie pins from a jewelry
box Mitchell had lost years before, and a Tibetan healer cured his
mother's glaucoma.

As a scientist, he had a hard time believing it, he said, but he could
not deny it either.
"I was used to looking at science in theory and in abstract, not in what
I was experiencing personally," he said.

Further research showed him that all cultures have unexplainable
occurrences, but most have been attributed to religion instead of
science, causing confusion and misunderstanding, he said.

Audience members were willing to acknowledge Mitchell's controversial
opinion.
Granted, his anomalies are hard to understand," said Marilyn Schmidt, an
SSE member from San Diego. "If we understood them, we wouldn't be here.
Trying to understand them gives us a way to look at life's meaning and
go into deeper issues."

SSE wants to provide a forum for discussions as controversial as
Mitchell's experiences, said Thomas Dykstra, society secretary and host
of the meeting. Still, Mitchell's speech is not to be taken as fact,
Dykstra said.

"Scientists normally come up with reasons to deny or ignore Mitchell's
experiences," he said. "In this setting, we're willing to accept it as a
topic of conversation, not necessarily as truth. The society doesn't
want to endorse any of the speeches given today. It simply hopes to
provide a forum."