The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
11-08-2021
N.S. expert says American UFO report could be about something else entirely
N.S. expert says American UFO report could be about something else entirely
Recent examples could be governments experimenting with hypersonics, says Paul Kimball
A UFO expert and filmmaker from Nova Scotia says the latest American report could be a subtle way to show how the U.S. is experimenting with new technologies.
(Mike Blake/Reuters)
At the end of June, the U.S. government issued a long-awaited report on UFOs. The unclassified nine-page report, released to Congress and the public, includes 144 observations — mostly from U.S. navy personnel — of what the government officially refers to as "unidentified aerial phenomenon," or UAP, dating back to 2004.
Since the acronym UFO, standing for Unidentified Flying Objects, is generally associated with the possibility of extraterrestrials, the government uses UAP.
The government's report on what these objects are is inconclusive. U.S. intelligence services suggest these objects might be technology belonging to Russia or China, for example.
Paul Kimball has other ideas about what's going on with this report.
Kimball is a Nova Scotia filmmaker, television producer and historian. His first film from 2002 was a documentary called Stan T. Friedman Is Real. It was about his uncle, the New Brunswick UFO researcher Stanton Friedman.
Friedman was one of the world's foremost investigators and lecturers on the UFO phenomenon, and broke the story of the Roswell, New Mexico, crash back in the 1970s.
"I was always interested in talking to him at family reunions," said Kimball. "He was the cool uncle who was talking about space aliens."
Kimball spent a decade researching UFO phenomena before stepping back from the subject, but he still keeps tabs on what's going on.
"These kinds of things have happened every now and then for about the last 70, 75 years. And they call them 'flaps,' when interest in UFOs break out into the broader public consciousness," Kimball said.
The current flap started with a series of videos that were taken by the United States military and shared with the public a few years ago.
In this 2015 video declassified by the U.S. Department of Defence, U.S. navy pilots track an unidentified flying object off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla. 0:35
"The U.S. navy has come out and said, 'Yes, these are real videos. Our guys took them and we're not exactly sure what they represent,'" said Kimball. "And that's kind of it. You know, I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but at the moment that's as far as it goes. Then there's the UFO media machine, as I like to call it, that latches on to that and drums up interest in the subject and says, 'Well, OK, space aliens.' And it's a very long leap to get from these videos to space aliens.
"We have some anomalies. We can't necessarily explain them. No evidence to say that they're space aliens, but no evidence to say that they're not, you know, so leaving the door open."
As far as what else the U.S. government might be up to with the release of this current report, Kimball tells a story his close friend, Karl T. Pflock, told him.
The late Pflock was deputy assistant secretary of defence in the Ronald Reagan administration, a strategic planner, a CIA officer, UFO researcher, and author of Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe.
"Karl actually believed that space aliens had visited Earth," said Kimball. "So we weren't talking about somebody who said there were never any space aliens. But, he said, 'Look, most of these cases can be explained by testing advanced weapon systems. The government is working on technology that is 10 or 15 years in advance of what they'll admit to.'
"You're sort of seeing in many of these cases, like the Belgian triangle flap that occurred in the 1980s, that was probably delta-wing aircraft being tested by the United States military. Well, you would mistake that potentially for a UFO."
Kimball suggests governments have been experimenting with hypersonics, the kind of technology that, theoretically, could be what these navy pilots may be seeing but not actually know anything about. If it represents tech being developed by the United States, these videos are a way to let America's enemies know what's coming soon without being overt about it. But if it's the tech of another superpower, that would be a problem.
"That would be very concerning from a national security point of view, which is, I think, why members of Congress are really interested in it," said Kimball.
Retired Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield has been following the conversation about UFOs, but says the idea that they're alien technology 'doesn't even pass the basic common sense test.' 1:03
For the record, Canada's Department of National Defence doesn't have a dog in this fight. Spokesperson Jessica Lamirande sent a statement to CBC News on the subject of the American report.
"The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) do not typically investigate sightings of unknown or unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating credible threats, potential threats, or potential distress in the case of search and rescue," the statement said.
"Although we collaborate closely with the U.S. for aerospace control, we are not aware of any Canadian nexus or participation in the U.S. Department of Defence's UFO studies at this time, nor does the CAF have a unit dedicated to investigating UFOs."
Kimball remains an agnostic about extraterrestrial visitors to Earth, but he also thinks the subject is worth serious consideration.
"I'm very open to the idea of the paranormal or the supernatural or things beyond our understanding, however you want to frame it," he said.
"The odds are there are extraterrestrials in our galaxy. So could they be coming here? Yeah. Have I seen anything yet that absolutely convinces me that they have been coming here? No. But I've seen enough to make me think this isn't a subject that you should laugh at."
My previous article was titled: “The Space Brothers of the 1950s: Were They Russian Agents Promoting Communism in the U.S.?” It was a study of the possibility that the so-called “Space Brothers” of the 1950s were actually Russian agents and not aliens. Their goal: to try and advance communism in the United States – and to do it under what we might call a “UFO guise.” Today’s article follows on. The previous feature addressed such matters in the early years of the Cold War. This one, however, looks at the connection between UFOs, aliens and Russian agents in more recent times. With that said, read on. In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It’s now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.It can be read at the CIA’s website. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper, which is focused on the 1970s-1980s.
Haines wrote something eye-opening: “During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.” The Soviets, then, were camouflaging their secret rocket tests by spreading false and fantastic tales of UFOs. Haines also said: “Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings .”
Also on this issue of Russia and UFOs, there are the following words of long-time ufologist Bruce Maccabee: “After I spoke at a UFO conference near Washington, D.C. in February 1993, I was contacted by an assistant military attaché who was stationed at the Russian Embassy [italics mine]. He wanted to know how to obtain U.S. government files on UFOs. You can imagine my surprise and amusement when, about six months later, while I was at work I got a call from the ‘dreaded’ FBI. It became obvious to me that the agent didn’t know much about the UFO phenomenon and was amused to learn about the FBI files on the subject. But he was especially interested in my interactions with the military attaché.” Moving on…
Interestingly, there have been strange rumors to the effect that the controversial, so-called Majestic 12 documents might have played a role in all of this. One theory is that the Russians created the documents. Yes, I know: that sounds very strange, but read on. If the combined intelligence community found anything more about Majestic 12 documents in the late 1980s, then it is yet to appear under the FOIA. We do know something of deep interest though, thanks to a man named Richard L. Huff. He served as Bureau Co-Director within the Office of Information and Privacy. In correspondence with him, Huff informed me of the existence of an FBI “Main File” on Majestic 12, now in what is termed “closed status.” Not only that: I was told that the FBI’s file on the Majestic 12 papers was titled nothing less than “Espionage.” Author Howard Blum said the FBI’s reasoning for suspecting the Russians might have been at the heart of the Majestic 12 debate revolved around “…muddying the waters, creating dissension, spreading paranoia in the ranks – those were all the day-in, day-out jobs of the ruthless operation.” Soviet revenge against U.S. Intelligence for having spun their own UFO-themed operations during the Cold War.”
During the first half of 2021, the United States had been overcome with a case of UFO fever (or “UAP”, as these unusual aerial objects now seem to be preferentially called by both the American military, and the media).
However, in recent days, much of this interest seems to have waned, following the publication of a widely anticipated report delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June.
This, despite the recent passing of a bill by the Senate that may significantly expand access to information about UAP collected by the intelligence community for a small unit within the U.S. Navy that has been tasked with studying these unexplained phenomena.
Much of the interest in the topic, which began with earnest in 2017 following revelations in the New York Times about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was further fueled by the appearance of a new task force within the U.S. Navy, specifically assigned to study anomalous aerial objects observed by the military.
The establishment of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was officially announced in early August 2020, following its approval by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist. “The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the UAPTF,” read a Pentagon press release announcing the establishment of the task force.
As the Pentagon had outlined at the time, the UAPTF had been established to help improve the U.S. government’s “understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs,” with a specific mission “to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.”
With the subsequent passing of the Intelligence Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2021, the UAPTF was given the go-ahead to proceed with the creation of a preliminary report on its findings regarding UAP, to be delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June of this year.
The buzz this all managed to generate had been impressive, to say the least. Almost every day, news items, opinion editorials, and blog posts speculated on what the contents of the widely anticipated government report on these aerial mysteries might contain.
However, once it finally arrived in late June, the contents of the report hardly lived up to all the hype it managed to generate.
The nine-page report, titled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” was delivered to the ODNI on June 25, 2021. Not counting the cover page, and a pair of appendixes found on the last two pages, the main body of the report comprised just six pages of material that provided no specifics on the 144 unresolved incidents involving UAP cited in the document. These incidents, the majority of which occurred within the last two years, appeared to represent encounters by personnel from the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and other areas of government with what the UAPTF believed to be physical objects or phenomena of some kind.
“Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories,” the report stated. These five categories included “airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall ‘other’ bin.”
In addition to its designation of multiple types of phenomena that comprised the UAP observed by the U.S. military, another key focus of the report involved the possible threat these objects might represent to aviators, as well as to U.S. interests and security more broadly.
“UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue,” read one portion of the report, “and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security. Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain.”
Significantly, the report added that “UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.”
The preliminary report seemed to convey at least one thing starkly: how seriously the Pentagon appears to be taking the UAP issue. Despite this renewed interest shown in the subject by the U.S. government, the general response to the report had been lackluster, with many complaining that it offered little information of any substance, or that wasn’t already publicly accessible.
However, what many seem to have overlooked about the report had been that in its preliminary assessment, the UAPTF was essentially presenting frontmatter for what would be ongoing studies of UAP by the Navy’s task force, drawing on information collected by a number of agencies within the intelligence community in the years ahead. But where do things go from here?
As with last year’s Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA), provisions were included again in this year’s bill related UAP and the efforts of the Navy’s UAP Task Force. According to Section 345 of the newly-passed FY 2022 IAA, titled “Support for and Oversight of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force,” the Secretary of Defense and Director of National Intelligence will now require “each element of the intelligence community and the Department of Defense with data relating to unidentified aerial phenomena to make such data available immediately to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.”
Among the most significant developments since the release of the preliminary report in June, it also presents us with ideas about the future direction of the Navy’s UAP Task Force, and that of other agencies within the government who are collecting data about unidentified aerial objects.
Whether or not the UAP subject holds the public’s attention, it appears that the government and its focus on collecting and analyzing reports have not changed. In the years ahead, perhaps there will be more significant findings on these unusual aerial objects that have perplexed governments and militaries around the world now for several decades.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
A United States Space Force flag hangs from a pole, with flags of other armed service branches, outside the Minnesota State Capitol building on May 22, 2021 in St. Paul, Minnesota. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
By Theodore Bunker
Space Force is reportedly wary of taking over investigating the Pentagon’s reports of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” multiple current and former officials told Politico on Monday.
"It makes perfect sense," one official who is currently advising the military on the issue said, noting that Space Force’s responsibilities are more global than the other branches of the military, which gives U.S. Space Command access to advanced surveillance technologies.
"There is no limit to the Space Force mission. It doesn't have a geographic boundary like the other services,” this official added.
They went on to note that some opposition to the idea exists within Space Force, which has been widely mocked since its debut under former President Donald Trump.
"They really are sensitive to that," the former official said. "They want people to take them seriously. They don't want to do anything that is embarrassing. But this is national security. This is their job."
