Ufos--What Are They?

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

Fifth Explantions, Bordering on the Fantastic.

UFOs are flying craft from other planets which are surveying the Earth.

Obviously, the hypothesis of a foreign-planet artificial origin of UFOs is an extreme point of view and at first glance completely improbable. Therefore we have placed it last, as a sort of antipodes to the first explanation--unsubstantiated denial. However, since the problem of UFOs has still not been solved, various, including fantastic, points of view are possible.

"We are far from the outright rejection of the interplanetary hypothesis," so writes even such a convinced opponent of it as D. Menzel, "but before accepting it, we wish to consider other more natural speculations."

Protagonists of this point of view call attention to the enormous speed and acceleration of the UFOs, not achievable by contemporary terrestrial flying craft and beyond the ability of terrestrial organisms to endure. The fact that UFOs never land is taken as possible evidence of the availability of some extraterrestrial bases for UFOs. It is curious that the number of UFO observations increases regularly with the approach of Mars to the Earth. And this fact is considered an argument in favor of the foreign-planetary hypothesis.

Protagonists of the foreign-planet origin of UFOs have worked out detailed "theories" concerning the range of UFOs, the utilization by them of the energy of the Earth's magnetic field or the energy of ions in the upper layer of the atmosphere. But all such discussions still seem extremely speculative. And even the "foreign-planet" hypothesis itself, of course, required more solid confirmation.

The conclusion is clear: there exists almost everywhere a definite type of phenomenon, known under the name of the UFO phenomenon. The nature of this phenomenon has still not been unravelled and not one of the existing hypotheses can pretend to be the final answer to the problem. In such a situation the only correct course is clear--to subject the mysterious UFO phenomenon to thorough and careful scientific study.

From nature should be wrested still another of her secrets. You see, the epoch of the "applied" study of the sky has actually arrived.