1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:21,640 Some say it began in biblical times or even earlier, and they cite the story of Ezekiel 2 00:00:21,640 --> 00:00:23,560 and the wheel. 3 00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:29,760 Some say it dates from the famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947, and some say the 4 00:00:29,760 --> 00:00:36,080 precise starting point hardly matters, that unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, have 5 00:00:36,080 --> 00:00:41,280 been with us throughout historical times, and that they will be with us for a long time 6 00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:43,280 to come. 7 00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:49,400 Ezekiel is perhaps as good a time to begin as any, for it adds a historical perspective 8 00:00:49,400 --> 00:00:51,760 that may well be important. 9 00:00:51,760 --> 00:00:58,920 The story, as told in chapter one of Ezekiel, starts simply, and I looked, and behold a 10 00:00:58,920 --> 00:01:05,600 whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud and a fire unfolding itself, and a brightness 11 00:01:05,600 --> 00:01:11,400 was about it, and out of the midst thereof, as the color of amber, out of the midst of 12 00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:20,560 the fire, what follows has been analyzed in detail by writers who are convinced that this 13 00:01:20,560 --> 00:01:26,080 was a description of a machine given in his own words by a man who was unfamiliar with 14 00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:31,560 mechanical devices and had no vocabulary for them. 15 00:01:31,560 --> 00:01:38,800 Are they right, or are those men right who, like Dr. Donald H. Menzel, director of Harvard 16 00:01:38,800 --> 00:01:45,640 College Observatory, say that Ezekiel saw a sundaw? 17 00:01:45,640 --> 00:01:47,920 It is hardly important. 18 00:01:47,920 --> 00:01:53,000 Accounts similar in their own way to that of Ezekiel have been handed down for thousands 19 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:54,500 of years. 20 00:01:54,500 --> 00:02:00,560 At least one has come from the Egyptians who dwelt in the valley of the Nile almost 1500 21 00:02:00,560 --> 00:02:06,000 years before the birth of Jesus, and there were some attributed to the days of the Roman 22 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:08,640 Empire. 23 00:02:08,640 --> 00:02:15,120 The astronomer mathematician Jacques Vallée claims in his book Anatomy of a Phenomenon 24 00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:22,800 to have collected more than 300 UFO sightings that took place prior to the 20th century. 25 00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:28,040 It is their very number that is impressive, that and the difficulty of assigning natural 26 00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:32,160 explanations for so many of them. 27 00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:37,840 The same problem holds true with modern sightings, the ones that, by general consent, are counted 28 00:02:37,840 --> 00:02:43,840 from June 24, 1947. 29 00:02:43,840 --> 00:02:50,560 That was the day that Kenneth Arnold, an experienced mountain flyer, sighted a flight of nine bright 30 00:02:50,560 --> 00:02:56,320 disc-shaped objects in the vicinity of Mount Rainier in the Cascade Mountains of the state 31 00:02:56,320 --> 00:02:58,400 of Washington. 32 00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:03,200 Arnold carefully noted his own position in the flight of the objects, which he estimated 33 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:10,000 to be 45 or 50 feet in length and some 20 to 25 miles distant. 34 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:20,440 He calculated their speed at almost 1700 miles per hour. 35 00:03:20,440 --> 00:03:26,400 Arnold's sighting, judgment and arithmetic have been argued ever since, but Edward J. 36 00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:33,120 Rupav, who once headed the United States Air Force Investigations into UFO reports, concludes 37 00:03:33,120 --> 00:03:39,080 simply that the objects Arnold saw were unknown. 38 00:03:39,080 --> 00:03:44,680 The Air Force Investigating Agency has been designated by several code names, but during 39 00:03:44,680 --> 00:03:49,720 most of its existence it has been known as Project Blue Book. 40 00:03:49,720 --> 00:03:55,440 It has collected more than 11,000 reports of UFO sightings in the United States, and 41 00:03:55,440 --> 00:04:02,120 it has frequently been accused of doing everything in its power to explain away each report, 42 00:04:02,120 --> 00:04:07,420 to attribute it to some natural and known event, no matter how far-fetched the attribution 43 00:04:07,420 --> 00:04:10,240 might be. 44 00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:16,100 In spite of that, Blue Book carries in its file some 700 sightings of objects it designates 45 00:04:16,100 --> 00:04:21,700 as unidentified, although in each of these cases sufficient information was supposedly 46 00:04:21,700 --> 00:04:25,300 given to make an identification possible. 