Chris Mellon, a former top Defense official for intelligence who has advised the military on the issue of UFOs, recently wrote in a post on his blog that whichever organization is ultimately charged with the investigation will have to work alongside the military, law enforcement, and the intelligence, academic and scientific communities, as well as the general public.
He notes that North American Aerospace Defense Command “would seem to make sense, but again its willingness to share information with other organizations is questionable. Still, they have money and contracting authority and the heft needed to make changes to the status quo if they were willing to aggressively pursue the issue.”
Mellon writes that "regardless, the first and most important step for Congress to take is to either identify a permanent home for the mission or require [the Department of Defense] and the CI [intelligence community] to do so and to explain their resulting rationale with the oversight committees."
A report issued to Congress in June by the director of national intelligence came to the conclusion that only one of the 144 UFO sightings investigated could be explained, noting that 18 of the cases included details that appeared to indicate advanced properties at work.
The report says that "we currently lack sufficient information in our dataset to attribute incidents to specific explanations,” and noted that UFOs "clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security."
A Pentagon spokesperson told Politico that "planning for an activity to take over the [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force’s] mission is ongoing. Spokespeople for Space Force and the Department of the Air Force referred Politico to the Pentagon’s spokesperson when asked for comment.
UFOs, UAPs—Whatever We Call Them, Why Do We Assume Mysterious Flying Objects Are Extraterrestrial?
UFOs, UAPs—Whatever We Call Them, Why Do We Assume Mysterious Flying Objects Are Extraterrestrial?
For better or worse, sightings of unidentifiable things in the sky have become inextricably linked to spacecraft from outer space.
Still unidentified: Navy pilots tracked and photographed what appeared to them to be a fast-moving object off the Florida coast in 2015. (U.S. Department of Defense)
Earlier this summer, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a much publicized nine-page report titled, with deliberate blandness, “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” Although the report was requested by Congress, in many ways it was the culmination of three-and-a-half years of public attention to military reports regarding unidentified flying objects. ODNI did not use the acronym “UFO,” which dates back to the 1950s (government officials now prefer “UAP,” for unidentified aerial phenomena), and never even mentioned the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin for the sighted objects. But that didn’t keep news outlets from concluding that the report “stops short of ruling out aliens.”
Military and intelligence officials have consistently framed these mysterious incidents in terms of national security. The Preliminary Assessment stated that ODNI’s charge from Congress was to provide policymakers with an overview of “the challenges associated with characterizing the potential threat posed by UAP.” The office was directed to focus on “identification of potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.” Even those who promote the study of UFOs agreed that possible military threats—not extraterrestrials—were the focus of the new report.
So why do the press and social media keep bringing up aliens? Because, for better or worse, sightings of unidentifiable things in the sky have become inextricably linked to visitors from outer space. Aliens are now our default explanation for such events, and the reason is no accident: For nearly 75 years, people have worked hard to make it the default.
When reports of flying saucers first began to surface during the summer of 1947, extraterrestrials were hardly brought up. Yes, there were some who took seriously the prospect that Martians or other beings from outer space were behind all the commotion. Kenneth Arnold—the man credited with first reporting a UFO sighting—is said to have encountered a distraught woman in an Oregon café, who ran out sobbing and shouting, “There’s the man who saw the men from Mars,” adding that she “would have to do something for the children.”
Most people, though, didn’t take this possibility seriously. Opinion writers tended to think it most likely that the U.S. or Soviet Union were testing experimental rockets or aircraft. The general public also seemed dubious that flying saucers might be the work of extraterrestrials. In August 1947, George Gallup published the results of a poll in which he asked those surveyed—all Americans—what they thought the flying objects reported in the newspapers might be. Twenty-nine percent thought witnesses had been mistaken, 15 percent thought they were secret American weapons, and one-third said they didn’t know. If there were people who believed they were ships from outer space, their responses were included among the nine percent who answered “other.”
A Dutch survey in October 1952 revealed similar sentiments in the Netherlands, with no apparent support for the idea of alien visitors. And 43 percent confessed that they had no idea what the flying saucers were.
The fact that almost half the general public in the late 1940s and early 1950s were undecided about the nature of UFOs meant that, in principle at least, they were open to different explanations. This provided an opportunity in 1950 for pulp and entertainment writers Donald Keyhoe (The Flying Saucers are Real), Frank Scully (Behind the Flying Saucers), and Gerald Heard (The Riddle of the Flying Saucers) to find receptive readers for their claims that unidentified flying objects were visitors from outer space. Over the course of the 1950s, first local, then nationwide flying saucer clubs and groups sprouted up across the United States. These offered subscribers both a way to keep up with UFO news through newsletters and bulletins, and a forum for speculating about the intentions of the extraterrestrials free from fear of public ridicule.
By 1956, the terms “unidentified flying object” and “UFO” were being used in place of “flying saucer” by some military officials and amateur civilian researchers. Within a decade and a half, the acronym UFO had effectively replaced its predecessor. If the new terminology was meant to bring precision to reports of sightings, however, it achieved nothing of the kind. Just as any account of an odd thing in the sky had been quickly branded by media outlets to be a potential flying saucer, so too “UFO” served as a convenient rubric under which the media categorized just about any perplexing observation. All the while, “UFO” continued to carry with it the same association with aliens that “flying saucer” once had. The current term, “unidentified aerial phenomena” is a prisoner of this same past.
What then, should we make of this most recent report? Does it add anything new to the long history of UFOlogy? How does it compare with previous official statements?
Unfortunately, the document is thin on details, so there is much we don’t know. What we have been told, however, is that the Department of Defense has formed an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) to study the issue. For the purposes of the report, this task force examined 144 incidents involving U.S. government personnel and assets, all of which occurred between November 2004 and March 2021. Most of the cases are considered explainable, though they haven’t all been completely explained due to the fact that “the reporting lacked sufficient specificity.”
The most worrying UAP episodes for national security-minded readers involved 18 outlier instances in which it was reported that the object displayed “unusual flight characteristics.” In these cases, investigators could not rule out the possibility that it was the result of sensor errors, cyberattack, or misperception. In the end, intelligence authorities recommend increased funding to the task force to develop a more robust data collection and analysis system.
This is by no means the first government fact-finding effort in this arena. After 1947, the U.S. Air Force established a series of UFO investigation task forces, the most prominent being Project Blue Book during the years 1952-1969. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency convened a small panel of consultants to look into the matter. Finally, the Air Force sponsored a scientific study of the UFO phenomenon by the University of Colorado between 1966 and 1968.
Civilian UFO researchers and enthusiasts have soundly criticized these undertakings for what they see as evidence of bias and secrecy. Nevertheless, in all these cases, officials publicly concluded that most reports of UFOs were explicable and presented no reason for concern, and that the residue of inexplicable cases did not pose a national security threat.
In short, the ODNI Preliminary Assessment is all too familiar. Modern investigation of UAPs has been hampered by inconsistent standards of reporting and limited resources, and as in the past, officials on the whole appear unruffled by such reports. And once again, government agencies leave room for ambiguity in admitting that there are a number of anomalous incidents.
ODNI’s preliminary report does break some new ground, however. It clearly states that most unidentified aerial phenomena reported are physical objects. It also admits that a culture of dismissiveness and ridicule within the military and intelligence communities has inhibited witnesses from coming forward, which may partly explain the shortcomings in reporting. In fact, the Preliminary Assessment appears to open the way for more scientists and technical experts to join the discussion, although how they should do that remains unclear.
We can expect that intelligence analysts will continue to monitor the situation. Activists will take to social media to demand full disclosure by government agencies. And both skeptics and believers in alien visitation will come away feeling that their side has won the day. Far from the end of the UFO controversy, this is just the beginning of a new chapter.
UK's top military brass refuse to rule out existence of extraterrestrial UFOs
UK's top military brass refuse to rule out existence of extraterrestrial UFOs
A senior defence source told the Daily Star Sunday that the government was having to very carefully word its statements on the existence of aliens and the presence of UFOs in our skies
By Sean Rayment
Aliens may well be shooting through the skies above us
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Military bosses have refused to rule out the existence of extraterrestrials.
The Ministry of Defence admitted it had been receiving reports of UFO sightings for more than 50 years.
But the Government said that because none of them posed a threat to UK security it had “no opinion on the existence of extraterrestrials”.
One senior defence source said last night he believed the Government was worried about commenting on alien life.
He said: “The MoD can’t deny the existence of UFOs because there are reports coming in every week, so it tries to fudge the issue by saying that no UFOs have posed a military threat.
Unidentified Flying Objects have been spotted in the skies above the UK with worrying frequency
“It’s interesting that it doesn’t mention anything about UFOs which don’t represent a threat.”
Details of the Government position was revealed in a Freedom of Information request.
An MoD spokesman said: “While I note your interest in Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, you may wish to be aware that the MoD has no opinion on the existence of extraterrestrials.
The MoD did not rule out the existence of UFOs(Image: Getty Images)
“This is because, in over 50 years, no UFO sighting reported to the department has indicated the existence of any military threat to the UK.”
Author Nick Pope, who used to run the British Government’s UFO Project, said: “The MoD’s response is disappointing, but predictable.”
Back in June, the Star reported how more than 200 close encounters have been reported in Yorkshire over the past two decades.
The latest came at the end of May, when a jet passenger filmed a long cigar-shaped object flying close to their aircraft as it cruised over the county.
If you’re into UFOs, you’ll know of the wave of activity that occurred in the skies of the United States in the latter part of the 1890s. Then, during the Second World War, there were the Foo Fighters. And, when the Second World War was over, we had the Ghost Rockets of Scandinavia. Flying Saucers followed within a year. In the early 1990s, the Black Triangles put in appearances, but never really went away. There’s another important time-frame to all of this, however. I’m talking about the very earliest years of the 1900s. You may not know, but there are some classic cases from that period, and particularly from 1909. Let’s begin. Nigel Wright is a long-time UFO researcher based in England, and – with Jonathan Downes, the director of the British-based Center for Fortean Zoology – the co-author of the book, The Rising of the Moon, which is a fine study of paranormal phenomena that I recommend to one and all. In their book, Nigel cites a report that he found within the May 21, 1909 edition of England’s Exmouth Journal newspaper, and, to which, are attached definitive M.I.B. overtones. Titled Invasion Scares – Queer Stories from Humberside, the article reads as follows: “A strange story was told the Yorkshire Post, Grimsby correspondent by workmen from Killingholm near Immingham new dock works on Tuesday night. They declared that they were seated at noon on the roadside at Killingholm, when a large motor car drove up and two men alighted who walked to the bank on which the workmen were seated and asked if any airships [italics mine]had been recently seen near. The workmen replied: ‘No,’ whereupon the motorists asked the distance between Killingholm and Spurn, and whether any mines were laid in the Humber between the two places. The workmen referred their interrogators to a coastguard, saying he would be able to answer them. It does not matter,’ replied the motorists, and, after enquiring the way to the nearest refreshment house, they jumped into their car and drove quickly away.” Now, onto another case from that early period:
Brett Holman, who has extensively studied this issue, says: “On the night of 23 March 1909, a police constable named Kettle saw a most unusual thing: a strange, cigar-shaped craft passing over the city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. His friends were skeptical, but his story was corroborated, to an extent, by Mr Banyard and Mrs Day, both of nearby March, who separately saw something similar two nights later. In fact, these incidents were only the prelude to a series of several dozen such sightings throughout April and especially May, mostly from East Anglia and South Wales.” In May of the same year, the LondonStandard newspaper told its readers that with “few exceptions” the witnesses described seeing “a torpedo-shaped object, possessing two powerful searchlights, which comes out early at night.”
