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Chief Prosecutor of UFOs, Dr. Donald H. Menzel.

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Now, if I presented Dr. Menzel as he really should be presented, we would be here for

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the rest of the morning and you would never hear it.

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Let me skip briefly through a career that includes a PhD from Princeton University teaching

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tours at the University of Iowa and Ohio State University.

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In 1926 he went to Lake Observatory as assistant astronomer.

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In the fall of 1932, Dr. Menzel became associated with Harvard University where he has been

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ever since except for three years of service as a commander in the U.S. Navy doing World

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War II.

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His studies have covered a large number of fields from pure physics to pure astronomy.

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In 1936 he was the head director of the Harvard MIT Eclipse expedition to the U.S.S.R.

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In 1954 he became the director of the Harvard College Observatory and only resigned that

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position in 1966.

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In Harvard he is paying professor of practical astronomy and professor of astrophysics.

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He has been president of the American Astronomical Society.

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Dr. Menzel has been a prolific writer.

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His books, articles and scientific papers cover a broad field and have been translated

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into many languages.

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He has even ventured briefly into the realm of science fiction.

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There is no end to this man's accomplishment.

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I am highly honored to present Dr. Donald H. Menzel of Harvard University.

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Well I too have examined the evidence and I have drawn slightly different conclusions

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from those presented by the previous speaker.

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Similar sightings of flying saucers go far back in history where they assume different

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forms for different people.

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Some records refer to them as fiery dragons, fiery chariots, will to the with jackal anders,

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fire-grakes, fox fire and even the devil themselves.

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And now we are having urged on us a new legend to explain a rash of mysterious sightings.

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Certain UFO buffs argue that peculiar properties and maneuvers of these apparitions as reported

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by reliable people of all different kinds are so remarkable that only one explanation

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for them is possible.

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They must be vehicles from outer space, manned by beings far more intelligent than we because

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the operators have clearly built vehicles capable of something far beyond anything we

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can conceive of.

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This is the argument that we are asked to accept.

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On the face of it it sounds much like the reasoning of Sherlock Holmes who said on several occasions

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is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible whatever remains however

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improbable must be the truth.

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I'm going to go along with this formula but only after we have followed Holmes and excluded

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every possibility but that of manned UFOs.

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And we must also show that no further possibility exists.

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The believers I feel are much too easy, much too eager to reach a decision and our method

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is quite simple.

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They try to find someone who may can establish as an authority, someone who will support

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their views, that may coach and often misquote various authorities or they misquote one another

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until they believe what they are saying.

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Having no real logic on their side they resort to innuendo and ridicule and try to discredit

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those who failed to support their view.

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The UFO magazine all reported me as the Archdemon of Saucerdom.

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To the folks all sightings are true UFOs and less proved otherwise.

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I can see that the concept of manned spaceships is not an absolute impossibility.

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Neither are the concepts of ghosts, spirits, witches, fairies, elves, hot goblins or the devil.

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The only problem with this last list is the fact that they are someone out of date.

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We live in the age of space.

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Isn't it natural that the beings from outer space should exhibit a similar interest to

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us?

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But when we consider these beings, if indeed they are beings, have been bugging us for centuries.

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Why should not one have landed on the White House lawn and shown himself as the President

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of the United States to a member of the National Academy of Sciences or at least to someone

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of you editors?

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Now please don't misunderstand me.

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I think it's very possible that intelligent life, hopefully more intelligent than we,

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may exist somewhere in the vast regions of our space.

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But it's the very vastness of this space that complicates the problem.

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The distances are almost inconceivable.

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The time required to reach the Earth, even if it speaks comparable to that of light,

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is something that we have been living in hundreds, did not thousands of years for some of our

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near neighbors.

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And it takes like some billions of years to reach us from the most distant galaxies, times

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comparable to that from the entire life history of our solar system.

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The number of habitable planets in the universe is anybody's guess.

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Many figures you've heard including mine are just guesses.

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I have guessed that our old Milky Way may contain as many as a million such planets.

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That sounds like a lot.

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But the chances are that if this figure is right, the nearest inhabited planet would be

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so far away that if we send out a message to it, today we would have to wait about 2,000

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years to get a reply.

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Alas, the evidence is poor for intelligent life in our solar system, although I would rather

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expect to find some mold forms of life on the planet Mars.

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With respect to UFOs, my position is simple with this, that other natural explanations

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exist.

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Dr. McDonald is a contrary for the unexplained settings.

