Unidentified Flying Object (UFO)
An unidentified flying
object, or UFO,
in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not
identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated
with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or
government-related conspiracy theories,
and have become popular subjects in fiction. UFOs are often identified after
their sighting. Sometimes, however, UFOs cannot be identified because of the
low quality of evidence related to their sightings.
Stories
of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the
term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by
the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as
a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated
that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance,
aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any
presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively
identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially
restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation,
as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or
"technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2).
During
the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as
"flying
saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more
widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in
popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era
associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies
have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national
security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel,
USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).
Terminology
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as
"An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first
published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe.
The
acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt,
who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs.
He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied
to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military
prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects.
UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other
phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include
"flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs",
"unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer".
The
phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the
summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing
nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier.
Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over
1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape
as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of
"flying saucers" and "flying discs".
In
popular usage, the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft.[1] and because of the
public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer
to use such terms as unidentified
aerial phenomenon (or UAP)
or anomalous
phenomena, as
in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena
(NARCAP).
Studies
Studies
have established that the majority of UFO observations are misidentified
conventional objects or natural phenomena—most commonly aircraft, balloons, noctilucent clouds, nacreous clouds, or astronomical objects such as meteors or bright planets
with a small percentage even being hoaxes. Between
5% and 20% of reported sightings are not explained, and therefore can be
classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. While proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) suggest that
these unexplained reports are of alien spacecraft, the null hypothesis cannot be excluded
that these reports are simply other more prosaic phenomena that cannot be
identified due to lack of complete information or due to the necessary
subjectivity of the reports.
While
UFOs have been the subject of extensive investigation by various governments
and although a few scientists have supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis,
almost no scientific papers about UFOs have been published in peer-reviewed
journals. There
was, in the past, some debate in the scientific
community about
whether any scientific investigation into UFO sightings is warranted with the
general conclusion being that the phenomenon was not worthy of serious
investigation beyond a cultural artifact.
The
void left by the lack of institutional scientific study has given rise to
independent researchers and groups, including the National Investigations
Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)
in the mid-20th century and, more recently, the Mutual
UFO Network (MUFON) and the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). The term "Ufology" is
used to describe the collective efforts of those who study reports and
associated evidence of unidentified flying objects.
UFOs
have become a prevalent theme in modern culture, and the social
phenomena have been the subject of academic research in sociology and
psychology.
Early history
Unexplained
aerial observations have been reported throughout history. Some were
undoubtedly astronomical in nature: comets, bright meteors, one or more of the
five planets that can be seen with the naked eye, planetary conjunctions, or
atmospheric optical
phenomena such
as parhelia and lenticular clouds.
An example is Halley's Comet,
which was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early
as 467 BC. Such sightings throughout history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. Some current-day UFO researchers have
noticed similarities between some religious symbols in medieval paintings and
UFO reports though
the canonical and symbolic character of such images is documented by art
historians placing more conventional religious interpretations on such images.
·
On January 25,
1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article
in which John Martin, a local farmer, had reported seeing a large, dark,
circular object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed."
Martin, according to the newspaper account, said it appeared to be about the
size of a saucer, the first known use of the word "saucer" in
association with a UFO.
·
In April 1897,
thousands of people reported seeing "airships" in
various parts of the United States. Many signed affidavits. Scores of people
even reported talking to the pilots. Thomas Edison was asked his
opinion, and said, "You can take it from me that it is a pure fake."[22][23]
·
On February 28,
1904, there was a sighting by three crew members on the USS Supply 300 miles
(483 km) west of San Francisco, reported by Lieutenant Frank Schofield, later to become Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Battle Fleet.
Schofield wrote of three bright red egg-shaped and circular objects flying in echelon formation that approached
beneath the cloud layer, then changed course and "soared" above the
clouds, departing directly away from the earth after two to three minutes. The
largest had an apparent size of about six Suns, he said.
·
The three earliest
known pilot UFO sightings, of 1,305 similar sitings cataloged by NARCAP, took
place in 1916 and 1926. On January 31, 1916, a UK pilot near Rochford reported a row of
lights, resembling lighted windows on a railway carriage, that rose and disappeared.
In January 1926 a pilot reported six "flying manhole covers" between Wichita, Kansas, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. In late September 1926 an
airmail pilot over Nevada said he had been
forced to land by a huge, wingless, cylindrical object.
·
On August 5, 1926,
while traveling in the Humboldt Mountains of Tibet's Kokonor region, Russian
explorer Nicholas Roerich reported, members
of his expedition saw "something big and shiny reflecting the sun, like a
huge oval moving at great speed. Crossing our camp the thing changed in its
direction from south to southwest. And we saw how it disappeared in the intense
blue sky. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly
an oval form with shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant from the
sun."[ Another description
by Roerich was of a "shiny body flying from north to south. Field glasses
are at hand. It is a huge body. One side glows in the sun. It is oval in shape.
Then it somehow turns in another direction and disappears in the
southwest."[
·
In the Pacific and
European theatres during World War II, "foo fighters"
(metallic spheres, balls of light and other shapes that followed aircraft) were
reported and on occasion photographed by Allied and Axis pilots. Some proposed
Allied explanations at the time included St. Elmo's fire, the
planet Venus, hallucinations from oxygen deprivation,
or German secret weapons.