Artist’s rendering of the airship purportedly seen during late 1896 and into the summer of 1897.
May 18, 1909 was the night on which one of the most amazing encounters occurred. A Mr. C. Lethbridge was walking to his Roland Street, Cardiff home, via the 271-meter-high Caerphilly Mountain. As he did so, Lethbridge was astonished by the sight of a cigar-shaped vehicle – in excess of forty-feet in length – which was sitting on the grass, at the edge of a mountain road. In his very own words… “When I turned the bend at the summit I was surprised to see a long tube-shaped affair on the grass on the roadside, with two men busily engaged with something nearby. They attracted my close attention because of their peculiar getup; they appeared to have big heavy fur coats and fur caps fitting tightly over their heads. I was rather frightened, but I continued to go on until I was within twenty yards of them, and then my idea as to their clothing was confirmed.
“The noise of my little spring cart seemed to attract them, and when they saw me they jumped up and jabbered furiously to each other in a strange lingo — Welsh or something else; it was certainly not English. They hurriedly collected something off the ground, and then I was really frightened. The long thing on the ground rose up slowly. I was standing still at the time, quite amazed, and when it was hanging a few feet off the ground the men jumped into a kind of little carriage suspended from it, and gradually the whole affair and the men rose in the air in a zigzag fashion. When they had cleared the telegraph wires that pass over the mountain, two lights like electric lamps shone out, and the thing went higher into the air, and sailed away towards Cardiff.” It seems that 1909 was a hotbed for UFO activity in the U.K.!
Fastwalker UFOs Are So Fast They Appear As Mere Streaks To Unaided Human Eye
Fastwalker UFOs Are So Fast They Appear As Mere Streaks To Unaided Human Eye
They are called Fastwalkers (or Fast Walkers) and travel at speeds well over 20,000 miles per hour making these UFOs mere “streaks” of light to the unaided human eye.
Their name comes from a 1984 NORAD incident which tracked an unidentified Fastwalker UFO moving at speeds over 22,000 MPH as it screamed towards the earth.
The May 1984 NORAD Fastwalker event
In May of 1984 at 1400 hours Zulu time, an alert was triggered at the North America Air Defense Command (NORAD) when ultra-sensitive orbiting USDSP military satellites (highly-classified satellites that serve as early ICBM launch detection systems) spotted a mysterious UFO heading towards earth at a mind-boggling 22,000 miles per hour.
As it passed in front of Earth and less than 20 miles from the USDSP satellite, officials determined it was not a ballistic missile nor a meteor. After classifying it as “unknown”, it was given the code name “Fast Walker”.
NORAD data revealed the unidentified object was a hot, fast, solid object that swept in quickly from space, approached Earth, then sped off into space.
The event was intended to be kept secret but an official (a retired military official) leaked details about the event to an investigator (special agent Joe Stefula) along with a diagram of the incident. According to Stefula:
“I haven’t been able to determine that the document’s absolutely authentic but I have been able to confirm that the DSP printout for that date shows an event at the same time with the same characteristics.
“What makes this particular Fast Walker so peculiar is that it came in from outer space on a curved trajectory, passing within three kilometers of the satellite platform, and then disappeared back into space. Whatever it was, it was tracked for nine minutes.”
The 1984 Fastwalker event obviously alarmed government officials – the sighting resulted in a 300-page internal report which basically “looked at every possibility and couldn’t explain [the unidentified object] by natural or man-made means.” A researcher explained whey the NORAD sighting was significant:
“Where it appeared in the (satellite’s) sensor field would indicate that the object came into the sensor field from outer-space, went in front of the sensor, and left, departing back into deep space. It would indicate that it was some type of craft that had the ability to maneuver. And there you have hard evidence.
“You have telemetry from that satellite, you have information, you have systems, you have data that you can go back and investigate and check and verify. In the past, usually UFO events are of just eye-witness testimony…
“There you have a very sensitive defense system that sent you information to the ground. I don’t even know if you can solve it… maybe it’s one of those enigmas that’s just gonna be with us forever. What type of craft would have that ability? Some people might say, ‘A UFO’.”
In 1993, after word of Fastwalkers had leaked to the public, the Department of Defense declassified unrelated satellite information which confirmed that satellites were routinely picking up unidentified hi-speed moving objects in space which were neither missiles nor meteorites/asteroids. According to the official who leaked the documents, an average of two to three Fastwalkers are detected each month.
The Observatory Journal documents a “candidate for an alien probe”
Additional stunning evidence was presented in April 1995, when The Observatory journal published an article by Duncan Steel (University of Adelaide, Australia), an expert on the danger of near-Earth objects, that described a recently sighted Fastwalker.
The article revealed that a December 1991 object passing near earth was designated a “candidate for an alien probe”. For all intents and purposes, the object looked and moved like an artificial satellite – only much faster.
Fastwalkers – alien surveillance probes
Below is a FOIA request submitted in 2013 which confirms NORAD’s search for “Fastwalkers” and “Slowwalkers” in internal document databases produced a representative hit. However, as noted in the response below, information on Fastwalkers is still classified and unavailable for public review.
For reference, Fastwalkers travel much faster than orbiting satellites but much slower than deep space asteroids. When discussed together, slower anomalous flying objects are termed “Slowwalkers”.
Many in the UFO community theorize the Earth may be under surveillance by advanced alien races whose motives are unclear. They believe Fastwalkers are alien surveillance vehicles or probes which conduct routine surveillance missions gathering data on our planet and its inhabitants.
They surmise that governments know of their existence, and their intent, but choose to keep details of their activities from the public.
USSR General Claimed Soviets Learnt To Attract UFOs & Made A Contact With Them In The 1980s
USSR General Claimed Soviets Learnt To Attract UFOs & Made A Contact With Them In The 1980s
During the cold war, it was impossible to leak information outside the Soviet Union. Due to top-tier secrecy, military officers and personnel never discussed UFOs during the Soviet era. Meanwhile, in the United States, UFO conferences were conducted due to the surge in UFO sightings. After the collapse of the USSR, people came forward to talk about UFOs in Russia, including the officers from Soviet Air Forces. Major General Vasily Alexeyev claimed that the Soviets had made contact with UFOs.
In 1997, Dr. Valery Uvarov interviewed the Head of the USSR’s Flight Safety Service Major General Vasily Alexeyev on the subject of UFOs. Dr. Uvarov is the head of the Department of UFO Research, Paleosciences, Palaeothechnology of the National Security Academy of Russia. Later, the text of the interview was exclusively released in the German edition of MAGAZINE 2000plus in May 2000.
Dr. Valery Uvarov
There is always a doubt over the existence of Major General Alekseyev, but he exists. His identity was confirmed in the book entitled “Russia’s Air Power At The Crossroads” written by Benjamin S. Lambeth. All the research mentioned in this book was funded by the United States Air Force, which makes it the most credible source to confirm this Soviet General’s existence.
During the 1980s, General Alekseyev had been working in the central staff that involved him with the units in the field. From there, he learned about many reports of unexplained phenomena. There were eye-witnesses to the phenomenon and that was reflected in specific documents and the reports of officials. This triggered the Soviet Defence Ministry and other departments to investigate. They sent the experts to the places where UFOs were spotted frequently.
He said that the UFOs appeared often on several military bases or any place where “there is a high concentration of advanced science and, to some degree, danger. Because every nuclear rocket, every new airforce installation represents a breakthrough both in science and in military terms.”
Moreover, he stated that individual officers and commanders who knew about the phenomenon had no official guidelines or instruction on the matter, so they investigated it in their own way.
“I know that in some places they even learned to create a situation which would deliberately provoke the appearance of a UFO. A UFO would appear where there was increased military activity connected, say, with the transportation of “special” loads. It was enough to artificially stimulate or schedule such a move for a UFO to appear,” General Alekseyev claimed.
Additionally, the Soviets learned to make contact with UFOs. According to him, the military personnel would move his hand in various directions which caused the sphere (UFO) to flatten in the same direction.
For example, if you raised your arms three times, the UFO would flatten out in a vertical direction three times as well. In the early 1980s, the Soviets ordered to carry out the experiments using technical devices (theodolites, radar stations, and others), as a result of which the unidentified objects were firmly recorded as instrumental data.
General Alekseyev shared one incredible incident when a team of Soviet scientists and other experts had an encounter with the UFO in the mid-air. They flew to Novosibirsk from Moscow to investigate an air crash. While returning, a UFO accompanied their plane in the air. As a research team, they observed the object, sketched it, and even collected data for scientific analysis.
He understood that the Defence Ministry, the Academy of Sciences and the intelligence services had been studying the UAP/UFOs, but those who were not directly into the investigation had no idea what was going on. He blamed the politics for not letting an open invention into the undefined objects. “I think that politics interfered with science here. Investigation of what was unidentified and not understood was carried out above all to clear matters up,” he said.
General Alekseyev even talked about encounters between UFOs and military personnel. He remembered one incident that happened to two warrant officers outside Moscow. One of them telepathically made a contact with the ship and even was invited inside it, but he refused as he was afraid to enter the spaceship. Alekseyev personally saw the drawings of the ship made by that officer. Soviet General believed that there are higher chances that UFOs are extraterrestrial or belong to other civilizations.
Astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek displays a photo of a fake UFO at a 1966 press conference.
Image: AP
UFOs and the Boundaries of Science
This summer, a defense report and a new Harvard research project have renewed the public’s interest in UFOs. But neither are likely to change many minds.
On June 25 of this year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a brief report entitled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” It fulfilled a 2020 directive from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired at the time by Marco Rubio, which ordered the national intelligence director to publish an unclassified, public appraisal of the “potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena [UAP] activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.” The request came partly as a response to news reports that Navy personnel had, in recent years, filed a number of incident reports involving UFOs.
Since 1947, UFOs have been caught in cycles of periodic, animated interest from government officials, enthusiasts, and scientists. But results are always inconclusive.
In the lead-up to the report’s release, both believers and skeptics were abuzz with anticipation. Chatter on social media was lively, and the self-styled crusader for government disclosure about UFOs, former intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, announced he would run for Congress if the report seemed misleading.
In the end, the preliminary assessment proved a mixed bag. Enthusiasts could be buoyed by the government’s admissions that most reported UFOs were real objects, that only 1 in 144 could be definitively explained, and that fear of ridicule had thus far stymied witnesses and thereby inhibited effective inquiry. Debunkers, on the other hand, could point to the fact that most reports suffered from a lack of “sufficient specificity,” that the overwhelming majority of UAP demonstrated conventional flight characteristics, and that there remained a great many mundane explanations for the phenomena. All sides felt vindicated, all could claim victory.
And so, ambiguity reigns. To anyone familiar with the history of unidentified flying objects, this represents a familiar state of affairs. The first modern report of a UFO took place in Washington State in 1947, and since then the phenomenon has been caught in cycles of periodic, animated interest from government officials, civilian enthusiasts, and scientists. During such moments, it always seems that the riddle of UFOs is about to be solved. But the result is always inconclusive findings and a dispersal of interest, leaving few minds changed and everyone returned to their corners to await the bell for the next round. The seeming effervescence of our current moment notwithstanding, it’s doubtful we should expect anything different this time around.
It’s easy to forget that, not long ago, the media was not giving regular updates on UFOs.