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The Air Force has given me full access to their vials.

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I concur with Dr. McDonald that there is no vast conspiracy either at the Air Force or

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CIA to conceal the facts from the public as many groups have charged.

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The Air Force has made its mistakes.

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They never have had enough scientists in the project.

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They have failed to follow up certain sightings of special importance.

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And to me, their questionnaire is amateurish, almost cleverly designed in certain cases to

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get the wrong answer and lose track of the facts.

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The Air Force is a clarified criticism, and at Major Quintanilla's invitation I have been

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making constructive criticisms, trying to help them in revisions of the questionnaire.

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And it is not an easy job.

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From 1947 until 1954, a bewildered group of Air Force personnel tried honestly and sincerely

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to resolve the UFO problem.

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Many highly reliable persons had reported seeing objects moving at fantastic speeds, and apparently

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taking evasive action in a manner impossible for known terrestrial craft.

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By 1952, a sizable number of those in the Air Force group had concluded that extraterrestrial

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vehicles were the only explanation.

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Some of this unrest leaked out.

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Popular writers exploited these ideas, and soon various UFOs clubs came into existence.

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In 1953, as you heard, a committee of scientists headed by H.P. Robertson of Caltech met at CIA

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to consider a number of Air Force's most convincing cases.

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These cases were, supposedly, the ones that had convinced the Air Force personnel who had

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worked on them, just the 20 or 30 most outstanding cases.

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The ones that looked as if they were absolutely no other explanation except UFOs from outer space

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to account for the sightings.

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The Robertson committee immediately solved a number of them, and the rest they could not

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be called only because of poor or insufficient data.

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The questioner again, that included the fall cases, had a natural solution, and the report states

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that there is no evidence to support the idea that UFOs are vehicles from another world.

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Nevertheless, the UFO buffs believe almost as an article of faith that special observers

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such as military or airline pilots couldn't possibly mistake a meteor or a planet or a star,

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a sundial or a mirage for a UFO.

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This viewpoint is absolutely non-sense, and the Air Force files bear witness to its falsity.

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They get thousands of solved cases, sightings by the same kind of reliable individuals like the pilots,

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but such persons have often made huge errors in the identification.

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A huge meteor flashes by in the sky.

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The copilot thinks it is going to strike the plane and takes the basic action.

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You may even imagine that the plane is hit by the backwash from this UFO.

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The pilot disagrees, and the pilot is right.

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The UFO proves to be a prank fireball or meteor a hundred miles away.

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Such occurrences are frequent.

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Not rare.

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Distances, especially in space are hard to estimate.

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If you are up in the air, things that you see may be, you may think that they are a hundred feet away from you,

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and they actually may be a star that is sort of, and clear up back in the firmament.

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A bird sped their shining in the sun to someone on the ground.

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A gloomy, a mere twenty feet overhead.

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They seem to be a distant object moving at a very high speed.

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Conversely, a pilot may think that the bright object on the horizon, just beyond his wing tip, is a UFO.

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And a layer of warm air sandwiched between two layers of coal air,

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can sometimes act as a layer,

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protecting a pulsing spinning, vividly colored, software-like image of a planet.

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I have seen this phenomenon myself,

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despite the fact that my previous speaker and his LinkedIn manuscript tries to discredit my setting.

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Pilots thinking they were dealing with a nearby flying object have often tried to intersect such images,

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which of course all attempts to cut it off.

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The distance may seem to change rapidly as the star fades or increases in intensity,

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because as the pilot flies along, the star may even be completely cut off at times by a mountain or by a forest,

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and will seem to buzz in and out from the plane, attacking the plane.

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It's realistic and very frank.

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The observations of this type fortified the UFO legend that these objects maneuver as if under intelligent control.

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But the pilots failed to realize that the intelligent control came from within themselves.

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And I think that the Air Force personnel of Project Blue Book still do not appreciate the this important UFO phenomenon.

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Merages aren't the only apparitions that appear to maneuver.

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I think I was the first person to point out that a spacial kind of reflection of the sun or moon from ice crystals,

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sometimes called a sun dog or a moon dog, can also perform evasive action.

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Layers of ice crystals are necessary, like those found in cirrus clouds.

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An aviator flying through cirrus sometimes sees a peculiar metallic appearing reflection.

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Reflection often has a reddish tinge on one side, a reflection of the sun or moon.

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Even the electric chases.

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The apparition will recede.

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The approach, the pilot reverses course and the object seems to execute evasive action.

