And... if UFOs exist?   Milton W. Hourcade

               Fairfax – United States

                milwash@cox.net

 

[Written in honor of my dear friend Dr. Willy Smith. Uruguayan-US physicist, associated with Dr. J. Allen Hynek in Ufology, Director of the UNICAT Project, author of the book "On pilots and UFOs", comrade-in-hours of research and study.]

 

Summary

 

The word "UFO" is inadequate when facing a phenomenon that still appears as a mystery to be solved. Neither does its association with the extraterrestrial subject seems to be easily explainable and reasonable. After all this time the percentage of the unexplained has been considerably reduced. If there is still a residual phenomenon to be known, the beaten path of classic Ufology will be useless. A direct interaction between the researcher and the phenomenon will be necessary, with the help of adequate instruments.

 

Introduction

 

In 1978 Frenchman Michel Monnerie wrote an unusual book titled "Et si les OVNIS n’existaient pas?" (And if UFOs do not exist?). (1)

 

By reading this book it can be clearly seen that Monnerie is not a researcher, never was, but a speculator who, comfortably sitting behind his desk, manipulates data to have it fit to his extravagant hypothesis of daydreaming.

 

We would thus have a world plagued with daydreamers. But what is curious is that those daydreamers should have similar dreams, and not completely different ones. But my intention in mentioning Monnerie's book is simply to say that I have deliberately taken the path of paraphrasing his title, but the other way around.

 

Some people that have the bad habit of typecasting human beings in fixed, even immovable categories, when dealing with the UFO subject tend to divide their fellow beings into believers or skeptics. As if there were no possibility of a centralized attitude that should not go to any of the dangerous irrational extremes.

 

I personally refuse to be classified by anybody on my position on the subject. I would rather say that I consider myself a mature Ufologist, somebody who from the fascination and illusion of the first times, came to see everything with great objectivity and insight.

 

A short time ago, Italian astrophysicist Massimo Teodorani defined me as a "rationally possibilist person". And I feel very comfortable with that definition that does not pretend to classify and typecast me, but to reflect how I am.

 

From that position I feel that I can move freely within the subject, with the freedom that a good use of reasoning, a sincere search for the truth and an intellectual honesty gives me, and most importantly, with humbleness.

 

A humbleness that basically comes from acknowledging one's own limitations that all of us human beings have as entities that partially grasp a reality that surrounds and surpasses us. Because our own physical third dimension and our own stature limit us in embracing, understanding and explaining many of the very small or very large things.

 

And the other limitation is time. We can not already live in the 23rd Century,  when we have not yet reached even the fourth part of the 21st. Each time we advance in history, each time we progress in the dimension of time, we are able to know, understand and even to dominate something else.

 

Our modern science has been able to discover, explain, understand and handle knowledge that was previously unthinkable, unimaginable.

 

Dr. Joseph Allen Hynek used to ask: What will the future hold for us?. What will science be like in a few centuries into the future?.

 

But it is typical of human beings to be imaginative, intuitive, and to be able to correlate several factors in order to obtain a picture which, although incomplete, is at least sufficiently stimulating as to invite and incite to perform a conscientious scientific work in search for concrete answers.

 

UFOs exist

 

Of course they exist, have existed, and will exist every time somebody looks at the sky and sees something that cannot be explained.

 

We know well that this is a primary and very superficial statement.

 

It is necessary then for us to remember the military origin of the term UFO, and how and why it was used in practice. It is necessary for us to break down its contents and to see how it has been interpreted in a different way by private and official researchers and scholars.

 

It is also necessary to finally reflect on the limitation of the term in its intrinsic meaning, because in the end it does not define anything nor does it tell us the nature of anything. It is an affirmation for the negative.

 

If the term keeps being used it is by reason of social convention rather than by any other reason, and so it is imperative to clarify that when we refer to it we do so strictly abiding to what the UFO term expresses. It is the "purist" meaning of the word, as Uruguayan physics professor Gonzalo Tancredi calls it.

 

But for the public at large, UFO has come to mean a synonym of "extraterrestrial craft."