This most recent fanfare surrounding UFOs—or UAP, as those seeking distance from UFOs’ outsize reputation now prefer—began in December 2017, when the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico all published exposés revealing the existence of a secret government program which, between 2007 and 2012, had investigated UFOs. Then followed viral videos of Navy pilots encountering unusual objects (reported upon in the same outlets); a cable television series on the incidents featuring Elizondo and former Blink 182 band member Tom DeLonge; announcement of the first human-detected interstellar object to enter our solar system (’Oumuamua); and a highly publicized, though admittedly frivolous, attempt to storm Area 51 in Nevada. And in July, astronomer Avi Loeb announced the creation of a new project at Harvard University, called Galileo, that will use high-tech astronomical equipment to seek evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts in space and possibly within Earth’s atmosphere. This follows closely on the publication of Loeb’s book Extraterrestrial, in which he argues that ’Oumuamua might be an artificial light sail made by an alien civilization.
It’s easy to forget that, not long ago, the media was not giving regular updates on UFOs. On the contrary, during the past two decades, public discussion of UFOs has been limited. But interest in UFOs has cycled through a couple of phases of ups and downs. The 1960s ushered in a revival of the supernatural in popular culture that flourished throughout the seventies, eighties, and into the nineties. If you’re old enough—say, over the age of forty—you may still have memories of Leonard Nimoy narrating the occult and mystery TV series In Search Of (1977–82); of listening to interviews with telepathic spoon benders and alien abductees on the daytime talk shows of Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Phil Donahue; or of browsing through the extensive paranormal section at your local public library or Waldenbooks. New Age philosophy, extrasensory perception, exorcisms, reincarnation, telekinesis, astrology, channeling, psychic healing, cryonics, Satanic ritual abuse claims: UFOs were sucked up into this paranormal wave and boosted by the lively syncretism of it all. The rising paranormal tide lifted all boats.
All this publicity surrounding the supernatural also gave rise to a revival of debunking, with prominent figures taking it upon themselves to call out erroneous claims and expose frauds. In 1976 a group of dedicated skeptics founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), headed initially by philosopher Paul Kurtz and sociologist Marcello Truzzi. At the organization’s inaugural conference, Kurtz expressed worry about the growing number of “cults of unreason and other forms of nonsense.” Noting the popularity of related beliefs in Nazi Germany and under Stalinism, he lamented the fact that “Western democratic societies are being swept by other forms of irrationalism, often blatantly antiscientific and pseudoscientific in character.” Skeptics needed to be decisive. “If we are to meet the growth of irrationality,” he insisted, “we need to develop an appreciation for the scientific attitude as a part of culture.” During the seventies and eighties, a number of well-known personalities associated with SCICOP—including aviation journalist Philip J. Klass, illusionist James Randi, and astronomer Carl Sagan—agreed and assumed the roles of public myth-busters.
Mudslinging over convictions is familiar to historians of religion, a domain of human existence marked by deep divisions over interpretations of belief. But science has often found itself engaged in similar debates and conflicts.
Over the last fifty years, the mutual antagonism between paranormal believers and skeptics has largely framed discussion about unidentified flying objects. And it often gets personal. Those taking seriously the prospect that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin have dismissed doubters as narrow-minded, biased, obstinate, and cruel. Those dubious about the idea of visitors from other worlds have brushed off devotees as naïve, ignorant, gullible, and downright dangerous.
This kind of mudslinging over convictions is certainly familiar to historians of religion, a domain of human existence marked by deep divisions over interpretations of belief. But science too has found itself engaged in similar debates and conflicts over the centuries. Venerated figures and institutions have regularly taken it upon themselves to engage in what has been dubbed “boundary work,” asserting and reasserting the borders between legitimate and illegitimate scientific research and ideas, between what may and what may not refer to itself as science.
When scientists engage in boundary work, they are doing something more than saying “this is true” or “that is false.” Instead, they are setting up the ground rules for what will be considered acceptable questions, methods, and answers when it comes to doing science. In essence, they are saying, “this is a question we may pursue in science” or “that is an impermissible way of conducting an experiment.” And there are any number of examples of this in the modern world.
Take psychology, for instance. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a subject that largely fell under the domain of philosophy. Then, during the second half of the century, some scholars interested in psychology took their cue from the natural sciences and started conducting experiments with animals and human beings. In this way, psychology began to establish itself as an independent social scientific field. That status remained contested, however, and psychologists had to defend their claims of being a legitimate science for decades. Boundary work was essential to this mission. So, when prominent researchers such as William James, Frederic Myers, and Eleanor Sidgwick argued that psychical research—the study of the power of mediumship, telepathy, clairvoyance, and life after death—should be included as part of academic psychology, many practitioners bristled. Experimentalist Wilhelm Wundt, Science editor James Cattell, and Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg were just some of the influential figures to repudiate the phenomena as “nothing but fraud and humbug” and to bemoan research about them for “doing much to injure psychology.” Their judgments eventually won the day and, as a result, parapsychology was shifted from science to pseudoscience.
Boundary work has also been evident in policing the how and what of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). When SETI takes the form of astronomers using telescopes to seek evidence of intelligent radio signals and mechanical objects in outer space, it is accepted as a mainstream (though, admittedly, underfunded) academic pursuit. The study of UFOs, on the other hand, is brushed off as pseudoscience. UFO investigation has, consequently, been largely privately funded and conducted by committed individuals in their free time.
This stark divide did not happen overnight, and its roots lie in the postwar decades, in a series of events that—with their news coverage, grainy images, celebrity crusaders, exasperated skeptics, unsatisfying military statements, and accusations of a government cover-up—foreshadow our present moment.
When astronomers use telescopes to seek evidence of extraterrestrials, it is accepted as a mainstream academic pursuit. The study of UFOs, on the other hand, is brushed off as pseudoscience. This stark divide did not happen overnight.
It all started in June 1947, when a private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, reported seeing a group of bat-like aircraft flying in formation at high speeds near Mt. Rainier. He described their motion to the media as moving like a saucer would if skipped across water, and an enterprising journalist had found his headline: he christened them “flying saucers.” That summer, flying saucers were reported across the United States, and the press began wondering what exactly was going on.
The thought that the objects might have been extraterrestrial visitors did not rank highly on the list of possibilities considered by most people at the time. A Gallup poll published just a few weeks after the Arnold sighting asked Americans what they thought the things were: while 90 percent admitted having heard of “flying saucers,” a majority either had no idea what they could be or thought that witnesses were mistaken. Gallup didn’t even mention if anyone surveyed brought up aliens. Ten years later, in August 1957, Trendex conducted a similar survey of the American public and found that now over 25 percent believed unidentified flying objects could be from outer space.
Three things had happened in the meantime that made this possible. First was media saturation. Newspapers and magazines across the world covered and outright promoted the flying saucer saga, especially after 1949. Then, what had begun as a distinctly U.S. phenomenon soon became a global one, as UFOs began to turn up in Southern Africa, Australia, Europe, and South America. By the mid-1950s, few in the world could say they had never heard of flying saucers.
Second was the rise of flying-saucers-from-outer-space promoters. In 1950, three influential books by pulp and entertainment writers—Donald Keyhoe’s The Flying Saucers Are Real, Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers, and Gerald Heard’s The Riddle of the Flying Saucers—hit bookshelves, each arguing that the overwhelming evidence showed that aliens were visiting, more likely than not in response to the detonation of atomic bombs. The authors provided the model for a new kind of public figure: the crusading whistleblower dedicated to breaking the silence over the alien origins of unidentified flying objects.
Third, some Americans were so curious about the phenomenon that they sought out like-minded others. Inspired by the development of science fiction fan clubs and newsletters in the 1930s and ’40s, enthusiasts beginning in the early ’50s organized local saucer clubs where members could meet to discuss the latest developments. By the end of the decade, some had grown into vibrant organizations, with national, even international followings and monthly newsletters which actively solicited contributions from members about their own sightings and theories.
So, by the end of the 1950s, flying saucers didn’t just make news; they had champions who helped make them news. Some enthusiasts, however, believed interest in UFOs needed to be channeled into something more than a hobby or pastime. The Air Force had been conducting its own investigations into the flying saucer phenomenon since 1947. Saucer groups, however, placed little confidence in the military and were especially frustrated by the secrecy surrounding its work. They believed it was time for civilians to seize the day and to begin investigating cases in a more thorough and open manner.
Keyhoe, Leonard Stringfield, Morris Jessup, and Coral and Jim Lorenzen were some of the leading pioneers in this effort. At first, most civilian investigators had to rely exclusively on newspaper and magazine articles for their source materials. By1965, however, the Lorenzens and Keyhoe were directing large organizations (the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, respectively) with national reach, allowing them to send members into the field to conduct interviews and examine sites. By 1972 the Lorenzens had put together a manual for field investigators, guiding them through the kind of equipment and procedures to use when going about their work.
The first generation of ufologists was buoyantly optimistic. They saw themselves as trailblazers who, though now dismissed, would one day be vindicated when ufology was established as a legitimate research enterprise.
In this way, a new field of study was born—“ufology,” as it was dubbed. That first generation of ufologists was buoyantly optimistic. They saw themselves as trailblazers—it was not uncommon for comparisons to be made to Galileo—who, though now dismissed by the establishment, would one day find their endeavors vindicated when ufology was established as a legitimate research enterprise.
Major scientific associations and most academic scholars saw matters differently. They considered ufology yet another example of a pseudoscience. While some went about publicly debunking its methods and findings, most academics opted to simply pay ufology no heed.
By the mid-1960s, however, a few scientists working at major U.S. universities had reached a different conclusion. They believed that UFOs were genuine physical phenomena that warranted serious scientific study. Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek was one such figure. Hynek was the scientific consultant to the Air Force in its investigations into unidentified flying objects. At first skeptical about the claims of witnesses, he grew puzzled by the growing number of cases that seemed to defy conventional explanation.
In the early sixties, Hynek began holding UFO discussion meetings in his home with interested colleagues—at first from Northwestern, but then from other universities as well. The group included French computer scientist Jacques Vallée, who would go on to become a leading voice in ufology. Soon, Hynek was referring to the circle as The Invisible College—a reference to the secretive group of seventeenth-century natural philosophers who had touted experimental research and defied church dogma. The name stuck, and continues to be used to refer to academics who study and exchange ideas about UFOs but do so clandestinely for fear of hurting their careers.
Another ufologist who rose to prominence in the 1960s was James McDonald, an internationally respected atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona. An expert in cloud physics and micrometeorology, he had begun privately looking into UFOs in the late fifties and joined a leading UFO organization. In 1966 he suddenly went public as an outspoken advocate for the position that UFOs were, as he put it, “the greatest scientific problem of our times.” Though a latecomer to the scene, McDonald was a constant public presence, making the case for the scientific study of UFOs in press conferences, public lectures, and TV and radio interviews. He railed against what he considered the Air Force’s incompetence in handling the matter, and he took it upon himself to interview hundreds of witnesses.
Though widely acknowledged to be accomplished and eloquent, many of his fellow scientists found McDonald to be dogmatic and abrasive. So when it was announced in October 1966 that the University of Colorado at Boulder had agreed to serve as the home for a scientific committee funded by the Air Force to study the UFO phenomenon, McDonald was not invited to serve as a member. Like Hynek and Vallée, McDonald instead was asked to consult now and again with the committee, but all three were left out of the group’s day-to-day activities and deliberations.
