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
129 have also had the opportunity to view approximately a half dozen other films, purportedly of "UFO's." The images on these films appeared possibly to be the result of natural phenomena,such as reflec- tions on airplanes, atmospheric mirages, optical flares, birds, balloons, insects, satellites, et cetera. For example, a recent (February 1968) set of two films were taken, using professional motion picture equipment, by a Universal Studio crew on location. Although rather peculiar in appearance,the objects thus photographed could have conceivably been the result of airplane reflections. To this date my analyses of anomalistic motion picture data have been rather ungratifying. Although I am convinced that many of the films indeed demonstrated the presence of anomalistic phenomena,they all have the characteristic of rather ill-defined blobs of light, and one can actually gain little insight into the real character of the phenomena. For example, linear distance, speed, and acceleration can- not be determined precisely, nor can size and mass. As I will discuss in a moment, this situation is not particularly surprising, since, with- out a special-purpose sensor system expressly designed to obtain in- formation pertinent to anomalistic observational phenomena,or a gen- eral-purpose sensor system operated so as not to disregard such data, the chance for obtaining high-quality hard data is quite small. PART 2. INADEQUACIES OF EXISTING SENSOR EQUIPMENT AND SYSTEMS The capabilities of astronomical optical sensors have been dealt with •in a thorough fashion by Page in 1968. The Prairie Network for Meteor Observations (McCrosky and Posen (1968))is a good example of a wide-coverage optical system, but as is so often the case, and as Page (1968) pointed out. "* * * R. E. McCrosky of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Obvervatory informed me that no thorough search(for anomalistic data) has been carried out." Even so, some astronomical photographs are bound to exhibit anomalistic data. Again quoting from Page (1968),"* * * W. T. Powers of Northwestern University Astronomy Department informed me that 'several' of the Smith- sonian-net photographs show anomalous trails." As I have already pointed out (Baker (1968b) to be found in appendix 4),the majority of our astronomical equipment (e.g., conventional photographic tele- scopes, Baker-Nunn cameras, meteor cameras, Markowitz Dual-rate Moon Cameras, et cetera) are special purpose in nature, and would probably not detect the anomalous luminous phenomena reported by the casual observer if they were indeed present. Their photographic speed,field of view, et cetera,impose severe restrictions on their ability to collect data on objects other than those they have been specifically designed to detect. As already noted in the quotes from Page (1968), even if such data were collected, the recognition of their uniqueness or anomalous character by an experimenter is improbable. Examples abound, in the history of clestial mechanics, of minor planets being detected on old astronomical plates that had been measured for other purposes,and then abandoned. Our radar and optical space surveillance and tracking systems are even more restrictive and thus, even less likely to provide information on anomalistic phenomena than are astronomical sensors. The Signal Test Processing Facility (STPF) radar at Floyd, N.Y. is a high-
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.