Scientists Debate the Question of UFO's

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

and the object seems to execute evasive action. As the pilot runs out of ice the UFO will seem to put on a burst of speed and disappear into the distance. It is the ice-crystal analogue of a rainbow.

## Material Causes

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

As we look over the Air Force files, we find that some 90 per cent of the solved cases result from the presence of material objects in the atmosphere, reflections from planes banking in the sun and balloons child's balloons, weather balloons, lighted or unlighted, especially those enormous plastic balloons as large as a 10-story building, which carry scientific instruments sometimes to 100,000 feet reflecting full sunlight while the earth below lies in dim twilight. Such balloons shine more brilliantly than Venus. Advertising planes or illuminated blimps frequently become UFO's.

Birds, by day or night, often reflect light from their shiny backs. Windblown kites, hats, paper, plastic sacks, feathers, spider webs, seed pods, dust devils have all contributed their share of UFO sightings. Insects single insects or insects in swarms saucer-shaped clouds, the reflection of a searchlight on clouds, special space experiments, such as rocket-launched sodium vapor releases or balloons launched from rockets from Wallops Island, have also produced spectacular apparitions, visible all up and down the East Coast. Ball lightning and the aurora borealis occasionally contribute.

Reflections from powerlines, insulators, television antennas, radars, radio telescopes, even apartment windows! These too have, in their turn, produced realistic UFO's and I could go on adding almost indefinitely to this list.

But the chief point that I want to make is that a simple phenomenon like any of the above have tricked intelligent people into reporting a UFO.

But there are still a few other phenomena that can produce UFOs as far as I know, the Air Force still does not recognize and I think I am bringing them to the public's attention for the first time today. You will see occasional reference to some of these phenomena but only indirectly.

Let me quote from an article on "Vision" in Volume 14 of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology: "...any observant person can detect swirling clouds or spots of light' in total darkness or while looking at a homogeneous field such as a bright blue sky." So, if you want to see flying saucers, just look up. If you don't see them, you probably aren't "observant."

I can see them most clearly in a dark room or on a moonless night with the sky even darker with heavy clouds. I find the background of stars on a clear night somewhat distracting. Just lie on your back, open your eyes and see the saucers spin. You will almost surely see bright irregular patches of light forms. Some of them seem gray-green but I occasionally see silver or gold and occasionally red. I can even imagine windows in some of them. As you move your eyes, they will cavort across the sky. To speed up the action, just rub your eyes like a person coming out of a sleep. Occasionally, the whole field will become large and luminous. 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? And even if an alerted copilot confirms it, he might also be responding to a similar effect in his own eyes, since we don't know that he is seeing exactly the same thing that the other man is reporting.

## Eye Errors

The chemistry and physiology of the human eye are certainly responsible for many UFO sightings. The eye responds in a different way to different kinds of stimuli. Taken a sudden burst of bright light like that coming from a flashbulb. You newspaper editors, and especially

that when you look at a sudden flash you will have an

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duces immediate change in the so-called visual purple of the retina. In a sense the retinal spot where the light fell on the eye becomes fatigued and, for some minutes after the flash, you will be able to see a bright usually greenish floating spot which could be mistaken for a UFO by someone unfamiliar with the problem.

But let me take an actual case which is typical of a large number in the files of Project Blue Book. A child going to the bathroom turns on a bright light and accidentally awakens one of this parents who is blinded by the sudden illumination. The child turns off the light and the parent, for some reason, also gets up and just happens to glance out of the window. He is startled to see a peculiar spot of light floating over the trees and making irregular jerky motions. He watches the UFO for a minute or two until it finally disappears. He can't be blamed for failing to realize that the erratic and often rapid movements of the UFO are due to similar movements of his own eye. The UFO simply appears in the direction in which he happens to be looking, and that's all. And yet he may describe it graphically as a luminous object "cavorting across the sky."

Many such stimuli are possible by day and night. A few weeks ago I was driving toward the setting sun. I came to a stoplight and looked out the side window of the car. I was startled to see a large black object shaped something like a dirigible surrounded by dozens of small black balloons. I suddenly realized that these were after-images of the sun. The big one was where I had been looking more fixedly. The spots were images where my eye had wandered. A UFO buff could have sworn that he was seeing a "mother ship" and a swarm of UFO's in rapid flight.

I once had another similar experience. I suddenly glanced up and was surprised to see a whole flotilla of UFO's in formation across the sky. They looked like after-images, but I hadn't been conscious of the visual stimulus responsible. I quickly retraced my steps and found it: sunlight reflected from the shiny surface of the fender of a parked car.

I am sure that many UFO's, still unknown, belong in this class. Look fixedly at the full moon for at least 30 seconds and then turn away. A greenish balloon will swim over your head and perform maneuvers startling or impossible for any real object. I have been able to attain the same effect with the planet Venus when it is near maximum brilliance. Yet most observers will swear that such UFO's are true objects. And the Air Force questionnaire, failing to recognize even the existence of this kind of UFO, contains not a single question that would help them identify it. In fact, the words signifying UFO, unidentified flying object, showed the state of mind of the Air Force personnel who invented this abbreviation. What I am saying, is that the UFO's are not unidentifiable. They are often not flying and many are not even objects. It is this point of view, to regard the apparition as actual solid objects, that has retarded the solution so long.

After-images possess still another complicated characteristic. Colored light tends to produce an after-image of complementary color. A green flash will cause a red after-image and vice versa.

Color-blind persons and persons with defective vision will often experience effects dif-

Continued

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