47 00:04:25,300 --> 00:04:30,940 Unofficial UFO reports, submitted to a private committee with headquarters in Washington, 48 00:04:30,940 --> 00:04:37,940 D.C., have on occasion run two and three times the number turned into the Air Force. 49 00:04:37,940 --> 00:04:43,940 And while the Air Force counts about 6% as unidentified, the National Investigations 50 00:04:43,940 --> 00:04:50,580 Committee on an aerial phenomena estimates that 20% of the reports it receives represent 51 00:04:50,580 --> 00:04:52,740 genuine mysteries. 52 00:04:52,740 --> 00:04:57,460 The descriptions range from the relatively conservative account given by Arnold, which 53 00:04:57,500 --> 00:05:03,500 might be summarized simply in the phrase, unidentified flying objects, to accounts 54 00:05:03,500 --> 00:05:09,500 of craft that have taken a variety of forms, have actually landed, and have been occupied 55 00:05:09,500 --> 00:05:14,340 by strange humanoid beings. 56 00:05:14,340 --> 00:05:19,140 Your are the letter reports always made by wild-eyed observers. 57 00:05:19,140 --> 00:05:24,580 While pure hoaxes and practical jokes are often suspect, it is difficult indeed to account 58 00:05:24,660 --> 00:05:31,660 for such a series of sightings as that which began in Northern California back in 1896. 59 00:05:33,900 --> 00:05:39,740 San Francisco newspapers on November 22nd of that year were full of the story. 60 00:05:39,740 --> 00:05:46,740 They greeted it with a light pen and pranksters at plenty enjoyed their hour or two upon stage. 61 00:05:46,740 --> 00:05:53,260 But on November 22nd, the San Francisco Examiner was forced to admit that credible witnesses 62 00:05:53,340 --> 00:05:58,740 had seen a lighted object in the skies over many parts of the state for the past several 63 00:05:58,740 --> 00:06:05,020 days, an object for which there was no satisfactory explanation. 64 00:06:05,020 --> 00:06:09,980 It was described as a cigar-shaped airship with what we would call propellers at either 65 00:06:09,980 --> 00:06:14,580 end and a long carriage beneath. 66 00:06:14,580 --> 00:06:21,340 No one at that time had built a navigable airship. 67 00:06:21,420 --> 00:06:26,420 As was to be the case with later UFO reports, some astronomers at that time insisted that 68 00:06:26,420 --> 00:06:33,420 people were merely seeing Mars or Venus, their light diffused by involvement with clouds. 69 00:06:33,660 --> 00:06:38,700 As was to be the case later, at least one man came forward to claim he had been taken 70 00:06:38,700 --> 00:06:45,700 aboard for a ride, in this instance a 24-hour, 4,400-mile round trip to Hawaii. 71 00:06:46,700 --> 00:06:51,700 As was to be the case later, some of the doubters were dumbfounded. 72 00:06:51,700 --> 00:06:57,300 They had insisted that the site was being taken in by a prankster in a balloon, only to shake 73 00:06:57,300 --> 00:07:04,300 their heads in puzzlement when, on November 30th, the aircraft appeared flying into the 74 00:07:04,300 --> 00:07:06,540 wind. 75 00:07:06,540 --> 00:07:12,420 The San Francisco newspaper reports blossomed suddenly around November 22nd, like a field 76 00:07:12,460 --> 00:07:17,620 of California poppies in the sun, and they faded just as quickly. 77 00:07:17,620 --> 00:07:22,620 Apparently the object had left the Bay Region, but the saga was not ended. 78 00:07:22,620 --> 00:07:28,020 For months afterward, there were reports of similar sightings across the country as far 79 00:07:28,020 --> 00:07:31,540 east as Chicago and St. Louis. 80 00:07:31,540 --> 00:07:37,940 None was stranger or more baffling than that of Alexander Hamilton, a former congressman 81 00:07:37,940 --> 00:07:42,340 who maintained a farm at Leroy, Kansas. 82 00:07:43,260 --> 00:07:48,260 Hamilton persuaded ten leading townsmen to sign an affidavit that his word had never 83 00:07:48,260 --> 00:07:54,260 been questioned, and that they did verily believe his statement to be true and correct. 84 00:07:54,260 --> 00:08:01,260 He himself swore that on a Monday evening in April, 1897, about 10.30 p.m., he, his 85 00:08:04,580 --> 00:08:10,580 son and attendant, were awakened from sleep by noise among the cattle. 86 00:08:10,820 --> 00:08:17,460 They rushed outside to see an airship slowly descending upon a cowlot about 220 yards from 87 00:08:17,460 --> 00:08:19,420 the house. 88 00:08:19,420 --> 00:08:24,380 The three men ran to within 50 yards of the craft, Hamilton said. 89 00:08:24,380 --> 00:08:31,380 It was cigar-shaped, possibly 300 feet long, and had a carriage underneath, made of glass 90 00:08:31,380 --> 00:08:38,380 or some other transparent substance, alternating with narrow strips of another material. 91 00:08:39,020 --> 00:08:45,300 It was, Hamilton continued, brilliantly lighted within, and was occupied by six of the strangest 92 00:08:45,300 --> 00:08:47,980 beings he had ever seen. 93 00:08:47,980 --> 00:08:53,260 The occupants were jabbering together, but the witnesses were unable to understand a 94 00:08:53,260 --> 00:08:55,660 word they said. 95 00:08:55,660 --> 00:09:01,300 The strange visitor hovered about 300 feet in the air, the account continued, directly 96 00:09:01,300 --> 00:09:05,420 above a squealing two-year-old heifer. 