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As the pilot runs out of ice crystals, the UFO will seep into the foot on a bridge to speed and disappear to the distance.

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It's the ice crystal...analyze of a rainbow.

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But such behavior does not imply, as the UFO addicts try to imply, the presence of an intelligent pilot to guide it.

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As we look over the Air Force files, we find that some 90% of the solved cases result from the presence of material objects in the atmosphere,

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reflections from planes making in the sun.

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They...

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Then balloons, child balloons, weather balloons, lighted or unlighted, especially those enormous plastic balloons,

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as large as a 10 storey building which carries scientific instruments, sometimes to 100,000 feet,

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reflecting full sunlight while the earth below lies in dim sunlight.

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Such balloons shine more brilliantly than Venus.

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Advertising planes or illuminated blades, birds by day or night often reflect light from their shiny backs.

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Windblown kites, hats, paper, plastic sacks, feathers, spider webs, seed pods, dust devils,

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have all contributed their share of UFO sightings.

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Insects, single insects or insects in swarms, saucer shaped clouds, reflections of searching life on clouds,

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special space experiments such as rocket launch, sodium vapor releases,

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or balloon launch from rockets from Wallops Island have also produced spectacular apparitions,

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visible all up and down the east coast.

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Ball lightning and the aurora borealis occasionally contribute.

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Reflections from power lines, insulators, televisions and antennas, radars, radio telescopes, even apartment windows.

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These two have on their turn produced realistic UFOs, and I can go on adding almost indefinitely to this list.

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But the key point that I want to make is that a simple phenomenon, like any of the above,

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tricked intelligent people into reporting a UFO.

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But there are still a few other phenomena that can produce UFOs of a type that as far as I know,

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the Air Force still does not recognize, and I think I'm bringing them to the public's attention for the first time today.

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You'll see a cage of reference to some of these phenomena, but totally indirectly.

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Let me quote from an article on Dagen in McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of science and technology.

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Any observant person can detect swirling clouds or spots of light in total darkness,

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or while looking at a homogeneous field such as a bright blue sky.

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So if you want to see flying saucer, just look up, and you don't see them, you probably aren't observant.

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I see them, or I can't see them, most clearly in a dark room or on a moonless night,

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with a sky even darker with heavy clouds.

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I find the background of the stars really clear, and I accept what's distracting.

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But just lie down on your back, open your eyes, and see the saucer spin.

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You'll almost surely see regular patches of light, form.

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Some of them seem gray-green, but I occasionally see silver or gold, and occasionally red.

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I can even imagine windows in some of them.

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As you move your eyes, they will move across the sky.

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They'll come forth across the sky to speed up the action, just rub your eyes like a person coming out of the suite.

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And occasionally the whole field will become large and luminous.

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Now I ask you, how can you be sure that the UFO reported by an airline pilot is not just one of these spurious images?

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And even if an alerted co-pilot confirms that he might also be responding to a similar effect in his own eyes,

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since you don't know that he is seeing exactly the same thing that the other man is reporting,

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the chemistry and physiology of the human eye are certainly responsible for many UFO sightings.

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The eye responds in a different way to different kinds of stimuli.

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A sudden burst of bright light like that coming from a flash bulb.

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You newspaper editors, especially the photographers down here in the first row, know that,

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but you look at a sudden flash, they will have an enduring effect on the eye.

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The light produces immediate change in the so-called visual purple of the retina, in a sense,

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the retinal spot where the light fell on the eye becomes fatigue.

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And for some minutes after the flash, you'll be able to see a bright, usually greenish floating spot,

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which could be mistaken for a UFO by someone unfamiliar with the problem.

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But let me take an actual case, which is typical of a large number in the files of Project Blubom.

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A child going to the bathroom turns on a bright light and accidentally awakens what it is parents,

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who is blinded by the sudden illumination.

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The child turns off the light and the parent, for some reason, also gets up and just happens to glance out of the window.

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He is startled to see a peculiar spot of light floating over the trees and making irregular, jerky motions.

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He watches the UFO for a minute or two until it finally disappears.

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He can't be blamed for failing to realize that the erratic and often rapid movements of the UFO

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are due to the similar movements of his own eye.

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The UFO simply appears in the direction in which he happens to be looking, and that's all.

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And yet he may describe it graphically as a luminous object cavorting across the sky.

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Many such stimuli are possible by day and night.

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A few weeks ago I was driving towards the setting sun.

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I came to a stop light and looked out the side window of the car.