The project’s director was nuclear physicist Edward Condon, who had spent decades working in and with the government dating back to the wartime Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. His involvement with the military, however, hadn’t stopped him from criticizing it for being too secretive. After the war, he was also a leading voice insisting that civilian authorities be put in control of atomic energy, and he had to face down accusations before the House Un-American Activities Committee on several occasions. Here, then, was a no-nonsense academic, who was not easily intimidated and despised government secrecy. He seemed the ideal choice to head up this first-ever funded scientific study of UFOs by academic researchers.
The Condon Committee began its work in November 1966. Excitement and anticipation surrounded the start of the project. Ufologists, UFO enthusiasts, members of the Invisible College, the Air Force, and the general public all expressed high hopes that the world would finally have an answer to the riddle of the flying saucers. Their enthusiasm was soon quashed. While some ufologists were asked to make presentations before the committee, word inside the Colorado group was that Condon considered the possibility of alien visitors to be preposterous. Disgruntled insiders reported that researchers were being steered toward concluding that the UFO phenomenon had a psychological explanation.
Condon came to consider his involvement in the study of UFOs “the biggest waste of time that I ever had in my life.”
McDonald was careful to cultivate contacts within the Colorado project. His personal papers, now housed in the archives at the University of Arizona, show that he received surreptitious updates from Boulder on an almost daily basis. As he did, he became more and more frustrated by what he saw as Condon’s attempt to stop any serious consideration that UFOs might have extraterrestrial origins. In early 1968 he, along with several people serving on the Condon Committee, confronted Condon with evidence that he had no intention of conducting a legitimate scientific investigation into unidentified flying objects.
The move outraged Condon, who fired the committee members for dereliction of their duties. McDonald went to the media, finding a journalist at Look to write an exposé chronicling what was portrayed as Condon’s incompetent and imperious management of the project. And with that, all bridges had been burned. Ufologists dismissed the work of the committee even before it had released its report in January 1969. McDonald demanded a new scientific study be conducted. The Air Force formally shut down its UFO task force. And Condon came to consider his involvement in the study of UFOs “the biggest waste of time that I ever had in my life.”
The Condon Committee’s final report did not mince words. “Our general conclusion,” it stated, “is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge”—this despite the fact that around a third of the cases examined remained unexplained. No one was terribly surprised, least of all people in the UFO community. Rather than settling the matter of UFOs for good, it simply escalated the mutual mistrust between believers and skeptics, between amateur ufologists and academic scientists.
Was the Condon Committee a failure then? At first glance, it would appear so. Without question, it fell victim to the political machinations of bad actors such as McDonald. Nevertheless, one has to wonder if any study at the time could have resolved the matter. If the 2020–21 UAP task force found itself confronted with ambiguities and a lack of information, this was surely even more the case in the 1960s.
And it must be said that both back then and today, there are many people for whom the mystery is the matter. UFOs may well be far more interesting to ponder than to actually solve. And fittingly, the decades that followed saw the rise of the UFO as mystery, with increasingly bizarre stories of alien abductions capturing the attention of readers and TV audiences between 1975 and 1995. Yes, there had always been outlier abduction reports dating back to the ’50s and ’60s. But now the floodgates opened, and with them a new generation of UFO advocates.
Chief among them were artist Budd Hopkins, horror writer Whitley Strieber, historian David Jacobs, and psychiatrist John Mack: each came onto the scene in the 1980s and ’90s insisting on the veracity of those claiming to have been kidnapped, examined, and experimented upon by beings from another world. The ufology of investigating the nuts and bolts of unidentified flying objects gave way on the public stage to these new missionaries who simultaneously played the role of investigator, therapist, and advocate to their vulnerable charges.
There are many people for whom the mystery is the matter. UFOs may well be far more interesting to ponder than to actually solve.
In many ways, it was Mack’s involvement that signaled both the culmination and end of the headiest days of alien abduction. A distinguished Harvard psychiatrist, when Mack began working with and publishing accounts of abductees—or “experiencers,” as he called them—in the early 1990s, he lent the study of extraterrestrial captivity an air of legitimacy it had been lacking. A five-day conference at MIT in 1992 on the alien abduction phenomenon, followed by a book on the subject two years later, brought him the affection of many in the UFO community and the scorn of many of his colleagues. The Harvard Medical School initiated a review of his position; he retained tenure, but after, as review board chairman Arnold Relman later put it, he was “not taken seriously by his colleagues anymore.” Claims of alien abduction have continued since then, but one would have to search far and wide to find a clinician of Mack’s stature who would go on record saying they believed them.
And so here we are a quarter century later, and we are again hearing some rumblings from within the scientific community. Some scientists involved with SETI have publicly called for the interdisciplinary study of UFOs. And now Loeb (another Harvard professor) has announced the Galileo Project. With an initial private investment of nearly $2 million with which to work, the Galileo Project will certainly have access to equipment qualitatively better than what existed in the fifties and sixties. Will this make a difference? Many of Loeb’s colleagues are skeptical about the prospect. If history is any guide, it’s questionable a project like this will succeed in persuading diehard believers and skeptics to rethink their positions.
Photograph courtesy of Michigan Chapter of the Mutual UFO Network
What am I looking at?
Nobody really knows. Unofficially, it’s called Patty’s Triangle because a woman named Patty Blackburn caught it on camera on June 14, 2006, near Lansing. In 24 seconds of video, Patty captured an unexplainable triangular configuration of lights that jerked around the sky. Maybe it’s a military aircraft that nobody’s seen before, or maybe it’s extraterrestrial beings from galaxies far, far away accidentally giving Earthlings a glimpse of themselves while surveilling humankind. Those, it seems, are the two most likely options to longtime aficionados of unidentified flying objects or, as the U.S. government has rebranded them, “unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Why are you showing me this particular blur?
Mostly because, as obscured and fuzzy as it is, it’s the best available image of a UFO from a Michigan sighting. Hundreds of sightings are reported each year to the Michigan chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), but the vast majority are resolved as something of clearly human origin. Patty’s Triangle is among the few that remain unexplained, says Michigan MUFON State Director Bill Konkolesky.
OK, but why should I care about something someone saw 15 years ago?
Because UFOs, once relegated to the province of crackpots, are having a big moment. The federal government, partly prompted by videos shot by U.S. Navy sailors of airborne objects moving in erratic manners that defy the understandings of modern physics, even released a report in June from the Defense Department’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force that can be summed up thus:That is, no evidence that E.T. is phoning home but no earthly ideas, either. Of 144 sightings involving military aviators, the task force was able to explain just one — it was a deflatingballoon. The other 143 remain a mystery. The feds have been taking the matter seriously for more than a decade now. Then-Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, secured $22 million for UFO research in 2007, and more recently Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told 60 Minutes this spring that he wants answers, too. Last year, former CIA Director John Brennan told a podcaster these incidents “could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.” And former President Barack Obama sent speculation into hyperdrive by telling TV’s James Corden recently there are “objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.”
Whoa! Obama believes in little green men?
Not exactly. You don’t have to think a slow-moving alien invasion is underway to accept that there’s weird stuff in the air that defies explanation. But many avid ufologists — yep, that’s a legit word — reason that astronomers claim there are possibly millions of inhabitable planets and moons in the Milky Way or other galaxies. “If life happened somewhere else and they’re even just a couple hundred years more advanced than we are, they probably have the ability to visit us,” says Konkolesky, who notes MUFON officially has no position on the existence of extraterrestrial sentient life. Either way, Konkolesky says interest from credible leaders makes the topic “a lot easier to talk about now. Some neighbors and family members who used to treat it with a giggle now ask with sincere interest. It takes a very short time, when you’re a dedicated, sincere UFO investigator, to conclude something really unusual and unexplainable is happening.”
What’s this Konkolesky guy’s deal, anyway?
He’s a 50-year-old father of two who works in the Academic Support Center at Oakland Community College and found a kinship when he discovered MUFON.He’salso a Michigan native who says that as a high school senior in February 1989, he and some buddies saw a blue football-shaped, car-sized ball of light the height of two telephone poles arching over their Chevette. Then it morphed into a display of white lights that “ping-ponged all over the sky,” followed by a red ball of light the size of a full moon. “We all saw the same thing,” he says. “It took a few years for me to find a group that actually investigates such things.”
Are there lots of UFO sightings in Michigan?
Michigan’s MUFON chapter received 2,789 sightings from 2010 to 2020, of which 80 to 95 percent turned out to have easy, earthly explanations, Konkolesky says. In 2019, for instance, a third of the reports turned out to be sightings of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, a stream of thousands of machines floating in a line in low-Earth orbit that aims to provide low-cost internet access the world over. There are four still-unexplained sightings that stand out — a 1953 sighting of disc-shaped objects darting across Lake Superior over the Soo Locks; a cluster of sightings in 1966 in which “many hundreds of witnesses” saw UFOs across southeastern Michigan, capped by a claim by a Dexter man of a landing in his backyard; a 1975 incident in which people at four Air Force bases where nuclear weapons were stored around the U.S., including Wurtsmith in Iosco County, saw a white disc descend for a bit before flitting off; and a 1994 sighting outside Grand Rapids that prompted a flood of calls to 911 and front-page coverage in the Detroit newspapers.
What do I do if I see something?
You can call the police, the military, or your shrink, as many people do. Or you can contact Konkolesky via mufon.com. Be aware, though, that Konkolesky offers this caveat: “If they’re saying something landed in their backyard, there’s not a lot we can do for them.”
Look up at the stars tonight. Those twinkling diamonds are several thousand light-years away. Our planet is just a grain of sand on a virtually endless beach, a small dot in agigantic galaxy. Is it the only dot with life on it? That’s a question humankind has been asking ever since we started to understand the basics of astronomy thousands of years ago. Now, we’re closer than ever to finding the answer, as an unprecedented crush of ultrapowerful telescopes and interplanetary missions try to trace where else life might possibly exist. Today’s Daily Dose travels to the far reaches of the universe on that search, taking you through the latest breakthroughs and the people behind them. Curious? You should be.
COME OUT, COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE
Age-Old Search
Some 2,500 years ago, two Greek philosophers looked to the sky and wondered if humans were alone in the universe. Today, many scientists believe the question is a no-brainer. For decades, one of the fundamental laws of physics formed the basis of our understanding of life on Earth. The law of increasing entropy insists that energy tends to dissipate instead of coming together: pour ink in water and watch it diffuse. If that’s true for the universe, then the sublime marriage of millions of cells and molecules for the creation of life on Earth could be a low-probability fluke that needn’t repeat itself. But some researchers now believe that the existence of extraterrestrial life doesn’t necessarily violate that basic law: In fact, they argue, it could be what drives the creation of living beings.
Count the Stars
And then there’s simple math to consider. There are billions of galaxies in the universe, each one home to tens of billions of stars circled by at least a planet each. See where I’m going? From the first astronomer eager to catch audio signals using radio in the early 1900s to the rovers currently exploring Mars, our fascination with outer space has always in part had to do with the hunt for potential neighbors beyond our planet. Sophisticated new tools, including the soon-to-be-deployed largest telescope in history, are capable of exploring the atmosphere of planets trillions of miles away, potentially bringing us within reach of an answer.