97 00:09:05,460 --> 00:09:10,820 When the three men reached the animal, they found a red cable about half an inch thick, 98 00:09:10,820 --> 00:09:13,820 fastened in a slipknot around her neck. 99 00:09:13,820 --> 00:09:17,260 The heifer was tangled in a wire fence. 100 00:09:17,260 --> 00:09:22,940 Unable to remove the cable, the men freed the animal by cutting away the wire, then 101 00:09:22,940 --> 00:09:29,300 stood in amazement to see the ship, heifer and all, rise slowly, disappearing in the 102 00:09:29,300 --> 00:09:32,740 northwest. 103 00:09:32,740 --> 00:09:37,460 Last evening, Hamilton learned that a neighbor some three or four miles distant had found 104 00:09:37,460 --> 00:09:44,460 the legs, head and hind, identified by Hamilton's brand in his field. 105 00:09:45,100 --> 00:09:50,100 There were no tracks in the soft ground around the remains. 106 00:09:50,100 --> 00:09:57,100 Hamilton had witnesses, including the neighboring farmer, and if he, a former congressman, were 107 00:09:57,100 --> 00:10:02,540 given to fantasy or joking, his fellow citizens would hardly have signed an affidavit attesting 108 00:10:02,540 --> 00:10:04,260 to his character. 109 00:10:04,260 --> 00:10:09,260 If he told the truth, what did he see? 110 00:10:09,260 --> 00:10:15,020 For that matter, what did the Reverend William Booth Gill, an ordained priest of the Church 111 00:10:15,020 --> 00:10:22,020 of England, and 37 other persons at his Papuan Mission in New Guinea, see on at least four 112 00:10:22,020 --> 00:10:26,660 occasions more than 60 years later? 113 00:10:26,660 --> 00:10:32,460 As Father Gill told it to a reporter for the Sydney Australia Sun Herald, he actually 114 00:10:32,460 --> 00:10:38,580 exchanged semaphore greetings with the occupants of a strange craft on the evening of the 26th 115 00:10:38,580 --> 00:10:46,080 of June, 1959, and so did others of his group. 116 00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:51,420 Father Gill described a sparkling craft which descended to an altitude of between 300 and 117 00:10:51,420 --> 00:10:56,940 450 feet shortly after dinner time. 118 00:10:56,940 --> 00:11:02,780 The ship looked like a disk with a small rounded superstructure, he said. 119 00:11:02,780 --> 00:11:07,500 Admitting he was a poor mathematician, the priest estimated that the craft was about 120 00:11:07,500 --> 00:11:13,700 35 feet in diameter on the lower deck and about 20 feet across on the upper. 121 00:11:13,700 --> 00:11:19,660 He added that it was yellowish when stationary and blue-green when in motion. 122 00:11:19,660 --> 00:11:24,980 But the most important and exciting thing, he said, was that there were human beings 123 00:11:24,980 --> 00:11:29,740 aboard, four in all. 124 00:11:29,740 --> 00:11:34,660 The figures looked as though they were doing something on the top deck, he related. 125 00:11:34,660 --> 00:11:38,300 One figure seemed to be standing, looking down at us. 126 00:11:38,300 --> 00:11:41,420 I stretched my hand above my head and waved. 127 00:11:41,420 --> 00:11:47,180 To our surprise, the figure did the same. 128 00:11:47,180 --> 00:11:51,420 Others in the group of onlookers also waved and received responses. 129 00:11:51,420 --> 00:11:56,560 One of the mission teachers waved and flashed a torchlight at the crew, and the craft swung 130 00:11:56,560 --> 00:12:01,700 like a pendulum, presumably in recognition, Father Gill said. 131 00:12:01,700 --> 00:12:09,980 But it did not land, and beyond the casual exchange of gestures there was no communication. 132 00:12:09,980 --> 00:12:14,380 Again the narrator of impeccable character. 133 00:12:14,380 --> 00:12:17,780 Then the additional witnesses. 134 00:12:17,780 --> 00:12:20,320 Again the question. 135 00:12:20,320 --> 00:12:30,060 If Father Gill told the truth, what did he see? 136 00:12:30,060 --> 00:12:35,780 The Leroy, Kansas and Papuan sightings, with their separation in time and space and their 137 00:12:35,780 --> 00:12:41,180 description of crewmen, must rank among the most fantastic in the literature of UFOs. 138 00:12:41,260 --> 00:12:47,380 But the questions they raised could be asked many times over, as report after report is 139 00:12:47,380 --> 00:12:49,260 examined. 140 00:12:49,260 --> 00:12:53,940 Other unusual craft have been seen on the ground, according to independent witnesses 141 00:12:53,940 --> 00:12:56,340 whose stories corroborated one another. 142 00:12:56,340 --> 00:13:03,940 There have been numerous descriptions of human or humanoid crewmen. 143 00:13:03,940 --> 00:13:08,700 Most people find it easier to believe witnesses who say simply that they have seen strange 144 00:13:08,740 --> 00:13:14,860 objects flying at speeds far beyond those that man-made craft can achieve in the atmosphere, 145 00:13:14,860 --> 00:13:20,300 or who insist they have watched them perform maneuvers that would crush a human body. 146 00:13:20,300 --> 00:13:29,260 Yet these reports too are incredible in the light of today's scientific knowledge. 147 00:13:29,260 --> 00:13:34,860 Whatever the source, UFO reports frequently evoke stubborn disbelief or hostility on the 148 00:13:34,860 --> 00:13:37,660 part of those who hear them. 149 00:13:37,700 --> 00:13:41,860 Although a recent Gallup poll indicates that at least five million Americans think they 150 00:13:41,860 --> 00:13:47,460 have seen strange objects in the skies, a great many citizens seem to find the reports 151 00:13:47,460 --> 00:13:52,420 humorous or frightening. 