·
In 1946, more than
2,000 reports were collected, primarily by the Swedish military, of
unidentified aerial objects over the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated
reports from France, Portugal, Italy and Greece. The objects were referred to
as "Russian hail" and later as "ghost rockets"
because it was thought that the mysterious objects were possibly Russian tests
of captured German V1 or V2 rockets. Although
most were thought to be such natural phenomena as meteors, more than 200 were
tracked on radar by the Swedish military and deemed to be "real physical
objects." In a 1948 top secret document,
Swedish authorities advised the USAF Europe that some of their investigators
believed these craft to be extraterrestrial in origin.
Investigations
UFOs
have been subject to investigations over the years that varied widely in scope
and scientific rigor. Governments or independent academics in the United
States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Peru, France, Belgium, Sweden,
Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union are known to have
investigated UFO reports at various times.
Among
the best known government studies are the ghost rockets investigation by the
Swedish military (1946–1947), Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge,
conducted by the USAF from 1947 until 1969, the secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project
Twinkle investigation
into green fireballs (1948–1951), the
secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle Memorial Institute, and the Brazilian
Air Force's 1977 Operação
Prato (Operation
Saucer). France has had an ongoing investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN) within its
space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) since 1977;
the government
of Uruguay has
had a similar investigation since 1989.
Project Sign
Project
Sign in 1948 produced a highly classified finding (see Estimate of the Situation) that the best UFO reports
probably had an extraterrestrial explanation. A top secret Swedish military
opinion given to the USAF in 1948 stated that some of their analysts believed
that the 1946 ghost rockets and later flying saucers had extraterrestrial
origins. (For document, see Ghost
rockets.) In 1954 German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth revealed that an
internal West German government
investigation, which he headed, had arrived at an extraterrestrial conclusion,
but this study was never made public.
Project Grudge
Project
Sign was dismantled and became Project Grudge at the end of 1948. Angered by
the low quality of investigations by Grudge, the Air Force Director of
Intelligence reorganized it as Project Blue Book in late 1951, placing Ruppelt
in charge. Blue Book closed down in 1970, using the Condon Committee's negative
conclusion as a rationale, thus ending official Air Force UFO investigations.
However, a 1969 USAF document, known as the Bolender memo, along with later
government documents, revealed that non-public U.S. government UFO investigations
continued after 1970. The Bolender memo first stated that "reports of
unidentified flying objects that could affect national security ... are
not part of the Blue Book system," indicating that more serious UFO
incidents already were handled outside the public Blue Book investigation. The
memo then added, "reports of UFOs which could affect national security
would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed
for this purpose."[ In addition, in the
late 1960s a chapter on UFOs in the Space Sciences course at the U.S. Air Force Academy gave serious
consideration to possible extraterrestrial origins. When word of the curriculum
became public, the Air Force in 1970 issued a statement to the effect that the
book was outdated and that cadets instead were being informed of the Condon Report's
negative conclusion.
USAF Regulation 200-2
Air Force Regulation 200-2, issued in 1953 and
1954, defined an Unidentified Flying Object ("UFOB") as "any
airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual
features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or
which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." The
regulation also said UFOBs were to be investigated as a "possible threat
to the security of the United States" and "to determine technical aspects
involved." The regulation went on to say that "it is permissible to
inform news media representatives on UFOB's when the object is positively
identified as a familiar object," but added: "For those objects which
are not explainable, only the fact that ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence
Center] will analyze the data is worthy of release, due to many unknowns
involved."
Project Blue Book
J. Allen Hynek, a
trained astronomer who served as a scientific advisor for Project Blue Book,
was initially skeptical of UFO reports, but eventually came to the conclusion
that many of them could not be satisfactorily explained and was highly critical
of what he described as "the cavalier disregard by Project Blue Book of
the principles of scientific investigation."[ Leaving government
work, he founded the privately funded CUFOS, to whose work he devoted the rest
of his life. Other private groups studying the phenomenon include the MUFON, a
grass roots organization whose investigator's handbooks go into great detail on
the documentation of alleged UFO sightings.
Like
Hynek, Jacques Vallée, a
scientist and prominent UFO researcher, has pointed to what he believes is the
scientific deficiency of most UFO research, including government studies. He
complains of the mythology and cultism often associated with the phenomenon,
but alleges that several hundred professional scientists—a group both he and
Hynek have termed "the invisible college"—continue to study UFOs in
private.
Scientific studies
The
study of UFOs has received little support in mainstream scientific literature.
Official studies ended in the U.S. in December 1969, following the statement by
the government scientist Edward Condon that further study
of UFOs could not be justified on grounds of scientific advancement. The Condon Report
and its conclusions were endorsed by the National Academy of Scientists, of
which Condon was a member. On the other hand, a scientific review by the UFO subcommittee
of the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
disagreed with Condon's conclusion, noting that at least 30 percent of the
cases studied remained unexplained and that scientific benefit might be gained
by continued study.
Critics
argue that all UFO evidence is anecdotal and
can be explained as prosaic natural phenomena. Defenders of UFO research
counter that knowledge of observational data, other than what is reported in
the popular media, is limited in the scientific community and that further
study is needed.