Move Over, Mars
While Mars has long been the poster child for out-of-Earth exploration, (it is, after all, the most similar to Earth in many ways), scientists are expanding their horizons. In fact, researchers at Washington State University have already identified more than 20 planets outside our solar system that could sustain life even better than Earth (don’t pack your bags just yet though; they are all more than 100 light-years away). Meanwhile, even as it waits for a robotic rover to deliver Martian samples by the end of the decade, NASA wants to explore one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. The agency is planning to send a mission to probe Europa’s frozen oceans and volcanoes as early as 2024. Another moon catching everyone’s attention is Titan, Saturn’s largest, where a mission will be launched to analyze liquid methane lakes in 2027.
Not So Fast
But some scientists are urging caution, saying the broadly accepted global guidelines on how to respond to a potential alien encounter are not enough. Physicist Mark Buchanan worries that these new civilizations could be more advanced and powerful than ours. “Most stars in our galaxy are much older than the sun. If civilizations arise fairly frequently on some planets, then there ought to be many civilizations in our galaxy millions of years more advanced than our own,” he wrote in The Washington Post in June. On the opposite side is a slightly more eerie argument: If these super smart aliens wanted to kill us all, they would have already done it.
Wait, Are They Already Here?
What if we’re the aliens on Earth? While a recently declassified report on alleged UFO sightings by U.S. navy pilots raised more questions than it provided answers, some prominent scientists have been positing a much more interesting theory: that life on Earth could have actually originated on Mars, making us, well, Martians. How? Life forms when planets cool down and liquid water eventually emerges. Evidence is increasingly pointing to the fact that Mars formed and cooled down before Earth, and that it had methane (an ingredient for the birth of life). Add that to the theory that various forms of life travel across the universe through asteroids and other debris, and you have a hypothesis more credible than distant sightings by pilots that could be explained in part by optical illusions.
Who Are the Aliens?
Scientists have recently discovered more than 2,000 stars from where Earth would be visible when it passed in front of the sun. That means that aliens with powerful telescopeson planets near those stars could actually be looking at us without visiting us on UFOs. The good news? Hector Socas-Navarro, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, says that if there’s life out there, we currently have a good chance of finding it. “The new large telescopes will allow us to scrutinize the chemical composition of many exoplanet atmospheres,” he tells OZY. “With those tools, we could find life elsewhere within the next 10 to 20 years.”
HOW ARE WE FINDING THEM?
Telescopes
From the moment Galileo Galilei, one of modern astronomy’s founding fathers, pointed his telescope upward in the 1600s, the instrument has been central to our understanding of the universe. It helped early scientists study the surface of our moon and discover Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons. Since then, telescopes have evolved in ways the Italian astronomer probably never dreamed of. In 1931, American engineer Karl Jansky’s giant rotating antennas detected the first radio signal from the center of the Milky Way. And more than seven decades later, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope identified thousands of planets that orbit around stars other than the sun between 2009 and 2018.
Best Bet
While China and the European Space Agency — apart from America — are investing in new rovers to explore Mars’ surface, modern versions of the telescope represent our best shot at discovering the truth about possible extraterrestrial life. China recently unveiled one of the largest single dish observatories in the world, so sensitive that it can detect anything from dead stars to hydrogen in distant galaxies. Meanwhile, NASA is preparing to send up the James Webb Space Telescope this year. This $10 billion observatory will work from space, its state-of-the-art technology allowing it to look through the gas and dust that usually obscure the view for other telescopes.
The Future
Telescopes are poised to become ever more sophisticated, with the ability to provide better images of smaller planets located farther away. The Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile and the European Extremely Large Telescope (brownie points for original naming) are both due to be up and running by 2025. They promise to deliver images so sharp scientists might be able to identify the fine imprint that molecules leave in the atmospheres of other planets, tracking clues to the possibility of life. Another Harvard University-led project will search for possible technologies aliens might have discarded as junk. Meanwhile, other researchers are developing ultrafast light-driven nanocrafts, similar to the ones aliens could have, to launch toward Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to ours (about 25 trillion miles away) that could potentially harvest life. Why is it so important to search for life elsewhere? Astrophysicist Socas-Navarro tells OZY the answer is simple: “All the life that we know descends from one line. Biology has only one sample to work with in trying to understand life itself and how it originates. It’s like trying to study medicine in a world with only one person.”
THE NEXT GALILEOS
Yuri Milner
Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson aren’t the only billionaires locked in a space race. Milner, an Israeli Russian businessman and one of the moneybags behind Facebook and Twitter, founded Breakthrough Initiatives in 2015 and has invested more than $200 million in the search for alien life on Jupiter, Saturn and in the clouds over Venus. The businessman, who was named after the Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to venture into space, has always been interested in what is out there. “I think it is only appropriate that we, as a civilization, devote at least some resources to try and ask the biggest existential questions; for example, are we alone in the universe?” he told CTech. But his biggest strength might be his proximity to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who heads a state with one of the world’s most sophisticated space programs at its disposal.
Latinas in Nasa
Latinos represent just 7% of NASA’s workforce, though they constitute 18% of the U.S. population. For Hispanic women, making it to NASA can be as hard as getting to Jupiter. Mexican Ali Guarneros Luna is shattering that glass ceiling, remaking the space agency’s reputation for a new generation. Growing up in Mexico, she read about space missions in an encyclopedia — and was instantly hooked. Then, at the age of 12, she immigrated to California with her mother after an earthquake devastated her native Mexico City in 1985. After high school, she gave up on her college dreams to support her four children. After she finally went back to school and earned two degrees, a professor convinced her to try out for NASA. She now works as part of the Agency’s small satellite technology program, which develops new tools for space missions, and is a top safety expert at the agency. Shooting for the stars has paid off for her.
You
But you don’t need to be a space engineer to satiate your curiosity about possible alien life. All you need is a telescope and a ton of time. NASA is recruiting amateur astronomers keen to observe planets from outside our solar system as they pass in front of the sun. The idea is that mass observation will help build a body of data pointing to the time and frequency at which these planets travel near the sun, allowing more experienced astronomers to know when to point the larger telescopes.
IN POP CULTURE
Fact or Fiction?
If they exist, what do aliens look like? Are they green and cute as in E.T., tall and skinny as in Signs, human-looking like Sally from 3rd Rock From the Sun or perhaps angry and gooey like in Aliens? For decades, popular culture has stepped in where science has been unable to answer questions. Some argue these stories reflect other social fears (think about the many reports of UFO sightings between 1952 and 1969 during the Cold War).
Mirror, Mirror
OK, that’s Hollywood. What do scientists say about the way aliens might actually look? That we should look at evolution, and keep an open mind. They argue that the way we humans look is pretty much a result of necessity (two eyes for wide vision, two ears for stereo audio, two legs to stand up and grab things from high up). Each species is different, based on their own evolutionary needs. So aliens can actually look completely different to us. Where we are going wrong is that we are only imagining beings similar to creatures on Earth.
Man on Mars
What if we could combine scientific research with the spectacle of films? A series of cool new documentaries does just that, exploring some of the questions NASA scientists are asking themselves and offering a front-row seat to their findings. Among them is Nat Geo’s Mars, a documentary-style fiction series that takes viewers on a trip over the next few decades as humans settle on Mars. Spoiler alert: It will take more than finding a new habitable planet to rid humanity of its problems.
Portage County Police Officers Pursues UFO In 1966
Portage County Police Officers Pursues UFO In 1966
The 1960s were a swinging time full of free love, way out fashions and television shows where rythmically challenged people that were far too old to pass as the teenagers they were meant to portray danced to the groovy sounds of Hammond organs.
For many this era of peace and love came to an end when the Ohio National Guard killed four students at Kent State in May of 1970. For a handful of police officers in the Kent area, however, the fun and games would come to an end 4 years earlier, on April 17th, 1966.
Things kicked off around 4am when Police Chief Gerald Buchert rushed home, grabbing his wife and his camera in an attempt to verify an odd object in the sky that had concerned citizens of Mantua, Ohio lighting up his phone lines.
He successfully captured a photograph that would later be a wrench in the engine of some very powerful governmental machinery, but the meat of the story would begin an hour later.
At 5:07am on an aforementioned morning Deputies Dale Spaur and Wilber Neff were driving to a hospital near Randolph, Ohio when they came across an abandoned vehicle. Stopping to investigate, Deputy Spaur noticed the car was filled with old radios and electronic equipment.
Stranger, still, was the symbol that Spaur noticed on the side of the jalopy: a triangle with a lightning bolt inside it and the words “Seven Steps to Hell” written above. By the time he read these words it was already too late for Dale Spaur, it seems.
Just as he was inspecting the car, Deputy Spaur noticed a bright light coming from the trees south of his position. Looking closer he observed a large, oval object with a bright bluish white light rising above the trees and moving towards his cruiser. The only sound heard coming from the mysterious craft was described as a “whisper behind a humming.”
At first the men felt they were unable to move, but as the craft took it’s position directly above them, Spaur and Neff summoned the will to jump into the cruiser and radioed police headquarters to descibe what they were witnessing.
The receiving officer, Deputy Robert Wilson, suggested they shoot at the UFO. Spaur declined, saying that seeing the object was like “looking down the middle of hell.” Deputy Wilson then requested they wait at their position while he dispatched a photographer. No sooner had he done so than the strange object began to move on down the road.
Spaur, a former stock car driver, must’ve grunted out an action movie quality “It’s on!” before throwing the cruiser into gear and engaging in hot pursuit of the E.T. and it’s wonderous flying machine.
The two followed the object for 86 miles, across the state line into Pennsylvania, with patrolman Wayne Huston joining the chase in East Palastine. As the chase was crossing into Pennsylvania, Spaur requested that fighter jets be scrambled to intercept the UFO. Shortly after crossing the state line his patrol car began to sputter from lack of gasoline.
Pulling into a gas station in Freedom, Pennsylvania they met Officer Frank Panzanella who had been independently following the craft. While the four officers stood at the gas station watching the object, confirmation came across the radio of the fighter jets deployment.
At that very moment, as if it were listening to the communication, the UFO shot straight up into the blackness of space, leaving the four men, with mouths gaping, wondering what the hell they had just witnessed.
One described it as smashed ice cream cone, another as a bisected football shape and another as a textured satin-like domed object with an antennae. In the end, hundreds of people across Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania reported seeing something in the sky that night.
Does all this sound familiar? Steven Spielberg based much of the first 2/3rds of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” on this incident. Unlike the movie, the officers experiences didn’t wrap up with five little pleasant notes of music, though.
Dale Spaur describing the incident before his fall from grace.
Upon their return to Ravenna, Spaur and Neff were met with a flurry of reporters. The director of Project Blue Book, General Hector Quintanilla, rushed up from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
His mission, it seemed, was to belittle and discredit the deputies with the brunt of his govrnment-man assholery coming down on Deputy Dale Spaur. In fact, his first words to Spaur were “Tell me about this mirage you saw.”
Quintanilla’s official ruling was that the deputies had confused the planet Venus and the Moon interchangeably for an alien space craft and had foolishly chased the features of the eastern sky into Pennsylvania. Despite being told by Pentagon superiors that he was “in error”, Quintanilla stuck by his analysis.
Even though Spaur was the only officer mentioned in Project Blue Books report, the effects of this ridicule were devastating for all of the policemen involved.
Buchert, who photographed the object, lost 20 pounds in the three days that followed the sighting and afterward maintained “it’s something that should be forgotten…left alone.”
Spaur’s partner, Neff, refused to speak of the incident. His wife said her husband was as white as a sheet for hours after the chase and in a state of severe shock. He told her he would never say another word about flying saucers even if one landed in his backyard.
