It is still not impossible—and our capabilities have increased as well.
We could bring about the Big Rain if we wanted to.
Science fiction people, fan and professional alike, tend to avoid the subject of "flying saucers." After all, we're much more scientific than
that!
I recall the first SF club meeting I ever attended. It was in Seattle, and the group was called The Nameless Ones. (They had a nasty habit of electing newcomers President at their first meeting; but that's another story.) For some reason a reporter showed up, and the first question she asked was about "flying saucers." The Nameless rather gruffly told her we weren't interested and never would be.
The reaction was probably justified. After all, we were those nutty people who wanted to go to the Moon, and in the 50's that was far out enough. How could we claim space travel was respectable if we were also saddled with flying saucers?
SF people have always tended to shy away from UFO's, and I've been no exception; but now the staid and stolid American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics includes panels on UFO's in their annual Aerospace Sciences meetings. If the inheritors of the professional American Rocket Society can discuss UFO's in the normal language of dull science, maybe we SF dreamers ought at least to think about them.
What really got me onto the subject, though, was the publisher of the newspaper chain I write science columns for. He wanted a feature on UFO's. I took the assignment with a certain degree of fear.
In my previous experiences, UFO enthusiasts were invariably wild-eyed, generally insisted that I look at smudgy photos, and often revealed that the US Air Force was engaged in a conspiracy to suppress all knowledge about UFO's. They told horror stories about Project Blue Book They solemnly related that the US Government had constructed a secret laboratory in the Mojave, and seduced a famous UFO investigator into thinking it was an extra-terrestrial space ship so that later they could embarrass him.
I had been told of hundreds of excellent photographs seized by the USAF Blue Book officers, taken away and never to be returned despite vigorous legal efforts to recover them—but somehow had never been given the name of the lawyer who filed the suit, the court in which it had been filed, or the judge who heard it.
I also remembered a couple of USAF captains I'd worked closely with when I was in the space program, and their stories about Blue Book. Blue Book was a "George" job (there's nobody to do it? Give it to George.) which everyone started off conscientiously and soon began to hate as the silly and inconsistent stories poured in.
However, an assignment is an assignment, and I dutifully looked up and interviewed as many UFO experts as I could find.
The field turns out to be more interesting, and far more respectable, than I would have thought.
* * *
Interest in and study of Unidentified Flying Objects—UFO's—is no longer confined to fanatics and eccentrics, if indeed it ever was. I don't mean to imply contempt for
all
the early investigators, or for the amateur outfits like MUFON and NICAP who collect the bulk of the data on the subject. However, the professional scientists have also moved into the field.
The Dean of UFO scientists is Dr. J. Alien Hynek, Chairman of the Department of Astronomy at Northwestern, and Director of the Center for UFO Studies (Box 11, Northfield, Illinois, 60093).
The consultant list for the Center includes such notables as Dr. Claude Poher, one of the Directors of the French equivalent of NASA, at least one Nobel Laureate, and any number of random PhD's in various sciences. Dr. Hynek himself looks like a very conservative astronomer, which in fact he is. He was originally hired by USAF as a UFO consultant, and began with the opinion that UFO reports were nonsense to be explained away. Unlike some others, notably the late Dr. Edmund Condon of Colorado U., Hynek didn't keep that view.
He now hopes that some progress on UFO research may be made during his lifetime, and views his Center as his scientific legacy. His book, THE UFO EXPERIENCE , is still the best general work on the subject. One sign of the increasing respectability of UFO studies is that Hynek's book was favorably reviewed by planetologist Bruce Murray in the AAAS journal,
Science.
(Not that Murray is a UFO enthusiast; far from it; but he took the trouble to examine the subject before writing a review. Alas, such courtesy seems even more rare in the scientific professions than among writers.)
Hynek's Center is now tied in with many law enforcement agencies and maintains a toll-free number available to police. Officers across the country can report UFO sightings and get advice on disposition of UFO cases.
This came about largely because the FBI published a long article on UFO's in the February 1975 issue of the FBI
Bulletin.
As Hynek says, that's practically "the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."
* * *
All right UFO research is respectable, if not orthodox. Now what the devil are UFO's?
No one knows. There are plenty of speculations, but very little evidence. We'll go into some speculations in a moment, but first let's see what we're discussing.
First, we can say what UFO's probably are not: namely, they are not misinterpretations of "usual" or "ordinary" phenomena. There are plenty of such, of course, but by definition if we can
identify
the cause, we don't have a UFO.
Incidentally, this is the major failure of the Air Force financed Condon Report. Condon never investigated a single case, and chose to concentrate nearly all his efforts on known mistakes and misidentifications.
In fact, Condon even sought out people like the "man from Galaxy Three" who wanted $100,000 "to build runways on orders from Galaxy Control." Condon's administrator put out a memo stating that the purpose of the study was to explain away UFO's, but to make it appear that a scientific investigation had been carried out. There was great concern that the staff would be laughed at by orthodox scientists, and efforts made to show that no one in the study really took it seriously.
Thus the Condon study never did do what the taxpayers put up their money for, namely, investigate
unidentified
flying objects. It does a pretty good job of showing the kinds of mistakes that have been made, but as a scientific study it is valueless. On the other hand, it probably served its major purpose, to get UFO's out of the Air Force's hair. (USAF had for years tried to give UFO studies to
someone:
NSF, the Weather Bureau, Air Defense Command [Army], National Academy of Sciences, anyone who'd take it, budget and all.)
Yet when we've got rid of the kooks and cranks, mercenaries and swamp gas and meteorological balloons, the planet Venus, helicopters, and hoaxes, there remain cases that we cannot explain. Hundreds of them, with nearly a hundred reported by multiple witnesses of presumed good honesty and integrity.