No
official government investigation has ever publicly concluded that UFOs are
indisputably real, physical objects, extraterrestrial in origin, or of concern
to national defense. These same negative conclusions also have been found in
studies that were highly classified for many years, such as the UK's Flying Saucer Working Party, Project Condign, the
U.S. CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel, the U.S. military investigation into the
green fireballs from 1948 to 1951, and the Battelle Memorial Institute study
for the USAF from 1952 to 1955 (Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14).
Some
public government reports have acknowledged the possibility of physical reality
of UFOs, but have stopped short of proposing extraterrestrial origins, though
not dismissing the possibility entirely. Examples are the Belgian military
investigation into large triangles over their
airspace in
1989–1991 and the 2009 Uruguayan
Air Force study
conclusion (see below).
Some
private studies have been neutral in their conclusions, but argued that the
inexplicable core cases call for continued scientific study. Examples are the
Sturrock panel study of 1998 and the 1970 AIAA review of the Condon Report.
United States
U.S.
investigations into UFOs include:
·
The Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU), established
by the U.S. Army sometime in the 1940s, and about which little is known. In
1987, British UFO researcher Timothy Good received from the Army's director of
counter-intelligence a letter confirming the existence of the IPU. The letter
stated that "the aforementioned Army unit was disestablished during the
late 1950s and never reactivated. All records pertaining to this unit were
surrendered to the U.S. Air Force Office of Special
Investigations in
conjunction with operation BLUEBOOK." The IPU records have never been
released.
·
Project Blue Book,
previously Project Sign and Project Grudge, conducted by the USAF from 1947
until 1969
·
The secret U.S.
Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951)
·
Ghost rockets
investigations by the Swedish, UK, U.S., and Greek militaries (1946–1947)
·
The secret CIA
Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I) study (1952–53)
·
The secret CIA
Robertson Panel (1953)
·
The secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle
Memorial Institute (1951–1954)
·
The Brookings Report (1960), commissioned
by NASA
·
The public Condon
Committee (1966–1968)
·
The private,
internal RAND Corporation study (1968)
·
The private
Sturrock panel (1998)
Thousands
of documents released under FOIA also
indicate that many U.S. intelligence agencies collected (and still collect)
information on UFOs. These agencies include the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), as well as
military intelligence agencies of the Army and U.S.
Navy, in addition to the Air Force.
The
investigation of UFOs has also attracted many civilians, who in the U.S formed
research groups such as NICAP (active 1956–1980), Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) (active
1952–1988), MUFON (active 1969–), and CUFOS (active 1973–).
In
November 2011, the White House released an
official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge
formally that aliens have visited this planet and to disclose any intentional
withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According
to the response, "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists
outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or
engaged any member of the human race." Also, according to
the response, there is "no credible information to suggest that any
evidence is being hidden from the public's eye." The response
further noted that efforts, like SETI and
NASA's Kepler space telescope and Mars Science Laboratory, continue looking for signs of life. The response noted "odds
are pretty high" that there may be life on other planets but "the
odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the
distances involved."
Post-1947 sightings
Following
the large U.S. surge in sightings in June and early July 1947, on July 9, 1947, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF)
intelligence, in cooperation with the FBI, began a formal
investigation into selected sightings with characteristics that could not be
immediately rationalized, which included Kenneth Arnold's and that of the
United Airlines crew. The USAAF used "all of its top scientists" to
determine whether "such a phenomenon could, in fact, occur." The
research was "being conducted with the thought that the flying objects
might be a celestial phenomenon," or that "they might be a foreign
body mechanically devised and controlled."[43] Three weeks later
in a preliminary defense estimate, the air force investigation decided that,
"This 'flying saucer' situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in
some natural phenomenon. Something is really flying around."[
A
further review by the intelligence and technical divisions of the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field reached
the same conclusion. It reported that "the phenomenon is something real
and not visionary or fictitious," that there were objects in the shape of
a disc, metallic in appearance, and as big as man-made aircraft. They were
characterized by "extreme rates of climb [and] maneuverability,"
general lack of noise, absence of trail, occasional formation flying, and
"evasive" behavior "when sighted or contacted by friendly
aircraft and radar," suggesting a controlled craft. It was therefore
recommended in late September 1947 that an official Air Force investigation be
set up to investigate the phenomenon. It was also recommended that other
government agencies should assist in the investigation.
Project Sign
This
led to the creation of the Air Force's Project Sign at the end of 1947, one of
the earliest government studies to come to a secret extraterrestrial
conclusion. In August 1948, Sign investigators wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect, but
the Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg ordered it
destroyed. The existence of this suppressed report was revealed by several
insiders who had read it, such as astronomer and USAF consultant J. Allen Hynek
and Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of the USAF's Project Blue Book.
Another
highly classified U.S. study was conducted by the CIA's Office of Scientific
Investigation (OS/I) in the latter half of 1952 in response to orders from the National Security Council (NSC). This study
concluded UFOs were real physical objects of potential threat to national
security. One OS/I memo to the CIA Director (DCI) in December read:
the
reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must
have immediate attention ... Sightings of unexplained objects at great
altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense
installations are of such a nature that they are not attributable to natural
phenomena or any known types of aerial vehicles.