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I was startled to see a large black object shape something like a irrigable, surrounded by dozens of small black balloons.

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I suddenly realized that these were after images of the sun.

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The big one, where I've been looking most fixedly, the spot for images where my eyes have wandered.

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A UFO's buff could have sworn that he was seeing a mothership and the swarm of UFOs had rapid flight.

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I once had a very similar experience.

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I suddenly glanced up and was surprised to see a whole float killer of UFOs in formation across the sky.

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They looked like after images, but I hadn't been conscious of the visual stimulus responsible.

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I quickly retraced my steps and found it.

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Sunlight reflected from the shiny surface of the fender of a parked car.

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I'm sure that many UFOs still unknowns belong in this class.

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Sometimes look fixedly at the moon for at least 30 seconds, and then turn away.

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The greenish balloon will swim over your head and perform maneuvers, startling or impossible for any real object.

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I have been able to obtain the same effect with a planet Venus when near maximum brightness.

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Yet most observers will swear that such UFOs are true objects.

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And the Air Force questionnaire, failing to recognize even the existence of this kind of UFO,

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remains not a single question that would help them identify it.

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In fact, the words, signifying UFOs, unidentified flying objects,

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show the state of mind of the Air Force personnel who invented this abbreviation.

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What I'm saying is that the UFOs are not unidentifiable.

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They are often not flying, and many are not even objects.

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It is this point of view to regard the apparition that actually will solid out that it retarded the solution so long.

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After images was that still another complicated characteristic.

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A colored light tends to produce an after image of complementary color.

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A green flash will cause a red after image and vice versa.

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Colorblind persons and persons with defective vision will often experience effects different from those of people with normal eyesight.

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Another phenomenon to produce an illusion.

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You may forget that the eyeball jumps a little every time that you blink.

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Walking transmits vibrations to the eye at every step.

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Many individuals think they see stars, planets or satellites oscillating.

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When the movement is actually about the eye itself.

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Let me give you this quotation from a book.

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On our return across Minnesota, we had an experience of which I always remembered as illustrative of the fallacy of all human testimony about ghosts.

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Rappings and other phenomena of that character.

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We spent two nights and a day at Fort Snelling.

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Some of the officers were greatly surprised by a celestial phenomenon of a very extraordinary character which had been observed for several nights past.

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A star had been seen night after night, rising in the east as usual and starting on its course towards the south.

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But instead of continuing that course across the meridian as stars invariably had done from the remotest antiquity,

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it took a turn toward the north, sunk towards the horizon and finally sat near the north point of the horizon.

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Of course an explanation was wanted.

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My assurance there must be some mistake in this observation could not be accepted because this erratic course of the heavenly body had been seen by all of them so plainly that no doubt could exist on the subject.

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The men who saw it were now the ordinary, untrained kind but graduates of West Point who if anyone ought to be free from optical dissections.

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I was myself, confidently invited to look out that night and say, we all want to visit the greatest manorist.

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In do time the planet Mars was seen in the east making its way toward the south.

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There it is with the exclamation.

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Yes, there it is.

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And I know that planet is going to keep right on its course towards the south.

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No, it is not.

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It says, hey, you will see a turnaround and go down towards the north.

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Hour after hour passed and as the planet began and continued on its regular course, the other watchers began to get a little nervous.

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It showed no signs of deviating from its course.

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We went out from time to time to look at the sky.

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There it is, said one of the observers at length, 40 to Capella, which was now just rising a little to the east of north.

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There is the star setting.

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The point is, said I, there was the star we've been looking at now quite inconspicuous near the meridian.

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And that star that you think is setting is really rising and will soon be higher up.

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A viral official watching shows that no deviation of the general laws of nature had occurred,

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but that the observers of previous nights had jumped at the conclusion that two objects widely apart in the heavens were the same.

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Those words came from a book called Reminiscences of Astronomer, published in 1903 by Simon Newcomb,

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who was in charge of the American Monarchal Monarch Office from 1877 until 1897.

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This event actually occurred in 1860.

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The similarity between modern U.S. overpowering a star from working across the sky.

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Military officers as reliable and responsible witnesses.

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For you who wear eyeglasses, there's still another way of seeing a UFO.

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Look directly at some bright light. There's a lot of them around the room here.

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You keep your head turned slightly to the left or right, and you undoubtedly see a pain-grounding autofocus spot.

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This is light reflected from the front surface of your eyeball back to the lens, and then back into the pupil of your eye.