152 00:13:52,420 --> 00:13:59,420 Their reaction to UFOs, Siders, is often one of mockery, sometimes one that verges on violence. 153 00:13:59,420 --> 00:14:05,740 A Michigan farmer who related that he and his son had approached a strange object in a 154 00:14:05,820 --> 00:14:10,860 swamp near their home, had the windshield of his automobile smashed. 155 00:14:10,860 --> 00:14:16,860 A sign reading, Head Martian, was taped to what was left of the glass. 156 00:14:16,860 --> 00:14:21,180 Hostile visitors swarmed around his farm, awakening his family in the middle of the night with 157 00:14:21,180 --> 00:14:23,180 taunts. 158 00:14:23,180 --> 00:14:30,460 Windows of a truck parked on his land were broken, bottles were hurled at his house. 159 00:14:30,540 --> 00:14:35,820 In Akron, Ohio, a deputy sheriff who told how he had chased a strange flying object for 160 00:14:35,820 --> 00:14:42,820 86 miles in his patrol car, was so hounded he said that he quit his job and his wife 161 00:14:42,820 --> 00:14:45,660 divorced him. 162 00:14:45,660 --> 00:14:47,820 Reactions are usually less severe. 163 00:14:47,820 --> 00:14:54,820 Nevertheless, they are strong enough so that many persons who report UFOs insist upon anonymity 164 00:14:54,820 --> 00:14:56,820 to avoid ridicule. 165 00:14:57,180 --> 00:15:04,180 Dr. Henry Clay Lindgren, a social psychologist and author of numerous widely used textbooks, 166 00:15:05,860 --> 00:15:10,580 explains such reactions by saying that it is not normal in our culture for people to 167 00:15:10,580 --> 00:15:12,660 see visions. 168 00:15:12,660 --> 00:15:18,860 He refers to UFO sightings as visions because, as he explains, he does not know what they 169 00:15:18,860 --> 00:15:25,860 really are and, for better or worse, the fellow citizens of the UFOs, will think of them as 170 00:15:25,860 --> 00:15:28,820 visions. 171 00:15:28,820 --> 00:15:35,820 We Americans pride ourselves on our rationalism and tough-minded skepticism Dr. Lindgren observes. 172 00:15:36,860 --> 00:15:43,860 We are likely to regard the UFOs sighter as crazy, or at least as unstable and unreliable. 173 00:15:44,220 --> 00:15:47,580 What he reports, however, is disturbing. 174 00:15:47,580 --> 00:15:53,700 He may be right, and if he is right, what he has seen may affect the lives of all his 175 00:15:53,740 --> 00:15:56,380 fellow citizens. 176 00:15:56,380 --> 00:16:00,340 UFOs are threats merely because we do not know how to cope with them. 177 00:16:00,340 --> 00:16:06,460 Their unknown threat potential arouses anxiety, or even a feeling of panic. 178 00:16:06,460 --> 00:16:11,620 The sighters, therefore, must be rejected and put down. 179 00:16:11,620 --> 00:16:16,620 The better educated and more sophisticated will be content to make derogatory statements 180 00:16:16,620 --> 00:16:20,940 in conversation or perhaps for publication. 181 00:16:20,980 --> 00:16:27,980 These well-educated and cruder types will harass UFO sighters more or less openly. 182 00:16:29,340 --> 00:16:36,340 Despite Dr. Lindgren's warning and the experiences of others, people keep on seeing, or at least 183 00:16:36,340 --> 00:16:39,860 reporting they have seen, UFOs. 184 00:16:39,860 --> 00:16:45,420 The noted psychoanalyst Carl Jung has attempted to explain many such sightings as part of 185 00:16:45,420 --> 00:16:52,420 a collective unconscious of rumors and legends that extends into the remote past. 186 00:16:52,420 --> 00:16:59,420 A new type of legend, one that tends to deprecate the reports, has sprung up around the apparitions 187 00:16:59,420 --> 00:17:02,420 today. 188 00:17:04,420 --> 00:17:09,420 Dr. J. Allen Heineck, director of the Dearborn Observatory at Northwestern University and 189 00:17:10,420 --> 00:17:16,420 technical consultant to Project Blue Book virtually since its inception, answers some 190 00:17:16,420 --> 00:17:21,420 of these in a letter published in Science, the journal of the American Association for 191 00:17:21,420 --> 00:17:24,420 the Advancement of Science. 192 00:17:24,420 --> 00:17:31,420 It is not true, Dr. Heineck said, that only UFO addicts report strange flying objects, 193 00:17:31,420 --> 00:17:37,420 or that the reports come from unreliable, unstable, or uneducated people. 194 00:17:37,420 --> 00:17:42,420 Only a negligible handful of the reports submitted to the Air Force came from what Dr. Heineck 195 00:17:42,420 --> 00:17:45,420 called true believers. 196 00:17:45,420 --> 00:17:51,420 The most puzzling ones came from people who had given little or no thought to UFOs, and 197 00:17:51,420 --> 00:17:58,420 most were from persons whom he describes as obviously intelligent observers. 198 00:17:58,420 --> 00:18:04,420 Some of the very best, most coherent reports have come from scientifically trained people, 199 00:18:04,420 --> 00:18:08,420 who usually request and are granted anonymity. 