MOD file DEFE 24/2032/1

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Can the
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1261 Unidentified [ 18 JANUARY 1979 ] Flying Objects 1262
with them and to cease what I am convinced that is quite possible if you believe in the
is a cover-up here. The people of Brit:-tin now accepted-or shall we say more
have a rir..ht to know all that the Govern- popular--theory of the " big bang" for
mcnts, not only of tbis country but others the start of the universe. Undoubtedlv,
throughout the world, know about UFOs. our wn and its solar svstem must have
been shared \Vi!h n:any others at that
Before l sit down I ask the noble Lord, moment when we suddenly appeared.
Lord Strabolgi, whether he will tcil your They even give dates for it now; they
Lo::'dships why the Ministry of Defence talk about 5,000 miilion years ago, which
has not informed the public of 18 con~acts fits in with our own geological back-
from 23rd May 1977 up to 22nd February ground.
1978, numbered K 5634 to K 5651 in-
clusive. Further, what do the classification
numbers 5, 3, 20, 16, 6, 8 and 23 mean for
these ! 8 contacts? Moreover, docs the
noble Lord r.:alise that 13 out of these
18 contacts \vcre seen dur;ng the hours of
daylight? There ned be no fear that the
people of this country may panic, since
if UFOs are extra-terrestrial their intelli-
gence and knowledge is far ahead of our
primitive understanding. J·Jy Lords, I
hc.artily support the Motion moved by
the noble Earl, L)rd Clancarty, for an
intra-governmental body to research UFOs.
Let Her Majesty's Go\'e:·nment give an
example to the rest of the >vorld by being
the leader in this investigation.
7.55 p.m.
The Viscount ofOXFUIRD: My Lords,
first I should like to thank the noble
Earl, Lord Clancerty, for initiating this
~xtremely interesting debate. Of course it
is really much above my head, but I have
enjoyed it already and I hope I ~hall
enjoy it for the re~t of the evening. To me,
the first question really is, where han~
these UFOs come fro;n? There could be a
great many ans\:vers to that, but in the
first place we can look at our own planet
and there is no doubt tbat there is very
little chance of their having come from
anything in our own solar system. In
fact I think I should quote a few· >vords
from Professor Kopal's recent book on
the solar system which finishes up, after
lamenting the fact of what they found out
about Mars, by saying:
" The hope of finding life on Mars has
evaporated, together with the canals, into the
thin Martian air. It is new almost certain th<!t as
living beings we arc alone in the solar system".
I think that is a very good example of the
fact that we cannot look to the solar
system to discov:;r where these things
come from, if they come from anywhere.
The next possibility which has been
paraded is that they might come from the
sister Slm in our own galazy. Of course
H.L. 8 P2
There are many stars which have a
solar systei:1 which might well be in the
same position; they might have one planet.
as we have, as go<.'d as ours and with th~
same amount of knowledge. On the other
hand, we must accept the fact, as the noble
Earl, Lord Kimberley, was saying, that it
would j1ave to be something which we
have not been able to ..,,~tain on this earth
and something that we do not understand
en this earth, because if one wanted to get,
say, from A Centauri, which is our nearest
star, to here, it wculd take half a lifetime.
Even travelling faster than anything we
have ever produced in the way of space
ships in this world of ours, the distance is
250,000 times the distance that '"e are
from our sun, which is 93 million miles.
It is a distance which would certainly take
half a lifetime, even at 100,000 miies an
hour. So I do not think it would be
reasonable to look at another solar system,
say A Centauri, which is very ncar, being
only roughly 4t light ytars from us, which
is not very much in space. There is of
course the possibility that the UFOs
may come from some secret effort on this
earth. This I very much doubt because
one could not keep a thing like that
secret for 20 or 30 years. I very much
doubt the possibility of its being on this
earth.
So we get an entirely different picture.
We have progressed in the last 30 years
both in cosmology and in many other
sciences, more than we have ever done
before, certainly in my lifetime. I think
the feeling really is that we are now on the
edge of something in the universe which
we do not understand yet; However. if
we are going to understand the UFO
question, we have got to _move to the
extent of understanding something beyond
cosmology today. From our point of
view, what we are looking at is the tip
of the iceberg. We know perfectly well
that we get information, we put it into.
computers and come out at the other
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