Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the printed record of a July 29, 1968 symposium on unidentified flying objects held by the Committee on Science and Astronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by Rep. J. Edward Roush. The committee heard statements from six scientists: J. Allen Hynek, James E. McDonald, Carl Sagan, Robert L. Hall, James A. Harder and Robert M. L. Baker. It also printed papers from Donald Menzel, Stanton Friedman, Frank Salisbury and others. Hynek argued that puzzling UFO reports from competent witnesses deserve serious scientific study.
“Nevers”43 pages
117 or cloud then decreased in apparent diameter, as if it were traveling away from him, and disappeared in another few minutes. During this time Webb repeatedly took off his glasses and then put them back on, noting each time that the rings appeared only when he was wearing the glasses. He did not know what to make of the sighting, but took notes, including the fact that it was about 10 in the morning. The date was May 5, 1953. One of the first things to note about the situation as described in the account is that the dark rings were observed with polaroid glasses, but not without them. The second thing is that, from the orientation of the observer relative to the position of the sun at that time of day, the blue scattered light from the part of the sky that formed the back- ground for the object was polarized. To this fortunate circumstance we must add the fact that Mr. Webb was curious about clouds, the effect of viewing them with polarized light, and took notes of what he observed. He did not, however, realize that he was observing the rotation of the plane of polarization of theblue light in the vicinity of the object. This was the interpretation I made some 8 years later upon reading his account. Mr. WYDLER. How would you define UFO's as you are using it in this paper before us. Dr. HARDER. I don't know how I could define it without being cir- cular. Mr. WYDLER.That is the conclusion to which I came. You state on the very first page or you more or less say you are going to tacitly assume the reality of UFO's, merely an "unidentified flying object." I think we can assume their reality without worrying much about it. It is only if they have some particular interplanetary significance that might become a real problem, the way we look at it, isn't that so? We all agree there are unidentified flying objects. I think you are defining them as interplanetary. I don't see you really come out and say that, but I think you hinted at it. Dr. HARDER. Well, if my interpretation of these rings is correct, it is certainly nothing we have been able to accomplish on earth. Mr. WYDLER. Are you saying, when you use this term, for the pur-poses of your statement, in your testimony, you are assuming they are of an interplanetary nature? Dr.HARDER.Yes, that is right. Mr. WYDLER. All right. Dr. HARDER. In my statement, which is available to the transcriber, I have gone through a little bit of argument suggesting why the outer of the three rings represents light that had been rotated through 90 degrees, so it would not pass through the polarizer, if it is polarizedglasses. The next ring represented light that had been rotated 90 plus 180 degrees. If you have polaroid glasses and look at the right part of the blue sky, any afternoon, you can seen that the light is polarized, and as you rotate your polaroid glasses there is an alternate darkening - lightening,as you go through 180 degrees. We can assume, to begin with, that the plane of the polarizer in his glasses was parallel to the plane of the undisturbed polarized light from the general direction of the object. If then something affected the light so as to turn its plane of polarization through 90 degrees, the portion that had been originally polarized would not pass through
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.