200 00:18:08,420 --> 00:18:13,420 Commenting on the frequent declarations that UFOs are never seen at close range and are 201 00:18:13,420 --> 00:18:19,420 always reported vaguely, Dr. Heineck says he has several hundred reports in his files 202 00:18:19,420 --> 00:18:24,420 that are fine brain teasers and could easily become the subject of profitable discussion 203 00:18:24,420 --> 00:18:29,420 among physical and social scientists. 204 00:18:29,420 --> 00:18:35,420 Edward Ruppelt, the former Project Blue Book Chief, also denies that UFO reports, which 205 00:18:35,420 --> 00:18:39,420 characteristicly come in waves, are self-generating. 206 00:18:39,420 --> 00:18:44,420 He says that while there is some correlation between publicity and the number of sightings, 207 00:18:44,420 --> 00:18:50,420 it is not an established fact that reports come in only when the press is playing up 208 00:18:50,420 --> 00:18:52,420 UFOs. 209 00:18:52,420 --> 00:18:57,420 Other commentators deny the off-terred claim that professional astronomers who constantly 210 00:18:57,420 --> 00:19:01,420 watch the skies never report UFOs. 211 00:19:01,420 --> 00:19:06,420 They insist there are many who ordinarily avail themselves of the guarantee of anonymity, 212 00:19:06,420 --> 00:19:14,420 but who include, among other notable figures, Clyde Tombow, the discoverer of the planet Pluto. 213 00:19:28,420 --> 00:19:38,420 We have seen that unidentified flying objects have been reported in the skies for centuries, 214 00:19:38,420 --> 00:19:45,420 and we have seen something of the fantastic shapes and behavior attributed to them. 215 00:19:45,420 --> 00:19:50,420 We have considered the psychological reasons for some of the reactions to UFOs sightings 216 00:19:50,420 --> 00:19:57,420 and how the popular idea that reports come only from true believers has been refuted. 217 00:19:57,420 --> 00:20:03,420 It is true, of course, that the great bulk of UFO reports received by Blue Book staff members 218 00:20:03,420 --> 00:20:09,420 are misinterpretations of some conventional object, such as a bright planet, sun halos 219 00:20:09,420 --> 00:20:15,420 and sun dogs, balloons, known aircraft, and space satellites. 220 00:20:15,420 --> 00:20:22,420 But the hard residue of unexplained sightings demands an organized scientific research effort. 221 00:20:26,420 --> 00:20:33,420 Just such an effort was stimulated in 1966 by a major wave of UFO sightings. 222 00:20:33,420 --> 00:20:38,420 It was second only to an earlier wave in 1952. 223 00:20:38,420 --> 00:20:43,420 Not only did the 1966 reports approach a record in sheer numbers, 224 00:20:43,420 --> 00:20:47,420 but many individual sightings were made by groups of witnesses, 225 00:20:47,420 --> 00:20:52,420 and the descriptions were as vivid as they were hard to believe. 226 00:20:52,420 --> 00:20:58,420 The year's major incident was a series of reports emanating from Dexter, Michigan, 227 00:20:58,420 --> 00:21:01,420 and a relatively nearby college campus. 228 00:21:01,420 --> 00:21:10,420 The first sighting occurred on March 19th, near Milan, a town about 16 miles southeast of Dexter. 229 00:21:10,420 --> 00:21:16,420 County police received calls that a UFO had flown over and lighted up the entire city. 230 00:21:16,420 --> 00:21:22,420 Officers responding to the alarm said they saw three strange flying objects, 231 00:21:22,420 --> 00:21:27,420 watched them for five hours during the early morning, and obtained photographs. 232 00:21:27,420 --> 00:21:35,420 The pictures were later debunked by Dr. Heineck as time exposures of the crescent moon and the planet Venus, 233 00:21:35,420 --> 00:21:40,420 an explanation which satisfied none of the witnesses involved. 234 00:21:40,420 --> 00:21:52,420 The next night, in a swamp near Dexter, a strange object was described by no less than 12 police officers and at least 35 other persons. 235 00:21:52,420 --> 00:21:59,420 At one point it was said to have hovered above a swamp behind the farm home of Frank Manor. 236 00:21:59,420 --> 00:22:06,420 He and his son Ronald, 19, said they ran to within 500 yards of a glowing object, 237 00:22:06,420 --> 00:22:14,420 which they described as about the size of an automobile, the shape of a football, and textured like coral rock. 238 00:22:14,420 --> 00:22:21,420 It was Manor whose auto windshield was later smashed and defaced with the label head-mortion. 239 00:22:22,420 --> 00:22:28,420 On the third night, an apparition was seen by between 60 and 90 co-eds, 240 00:22:28,420 --> 00:22:35,420 who watched from dormitory windows at Hillsdale College, 45 miles southwest of Dexter. 241 00:22:35,420 --> 00:22:45,420 The display was described as one primarily of pulsing, moving lights in a variety of colors that hovered for hours above a swamp. 242 00:22:46,420 --> 00:22:50,420 Dr. Heineck, who made a field investigation of the Michigan Sains, 243 00:22:50,420 --> 00:23:00,420 ascribed both the pyrotechnics on the Manor farm and those seen by the college girls to swamp gas released by an early winter thaw. 244 00:23:00,420 --> 00:23:10,420 But William Van Horn, longtime civil defense director for the area, who saw the college display, disagreed strongly. 245 00:23:10,420 --> 00:23:13,420 That was in March. 246 00:23:14,420 --> 00:23:22,420 In April, Congressman L. Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, commented of the sightings, 247 00:23:22,420 --> 00:23:29,420 We can't just write them off. There are too many responsible people who are concerned. 