MOD file DEFE 24/2032/1

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1293 u,ritfemi/ied [ 18 JANUARY 1979] Flying Objects 1294
The ans\\·Cr to the question put by the fiction, Out of the Silent Pianet, Perelandra,
noble Lord, Lord Rankeillour- I haw and That Hideous Strength, will ever have
not had very lo:H! to think it out because his faith disturbed by doing so. C. S.
h.:' sprung it. on n1e as a bit of a surprise-- Lewis, who was a profoundly Christian
is this. lf you were to create a vacuum, apologist, wrote the most marvellous space
what would happen to the air you had dis- fiction of a complex universe, in which
placed? Would you pull it in in front some of the created species were tempted
and push it out behind'? lf that is your and fallen, like ourselves; others were
means of travelling through the medium. tempted and unfallen; and othc:rs were
)'<)U arc merely moving some air back- untempted. And they all had to live
'' urds at the speed of sound, and it would together in the same universe. I have
create a supersonic bang just the same. always regarded the deeps of space and the
Customarily, very often we hear two immense time that it would take to travel
b:1ngs because there is a bow wave and a from one inhabited world to another as
stern wave from the moving object. Some- being a kind of divine quarantine to
times the bang degenerates into a rumble, prevent created beings from intcrferirl!!
just as. a thunderclap degenerates into a with one another's cultures until they are
rumble. Anv noble Lords who have been civilised enough and mature enough to
uncomfortably close to a lightening bolt reach the point when thcv no longer want
arc aware that it makes a very pronounced to do so. Too much· of our- science
bang_ as the spark flies through the air. fiction is taken up with the supposition
that vastly superior kings to ourselves
are motivated by the same rather un-
worthy commercial motives as ours,
and that they want to steal our coal mines
or our water or set up imperialisms.
1 ~ If these arc material objects and if they
/;are moving at the speeds alleged, I cannot
~' sec th~m doing other than making a bang,
:: so either they are not material objects or
'i they are 110t moving at the spe"ds alleged,
(; in which case the speeds arc some kind of
optical illusion. This thro\\•s doubt upon
the rest ofttw reports that we received upon
them.
In this week's New Scientist, published
today, there is a report from New Zealand,
and I should like to read to your Lordships
a passage from it:
" Classic conditions
radar beams "-
The little piece of fiction that I have
always enjoyed most concerned a ilving
saucer which was hovering slowly rn a
circle round Centra! Park in New York
and all the security forces turned out in
order to do sometf.ing about it. As it
went round, it became more and more
dear that it was going round in a spiral
and r1ot a circle and as the spiral grew
f.:sr false reflections of smaller so the flying saucer grew smaller
untjl it was very little more than the size
of a waistcoat button going round the
head of a maiden in New York Central
Park. All th~ security forces converged on
her because It was clear from the expres-
sion on her face that she was receiving a
message, at which she smiled. Finally.
the \vaistcoat button feii on to the path
and was picked up and proved to be a
waistcoat button and the security forces
converged upon the maiden and bullied
her into telling them-and she did not
want to-what the flying saucer had told
her. She said "I don't \Vant to, because it
will spoil it all." They said " Never mind.
it may be very important for the securitv
of the United States ". She said " Weli.
all it said was 'Don't be unhappy; you
are not the only lonely object in the
universe'." I think that is a much more
comforting thought with which to approach
the subject of flying saucers than to sup-
pose that they are engaged iq some kind
of irnperialism. .
this tunes in very much with what the
noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said--
" existet:l in the- atmosphere over New Zealand 0n
the nights that the UFOs were spotted at the <'nd
of December, Christchurch meteorologist, Dr.
Neil Cherry, has reported. UFOs were both
spotted oa radar and seen by an airiin<:: pilot, and a
brilliant light wa~ subsequently filmed by an
airborne TV crew"'.
There is nothing in that report tosuggest
whether the optical sightings and the radar
sightings came from the same point, or on
the same alignment, or at the same time.
We shall have to wait until the details
become available.
1 was much impressed by everything
that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop
of Norwich had to say on this matter and
by some of the things which the noble
Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, had to say,
too. I do not think that anybody who
reads the C. S. Lewis trilogy of space
H.L. 8 Q2
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