 

That is why we prefer to speak of Anomalous Observational Phenomena – AOPs, as Dr. Robert M. L. Baker so adequately stated in the book "UFO's A Scientific Debate", edited by Drs. Carl Sagan and Thornton Page. (2)

 

The ETH is not the best hypothesis

 

When we started working in the Centro de Investigación de Objetos Voladores Inidentificados, C.I.O.V.I. (Unidentified Flying Objects Research Center) on April 29, 1958, we were a group of enthusiastic young men who basically soaked in ideas from U.S. authors who strongly suggested that the origin of UFOs was extraterrestrial.

 

At that time we did not realize that such idea had been created by the U.S. Air Force intelligence, and that it would later serve to manipulate the mind of the masses and conform the culture of society for decades, using all possible means, including communications.

 

But there were always voices of alert and warning within the Center to keep us from so easily sliding down a slope that was demanding proof and demonstrations.

 

In time we realized that the idea of UFOs as extraterrestrial craft was out of keeping with the reality that we were investigating. We then began to look for other alternatives and to avidly poke around other possibilities, closer and more feasible, and above all, rational, intelligent.

 

We then applied Occam's razor. We did not jump into hypotheses or extravagant explanations without previously considering more possible and handy ones.

 

French investigator and scholar Dr. Jacques Vallée, who has a Masters in Astrophysics and a Doctorate in Computer Science, while being interviewed in 1978 by Jerome Clark for FATE magazine, expressed the process we lived in CIOVI like this:

 

"At the same time I hope that public opinion will change. Initially it will probably move strongly towards the extraterrestrial explanation. Most of the people only see two ways of facing the problem - either it is senseless or we are being visited from outer space. The present avalanche of movies, books and magazine articles will lead people towards the extraterrestrial hypothesis. After that I hope that a counterstrike effect will push them in another direction."

 

Prophetic words from Dr. Vallée.

 

This has been happening all over the world, internationally, resulting in the enormous amount of private organizations that ceased their activities and official ones that had problems to justify their existence.

 

UFOs have disappeared from the front pages of the most important newspapers, and are not the first piece of news on television or radio newscasts.

 

We are in the post-modernist era of Ufology.

 

Dr. Joseph Allen Hynek visited Uruguay in December 1982. On December 16th the "First Scientific-Technical Conference on the UFO Phenomenon" was held at the University Association gathering university professionals and technicians in different disciplines.

 

Dr. Willy Smith also took part, while accompanying Dr. Hynek and making an excellent translation into Spanish of his conference. Dr. Hynek clearly stated that he also was not accepting the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs hypothesis, which he considered "simplistic."

 

In this regard he pointed to several arguments, among which he mentioned:

 

"There are four very good reasons why the simplistic extraterrestrial hypothesis does not seem to hold water. In the first place, if I take a simple card and let its thickness represent the distance between Earth and the Moon, I would then ask: how many cards would we have to place, one on top of the other, to represent the distance to the closest star, aside from the Sun?... You see, people come and tell me: 'We went to the Moon, why can't they come here'?

The thing is that if we complete this, we have to keep on piling cards until we have 30 kilometers of cards to represent the distance to the closest star, Alpha Centauri."

 

Dr. Hynek preferred to think that this was a reality that momentarily intersected with ours from a parallel universe and linked this phenomenon to quantum mechanics.

 

And he argued, demolishing the extraterrestrial hypothesis:

 

"Moreover, there are complex and highly sophisticated detection systems: our DEW Line, radars, NORAD radars, infrared satellites and the various reconnaissance systems which -as far as I know - have not detected their entrance or exit."

 

The strangeness that the phenomenon in question may raise does not necessarily and exclusively imply that the extraterrestrial is the explanation.

 

And there is no right to impose the extraterrestrial as a sine-qua-non condition for somebody to be accepted and acknowledged as an ufologist, as if this were a profession of faith.

 

There are those who are also tempted to impose the extraterrestrial ideology, just like political totalitarians impose their systems.

 

We think that together with these two great men, we are in very good company in our position and we don't believe that somebody would dare to discuss the character of experts on the UFO subject like Dr. Hynek or Dr. Vallée.

 

From the freedom to think, imagine, search and analyze, we reject such imposition and leave the field open to other possibilities.

 

The authentic ufologist does not have the answer beforehand, but is searching for it.