248 00:23:29,420 --> 00:23:32,420 The reports kept coming in. 249 00:23:32,420 --> 00:23:43,420 It was in April that Deputy Sheriff Dale Spore of Portage County, Ohio reported chasing an object that looked like two table saucers glued together. 250 00:23:43,420 --> 00:23:47,420 The description was that of a fellow officer. 251 00:23:47,420 --> 00:23:54,420 The chase led from a point near Ravenna, Ohio to Conway, Pennsylvania, which is near Pittsburgh. 252 00:23:54,420 --> 00:24:01,420 Spore said the object appeared definitely to be under intelligent control, that it actually maneuvered, 253 00:24:01,420 --> 00:24:09,420 even to the point of waiting for him when he and the other officer were delayed in what he called a mess of bridges. 254 00:24:09,420 --> 00:24:15,420 The object finally disappeared near Conway, going straight up, he said. 255 00:24:15,420 --> 00:24:24,420 Pressed dispatches said hundreds of persons in both Ohio and Pennsylvania reported seeing a brilliant and shiny object in the sky. 256 00:24:24,420 --> 00:24:33,420 But Spore, who talked readily about his experience, in contrast to other officers who were more close mouth, suffered by it. 257 00:24:33,420 --> 00:24:42,420 He was the deputy sheriff who lost his job and his wife, and who six months later said he had also lost 40 pounds. 258 00:24:42,420 --> 00:24:57,420 His entire life came crashing down around his shoulders in a flood of reporters, television cameramen, government officials, Air Force investigators, and weird mail, he said. 259 00:24:57,420 --> 00:25:05,420 Still the reports flowed in, and in October the first truly scientific study of the phenomenon was announced. 260 00:25:05,420 --> 00:25:11,420 It was financed by a $300,000 research contract from the Air Force. 261 00:25:11,420 --> 00:25:25,420 Dr. Edward U. Condon, a distinguished physicist who formally headed the National Bureau of Standards, was chosen to direct the project, which was undertaken at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 262 00:25:25,420 --> 00:25:30,420 All of the past reports from Project Blue Book were made available to the researchers. 263 00:25:30,420 --> 00:25:45,420 Every new sighting reported to an Air Force base in the United States was promptly forwarded to the University at the same time that duplicate copies went to Blue Book at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and to the Pentagon. 264 00:25:45,420 --> 00:25:56,420 But Dr. Condon and his associates, whose work was subject to review by the National Academy of Sciences, had their job cut out for them. 265 00:25:56,420 --> 00:26:08,420 A major task was indexing the Blue Book files so that it would become possible to make cross-references, thus comparing sightings that were similar in type, geography, and other characteristics. 266 00:26:08,420 --> 00:26:21,420 Even more perplexing was the problem of devising a technique by which coherent information could be extracted from so many varying reports and reasonable inferences drawn from them. 267 00:26:22,420 --> 00:26:35,420 Jacques Vallee had already proposed one such approach. It consisted of classifying UFO sightings according to types. Those that landed or hovered near the ground at not more than treetop height. 268 00:26:35,420 --> 00:26:45,420 Those that were described as cylindrical and associated with diffuse clouds. Those that were seen in the skies pursuing unusual flight paths. 269 00:26:45,420 --> 00:26:58,420 Those of unusual shape that remained stationary in the sky. And those that were diffuse in outline and did not, for one reason or another, appear solid or material in substance. 270 00:26:58,420 --> 00:27:14,420 There would be numerous subclassifications. The astronomer mathematician who devised the scheme suggested that such a system would make it possible to code the sightings, feed the data into computers, and perhaps come up with some basic conclusions. 271 00:27:15,420 --> 00:27:32,420 Computer coding was also proposed to describe the shape of the object, its motions, colors, illumination, and such characteristics as the emission of smoke, sparks, or lightning, odor and heat, spin, radioactivity, and magnetic effects. 272 00:27:32,420 --> 00:27:39,420 The necessity for such detail is indicated by the variety of sightings and of the effects that accompany them. 273 00:27:39,420 --> 00:27:54,420 Rupelt, in his UFO book, devotes considerable space, for instance, to a series of informal experiments which strongly indicated that at least some UFOs are accompanied by emissions which affect Geiger counters. 274 00:27:54,420 --> 00:28:06,420 There are many reports by witnesses who say that their automobiles or motorcycles came to a sudden halt in the presence of strange hovering objects, apparently because the ignition system was affected. 275 00:28:06,420 --> 00:28:22,420 In one striking case, however, a diesel tractor was not halted while a gasoline-driven machine in the same field suddenly stopped. The diesel engine fires its fuel by the heat of compression rather than by electric spark. 276 00:28:22,420 --> 00:28:28,420 Radio sets also have gone silent in the presence of UFO-like objects. 