Scisoft

Introduction

"There has remained a percentage of the total, in the order of twenty percent of the reports, that have come from credible observers of relatively incredible things..."

Major General John A. Samford
USAF, Director of Intelligence

UFO is an acronym for Unidentified Flying Object. Such objects include meteors, disintegrating satellites, flocks of birds, aircraft, lights, weather balloons, and just about anything moving within the visible band of electromagnetism. In common language UFO has been often
a synonym for an alien spacecraft.

Photo from the cover of
Ufo Mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth
by Curt Sutherly

There are many photographs of UFOs and they are of equal quality: blurs and forgeries. Other physical evidence, such as alleged debris from alien crashes, or burn marks on the ground from alien landings, or implants in bodies of alien abductees, have turned out to be quite terrestrial, including forgeries. The main reasons for believing in UFOs are the testimony of many people, the inability to distinguish science fiction from science, the willingness to trust men telling fantastic stories, the ability to distrust all contrary sources as being part of a conspiracy to withhold the truth, and a desire for contact with the world above. Belief in aliens in UFOs is akin to belief in supernatural beings.

UFOlogy is the mythology of the space age. Rather than angels...we now have...extraterrestrials. It seeks to give man deeper roots and bearings in the universe. It is an expression of our hunger for mystery...our hope for transcendental meaning. The ancient gods have been transformed into space voyagers.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer, foremost proponent of UFOs, and the one who came up with the expression "close encounters of the third kind," defines a UFO as:

The reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon land the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behaviour of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one is possible.

What Hynek considers to be "all available evidence" may be much less than what a skeptic would require. For example, the evidence appealed to by UFOlogists consists of (1) the testimony of people who claim to have seen aliens and/or alien spacecraft; (2) facts about the type of people who give the testimony; (3) the lack of contrary testimony or physical evidence that would either explain the sighting by conventional means (weather balloon, prank, meteor shower, reflection of light, etc.) or discredit the reliability of the eyewitness; and, (4) alleged weaknesses in the arguments of skeptics against the UFOlogists. The last item is irrelevant to the issue, yet it plays a disproportionately large role in UFOlogy.

It seems reasonable to believe that the only reason we cannot explain these sightings by conventional means is because we do not have all the evidence - not because these sightings are probably due to alien visitations. If we had all the evidence, we would probably be able to explain the sightings by some conventional means. The fact that we cannot prove that Mr. and Mrs. Barney Hill were not abducted by aliens, does not support the hypothesis that they were abducted by aliens.

Many UFOlogists think that if eyewitnesses such as Whitley Strieber, Betty and Barney Hill, or other alleged alien abductees are not insane or evil, then they cannot be deluded and are to be trusted with giving accurate accounts of alien abduction. Yet, it seems obvious that most sane, good, normal people are deluded about many things and not to be trusted about certain things.

UFOlogists would rather follow their faulty logic than accept the conclusions of Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force report which states that "after twenty-two years of investigation...none of the unidentified objects reported and evaluated posed a threat to our national security." (It was in this Blue Book that Edward Ruppelt coined the term "UFO.") UFOlogists are unimpressed with the Condon Report, as well. Edward U. Condon was the head of a scientific research team which was contracted to the University of Colorado to examine the UFO issue. His report concluded that "nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge...further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby."

It is assumed by UFOlogists that the government, especially the CIA, is lying and covering up alien landings and communication. However, there is no evidence for this other than a general distrust of the government and the fact that many government officials have lied, distorted the truth and been mistaken when reporting to the general public. The CIA, however, has shown little interest in UFOs since about 1950, except to encourage UFOlogists to believe that reconnaissance flights might be alien craft. UFOlogists prefer another kind of lie to the government lie. They support the work of NBC, for example, which produced two dozen programs called "Project UFO," said to be based on Project Blue Book. However, unlike the Air Force, NBC suggested that there were documented cases of alien spacecraft sightings. The programs, produced by Jack Webb of Dragnet fame, distorted and falsified information to make the presentation look more believable. No UFOlogist took NBC to task for lying. To the skeptic, NBC was pandering to the taste of the viewing audience. Government agents lie for all sorts of reasons, but covering up alien landings does not seem to be one of them.

Most unidentified flying objects are eventually identified as hoaxes or astronomical events, aircraft, satellites, weather balloons, or other natural phenomena. In studies done by the Air Force, less than 2% of UFO sightings remain unidentifiable. It is more probable that with more information those 2% would be identified as meteors, aircraft, etc., than that they are alien spacecraft.

The reason no logical explanation seems credible to UFOlogists is probably because those making and hearing the reports either do not want to hear a logical explanation or they make little or no effort to find one. In any case, the fact that some pilots or scientists claim they cannot think of any logical explanations for some perceptual observations is hardly proof that they have observed alien spacecraft.

Finally, it should be noted that UFOs are usually observed by untrained skywatchers and almost never by professional or amateur astronomers, people who spend inordinate amounts of time observing the heavens above. One would think that astronomers would have spotted some of these alien craft. Perhaps the crafty aliens know that good scientists are skeptical and inquisitive. Such beings might pose a threat to the security of a story well-told.

Also in this sway.......

Iridium Satellites

Source: Institute for UFO Research (IUR)

Iridium Satellites became a new source of UFO Reports:

“I was looking at the sky when I noticed this light hanging in the sky that got brighter and brighter. I knew it wasn't an airplane because there were no red lights. Just a single, round bright light that got incredibly brighter, like a star exploding. It couldn't have been anything from this planet.”

Well, yes, it could have been.

A constellation of commercial communication satellites has become the latest nuisance to UFO-spotters, not to mention astronomers all over the world.

Iridium LLC, an international consortium based in Washington, D.C., has been launching satellites into 780 km (485 mi.) high pole-to-pole orbits. The satellites will provide a global telephone network.

Originally, 77 satellites were planned, and the project was named “Iridium”; (Iridium is a metallic chemical element having 77 electrons surrounding its nucleus.) Later, the plan was revised to make do with 66 satellites, but the name remained. (Thank goodness they didn't rename it “Dysprosium”. -ed.)

Unfortunately, the three main antennas on the satellite (two of them are seen as the lower vanes in the photo) form a sort of pyramid facing the ground, and they are highly reflective. These antennas are about the size of an average household door, and are nearly perfect mirrors. As the satellite slowly rotates, they can reflect a beam of sunlight to the ground. Because of the satellite's altitude, it is still in sunlight long after the earth below has fallen into darkness. In fact, during most of its orbit, each satellite will be reflecting sunlight somewhere on the earth.

Viewed from the ground, an Iridium satellite produces a bright flare of light lasting up to 20 seconds. At peak intensity (about 5 seconds), the flash can be as much as 23 times brighter than Venus - enough to cast faint shadows on the ground. Then it fades out and apparently disappears completely.

And there you are - another UFO is reported. If you're not directly in the main path of the beam, the flash can still be up to -4 magnitude, brighter than the brightest star in the sky.

Radio astronomers have already fallen foul of terrestrial cellular phone signals, which are beginning to clog up the radio spectrum. “Those cell phones are horrible,” says Dan Green of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Iridium satellites will add to radio astronomers' headaches. But the flashes also annoy astronomers working at visible wavelengths. “For professional astronomers, they're not a problem,” says Green. “But an amateur might be convinced he's seen a new nova. They get angry when you try to tell them otherwise. It wastes a fair amount of our time and effort.”

Source: Institute for UFO Research (IUR)

---

Data source: world-mysteries.com