The
matter was considered so urgent that OS/I drafted a memorandum from the DCI to
the NSC proposing that the NSC establish an investigation of UFOs as a priority
project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development
community. It also urged the DCI to establish an external research project of
top-level scientists, now known as the Robertson Panel to analyze the problem
of UFOs. The OS/I investigation was called off after the Robertson Panel's
negative conclusions in January 1953.
The Condon Committee
Main article: Condon Committee
A
public research effort conducted by the Condon Committee for the USAF, which
arrived at a negative conclusion in 1968, marked the end of the U.S.
government's official investigation of UFOs, though various government
intelligence agencies continue unofficially to investigate or monitor the
situation.
Controversy
has surrounded the Condon Report, both before and after it was released. It has
been observed that the report was "harshly criticized by numerous
scientists, particularly at the powerful AIAA ... [which] recommended
moderate, but continuous scientific work on UFOs."[ In an address to
the AAAS, James E. McDonald stated that he
believed science had failed to mount adequate studies of the problem and
criticized the Condon Report and earlier studies by the USAF as scientifically
deficient. He also questioned the basis for Condon's conclusions and argued that the
reports of UFOs have been "laughed out of scientific court." J. Allen
Hynek, an astronomer who worked as a USAF consultant from 1948, sharply
criticized the Condon Committee Report and later wrote two nontechnical books
that set forth the case for continuing to investigate UFO reports.
Ruppelt
recounted his experiences with Project Blue Book, a USAF investigation that
preceded Condon's.
Notable cases
·
The Roswell
UFO incident (1947)
involved New Mexico residents, local
law enforcement officers, and the U.S. military, the latter of whom allegedly
collected physical evidence from the UFO crash site.
·
The Mantell
UFO incident January
7, 1948
·
The Betty and Barney Hill abduction (1961) was the
first reported abduction incident.
·
In the Kecksburg UFO incident, Pennsylvania (1965),
residents reported seeing a bell shaped object crash in the area. Police
officers, and possibly military personnel, were sent to investigate.
·
The Travis Walton abduction
case (1975): The movie Fire in the Sky (1993) was based on
this event, but embellished greatly the original account.
·
The "Phoenix Lights"
March 13, 1997
·
2006 O'Hare International Airport UFO sighting
Canada
In
Canada, the Department of National Defence has dealt with
reports, sightings and investigations of UFOs across Canada. In addition to
conducting investigations into crop circles in Duhamel, Alberta, it
still considers "unsolved" the Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba and
the Shag Harbour UFO incident in Nova Scotia.
Early
Canadian studies included Project Magnet (1950–1954) and Project Second Storey (1952–1954),
supported by the Defence Research Board.
France
On
March 2007, the French space agency CNES published an archive of UFO sightings
and other phenomena online.
French
studies include GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN (1977–), within CNES (French
space agency), the longest ongoing government-sponsored investigation. About
22% of 6000 cases studied remain unexplained. The official
opinion of GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN has been neutral, stating on their FAQ page
that their mission is fact-finding for the scientific community, not rendering
an opinion. They add they can neither prove nor disprove the Exterrestrial
Hypothesis (ETH), but their Steering Committee's clear position is that they
cannot discard the possibility that some fraction of the very strange 22% of
unexplained cases might be due to distant and advanced civilizations. Possibly their bias
may be indicated by their use of the terms "PAN" (French) or
"UAP" (English equivalent) for "Unidentified Aerospace Phenomenon"
(whereas "UAP" as normally used by English organizations stands for
"Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon", a
more neutral term). In addition, the three heads of the studies have gone on
record in stating that UFOs were real physical flying machines beyond our
knowledge or that the best explanation for the most inexplicable cases was an
extraterrestrial one.
In
2008, Michel Scheller, president of the Association Aéronautique et
Astronautique de France (3AF),
created the Sigma Commission. Its purpose was to investigate UFO phenomenon
worldwide. A
progress report published in May 2010 stated that the central hypothesis proposed
by the COMETA report is perfectly
credible. In
December 2012, the final report of the Sigma Commission was submitted to
Scheller. Following the submission of the final report, the Sigma2 Commission
is to be formed with a mandate to continue the scientific investigation of UFO
phenomenon.
The
most notable cases of UFO sightings in France include the Valensole UFO incident in 1965, and the Trans-en-Provence Case in 1981.
United Kingdom
The
UK's Flying Saucer Working Party published its final
report in June 1951, which remained secret for over 50 years. The Working Party
concluded that all UFO sightings could be explained as misidentifications of
ordinary objects or phenomena, optical illusions, psychological
misperceptions/aberrations, or hoaxes. The report stated: "We accordingly
recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious
aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes
available."[
Eight
file collections on UFO sightings, dating from 1978 to 1987, were first
released on May 14, 2008, to The National Archives by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Although kept secret
from the public for many years, most of the files have low levels of
classification and none are classified Top Secret. 200 files are set to be made
public by 2012. The files are correspondence from the public sent to the
British government and officials, such as the MoD and Margaret Thatcher.
The MoD released the files under the Freedom of Information Act due to requests
from researchers. These
files include, but are not limited to, UFOs over Liverpool and the Waterloo Bridge in London.
