Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

26
Meteorological
optics
is
a
subject
that
I
enjoy
and
have
looked
into
over the
years rather
carefully,
and
I
must
express
for
the
record
my
very strong
disagreement
with
Dr.
Donald
H.
Menzel,
former
director
of
Harvard
Observatory,
whose
two
books
on
the
subject
of
UFO's
lean
primarily
on
meteorological explanations.
I
have
checked
case
after
case
of
his,
and
his
explanations are very,
very far
removed
fromwhat
are
well-known
principles
and
quantitative aspects
of
meteor-
ological
optic
objects.
He
has
made
statements
that
simply
do
not
fit
what
is
known
about
meteorological
objects.
I
would
be
prepared
to
talk
all
day
on
specific
illustrations
but time
will
not permit
more.
Secondly,
there
has
more
recently
been
a
suggestion
made
by
"Avia-
tion
Week"
Senior
Editor
Philip
J.
Klass, that the
really interesting
UFO's
are
atmospheric
-electrical
plasmas of
some
type
similar
to
ball
lightning,
but
perhaps something
different,
something
we
don't
yet
understand
but
are generated
by
atmospheric
processes.
The
first
time
anyone
tried
the
ball
lightning hypothesis
was
in
Air
Force
Project
Grudge,
back
in 1949.
The
Weather Bureau
was
asked
to
do
a
special
study
of
ball
lightning.
I
recently
got
a
declassified
copy
of
that,
and
the
Air
Force
position
at that time,
and
since
then
was
that
ball
lightning
doesn't
come
near
to explaining
these
sight-
ings.
I
concur
in
that.
When
you
deal
with
multiple-witness
cases
in-
volving
discs
with
metallic
luster,
definite
outline,
seen in the
day-
time, completely
removed
from a
thunderstorm, perhaps
seen
over
center
Manhattan,
or perhaps
in
Redlands,
Calif.,
they
are
not
ball
lightning
or
plasmas.
In
weather
completely
unrelated to
anything
that could provide
a
source
of
energy, the continuous
power
source required to
maintain
aplasma
in
the
face
of
recombination
and
decay of
a
plasma,
Klass'
views
just
do
not
make
good
sense.
It
is
just
not
reasonable
to suggest
that,
say
the
BOAC
Strato-
cruiser
that
was
followed
by
six
UFO's
for
90
miles
up
in the St.
Lawrence
Valley
in
1954
was
followed
by
a
plasma,or that
these
peoplein
Redlands were
looking
at
a
plasma, or
that the
20
or
so
objects
that
went
over
Farmington
were
plasmas.
One
of
the
most
characteristic
features
of
a
plasma
is
its
very
short
lifetime
and
exceedingly great
instability,
as
some
of your
members
will
know
from
your
contact
with
fusion research
problems.
The
diffi-
culty
of
sustaining
a plasma
for
more
than
microseconds
is
a
very great
difficulty.
To
suggest that
clear
weather
conditions
can
somehow
cre-
ate
and
maintain plasmas
that
persist
for
many
minutes,
and
fool
pilots
with
18,000
flight
hours
into
thinking that they
are white-
and
red
-domed
discs,
to take
a
very
famous
case
over Philadelphia
wherethe
pilot
thought he was
about 100
yards
from
this
dome
-disc, is
un-
reasonable.
It
is
not a
scientifically
well-defended viewpoint.
To
conclude, then,
my
position
is
that
UFO's
are
entirely real
and
we do
not
know what
they
are, because
we
have laughed
them out of
court.
The
possibility
that these are
extraterrestrial devices,
that
we
are
dealing with
surveillance
from some advanced technology,
is
a
possi-bility
I
take very
seriously.
I
reach that hypothesis, as
my
preferred hypothesis, not by hard
fact,
hardware,
tailfins,
or reading
license plates,
but by having ex-