Panzella was also quiet about the incident and had his phone removed after that morning.
Huston resigned a few months after the experience, changed his name and moved to Seattle to become a bus driver.
As was said earlier, Dale Spaur had the worst time in the aftermath of the sighting. He began disappearing for days at a time and seemingly started to lose his mind. Within two months of following the UFO he flew into a rage and attacked his wife, consequently ending both his marriage and career in law enforcement.
Six months after the sighting he was a broken, lonely and haunted man living in a seedy motel on a minuscule painter’s salary. No matter who he turned to (his family, friends and even the church) he was ridiculed as the man who chased the flying saucer. When he would fall asleep it would only be a few minutes before nightmares of “the Incident” would jar him awake.
Eventually, Spaur moved to Amsted, West Virginia and became a taxi driver. It was during his time here that he was seriously injured when he fell into an abandoned mine shaft during a walk in the woods.
Rushed to the hospital in critical condition, Spaur slipped into a coma shortly after arriving. No one, outside of family, knew of Spaur’s past, though one nurse would end up getting a pretty good idea that his history was anything but ordinary.
He had been in a coma for several weeks and this particular nurse spent a great deal of time sitting with him in hopes of a miracle, until one day when she suddenly ran from the room screaming.
She never described what she saw that day, but refused to enter his room again saying only that he was an alien and possessed by something that was not of this world. Despite his new found lack of company, Spaur did make that miraculous recovery and returned to Ohio where he managed a Lakewood bar until his death in 1983.
Ohioans have reported THOUSANDS of UFO sightings over the past 70 years, including another well-documented sighting that involved multiple police witnesses in nearby Trumbull County on December 14th of 1994.
The U.S. government released to the public some data on UFO/UAP encounters reported by military personnel and commercial airline pilots, but most people believe the data cache is far larger and may never see the light of day – at least in the general public arena. Based on comments and frustrations expressed by current and former members of Congress, that body may not see it either. We know that Great Britain has been much more dedicated to collecting UFO data, but former insiders like Nick Pope express the dame frustration. What about our friends to the great white north? It turns out they have a different problem – but the same frustrating results. What’s the problem, eh?
“Nav Canada essentially has discretionary power over the release of information about this issue. That makes it extraordinarily difficult for anyone seeking a greater understanding of these incidents.”
In a detailed investigation by VICE, Sean Holman, an associate professor of journalism at Alberta’s Mount Royal University and a researcher who focuses on Canada’s freedom of information laws, reveals why it’s more difficult to obtain data on UFO encounters by commercial pilots in Canada – its civil air navigation system – air traffic controllers, flight service specialists and technologists – work for the privately run, not for profit corporation Nav Canada. Founded in 1966, it is paid by the Canadian government to run its air traffic control system. Despite the government being its sole customer, Nav Canada is under no obligation to submit to public scrutiny or respond to public requests for information.
Why not ask us?
That doesn’t mean Canadian UFO data doesn’t exist. According to VICE, Canadian aviation regulations and procedures requires pilots over Canada to immediately alert air traffic controllers of “objects or activities that appear to be hostile, suspicious, unidentified, or engaged in possible illegal smuggling activity” and file a Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings (CIRVIS) report. When it receives a CIRVIS, Nav Canada typically informs the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 21 Aerospace Control & Warning Squadron in North Bay, Ontario, which works with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). 21 Aerospace also files a report to Transport Canada, the federal transportation department. That means the military and the government has files on commercial pilot UFO sightings.
And then?
“Despite these notifications, there’s no indication Nav Canada, Transport Canada, or any branch of the Canadian Armed Forces investigates UFOs outside of initial security assessment. That is, as soon as it’s been determined a UFO isn’t something like a Russian fighter jet or a plane full of drugs, Canadian interest seems to officially end.”
Nothing. UFO investigators know that CADORS (the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Report System maintains for the public a digital of airline incidents and contains more than two decades of UFO reports from airlines. Unfortunately, the data is basic, preliminary, and not the final report. Besides, it doesn’t appear that UFO reports are investigated anyway.
“This isn’t an era of conspiracy theories and X-Files anymore. The public should have a right to know.”
Sean Holman doesn’t study UFOs … and it shows. This is definitely an era of conspiracy theories and X-files – otherwise, we’d have disclosure on UFOs … even if it’s to say “We don’t know” about more incidents than just the few in the recent US government report.
Kudos to VICE for exposing this Canadian UFO data problem. Perhaps what Canada needs are some rabble-rousing podcasters like Joe Rogan or some late night talk show hosts to have Nav Canada executives on as guests and taunt them into spilling some beans. That would be fun, eh?
SANTA FE, N.M., Aug. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a preliminary report on possible threats posed by UFOs, now known as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and the progress the Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) has made in understanding any threats. The report provided an overview for policymakers of the challenges associated with characterizing the potential threat posed by UAP while also providing a means to develop relevant processes, policies, technologies, and training for the U.S. military and other U.S. Government (USG) personnel if and when they encounter UAP, so as to enhance the Intelligence Community's (IC) ability to understand the threat.
Dovetailing with the objectives of the ODNI's report, the Genesis 2 Project® (G2P) was established to pursue empirical investigations of forensically-validated UAP recordings and open legitimate questioning into the implications of such technologies on our national security.
Following a briefing of Bill Richardson, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Governor of New Mexico, on its >4-year data collection effort and scientific investigation of UAP, G2P is currently preparing to extend the opportunity for further focused investigation to Senator Marco Rubio, Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to aid in protection of our national security. G2P will be sharing still images and videos of the first scientifically-authenticated documentation of UAPs in U.S. airspace, including those captured with infrared technology.
G2P's bona fide scientific approach to the study of UAP relies on the critical first step of digital media forensic analysis, performed by Primeau Forensics. The scientific analyses are carried out according to the methodological standards outlined by the Scientific Working Group for Digital Evidence (SWGDE) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Chain of custody documentation of the evidence (digital files and the image-capturing devices) is strictly maintained, from intake to extraction and handling of the data.
Moreover, in G2P's ongoing efforts to combat the pseudoscience currently being pushed-forward against a valid empirical scientific approach for UAP, they have expanded their scientific team to include a former NASA physicist and a former FBI Special Agent and Forensic Scientist in the Evidence Response Team Unit at the FBI lab. These world-renowned experts enhance G2P's already strong team of principals and associates in the fields of science, security, and technology. All have signed non-disclosure agreements, recognizing the importance of maintaining focus on the integrity of the information itself, as all have carried secret clearances with DOD and/or DOE.
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow…UAP activity exists among us. G2P's systematic empirical study will help in solidifying the transition of UAP investigation from entertainment to scientific, while advancing our knowledge of physics and promoting forward-thinking ideas that will benefit science and technology.
David C. Henley: What the government says about UFOs
David C. Henley: What the government says about UFOs
By David C Henley
It was Thursday, June 3, and across America and around the world millions of people were anxiously awaiting the release of a major U.S. government report. “Suspense Builds Ahead of Pentagon Report” headlined a front page article in the Washington Times. “Breathless” was the word used by the San Diego Union-Tribune to describe the emotions of many of those waiting for the much-heralded document.
So what were the disclosures found in the report made public seven weeks ago by the Defense Department’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in conjunction with the Office of Naval Intelligence and the FBI? In a nutshell, the report said that there is no conclusive evidence of the existence of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, despite the fact that U.S. military pilots have issued 120 reports of UFO sightings the past several years. As National Public Radio stated, “This could have been the day that finally answered the burning question: Are there aliens out there? Sadly, we’ll still have to wait.” The government report conceded, however, “The very ambiguity of the findings meant the government could not definitely rule out theories that the phenomenon observed by the pilots might be alien spacecraft.” Transplanted into readable English, this means UFOs could, or could not, be flying around in the skies above us. UFO sightings are nothing new. They have been reported for centuries. A CBS News poll released two months ago revealed that 66% of Americans believe there is intelligent life on other planets, an increase of 10 percentage points from a poll taken in 2017. I am one of those who has seen an alien spacecraft, and I also met its four passengers. I previously told no one of my encounter because I figured they might think I had gone bonkers. This column today, then, is my first description of my most-unusual UFO experience that occurred on a cold, rainy and foggy day in January 2002, when I spied the UFO hovering over our house on the southern bank of the Carson River northwest of downtown Fallon. It was about 7 a.m. that morning, and I was en route to our newspaper office on North Maine Street to finish my weekly column that was due that afternoon. As I was backing out of the garage, the UFO landed in front of my car and I came to a quick stop. The UFO was torpedo-shaped, about 30 feet in length, and in a minute or two four women emerged from the craft and waved to me. Too shocked to say anything, I waved back and finally managed to utter a “hello, ladies.” The women were super-friendly, and we shook hands. They appeared to be in the late 20s or early 30s. I didn’t ask their ages because my mother always told me it was impolite to ask a woman how old she is. They were about 7 feet tall, had six fingers on each hand, large round heads, fair complexions, black hair and spoke perfect English with no foreign accent. “Where are you from and what are your names?” I asked. “We are from Galaxy X near the moon and our names are Mae, Fay, Kay and Rae,” responded Mae, the UFO’s pilot. “Why did you stop at my house?” I asked. “Your home looks very pretty and inviting, and it’s on a wide street so we had no trouble parking our craft,” answered Kay. “Why did you come to Fallon,” I then asked. “We’ve heard that Fallon is welcoming to visitors, and we want to go to a big store here to buy lipsticks and blonde hair dye that will make us the only ladies in our galaxy to have red lips and light-colored hair. Where should we go to shop?” continued Kay. I answered that Walmart is the largest store in Fallon, and it carried a large selection of colorful dresses that they also wanted to purchase. The four women wore long, white dresses that resembled wedding gowns which most females in Galaxy X wear, and they said they hoped to look more inviting to the men in their galaxy if they returned home wearing up-to-date American fashions. I told them to park their UFO behind my garage, as I didn’t want it to draw too much attention from the neighbors. The five of us then hopped in my 1998 Ford Explorer and we drove off to Walmart. Once inside, they drew stares from customers and employees, who, nevertheless, were warm and welcoming. The four ladies shopped for more than an hour, buying about a dozen dresses each and enough lipsticks and blonde hair dyes to last several years. Each woman also bought about 20 tubes of toothpaste. “The stuff sold in our stores tastes and smells like kerosene,” Fay said as we piled into the Explorer and drove back to my house. The ladies’ total purchases had come to nearly $1,500, which they paid in bitcoin. When we got home, I asked them to come inside to meet my wife, Ludie, but they said they didn’t have time because they needed to return to Galaxy X immediately to attend a welcome home party. “We also are looking forward to watching our two favorite American TV shows which will air in our spacecraft in a few minutes,” replied May. When I asked her what those shows were, she responded “Bachelor” and “QVC Shopping Show.” Before the women departed, they said they hoped to return someday and bring presents to Ludie and me. We shook hands, they kissed me on the cheek and flew off in their craft heading straight up to the heavens.
David C. Henley is publisher emeritus of the Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle-Standard.
In a report submitted to the United Nations in January 1979, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) classified the objects as "UFOs until identified", but said the "prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote".
The document is one of a large group of declassified documents regarding "Unidentified Flying Objects" at Archives New Zealand, which came from New Zealand's post at the UN between 1977 and 1982.
In the briefing, DSIR debunks one film of the famous event, but has trouble in doing the same with TV1's footage.