On
October 20, 2008, more UFO files were released. One case released detailed that
in 1991 an Alitalia passenger aircraft was approaching London Heathrow Airport when the pilots saw
what they described as a "cruise missile"
fly extremely close to the cockpit. The pilots believed that a collision was
imminent. UFO expert David Clarke says that this is one of the most convincing
cases for a UFO he has come across.
A
secret study of UFOs was undertaken for the Ministry of Defence between 1996
and 2000 and was code-named Project Condign. The resulting report, titled
"Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Defence Region", was
publicly released in 2006, but the identity and credentials of whomever
constituted Project Condign remains classified. The report confirmed earlier
findings that the main causes of UFO sightings are misidentification of
man-made and natural objects. The report noted: "No artefacts of unknown
or unexplained origin have been reported or handed to the UK authorities,
despite thousands of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reports. There are no SIGINT, ELINT or radiation
measurements and little useful video or still IMINT."
It concluded: "There is no evidence that any UAP, seen in the UKADR [UK
Air Defence Region], are incursions by air-objects of any intelligent
(extraterrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile
intent." A little-discussed conclusion of the report was that novel meteorological
plasma phenomenon akin to ball lightning are responsible for
"the majority, if not all" of otherwise inexplicable sightings,
especially reports of black
triangle UFOs.
On
December 1, 2009, the Ministry of Defence quietly closed down its UFO
investigations unit. The unit's hotline and email address were suspended by the
MoD on that date. The MoD said there was no value in continuing to receive and
investigate sightings in a release, stating
in
over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat
to the United Kingdom. The MoD has no specific capability for identifying the
nature of such sightings. There is no Defence benefit in such investigation and
it would be an inappropriate use of defence resources. Furthermore, responding
to reported UFO sightings diverts MoD resources from tasks that are relevant to
Defence."
The Guardian reported that the
MoD claimed the closure would save the Ministry around £50,000 a year. The MoD
said that it would continue to release UFO files to the public through The
National Archives.
Notable cases
According
to records released on August 5, 2010, British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill banned the
reporting for 50 years of an alleged UFO incident because of fears it could create
mass panic. Reports given to Churchill asserted that the incident involved a Royal Air Force (RAF)
reconnaissance aircraft returning from a mission in France or Germany toward
the end of World War II. It was
over or near the English coastline when it was allegedly intercepted by a
strange metallic object that matched the aircraft's course and speed for a time
before accelerating away and disappearing. The aircraft's crew were reported to
have photographed the object, which they said had "hovered
noiselessly" near the aircraft, before moving off. According to the
documents, details of the coverup emerged when a man wrote to the government in
1999 seeking to find out more about the incident and described how his
grandfather, who had served with the RAF in the war, was present when Churchill
and U.S. General Dwight
D. Eisenhower discussed
how to deal with the UFO encounter. The
files come from more than 5,000 pages of UFO reports, letters and drawings from
members of the public, as well as questions raised in Parliament. They are
available to download from The National Archives website.
In
the April 1957 West
Freugh incident in
Scotland, named after the principal military base involved, two unidentified
objects flying high over the UK were tracked by radar operators. The objects
were reported to operate at speeds and perform maneuvers beyond the capability
of any known craft. Also significant is their alleged size, which – based
on the radar returns – was closer to that of a ship than an aircraft.
In
the Rendlesham Forest incident of December 1980,
U.S. military personnel witnessed UFOs near the air base at Woodbridge,
Suffolk, over a period of three nights. On one night the deputy base commander,
Colonel Charles I. Halt, and
other personnel followed one or more UFOs that were moving in and above the
forest for several hours. Col. Halt made an audio recording while this was
happening and subsequently wrote an official memorandum summarizing the
incident. After retirement from the military, he said that he had deliberately
downplayed the event (officially termed 'Unexplained Lights') to avoid damaging
his career. Other base personnel are said to have observed one of the UFOs,
which had landed in the forest, and even gone up to and touched it.
Italy
According
to some Italian ufologists, the first documented case of a UFO sighting in Italy dates back to April
11, 1933, to Varese. Documents of
the time show that an alleged UFO crashed or landed near Vergiate. Following
this, Benito Mussolini created a secret
group to look at it, called Cabinet RS/33.
Alleged
UFO sightings gradually increased since the war, peaking in 1978 and 2005. The
total number of sightings since 1947 are 18,500, of which 90% are identifiable.
In
2000, Italian ufologist Roberto Pinotti published material
regarding the so-called "Fascist UFO Files", which dealt with a
flying saucer that had crashed near Milan in
1933 (some 14 years before the Roswell,
New Mexico, crash), and of the subsequent investigation by a never
mentioned before Cabinet RS/33, that allegedly was authorized by Benito Mussolini,
and headed by the Nobel scientist Guglielmo Marconi. A
spaceship was allegedly stored in the hangars of the SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate
near Milan.
Julius Obsequens was a Roman writer who is
believed to have lived in the middle of the fourth century AD. The only work
associated with his name is the Liber
de prodigiis (Book
of Prodigies), completely extracted from an epitome, or abridgment, written by Livy; De
prodigiis was
constructed as an account of the wonders and portents that occurred in Rome between
249 BC-12 BC. An aspect of Obsequens' work that has inspired much interest in
some circles is that references are made to things moving through the sky.