The USAF Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, said back in 1947 that "credible observers are reporting incredible things." Nearly 30 years later that's a good summary. The observers are credible by any test. The reports defy belief.
I want to emphasize something: we have convicted people of murder on far less evidence than we have for the existence of "incredible" UFO's. Our legal system routinely tries to sort out fact from fancy, and to examine such intangibles as "honesty and integrity." However well it works or doesn't work, courts regularly try cases on flimsier evidence than we have in the UFO reports, and hear witnesses far less credible than those Hynek has singled out for his studies.
If you were on a jury you'd be likely to believe the people Hynek has interviewed. He excludes almost all of the famous UFO "investigators" who grow wealthy from their UFO tales.
Hynek's classification scheme is as good as any. He sorts UFO reports into the following categories: Daylight Discs, Nocturnal Lights, Radar-Visual, and Close Encounters of the First, Second, and Third Kinds.
The first two are simple enough. They also exhibit a number of similarities: rapid to enormous velocities and accelerations, no sonic boom despite high velocity, etc. Radar-Visuals are those reported by both kinds of observation on the same phenomenon, usually by highly professional personnel such as USAF radarmen, professional air traffic controllers, etc.
So far so good. Were these three the whole of it, we could comfort ourselves with the thought that there's probably an explanation well within the limits of present-day science.
Unfortunately they are not the whole of it.
The Close Encounters are disturbing, but there's a lot of reliable evidence for them: reliable, that is, in that the observers would be believed if they told nearly any other story. Close Encounters of the First Kind involve observations at ranges of 20 to 500 feet, close enough to see details.
Close Encounters of the Second Kind involve some physical effect on the observers or their surroundings: interference with auto ignition (a common report); movement of trees, as was photographed in the famous Oregon disc; or, sometimes, thermal and physiological effects.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind involve inhabitants, generally humanoid. If we have trouble swallowing the first two encounters, this one really makes us want to gag; yet, again, the reports are about as good as those given in criminal courts, or sent out by war correspondents, or indeed, for most of us, for the existence of any other complex phenomena we haven't ourselves seen.
Beyond this point Hynek and most UFO scientists draw the line. There are reports of actual communication with UFO's, many given by people who
seem
to be telling the truth, but first there are few such, and secondly, those making them nearly always manifest some kind of psychological aberration. We can note that the experience itself might be enough to unhinge most of us, and still confine our work to the three kinds of close encounters, the discs, the night lights, and the radar-visuals.
* * *
OK. That's the subject matter. Reports, sometimes accompanied by photographs, sometimes not. There aren't a lot of photographs, and of those not many have been or can be checked and pronounced unmistakably genuine;
but there are some.
There are others which
may
be genuine, but can't be proved to be; but those unmistakably genuine are disturbing enough.
Now what do we mean by genuine? Well, among other things, that the negative exists, so that photo experts can be certain this isn't either a double exposure or some kind of fakery
from
the printing lab; that there's a real object recorded on the film.
Next, they want to see other objects besides the UFO: trees, houses, wheat fields, etc., so that the distance to the UFO, and thus its size, can be established. This generally takes care of thrown objects and the like. The experts are even happier with a series of photographs, because they can take the sun angle off each one, and again eliminate a lot of thrown or suspended objects.
I won't go into all the tests because I'm not a photo expert. I did conduct a long interview with Adrian Vance of
Popular Photography
magazine, and also with some USAF professionals, and I'm now convinced: there exist several photographs of genuine objects, taken at distances of some 50 to 500 feet. The objects are in flight. They tend to be circular, and of dimension about 30 feet diameter by 7 feet at the thickest point. At least one (the Oregon "saucer") had a photographable effect on very large trees.
I find it hard to believe that's a thrown or suspended object. Moreover, in several unrelated cases of photographed discs there were multiple observers with no obvious connections with each other and no discoverable reason for making up the story. (As is usual in most cases, the observers do
not
want their names in the paper, do
not
want to be paid for their information, and are
not
interested in going on lecture tours.)
* * *
OK again. Some readers have always "believed" in UFO's. Some others may now be convinced there's
something there,
and rather a larger number are probably convinced that
I
believe there's something there.
So what are they?
* * *
Gee, I don't know. I used to say I was uninterested in UFO's because they just couldn't be intelligent critters. Why couldn't they? Because there was no place they could have come from. Earth? Not really likely. The Solar System? Unlikely a few years ago, virtually impossible now given what we've learned about the other planets.
Another star system, then. Now that
really
raises problems. How do they get here? Faster than light travel? Science fiction aside, although the General Theory of Relativity isn't anywhere near universally accepted, the Special Theory forbids faster than light travel by material objects, and gets more and more corroboration every year.
But then, so what? Do I really "believe in" the absolute limit of the speed of light? No. I accept it as a probable working hypothesis, but I firmly hope to see faster than light (FTL) travel in my lifetime. I
hope
to see it; but I can't tell you how it will happen, and the evidence is all against me. Still, I do not rule out FTL as impossible, and thus I can't say interstellar visitors are impossible either.
This is the point at which scientists get nervous. Not only Hynek, but men like Dr. Robert Wood (BSEE, Aeronautical Engineering: PhD, Physics, Cornell) who is an engineering manager for a large aerospace firm he'd rather not have named in an article on UFO's; a Nobel Laureate who'd rather not be named at all; all of them say almost exactly the same thing when you ask, "What do you think UFO's are?"
They say: "You want some wild guesses? Hypotheses we'd be willing to defend at a scientific meeting? Science fiction? Where's this going to be published, anyway?"
Nervous indeed. Every one of them wants it clearly understood they're talking hypotheses, theories which not only may not be true, but probably aren't true; speculations, if you will.