 

It behooves the researcher to investigate until a rational, logical, possible and true explanation of what was seen has been found. Most of the times this is possible. Others, it is not.

 

But today we pretend to be practicing at CIOVI - and we know that other researchers and scholars of the subject in different parts of the world are also doing it - a mature ufology which does not let itself be deceived by "little mirrors", and which no longer believes in the "Three Magi", "Santa Claus" or "Papá Noel".

 

Once the fathers of the UFO idea as extraterrestrial craft were exposed, we lost our original innocence. We are sharp and shrewd. We are not deceived by appearances. We know that things are what they are, not an interpretation of them, and that the latter has to be broken down in order to arrive at the truth.

 

The percentage of the unexplained

 

There are people that, based or not on catalogues that many times are up for discussion as to their reliability, claim that hundreds of thousands of UFO cases have accumulated for decades, meaning cases that resisted the filter of natural or conventional explanations.

 

Such a residue would imply that we are being permanently surrounded by the phenomenon in all its manifestations. In a way we would be like a besieged planet.

 

In view of such a situation it would be absolutely absurd that the United Nations would not intervene and would not be shaken by a reality that is impossible to hide.

Likewise, world governments would act at their most diverse levels. It would be unthinkable that the Great Powers would ignore such circumstances.

 

Of course the trite argument of debunking will then appear, about the cover up wanting to explain that we are deliberately being kept from a reality. But the argument is nonsense and turns like a boomerang against those who wield it. If Earth were being frequented by extraterrestrial craft to such a degree of weariness, no government would be able to hide such a situation for a long time because it would be irresistible. The sky cannot be hidden with a harness.

 

Besides, this would suppose that individuals, regimes and governments irreconcilable in all aspects of human history would however have been capable of agreeing to a super-secret worldwide alliance to conspire in unison to not reveal such an overwhelming truth.

 

There really needs to be a note of wisdom injected in all of this - which has been quite lacking for sure - and at least affirm that for decades, tens or a few hundreds - just in case - of sightings of anomalous phenomena have been seen worldwide, and even this would be somewhat exaggerated.

 

As more natural phenomena and also objects made by human experimental and operational technology have become known, the percentage of the unidentified has been falling.

 

Thus, the 1950s figure which placed the "not identified" at 23%, is now a distant one, with the 1960s decade placing them at 18% to 20%. Also distant is the so-called "7% phenomenon" as Robert Emenegger defined it in the documental 1975 movie (in which Dr. Hynek appears), titled: "UFOs, Past, Present and Future" and in the book of the same name (3).

 

Even the French GEPAN/SEPRA started to talk about a 3%.

 

In 1990 the C.I.O.V.I. held a public conference at the Municipal Planetarium in Montevideo. Based on the experience obtained from research carried out in Uruguay from the date of its creation until that date, the Center then stated that the percentage of the unidentified was between 1,5% to 1%.

 

It was considered that, scientifically speaking, this was an insignificant percentage in spite of which explanations would still have to be found.

 

In 2000 I wrote the first draft of the book I updated in 2003, which I named "OVNIs: La Agenda Secreta" ("UFOs: The Secret Agenda"), which won the Zurich Prize from the Spanish Fundación Anomalía (Anomaly Foundation), and will come out in 2005.

 

At that time we took into consideration a series of unconventional craft used especially for spying, as well as the scientific acceptance, only in mid-1990, of a natural phenomenon that had been reported in vain by pilots until then: "Ghosts and Sprites."

 

But we also delved into the characteristics of ball lightning and the blue ray, and the Luminous Anomalous Phenomena called "terrestrial lights" by British researcher and scholar Paul Devereux, author of the book "Earth Lights Revelation." (4)

 

We performed a thorough comparative study of the places and features of the "terrestrial lights" and - as the intense scientific activity carried out there deserved - we paid a lot of attention to the events recorded in the Hessdalen valley, Norway, and the EMBLA Missions, etc.

 

We also studied the work of astronomer Dr. Sten Odenwald in relation to the Marfa lights in Texas. And we concluded that all these factors together and combined allowed us to explain the remaining 1,5% to 1%.

 

In this area of the search for knowledge and the scientific work it is imperative to reduce the noise to the maximum in order to be able to clearly hear the signal.