These have been interpreted as reports of UFOs, but may just as well describe
meteors, and, since Obsequens, probably, writes in the 4th century, that is,
some 400 years after the events he describes, they hardly qualify as
eye-witness accounts.
Notable cases
·
A UFO sighting in Florence, October
28, 1954, followed by a fall of angel hair.
·
In 1973, an Alitalia airplane
left Rome for Naples sighted a mysterious
round object. Two Italian Air Force planes from Ciampino confirmed the
sighting. In
the same year there was another sighting at Caselle airport near Turin.
·
In 1978, two young
hikers, while walking on Monte Musinè near Turin, saw a bright light; one of them
temporarily disappeared and, after a while, was found in a state of shock and
with a noticeable scald on one leg. After
regaining consciousness, he reported having seen an elongated vehicle and that
some strangely shaped beings descended from it. Both the young hikers suffered
from conjunctivitis for some time.
·
A close encounter reported in
September 1978 in Torrita di Siena in the Province of Siena. A
young motorist saw in front of him a bright object, two beings of small stature
who wore suits and helmets, the two approached the car, and after watching it
carefully went back and rose again to the UFO. A boy who lived with his family
in a country house not far from there said he had seen at the same time "a
kind of small reddish sun".
·
Yet in 1978, there
has been also the story of Pier Fortunato Zanfretta, the best known and most
controversial case of an Italian alleged alien abduction.
Zanfretta said to have been kidnapped on the night of 6 December and 7 December
while he was performing his job at Marzano, in the
municipality of Torriglia in the Province of Genoa.
Uruguay
The Uruguayan
Air Force has
conducted UFO investigations since 1989 and reportedly analyzed 2,100 cases of
which they regard approximately 2% as lacking explanation.
Astronomer reports
The
USAF's Project Blue Book files indicate that approximately 1% of all unknown
reports came from amateur and professional astronomers or other users of
telescopes (such as missile trackers or surveyors). In 1952, astronomer J.
Allen Hynek, then a consultant to Blue Book, conducted a small survey of 45
fellow professional astronomers. Five reported UFO sightings (about 11%). In
the 1970s, astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock conducted two large
surveys of the AIAA and American Astronomical Society (AAS). About 5% of
the members polled indicated that they had had UFO sightings.
Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who
admitted to six UFO sightings, including three green fireballs, supported the
Extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs and stated he thought scientists who
dismissed it without study were being "unscientific." Another
astronomer was Lincoln LaPaz, who
had headed the Air Force's investigation into the green fireballs and other UFO
phenomena in New Mexico. LaPaz reported two personal sightings, one of a green
fireball, the other of an anomalous disc-like object. (Both Tombaugh and LaPaz
were part of Hynek's 1952 survey.) Hynek himself took two photos through the
window of a commercial airliner of a disc-like object that seemed to pace his
aircraft.
In
1980, a survey of 1800 members of various amateur astronomer associations by
Gert Helb and Hynek for CUFOS found that 24% responded "yes" to the
question "Have you ever observed an object which resisted your most
exhaustive efforts at identification?"
Claims of increase in reports
MUFON
reports that UFO sightings to their offices have increased by 67% in the
previous three years as of 2011. According to MUFON international director
Clifford Clift in 2011, "Over the past year, we've been averaging 500
sighting reports a month, compared to about 300 three years ago [67
percent],".
According
to the annual survey of reports conducted by Canadian-based UFO research group
Ufology Research, reported UFO sightings doubled in Canada between 2011 and 2012.
In
2013 the Peruvian government's Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos
Aéreos Anómalos (Anomalous Aerial Phenomena Research Department), or
"DIFAA", was officially reactivated due to an increase in reported
sightings. According to Colonel Julio Vucetich, head of the air force's
aerospace interests division who himself claims to have seen an "anomalous
aerial object", "On a personal basis, it's evident to me that we are
not alone in this world or universe."
In
contrast, according to the UK-based Association for the Scientific
Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP),
reports of sightings in Britain to their office have declined by 96% since
1988.
Identification of UFOs
Fata Morgana, a type of mirage in which objects
located below the astronomical horizon appear to be
hovering in the sky just above the horizon, may be responsible for some UFO
sightings. (Here, the shape floating above the horizon is the reflected image
of a boat.) Fata Morgana can also distort the appearance of distant objects,
sometimes making them unrecognizable.
Studies
show that after careful investigation, the majority of UFOs can be identified
as ordinary objects or phenomena. The most commonly found identified sources of
UFO reports are:
·
Astronomical
objects (bright stars, planets, meteors, re-entering man-made spacecraft, artificial satellites,
and the Moon)
·
Aircraft (aerial
advertising and
other aircraft, missile launches)
·
Balloons (toy
balloons, weather balloons,
large research balloons)
·
Other atmospheric
objects and phenomena (birds, unusual clouds, kites, flares)
·
Light phenomena mirages, Fata Morgana, ball lightning, moon dogs, searchlights and other ground
lights, etc.
·
Hoaxes
A
1952–1955 study by
the Battelle Memorial Institute for the USAF included these categories as well
as a "psychological" one.
