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.
“Mineral Wells”1 page
123 What can we learn about the propulsion of UFO's from the information pro- vided by the observations of these two police officers? Mainly, it is negative in- formation: From the silence it seems impossible that it could have been sup- ported by a jet or rocket reaction. There are further considerations involving specific impulse, energy, etc., that we need not go into here, that provide com- pelling arguments against any conventional way of counteracting the earth's gravitational field. There remains a slight possibility of developing sufficient reactive force by expelling relativistic neutrinos, for they would not be inter- cepted by the earth under a UFO and would not be noticed. Expelling neutrons would have this same advantage, but in the quantities required they would induce far more radioactivity than has ever been measured at sites where UFO's have come close to the ground or have been reported to have landed.Fortunately, there has been at least one observation that tends to provide a bit of positive information. Mr. Wells Allen Webb, an applied chemist with a master of science degree from the University of California, was one mile north of Spain Flying Field, seven miles east of Yuma, Arizona, just off U.S. Highway 80, when his attention was drawn to the sky to the north by some low -flying jet aircraft. Then he noticed a small white cloud -like object in an otherwise cloudless sky. He watched for about five minutes as it traveled eastward; as it reached a spot north northeast of his location, it abruptly altered shape from being oblong and subtending about half the angle of the full moon (about 15 minutes of arc) to being circular and subtending about 5 minutes of arc. Webb was wearing polaroid glasses, and noted that there appeared around the object a series of dark rings, the outermost of which was about six times the diameterof the central white or silvery object, or about the diameter of the full moon. The object 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: 5 May 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 background 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 ofthe plane of polarization of the blue light in the vicinity of the object. This was the interpretation I made some ten years later upon reading his account. 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 direc- tion 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 the glasses. Likewise, for light that had had its plane of polarization turned through 90 plus 180 degrees, 90 plus 360 degrees, and so on,there would be a partial extinction of light. On this basis, the outer dark ring was due to the rejection, by the polarizing filter of the glasses, of light which had had its plane of polarization turned through 90 degrees, the next outermost band by light that had been turned through 270 degrees, etc. This interpretation is strengthened by Webb's observation that the dark rings were narrower than the brighter areas between them; this is what should beexpected on the basis of the above explanation. What hypotheses can be constructed that might account for this unusual ob- servation? There are at least two that have interesting implications for the pro- pulsion problem. First, by the Faraday effect, a magnetic field parallel to the path of the light could so rotate the plane of polarization. A quick calculation using the properties of the atmosphere shows that a field of 200,000 gauss, operating over a distance of 130 feet (40 meters) could turn the plane 90 degrees; this is in- deed a very intense and extensive magnetic field, and of course, would only ac- count for one ring. Three rings would require a million gauss over the same dis- tance. We have been able to achieve these field strengths in the laboratory for only fractions of seconds over very small distances. However, the principal argu- ment against this hypothesis is the conclusion that were such a field be brought at all close to the surface of the earth its effect would be to induce very strong
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.