277 00:28:29,420 --> 00:28:48,420 Dr. Condon and his associates, he planned to involve as many as 100 scientists as consultants in their respective disciplines, undertook to develop a classification system which the project chief described as something along the lines that the lead proposed, although not exactly without variations. 278 00:28:49,420 --> 00:29:03,420 Because of budgetary limitations, $300,000 is not an overwhelming grant as modern research efforts go. The Condon Group could not undertake fieldwork on sightings outside the United States. 279 00:29:04,420 --> 00:29:17,420 Although foreign governments have shown less official curiosity about UFOs than the United States, these sightings have occurred in large numbers, have been extensively reported in the press of each nation, and are important. 280 00:29:18,420 --> 00:29:28,420 It would be extremely difficult, for instance, to judge the validity of waves of UFO reports in the United States unless they could be compared with those in other nations. 281 00:29:28,420 --> 00:29:40,420 The 1952 American wave, which included the largest number of reports yet received in a single year, was parallel by a similar crescendo of sightings in France and other countries. 282 00:29:40,420 --> 00:30:00,420 Although field investigation abroad was financially impossible, the Condon Group did not ignore the foreign sightings. They asked for and received from Jacques Valais some 3,000 IBM cards that contained coded reports of UFO sightings, almost half of them from beyond the continental United States. 283 00:30:01,420 --> 00:30:15,420 Thus, the University of Colorado researchers were equipped beyond the limits of their grant when they undertook their labors. They also consulted with Dr. Heineck, who had written in his letter to science, 284 00:30:16,420 --> 00:30:28,420 I cannot dismiss the UFO phenomenon with a shrug. The hard data cases contain frequent illusions to recurrent kinematic, geometric, and luminescent characteristics. 285 00:30:29,420 --> 00:30:46,420 I have begun to feel that there is a tendency in the 20th century science to forget that there will be a 21st century science and indeed a 30th century science from which vantage points our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different. 286 00:30:46,420 --> 00:30:55,420 We suffer, perhaps, from temporal provincialism, a form of arrogance that has always irritated posterity. 287 00:30:56,420 --> 00:31:00,420 To that, many of his colleagues would say, Amen. 288 00:31:00,420 --> 00:31:06,420 But the UFO phenomenon is complex and an explanation difficult. 289 00:31:06,420 --> 00:31:14,420 It may be, as a few serious observers have suggested, that people have been seeing spacecraft that come from other worlds. 290 00:31:14,420 --> 00:31:21,420 It may be that UFOs are a social and psychological phenomenon, at least in large part. 291 00:31:21,420 --> 00:31:29,420 It may be that there are natural forces at work in the atmosphere and on the surface of our planet, with which we are not at all familiar. 292 00:31:29,420 --> 00:31:38,420 Speculation can be, indeed, has been, almost endless, because one question to another. 293 00:31:39,420 --> 00:31:56,420 As an example, perhaps the most popular of all is the suggestion that UFOs are actually spacecraft from another world, a world which has had the Earth undiscrutiny for thousands of years, patiently watching the development of civilization here. 294 00:31:56,420 --> 00:32:02,420 If so, where is that other world? 295 00:32:02,420 --> 00:32:09,420 Modern astronomy offers no reason to expect advanced life forms on other planets in our own solar system. 296 00:32:09,420 --> 00:32:19,420 Venus, if we are to trust the findings of the Mariner 2 space probe, is an unbearably hot world, probably a global desert. 297 00:32:19,420 --> 00:32:30,420 Mars may possibly be the home of a relatively simple form of vegetation, but it's difficult to make a reasonable argument for anything more highly developed. 298 00:32:31,420 --> 00:32:35,420 And the other planets of our own system are even less promising. 299 00:32:35,420 --> 00:32:40,420 Mercury is far too hot and has only a barely detectable atmosphere. 300 00:32:40,420 --> 00:32:48,420 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, all too cold and inhospitable. 301 00:32:48,420 --> 00:32:54,420 They lie outside the Sun's life support zone. 302 00:32:54,420 --> 00:33:04,420 If the UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft then, it would appear that they must come from a planet that circles one of the distant stars. 303 00:33:04,420 --> 00:33:13,420 Most astronomers agree that in all probability there are many other Suns with planets that could support well-developed life forms. 304 00:33:13,420 --> 00:33:20,420 It's their distance that places an insurmountable obstacle in the path of spacecraft from such worlds, 305 00:33:20,420 --> 00:33:26,420 an obstacle at least that is insurmountable in the light of our own technology. 306 00:33:26,420 --> 00:33:33,420 The nearest star system to us, a triple Sun, is Alpha Centauri. 307 00:33:33,420 --> 00:33:42,420 Because of the complex orbit a planet would follow in such a system, there is little likelihood that advanced life exists there. 