The Science of Ufos - Hardcover

(Reported in Popular Mechanics, July 1998)

COSMIC PRECIOUS GEMS SCATTERED ON THE ROAD: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE EVIDENCE OF UNUSUAL EVENTS?

Many of the people whose memories of being kidnapped by aliens are recounted in the book Abduction, by Harvard psychologist John Mack, report being taken aboard alien ships and examined with metal instruments in rooms lit from all surfaces. They also recall aliens of varied descriptions, as if of distinct species. Certain details of these accounts are remarkably similar to each other, and the aliens' reported behavior makes these experiences sometimes shockingly invasive of the abductees' personal space, physical bodies, and sense of sanity.

 

The above examples of extraordinary events fall into three major categories of what might be called "alien contact." The first are accounts of lights or colors or indistinct shapes in the sky that travel at unbelievable speeds, accelerate at unbelievable rates, appear and disappear while standing still, and generally show behavior not achievable by human aircraft or rocket craft. In some cases their performance seems to violate known laws of physics. These sightings often take place at night, and most of the objects are reported to be self-luminous. These phenomena are called UFOs (Unidentified FlyingObjects) precisely because their nature is unknown until and unless someone comes along to identify or explain them. The Mexico and West Virginia sightings mentioned above fall into this category.

The Zanesville sightings and photos are in a second category: the observers see, describe, and sometimes make photos or videos of a definite shape, one that could be classified as a spacecraft or at least a manufactured object. These, too, behave in ways that human technology cannot achieve, and they are most often daytime sightings. (Of course there are exceptions. In some cases lighting onboard or on the ground allows observers to see details of the craft even at night.)

The stories of interactions with aliens, the details of the insides of their spacecraft, and the tools for physical exams of abductees represent a third level of involvement of the witnesses. Often these events take place at night, perhaps because the abduction experiences frequently start while abductees are in a dream state, asleep.

These categories apply reasonably well to reports of strange sightings and interactions from all over the world. The modern era of such reports dates back to World War II, when stories of what we now call UFOs began to trickle in. Allied pilots described seeing "foo-fighters," luminous spheres that darted around Allied aircraft while on bombing missions, sometimes keeping station with the bombers and often undergoing extraordinary changes of course and speed. (We will explore this phenomenon in Chapter 7.)

The number of all types of alien phenomena reports grew rapidly after the widely publicized Kenneth Arnold sighting of UFOs in 1947--the sighting from which the term "flying saucers" was coined. The number of reports continues to grow and is now large enough that significant numbers of people have had an experience in one or another of the above categories.

Common elements of UFO sightings include, for example, certain shapes (cigars, saucers, wedges), certain attributes (silent running, for one) and out-of-this-world movements. Many UFOs move but reveal no details of shape or surface texture. Because they are seen by a wide variety of people and mostly for short periods of time in unforeseen circumstances, they may as a group contain a lower incidence of deliberate fraud than the second category--the sightings of what are claimed to be alien spacecraft.

The photos of alien ships produced in this second category are examined critically by specialists inside the UFO community, and are rejected publicly if found wanting (see, for example, UFO Magazine April/May 1999 or almost any recent issue). It is common for the images of spacecraft to be seen against a blank sky. The craft also generally fit into a few common categories of shape.

Because the third category, interaction with aliens, usually is freighted by heavy psychological baggage, the abduction reports may contain a high percentage of honest reporting, though the reality reported may be greatly at odds with common experience.

We will explore each of these three categories, but we will focus most intently on the first two. The reason is that, except for the reports of people passing directly through walls unscathed or of bloodless and incisionless operations (both of which are interesting as physical puzzles--see Chapter 6), the third category of reports generally omits behavior and technology that requires or defies physical explanation (although it may well require psychological explanation). We will mainly delve into the reports of UFO sightings(category 1) and alien spacecraft (category 2), looking carefully at what the accounts imply or say about what happened, trying to show where conventional science leaves off, and then suggesting what kinds of new physics--alien technology if you will--might explain them.

These three categories are not exhaustive, and within them there is much variation as well as commonalities. Sometimes high-tech equipment is involved in the sightings. For example, on August 13, 1956, British radar operators at Bentwaters, England, observed a set of blips with intensities similar to that of an ordinary jet aircraft (before the age of stealth!). The blips were tracked as traveling at speeds of up to 9,000 mph, way above the capability of any maneuvering craft of human origin, then or now....