 

The question to be asked next is: Is there any signal to be heard, once the noise has been eliminated?

 

We would like to answer this question in the affirmative and definitely. But we cannot do so until we exhaust all possibilities to reliably demonstrate that there is no residual signal at all.

 

The problem is that the way in which we have investigated and studied the subject until now is not enough to completely reject the possible existence of a signal.

 

We have used insufficient methodology. It is time to improve it and to tackle the problem in a completely different way. Only then will finally an answer be found and the minimum doubt that may remain as to the existence of a still unexplained phenomenon, be cleared up.

 

The need for a new scientific paradigm

 

Continuing with the search, we focused our attention on a different area. One mentioned by some important investigators that would indicate that there still remains a residue of the phenomenon, which has not been adequately approached from the scientific point of view.

 

As Vallée stated in the above interview:

 

"You don't know the answers until you really search for them, and until now nobody has been searching very seriously. Up to now those who have searched have been military asking about enemy craft or direct threats to national security. Or superficial investigators, dedicated civilians with good training but limited time and resources."

 

And he also said:

 

"The people that are in the field now are good physicists and good engineers who know what they are doing and who know that it is time for them to get involved."

 

In Latin America, and in general in the developing countries, we have been greatly limited, and this has always been a limitation of financial resources and lack of adequate instruments.

 

Nevertheless, in the case of CIOVI, it has been really healthy and successful to be able to largely reduce the percentage of the unexplained due to a strict application of the scientific method.

 

But the subject was never tackled with the strength with which it could have been done, especially by scientists in developed countries.

 

They defined their task as having to interview witnesses and collect reports.

 

We are not overlooking all the work done by the military intelligence behind them. We  even noticed how the scientists were manipulated so they would not do what would have been the only most valuable thing they could have contributed. They were not allowed to act freely and be creative.

 

In part it was all dictated by the confrontation of the Cold War, which limited and restricted possibilities, and drove others in enormously shortened directions.

 

This was a reality in the United States, but also in Europe.

 

And their influence flowed over to those of us who were working in the developing countries. At that time it was difficult to realize what was really happening, behind the institutions, the names, the activities and the appearances.

 

Today we live in a different time and we need to catch our breath to finally be able to initiate a valid search that will bring about final results.

 

Once and for all we have to define whether we are facing an exogenous, artificial or simply strange, but natural phenomenon.

 

The work at hand is hard, and its main variable is that it introduces the use of instruments. The phenomenon must be caught in different ways, has to be calibrated, measured, recorded, and then analyzed.

 

In general this is what has not been done until now with the dedication, the tenacity and above all the persistence and systematization that are necessary.

 

From its beginnings and until the present time, Ufology has been a compilation of testimonies. It was based on the fallible human instrument trying to learn and describe a different phenomenon.

 

When some other aspect - photos, films, radar records, substances or tracks - have been attached to the witnesses' reports, they have been but collateral factors that pretended to back those reports.

 

But that never was enough to sufficiently clarify in a precise and conclusive manner what we were facing of.

 

In the end, Ufology meant an arduous task of interviewing witnesses, reenact situations and create dossiers.

 

We must honestly acknowledge that all of that had not been enough, was useless and was basically not performed by scientists, and when some of them intervened, they did not go beyond the generally established rules.

 

Even with the best of good will by most ufologists, especially those in the private sector, we all started from zero, but were able to do the job.

 

Sometimes - as in CIOVI - we had the privilege of relying on people with a solid academic scientific formation. However, their task as investigators was the standard one set for this subject.

 

And even in the developed countries and those that had dedicated official institutions such as Blue Book in the United States or GEPAN/SEPRA in France, the system was simply repeated.

 

What has happened up to now is that we researchers always get there after something happened to third parties, but we are never prepared to ourselves be the main protagonists and a part of the "UFO event." And not only ourselves, but together with all the necessary and adequate equipment to gather the maximum information about the presence of the phenomenon.

 

We have chased the phenomenon trying to reconstruct or reenact what others have experienced instead of us making plans to go out and meet it.

 

And this is precisely what is new. This is what is different. From now on this is what must comprise the task of investigating and studying the Anomalous Observational Phenomena.