308 00:33:43,420 --> 00:33:49,420 The nearest stars where life-supporting planets may exist are at a distance of 10 light-years from us, 309 00:33:49,420 --> 00:34:00,420 each light-year representing the distance that light travels in a year at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. 310 00:34:02,420 --> 00:34:06,420 The problems inherent in traveling across such distances are staggering. 311 00:34:07,420 --> 00:34:23,420 If we support the most efficient nuclear fuels, it would nevertheless have to carry billions of tons of fuel for each ton of its own weight on any interstellar journey to be completed within the span of a human lifetime. 312 00:34:23,420 --> 00:34:32,420 If we adopt the more economical and fuel-saving plan of coasting, the method the Mariner probes used to reach Mars and Venus, 313 00:34:33,420 --> 00:34:37,420 then we must reckon on a journey that lasts for many hundreds of years. 314 00:34:41,420 --> 00:34:48,420 It will be a long time, if ever, before man can contemplate seriously such a venture into interstellar space. 315 00:34:48,420 --> 00:34:54,420 Yet, if we are to accept the idea that UFOs have come from beyond the solar system, 316 00:34:55,420 --> 00:35:02,420 we must acknowledge a civilization so far beyond ours that it can mount not a single such expedition, 317 00:35:02,420 --> 00:35:11,420 but an almost casual parade of a variety of vehicles that have been making the excursion for perhaps thousands of years. 318 00:35:12,420 --> 00:35:18,420 Enthusiasts argue, however, that there may be undiscovered energy sources that could make it all possible, 319 00:35:19,420 --> 00:35:25,420 or that still unknown secrets of the geometry of space would make it far easier than we think. 320 00:35:27,420 --> 00:35:35,420 The ramifications continue. If UFOs are visiting spacecraft, why haven't they attempted to communicate with us? 321 00:35:36,420 --> 00:35:39,420 Why haven't they tried to rescue us from our own follies? 322 00:35:40,420 --> 00:35:47,420 Could it be that a race so far advanced finds Earth's environment, one in which it cannot survive, 323 00:35:48,420 --> 00:35:51,420 and this a problem it cannot overcome? 324 00:35:53,420 --> 00:36:01,420 Or do they nearly steady us with the same detachment, the same mental and spiritual separation from their subject 325 00:36:01,420 --> 00:36:04,420 that the entomologist feels for a colony of ants? 326 00:36:05,420 --> 00:36:11,420 No speculation seems too fantastic for the dive in the world UFO believer. 327 00:36:12,420 --> 00:36:17,420 Thus, one hears the suggestion that the visitors may be not from another world, 328 00:36:18,420 --> 00:36:24,420 but from our own Earth of the distant future, that they are time travelers. 329 00:36:26,420 --> 00:36:31,420 This might resolve the question of lack of contact, as any reader of science fiction notes, 330 00:36:32,420 --> 00:36:39,420 such historical investigators from the future might be allowed to observe, but they could never interfere. 331 00:36:40,420 --> 00:36:45,420 If they did, they would change the shape of the very future from which they came. 332 00:36:46,420 --> 00:36:54,420 Travel through time, of course, has been a favorite subject for literary dreaming since the days of H.G. Wells and his time machine. 333 00:36:55,420 --> 00:37:01,420 But time itself is largely a mystery, and although there is learned argument that it may be reversible, 334 00:37:02,420 --> 00:37:07,420 there is equally learned and compelling rebuttal that such a thing is impossible. 335 00:37:08,420 --> 00:37:16,420 Explanations of UFOs as natural, physical or psychological phenomena, plunge into equally unclunged depths, 336 00:37:17,420 --> 00:37:22,420 and so every speculation about their origin ends as it began. 337 00:37:22,420 --> 00:37:28,420 Without an answer, and with some who will support almost any idea that is offered. 338 00:37:29,420 --> 00:37:31,420 Certain things are true, however. 339 00:37:32,420 --> 00:37:37,420 If the objects that witnesses have reported are actually maneuverable air or spacecraft, 340 00:37:38,420 --> 00:37:42,420 they would seem to represent something that is foreign to every nation on Earth. 341 00:37:43,420 --> 00:37:47,420 If they are natural phenomena, they are strangers to our sciences. 342 00:37:47,420 --> 00:37:55,420 If they are in the minds of the beholders, they represent depths of the human spirit that have so far been largely unexplored. 343 00:37:56,420 --> 00:38:00,420 Whatever they are, they may well have been with us since biblical times. 344 00:38:01,420 --> 00:38:06,420 They have had their counterparts in the intervening years, and they have returned in unfurl, 345 00:38:07,420 --> 00:38:12,420 which may represent no more than the improvement in communications during the past twenty years. 346 00:38:13,420 --> 00:38:16,420 And they are worthy of serious attention. 347 00:38:17,420 --> 00:38:21,420 For when we have finally learned the truth about the myriad UFOs I use, 348 00:38:22,420 --> 00:38:31,420 we may well have learned important new truths about ourselves, our world, or even, despite all the arguments against it, 349 00:38:32,420 --> 00:38:35,420 about worlds that lie among the stars.