An
individual 1979 study by CUFOS researcher Allan Hendry found, as did other
investigations, that only a small percentage of cases he investigated were
hoaxes (<1 %) and that most sightings were actually honest
misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Hendry attributed most of these to
inexperience or misperception.
Claims by military, government, and aviation personnel
Since
2001 there have been calls for greater openness on the part of the government
by various persons. In May 2001, a press conference was held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., by
an organization called the Disclosure Project,
featuring twenty persons including retired Air Force and FAA personnel,
intelligence officers and an air traffic controller. They all gave a
brief account of what they knew or had witnessed, and stated that they would be
willing to testify to what they had said under oath to a Congressional
committee. According to a 2002 report in the Oregon Daily Emerald,
Disclosure Project founder Steven M. Greer has gathered 120
hours of testimony from various government officials on the topic of UFO's,
including astronaut Gordon Cooper and a Brigadier
General.
In
2007, former Arizona governor Fife Symington came forward and
admitted that he had seen "a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigate
over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona" in 1997.
On
September 27, 2010, a group of six former USAF officers and one former enlisted
Air Force man held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington,
D.C., on the theme "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by
Unidentified Aerial Objects."[ They told how they had
witnessed UFOs hovering near missile sites and even disarming the missiles.
From
April 29 to May 3, 2013, the Paradigm Research Group held the "Citizen
Hearing on Disclosure" at the National Press Club. The group paid former
U.S. Senator Mike Gravel and former
Representatives Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Roscoe Bartlett, Merrill Cook, Darlene Hooley, and Lynn Woolsey $20,000 each to
hear testimony from a panel of researchers which included witnesses from
military, agency, and political backgrounds.
Apollo
14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell claimed that he
knew of senior government employees who had been involved in "close
encounters" and because of this he has no doubt that aliens have visited
Earth.
Extraterrestrial hypothesis
While
technically a UFO refers to any unidentified
flying object, in modern popular culture the term UFO has generally become
synonymous with alien spacecraft; however, the term
ETV (ExtraTerrestrial Vehicle) is sometimes used to separate this explanation
of UFOs from totally earthbound explanations.
Associated claims
Besides
anecdotal visual sightings, reports sometimes include claims of other kinds of
evidence, including cases studied by the military and various government
agencies of different countries (such as Project Blue Book, the Condon
Committee, the French GEPAN/SEPRA, and
Uruguay's current Air Force study).
A
comprehensive scientific review of cases where physical evidence was available
was carried out by the 1998 Sturrock panel, with specific examples of many of
the categories listed below.
·
Radar contact and
tracking, sometimes from multiple sites. These have included military personnel
and control tower operators, simultaneous visual sightings, and aircraft
intercepts. One such example were the mass sightings of large, silent,
low-flying black triangles in 1989 and 1990 over Belgium, tracked by NATO radar
and jet interceptors, and investigated by Belgium's military (included
photographic evidence). Another
famous case from 1986 was the Japan Air Lines flight 1628 incident over Alaska investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
·
Photographic
evidence, including still photos, movie film, and video.
·
Claims of physical
trace of landing UFOs, including ground impressions, burned or desiccated soil,
burned and broken foliage, magnetic anomalies increased
radiation levels, and metallic traces. (See, e. g. Height 611 UFO incident or the 1964 Lonnie Zamora's Socorro,
New Mexico encounter
of the USAF Project Blue Book cases.) A well-known example from December 1980
was the USAF Rendlesham Forest incident in England. Another occurred in January
1981 in Trans-en-Provence and was investigated by GEPAN, then France's official
government UFO-investigation agency. Project Blue Book head Edward J. Ruppelt
described a classic 1952 CE2 case involving a patch of charred grass roots.
·
Physiological
effects on people and animals including temporary paralysis, skin burns and
rashes, corneal burns, and symptoms
superficially resembling radiation poisoning, such as the Cash-Landrum incident in 1980.
·
Animal/cattle mutilation cases, that some
feel are also part of the UFO phenomenon.
·
Biological effects
on plants such as increased or decreased growth, germination effects on seeds,
and blown-out stem nodes (usually associated with physical trace cases or crop circles)
·
Electromagnetic interference (EM) effects. A
famous 1976 military case over Tehran, recorded in
CIA and DIA classified documents, was associated with communication losses in
multiple aircraft and weapons system failure in an F-4 Phantom II jet
interceptor as it was about to fire a missile on one of the UFOs.
·
Apparent remote
radiation detection, some noted in FBI and CIA documents occurring over
government nuclear installations at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1950, also
reported by Project Blue Book director Edward J. Ruppelt in his book.
·
Claimed artifacts
of UFOs themselves, such as 1957, Ubatuba, Brazil, magnesium fragments analyzed
by the Brazilian government and in the Condon
Report and by others. The 1964 Lonnie Zamora incident also left metal traces,
analyzed by NASA. A
more recent example involves a tear drop-shaped object recovered by Bob White
and was featured in a television episode of UFO Hunters.
·
Angel hair and angel grass, possibly explained in
some cases as nests from ballooning
spiders or chaff.
Ufology
Photograph of "an unusual atmospheric occurrence
observed over Sri Lanka", forwarded to the UK Ministry of Defence by RAF Fylingdales,
2004
Ufology is a neologism describing the
collective efforts of those who study UFO reports and associated evidence.