 

It's all about a new paradigm for the scientific activity that proposes an "a-priori" activity and not an "a-posteriori" activity. It has to anticipate the events, not run to obtain third parties' reports after the fact.

 

This line of research and study recognizes certain background that needs to be mentioned. These antecedents are of great value historically because they show there were attempts, and even certain specific activities.

 

The only thing is that this approach never reached its "critical mass", its volume, its importance, its emphasis, as to establish itself and overcome the other worn-out focus that up to now made us lose decades of precious time, work, thought, finances, and in the end has not allowed us to clarify anything.

 

Maybe there was a deliberate purpose in some circles for this line of investigation never to be successful.

 

It is possible that the solution to the phenomenon would have left many without resources to fantasize, to create religious sects, groups of "research", and make the subject their "modus vivendi."

 

Many circles have found it convenient to maintain the mystery. There is no more room for this. It is necessary to hasten the hour of truth.

 

Background of exploration with instruments

 

There have been several initiatives in varying degrees of complexity, improvements and instruments in an endeavor to record, precisely measure and thus obtain a more intrinsic knowledge of the phenomenon which apparently defied a conventional explanation and the knowledge of that time.

 

And there were different times in different decades, but the mystery kept being approached the wrong way. The only way - on the other hand - that made sure the identity of the phenomenon would not be at risk or could not be known exactly.

 

The first reports of an alternative activity being tried are included in Captain Edward J. Ruppelt's must have book "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects". (5)

 

In 1949 a series of sightings in a highly secret U.S. Army area resulted in the highest authority of the base setting up patrols to guard the base with instruments that would record certain details and quickly communicate with each other.

 

The base commander requested authorization from the Air Force to put the plan into practice. "Everything was ready to go as soon as the Air Force gave the "go ahead". The Air Force did not approve the plan. I don't know where the plan was killed, or who killed it, but it was killed," commented Ruppelt.

 

Once again Ruppelt is the source for another plan of direct action to get to the bottom of the mystery of this phenomenon.

 

In mid 1952 a colonel who later became Brigadier General submitted a plan to use a special squadron of F-94C jets (the best at that time), emptied of all their armament and carrying special cameras to take photos of the phenomenon.

 

The planes would be ready to go and would stay in places where apparently the phenomenon was frequent. Result: "The colonel's plan was finally put away in a drawer."

 

Towards the end of 1952 Colonel Don Bower and Ruppelt himself, after consulting with Air Force personnel, astronomers, technicians, etc., came up with an ambitious "master plan" to detect the phenomenon.

 

The plan included the use of long focal cameras equipped with diffraction lenses in order to be able to obtain spectrums that would reveal what elements were present in the phenomenon, among other things.

 

Ruppelt was interested in obtaining precise data about sizes, speeds, exact times, azimuth, elevation angles, etc.

 

The plan also involved the setting up of a series of observation and recording stations in certain geographic areas. This visual detection network would be linked to the existing network of defense radar.

 

Unfortunately this plan, maybe the most complete and best conceived for that time, also did not merit the approval of the hierarchies. Ruppelt comments in the end: "...Our plan of instruments had been rejected. The high commands had decided against it."

 

In 1958 in Uruguay, CIOVI was already aware of a simple "detector" device that was based on the presence of a UFO showing a recordable alteration in the magnetic field. The instrument contained a magnetized needle that, if detecting a variation, would touch a metal that surrounded it, closing the circuit and sounding an alarm or turning on a light.

 

CIOVI had one of these devices made but unfortunately the magnetized metal was mounted on an axis that was too heavy. The needle almost did not float, and that reduced the artifact to a museum piece in the Center's annals.

 

Ray Stanford founded project Starlight International in Arizona in 1964. It was then relocated to Texas in 1967, where better financing and installations could be obtained towards the end of 1973.

 

Even though the PSI was trying to establish a possible contact with the phenomenon, it made use of several cameras synchronized with the Coordinated Universal Time, video cameras, telescopes, image monitors and recorders, a microphone attached to a parabolic antenna one meter in diameter to capture sounds, a magnetometer and laser to somehow obtain potentially valid records for further study.