What we learned from the United States UFO Report
The United States released a report on UFOs earlier this year.
"Both Crockett's and TV1's films are highly distorted," the briefing reads.
ADVERTISEMEN
"Crockett's film now considered unmeritous because of visual discrepancies produced by filming through an argosy window. DSIR have actually duplicated Crockett's results by shining a torch light onto the plane's window.
"TV1's film proving more interesting as it was a straight shot free of any distortion produced by filming through glass and plastic.
"However, aberrations are apparent in the film which is making it difficult to analyse. DSIR are now converting the film to computer readout and are hopeful that distortions can be erased."
DSIR said atmospheric conditions could explain false radar readings at the time of the sightings, where both Christchurch and Wellington air traffic control registered signals.
They said the readings weren't consistent with the sightings of pilots, or ground sightings.
"DSIR are not willing to make definite statements yet but their conjecture is that the objects filmed will turn out to be no more than general illumination (possibly produced by Jupiter or Venus) on the horizon.
"The objects remain classified as UFOs until identified. Prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote."
UNCREDITED/AP
UFO sightings have received significant media coverage in recent months. This 2015 image from video provided by the US Department of Defense shows anunexplained object as it soars high along the clouds, travelling against the wind.
Other documents show the lobbying New Zealand received from the nation of Grenada, which wanted the United Nations to "initiate, conduct and co-ordinate research into the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects and related phenomena".
New Zealand was chairing the Western European and Other States Group in November, 1978, when Grenada wanted to table their suggestion, and was not too pleased at the suggestion.
"We are disenchanted with Grenada resolution and would hope that the item can be disposed of without vote," one document reads.
"If put to the vote our inclination would be to vote against."
UNSPLASH
A report to the United Nations in 1979 said the "prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote".
Another document said: "A number of countries who were members of the Outer Space Committee (particularly Austria) were unhappy at the proposal. They felt it would damage the Committee's credibility and divert resources from more imporant work."
New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it shared the opinion of the committee.
"The matter is not appropriate for discussion in a United Nations context.
"We would hope, therefore, that the matter would be disposed of without vote.
"If put to the vote a negative vote would be appropriate though the delegation has discretion to abstain in appropriate company."
Grenada eventually pulled its pursuit of an UFO investigations unit in the UN, at the urging of the United Kingdom.
This story was originally published on RNZ.co.nz and is republished with permission.
Telescope Mount Assembly at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction. Credit:Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA(CC BY 4.0)
Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist who doesn’t hesitate to swim in the shark-infested waters of controversy, is proposing a major effort to find aliens in our solar system, perhaps even in our airspace. He has raised $1.7 million in private funding to launch something he calls the Galileo Project, an initiative to bring the rigor of experimental science to ufology.
Loeb’s plan is to use a telescope now under construction, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, to study interstellar objects that come into our solar system. In addition, the project envisions building a network of small telescopes, in groups of two, that can photograph and determine the distance to anything they see in our atmosphere.
Is this project something to be lauded, or laughed at? Although academe may dismiss the Galileo Project as nothing more than pandering to a gullible public, such prejudice is unhelpful and myopic.
Even critics acknowledge that Loeb has credentials and talent. Nonetheless, he is regarded by some in the astronomy community as a knight-errant, tilting at windmills. That’s largely because of his unorthodox views about the object ‘Oumuamua. Roughly the size of a strip mall, ‘Oumuamua was first seen as a dot on a telescope image four years ago. Its orbit tells us that it comes not from the outer reaches of our own solar system, but from somewhere else in the galaxy. While many astronomers say that ‘Oumuamua is either a comet or an asteroid, eroded and encrusted thanks to its lengthy journey through space, Loeb has suggested that it might be a chunk of alien hardware—perhaps a solar sail.
Clearly, that’s a radical hypothesis. It’s also a rebuff to Occam’s razor. The latter would caution against invoking extraterrestrial engineering when more conventional explanations suffice for understanding ‘Oumuamua.
But Loeb stands by his suggestion, and he’s recently weighed in on another puzzle, one produced by the recently released report to Congress about UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena). This study was the result of a bill passed last December instructing government intelligence agencies to put on the table all they know about UAP (also known as UFOs). In particular, the report was to address the experiences of some Navy pilots who’ve seen and photographed mysterious objects in the sky. That report, delivered in late June, said nothing about alien spacecraft (at least not in the publicly released version), but did admit that of 144 intriguing incidents, the intelligence agencies could explain only one.
So, the Galileo Project is stepping in to say “Enough already.” Let’s try and nail down such enticing phenomena with legitimate science.
The public has been whipsawed by these stories. For seven decades, the UFO believers have been belittled by serious scientists for making extraordinary claims without offering any extraordinary evidence. Now a credentialed researcher seems ready to step in to help.
That will cause some folks to roll their eyes and conclude that Loeb has gone over to the dark side. But that’s too easy. The subject is obviously important, and it should be addressed without preconceived notions or opinions based on the poor UFO evidence of the past.
But while it may be tough for Loeb to find support from his peers, those are the very people who should be grateful for his effort. The SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) community, has so far failed to find either a radio or light signal from other star systems. Yes, this type of SETI experiment is getting faster all the time, and its practitioners (including myself) are hopeful that when a substantially larger number of targets has been scrutinized, an unequivocal alien signal will be found.
But an alternative SETI strategy is to search for artifacts that highly advanced societies may have constructed. That’s certainly a legitimate approach to uncovering aliens, and one that doesn’t rely on a signal reaching us just as we’re looking for it. It also takes note of the fact that the universe is three times the age of the Earth. Consequently, there should be intelligence in the galaxy at a level that is millions or billions of years beyond our own. Maybe that intelligence really does have an interest in sending hardware to other star systems.
So, it’s at least possible that we are being visited, and the Galileo Project says it will perform observations to check that out.
Still, the project is a long shot, motivated by phenomena that only a few scientists think are worthy of study. The feeling among most astronomers is that ‘Oumuamua is simply a well-traveled rock. The three tantalizing videos released by the Navy can be understood by invoking aircraft and balloons. And as for that network of telescopes put in place to record extraterrestrial hardware cruising our cluttered skies … well, the 700 orbiting satellites that already surveil our planet haven’t seen anything that humans didn’t put there.
In other words, none of the phenomena that have spurred the Galileo Project is likely to be the handiwork of aliens.
But is that good enough reason to dismiss Loeb’s exercise? In his defense, one must admit that the road less traveled occasionally leads to something interesting.
Loeb has secured private funding and has the intellectual chops to ensure the project’s scientific rigor. Anyone with lesser credentials would have difficulty getting it off the ground.
Free from the banal consideration of tenure, and with a willingness to ignore side-eye from peers, Avi Loeb is able to bet on a dark horse. As a SETI scientist, I’m grateful that he has the freedom, and the guts, to sidestep the barrier of conventional wisdom and boldly go where few would dare to go.
This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Telescope Mount Assembly at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction. Credit:Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA(CC BY 4.0)
Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist who doesn’t hesitate to swim in the shark-infested waters of controversy, is proposing a major effort to find aliens in our solar system, perhaps even in our airspace. He has raised $1.7 million in private funding to launch something he calls the Galileo Project, an initiative to bring the rigor of experimental science to ufology.
Loeb’s plan is to use a telescope now under construction, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, to study interstellar objects that come into our solar system. In addition, the project envisions building a network of small telescopes, in groups of two, that can photograph and determine the distance to anything they see in our atmosphere.
Is this project something to be lauded, or laughed at? Although academe may dismiss the Galileo Project as nothing more than pandering to a gullible public, such prejudice is unhelpful and myopic.
Even critics acknowledge that Loeb has credentials and talent. Nonetheless, he is regarded by some in the astronomy community as a knight-errant, tilting at windmills. That’s largely because of his unorthodox views about the object ‘Oumuamua. Roughly the size of a strip mall, ‘Oumuamua was first seen as a dot on a telescope image four years ago. Its orbit tells us that it comes not from the outer reaches of our own solar system, but from somewhere else in the galaxy. While many astronomers say that ‘Oumuamua is either a comet or an asteroid, eroded and encrusted thanks to its lengthy journey through space, Loeb has suggested that it might be a chunk of alien hardware—perhaps a solar sail.
Clearly, that’s a radical hypothesis. It’s also a rebuff to Occam’s razor. The latter would caution against invoking extraterrestrial engineering when more conventional explanations suffice for understanding ‘Oumuamua.
But Loeb stands by his suggestion, and he’s recently weighed in on another puzzle, one produced by the recently released report to Congress about UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena). This study was the result of a bill passed last December instructing government intelligence agencies to put on the table all they know about UAP (also known as UFOs). In particular, the report was to address the experiences of some Navy pilots who’ve seen and photographed mysterious objects in the sky. That report, delivered in late June, said nothing about alien spacecraft (at least not in the publicly released version), but did admit that of 144 intriguing incidents, the intelligence agencies could explain only one.
So, the Galileo Project is stepping in to say “Enough already.” Let’s try and nail down such enticing phenomena with legitimate science.
The public has been whipsawed by these stories. For seven decades, the UFO believers have been belittled by serious scientists for making extraordinary claims without offering any extraordinary evidence. Now a credentialed researcher seems ready to step in to help.
That will cause some folks to roll their eyes and conclude that Loeb has gone over to the dark side. But that’s too easy. The subject is obviously important, and it should be addressed without preconceived notions or opinions based on the poor UFO evidence of the past.
But while it may be tough for Loeb to find support from his peers, those are the very people who should be grateful for his effort. The SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) community, has so far failed to find either a radio or light signal from other star systems. Yes, this type of SETI experiment is getting faster all the time, and its practitioners (including myself) are hopeful that when a substantially larger number of targets has been scrutinized, an unequivocal alien signal will be found.
But an alternative SETI strategy is to search for artifacts that highly advanced societies may have constructed. That’s certainly a legitimate approach to uncovering aliens, and one that doesn’t rely on a signal reaching us just as we’re looking for it. It also takes note of the fact that the universe is three times the age of the Earth. Consequently, there should be intelligence in the galaxy at a level that is millions or billions of years beyond our own. Maybe that intelligence really does have an interest in sending hardware to other star systems.
So, it’s at least possible that we are being visited, and the Galileo Project says it will perform observations to check that out.
Still, the project is a long shot, motivated by phenomena that only a few scientists think are worthy of study. The feeling among most astronomers is that ‘Oumuamua is simply a well-traveled rock. The three tantalizing videos released by the Navy can be understood by invoking aircraft and balloons. And as for that network of telescopes put in place to record extraterrestrial hardware cruising our cluttered skies … well, the 700 orbiting satellites that already surveil our planet haven’t seen anything that humans didn’t put there.
In other words, none of the phenomena that have spurred the Galileo Project is likely to be the handiwork of aliens.
But is that good enough reason to dismiss Loeb’s exercise? In his defense, one must admit that the road less traveled occasionally leads to something interesting.
Loeb has secured private funding and has the intellectual chops to ensure the project’s scientific rigor. Anyone with lesser credentials would have difficulty getting it off the ground.
Free from the banal consideration of tenure, and with a willingness to ignore side-eye from peers, Avi Loeb is able to bet on a dark horse. As a SETI scientist, I’m grateful that he has the freedom, and the guts, to sidestep the barrier of conventional wisdom and boldly go where few would dare to go.
This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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