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A bright source to one side and slightly behind you can also reach your eye,

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through reflection from the internal surface of the spectacle lens.

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To this moment, I haven't mentioned there's still another method of detecting saucers.

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One not so big because of the vanguaries of the human eye. I mean radar.

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Radar is a machine. It can't make mistakes, or at least that is a common argument advanced by the UFO buffs.

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The previous speaker in the document referred to violently discredits my work and reveals his ignorance of the phenomenon of radio propagation of the radar waves.

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So happens that very much three years service in the Navy, which has already been referred to,

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and 22 years since then as consultant to the Radio Central Radio Propagation Laboratory of the National Bureau of Standards.

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I have had a little experience with this particular phenomenon and the conditions.

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All the radar is cursed with all the potential of the plethora of any complicated electrical gadget can suffer.

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There is one specific thing that can affect this greatly, moronic.

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Let me explain briefly what a radar does. It sends out a pulse of radio waves.

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We know the direction, northeast. We know the elevation of the horizon and echo return.

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From the interval between the transmission and the return of the signal, we know how far away the object is that reflects the pulse.

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We think therefore we will take the plane or a UFO in flight because the radar directs its pulse over.

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But we haven't any way of following the pulse in its path toward the target.

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A layer of warm dry air or even a layer to change a few bubbles of warm air will bend the radar beam back to Earth.

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This is what we call partial trapping. This was, for example, what happened in Washington at the famous sighting in 1952.

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The reflection of the beam after it has been directed backwards comes back from a distant building, a train or a ship.

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No wonder that planes that were sent out to intercept the radar UFO found in nothing.

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In one such case, a well-known writer on flying saucers said the discovery of visible saucers had been serious enough.

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The discovery of invisible flying saucers would be a mouthful to fright anyone.

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I know of no reliable cases of simultaneous visual and radar sightings.

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In view of the physical properties of the eye, the surprising fact is that so few cases have been reported.

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Time won't permit me to elaborate on still another relevant phenomenon.

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The Earthworks appears to have neglected completely the psychological angle of mass hallucination.

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Back in 1919 in Spain, a not unrelated phenomenon occurred.

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Thousands of people, reliable people, swore that they had seen the images of saints rolling their eyes,

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holding their hands, gripping, drops of blood, even stepping out of their panels.

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A person would call out, look, there it goes, and everyone else would look at it and they would see this phenomenon.

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There are many similar events recorded through history.

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There are hundreds and thousands, perhaps of hoaxes, like that the University of Colorado

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and some enterprising pranksters made hot air balloons from candles and plastic bags.

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And it gave the university officials who were investigating the UFO phenomenon the opportunity to see how poor the evidence can be.

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A fact well known to the legal profession.

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This is another point that the Air Force has sometimes failed to realize.

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Moreover, their poor questionnaire has only further confused and already confused pictures.

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Several times during this talk I have used the phrase UFOs cavorting across the sky.

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I did so deliberately because it seems to be a favorite phrase of my good friend, Dr. J. Allen Heineck,

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of Northwestern University and consultant to the Air Force, Project Blue Cook.

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He has sometimes expressed doubts about the UFOs because stars don't cavort across the sky.

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What I have tried to show today is that many kinds of optical stimuli can produce weird effects

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with all these kinds of phenomena masquerading as UFOs.

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Many of them, like those related to the physiology of the human eye, still practically not investigated,

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I think I can reasonably claim, applying the criterion of Sherlock Holmes,

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that we have not excluded all of the impossible.

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I have shown that the arguments advanced in favor of the interplanetary nature of UFOs are fallacious.

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They are at high speeds in the ability to maneuver.

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They are at short distances, are completely underestimated.

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And they have natural explanations.

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I think it is time for the Air Force to wrap up Project Blue Cook.

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It has produced a level of scientific value, keeping it going only fosters the belief of persons

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that the Air Force must have found something to substantiate the belief in the UFOs.

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In making this recommendation, I am not criticizing the present or recent administration of the project.

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But it is time that we put an end to chasing ghosts, hot goblins, visions and hallucinations.

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And as for the true believers, blessed are their hearts, let them go on believing in UFOs,

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fairies or sandy claws if they want to.

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Nothing will change their minds.

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They will go on forever demanding more dollars for investigation

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and more congressional investigation of the UFOs and the Air Force.

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Incidentally, we did get, I would like to mention that a complete discussion

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of many of these phenomenal, it appears in my book, The World of Flying Saucers, by Mrs. Boyd and myself.