Researchers
Sightings
Organizations
Categorization
Some ufologists recommend that observations be
classified according to the features of the phenomenon or object that are
reported or recorded. Typical categories include:
·
Saucer, toy-top, or
disk-shaped "craft" without visible or audible propulsion.
·
Large triangular
"craft" or triangular light pattern, usually reported at night.
·
Cigar-shaped
"craft" with lighted windows (meteor fireballs are sometimes reported
this way, but are very different phenomena).
·
Other: chevrons,
(equilateral) triangles, crescent, boomerangs, spheres (usually reported to be
shining, glowing at night), domes, diamonds, shapeless black masses, eggs,
pyramids and cylinders, classic "lights."
Popular
UFO classification systems include the Hynek system,
created by J. Allen Hynek, and the Vallée system,
created by Jacques Vallée.
Hynek's
system involves dividing the sighted object by appearance, subdivided further
into the type of "close encounter" (a term from which the film
director Steven Spielberg derived the title
of his 1977 UFO movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind).
Jacques
Vallée's system classifies UFOs into five broad types, each with from three to
five subtypes that vary according to type.
Scientific skepticism
A scientifically skeptical group that has for
many years offered critical analysis of UFO claims is the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).
One
example is the response to local beliefs that "extraterrestrial
beings" in UFOs were responsible for crop circles appearing in Indonesia,
which the government and the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) described
them as "man-made". Thomas Djamaluddin, research professor of
astronomy and astrophysics at Lapan stated: "We have come to agree that
this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven. Scientists have put UFOs in the
category of pseudoscience."
Conspiracy theories
UFOs
are sometimes an element of conspiracy theories in which governments are
allegedly intentionally "covering up" the existence of aliens by
removing physical evidence of their presence, or even collaborating with extraterrestrial
beings. There are many versions of this story; some are exclusive, while others
overlap with various other conspiracy theories.
In
the U.S., an opinion poll conducted in 1997 suggested that 80% of Americans
believed the U.S. government was withholding such information. Various notables
have also expressed such views. Some examples are astronauts Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell,
Senator Barry Goldwater,
Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (the first CIA
director), Lord Hill-Norton (former British
Chief of Defense Staff and NATO head), the 1999 French COMETA study by various
French generals and aerospace experts, and Yves Sillard (former director of
CNES, new director of French UFO research organization GEIPAN).
It
has also been suggested by a few paranormal authors that all or most human
technology and culture is based on extraterrestrial contact (see also ancient
astronauts).
Famous hoaxes
·
The Maury Island incident
·
The Ummo affair, a
decades-long series of detailed letters and documents allegedly from
extraterrestrials. The total length of the documents is at least 1,000 pages,
and some estimate that further undiscovered documents may total nearly 4000
pages. A José Luis Jordan Pena came forward in the early 1990s claiming
responsibility for the phenomenon, and most consider
there to be little reason to challenge his claims.
·
George Adamski over the space of
two decades made various claims about his meetings with telepathic aliens from
nearby planets. He claimed that photographs of the far
side of the Moon taken
by the Soviet lunar probe Luna 3 in 1959 were fake,
and that there were cities, trees and snow-capped mountains on the far side of
the Moon. Among copycats was a shadowy British figure named Cedric Allingham.
·
Ed Walters, a
building contractor, in 1987 allegedly perpetrated a hoax in Gulf
Breeze, Florida. Walters claimed at first having seen a small UFO
flying near his home and took some photographs of the craft. Walters reported
and documented a series of UFO sightings over a period of three weeks and took
several photographs. These sightings became famous and were called Gulf Breeze UFO incident. Three years later, in 1990,
after the Walters family had moved, the new residents discovered a model of a
UFO poorly hidden in the attic that bore an undeniable resemblance to the craft
in Walters' photographs. Most investigators like the forensic photo expert
William G. Hyzer now
consider the sightings to be a hoax.
In popular culture
UFOs
constitute a widespread international cultural
phenomenon of
the last 60 years. Gallup Polls rank UFOs near the
top of lists for subjects of widespread recognition. In 1973, a survey found
that 95 percent of the public reported having heard of UFOs, whereas only 92
percent had heard of U.S. President Gerald Ford in a 1977 poll
taken just nine months after he left the White House. A 1996 Gallup Poll
reported that 71 percent of the United States population believed that the U.S.
government was covering up information regarding UFOs. A 2002 Roper Poll for the Sci-Fi Channel found similar
results, but with more people believing that UFOs are extraterrestrial craft.
In that latest poll, 56 percent thought UFOs were real craft and 48 percent
that aliens had visited the Earth. Again, about 70 percent felt the government
was not sharing everything it knew about UFOs or extraterrestrial life. In the
film Yellow Submarine, Ringo states that the
yellow submarine that is following him "must be one of them unidentified
flying cupcakes." Another
effect of the flying saucer type of UFO sightings has been Earth-made flying
saucer craft in space fiction, for example the United Planets Cruiser C57D in Forbidden Planet (1956), the Jupiter
2 in Lost in Space,
and the saucer section of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek,
and many others.
UFOs
and extraterrestrials have been featured in many movies.
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object
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