 

The French organization "Lumières Dans La Nuit", with better technical instruments, installed 430 detectors in France to measure the magnetic field variations between 1968 and 1969. According to the organization, the detectors had observed 3% of 322 reports of UFO sightings recorded during that period.

 

From November 1970 to September 1972 magnetovariometers were employed in the New Hampshire area to detect the presence of the phenomenon. The devices were distributed in 13 geographic spots within the area, and were able to confirm 22 events of magnetic variation, from a total of 659 reports.

 

In August 1972, at the request of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. David Akers performed an investigation in the field after reports of night lights having been seen in Toppenish, Washington State, in the NW of the United States. The study was made in six sighting and recording stations linked by radio. The instruments used were reflex and movie cameras, magnetometers, chronographs connected to the official time and recorders. Occasionally nuclear radiation detectors were used, as well as infrared, ultrasound and frequency rays. The report about the sightings and recordings obtained was submitted by Dr. Acker to Dr. Hynek on November 2, 1972.

 

Curiously, Dr. Hynek never mentioned this study in any of his books nor in personal talks.

 

One of the most serious and organized experiments in favor of obtaining credible information about the phenomenon was performed by Dr. Harley Rutledge, a university Physics professor.

 

In 1973 residents of Piedmont, Missouri, began to report seeing lights in the sky. Dr. Rutledge, who at that time was heading the Physics Department of a nearby university, set up a plan using sophisticated equipment: Questar telescopes (with which the enlargement can be obtained without replacing the visor), electromagnetic frequency analyzers, high frequency and low density sound detectors and high quality photo cameras.

 

The result was "Project Identification" which was active for 15 years and collected valuable information, all of which appears in the book "Project Identification - The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena". (6)

 

From 1982 up to the present, Erling Strand, the group of scientists of Ostfold University in Norway, and the EMBLA missions where many renowned Italian scientists and technicians took part, mounted a complex system of detection, photography, filming and spectrography for the so-called "Hessalen lights", which fall under the heading of Anomalous Luminous Phenomena or "terrestrial lights"

 

However, according to the experience obtained in Hessdalen by one of the main experts, Italian Astrophysicist Dr. Massimo Teodorani, certain structured shapes were seen together with the "lights", which cannot be mistaken for them and represent a whole new challenge to knowledge and investigation. This, then, would be the residual phenomenon that still remains to be studied.

 

In 1992, geologist, paleontologist and paleobiologist Dr. Bruce Cornet together with Ellen Crystall studied the Anomalous Observational Phenomena in the area of Pine Bush, New Jersey. Dr. Cornet based his work mainly on the use of magnetometers and the capture of photographs and video images.

 

The results are condensed in Crystall's book: "Silent Invasion" (7) but more precise details can be found in a web site created by Dr. Cornet named "The Performance." (8) Possibly, if a strange phenomenon could be recorded in the area, it could be blamed on the "terrestrial lights", without putting aside certain military experimental activities and the simple navigation of military planes in the area, with which they could have been taken for.

 

The list of the above mentioned efforts and initiatives simply indicates that there has been, amidst the general current and the more common approach to Ufology, a tendency that was cut short, and almost never referred to - sometimes it seems as if it has been deliberately concealed - that tried to perform the task of investigation and study setting out from different bases.

 

That is just what remains to be done.

 

The phenomenon in front of us

 

Which are the possible characteristics of the phenomenon that have to be explored?

 

Dr. Jacques Vallée, in the above-mentioned interview for "FATE", says:

 

"First, there is a physical object... All we know about it is that it represents a tremendous amount of electromagnetic energy in a small volume."

 

Further on he reaffirms the same concept:

 

"We know there are objects that contain much energy in a small space."

 

Dr. Massimo Teodorani writes: (9)

 

"A high level of atmospheric electrification has been recorded in all the valley of Hessdalen."

 

"There is a phenomenology that is able to produce Doppler like signals at VLF with speeds up to 100,000 km/sec, an evidence that, based on an ad-hoc model, can be interpreted as the presence of high energy particles that are accelerated and collimated by a magnetic field."

 

"The phenomenon is capable of changing shape and color in a very short period of time."

 

"Sometimes low luminosity events have been recorded that clearly showed structural characteristics (such as triangles and ellipsoids, especially) as if superimposing on the phenomenology that is more typically characterized by light spheroids without a solid structure."

 

"A small but significant part (approximately 5%) of the objects recorded does not show a plasma signature, in this case a clear signature has been diagnosed which is typical of uniformly illuminated solids."

 

In an interview that Luigi Drago did with Dr. Teodorani on May 22, 2004, he states:

 

"Considering the short period of time spent in that strange valley (Hessdalen) I finally found there a geophysical phenomenon similar to ball lightning and, very occasionally, some other thing that superimposed this phenomenon and that certainly did not look like a natural phenomenon."

 

Vallée as well as Teodorani point to a more disturbing aspect about this phenomenon:

In the above-mentioned interview with Clark, Vallée says:

 

"We have evidence that the phenomenon has the ability of creating a distortion of the sense of reality or of substituting the real ones with artificial sensations."

 

And further on he asks himself a question and also answers it:

 

"What do we know about what happens to the human brain when it is exposed to a large amount of energy? We know very little about that. We don't know much about the effects on the brain of electromagnetic and microwave radiation, and neither do we know about the effects that pulsing colored lights have on the brain. The research on this is only just beginning."  It should be noted that the report is from 1978. Now we know more about the effects of electromagnetic and microwave radiation on the brain. There is damage to the brain tissue and brain cells.

 

On the other hand, Dr. Teodorani writes:

 

"... There is a strong suspicion that most of the luminous phenomena that cannot be explained with the ball lightning theory, are deceptive. We do know what can happen to someone, even to a scientist, when he or she is exposed for too long to these specific phenomena. There can be a partial loss of emotional control, maybe due to some kind of very low frequency emission associated with the phenomenon which may interact with the electrical activity of our brain."

 

There is only one way of defining once and for all the intrinsic nature of this type of phenomenon, its characteristics, effects, etc. And that is through the direct application of the scientific method using adequate instruments.

 

The most complete and scientific proposal we know for Ufology which it is necessary to put into practice today has been submitted by Dr. Massimo Teodorani and is called "Physics from UFO Data" (10), that is, obtaining the knowledge about Physics from the information provided by the direct study of UFOs.

 

In short, Dr. Teodorani proposes a precise methodology and a detailed use of instruments in order to gain as much knowledge about the phenomenon in question as possible.

 

This is a research project in which the Anomalous Observational Phenomena are treated on a par with astronomical objects that have no fixed coordinates.

 

Techniques specifically geared for monitoring are submitted, as well as strategies that imply the use of small telescopes connected to CCD detectors, spectrographs and photometers to count photons. The use of magnetometers and radars is also included.

 

 

The result of such an activity may lead to the conclusion that:

 

a) The phenomenon may be natural and until now not known well enough and therefore, not classified;

 

b) The phenomenon may be artificial and of human origin, camouflaging itself between natural phenomena such as "terrestrial lights";

 

c) The phenomenon may be artificial and of exogenous origin, or else may in itself indicate the presence of space probes with high energetic power; or else it may be a manifestation from another time or physical dimension.

 

In any of these cases it is possible that the phenomenon may intrinsically possess - or deliberately develop - a mechanism capable of interacting with the human mind, which among other things may cause hallucinations.

 

Notes:

 

(1) "Et si les OVNIS n’existent pas?", L. F. Editions, 1972.

 

(2) "UFO´s A Scientific Debate", edited by Carl Sagan & Thornton Page, Cornell University Press, 1972 – Barnes & Noble, 1996.

 

(3) "UFOs: Past, Present and Future", Ballantine Books, 1974.

 

(4) "Earth Lights Revelation", Blandford Press, 1989.

 

(5) "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects", Doubleday, 1956.

 

(6) "Project Identification – The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena", Prentice Hall,1981.

 

(7) "Silent Invasion: The Shocking Discoveries of a UFO Researcher", Paragon House, 1992.

 

(8) http://www.abcfield.force9.co.uk/bcornet/

 

(9) "The Physical Study of Luminous Atmospheric Anomalies and the SETV Hypothesis", a conference held in San Marino, Italy, March 2004.

 

(10) http://www.itacomm.net/ph/phdata/_e.pdf