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.
“UFO Files”31 pages
59 WHY DON'T ASTRONOMERS EVER SEE UFO'S ? I have had this question put to me by many persons, including a number of astronomers. Once I was speaking to a group from an important laboratory of astronomy when the director asked why astronomers never see them. In the room,'among his staff, were two astronomers who had seen unconventional ob- jects while doing observing but who had 'asked that the information they had given me about their sightings be kept confidential. I understand such strictures, but some of them make things a bit difficult. This phenomenon of professional per- sons seeing unidentified objects and then being extremely loath to admit it is far more common than one might guess. After hearing of an evidently very significant sighting by a prominent physical scientist who was hiking in some western moun- tains when he spotted a metallic-looking disc, examined it with binoculars, and saw it 'shoot up into the air (according to my second-hand report from a profes- sional colleague), I tried for months to secure a direct report of it from him; he was unwilling to discuss it openly with me. NICAP has had reports from prominent executives in large technical corporations who insisted that, just be- cause of their positions, their names'not be used publicly. Similar instances could be cited almost ad infinitum. The very types of witnesses whose testimony would carry greatest credence often prove to be the most reluctant to admit their sight- ings; they seem to feel they have the most to lose. Within a day of this writing, I 'spoke to a veteran airlines pilot about a sighting in which he was involved 'about a decade ago. After the 'official "explanation" was publicized, he decided he'd never report another one. I predict that'social psychologists'are going to have a field day,in a few years, studying the "pluralistic ignorance" that led so many persons to conceal so many 'sightings for so long. - Returning, however, to the question of why astronomers never see UFOs, a relevant quantitative consideration needs to be cited at once. According to a re- cent count, the membership of the American Astronomical Society is about 1800; by contrast, our country has'about 350,000 law-enforcement officers. With 'almost 200 times as'many police, sheriffs' deputies, state troopers, etc., 'as there are pro- fessional 'astronomers, it is no 'surprise that many more UFO reports come from the law-enforcement officers than from the astronomers. Furthermore, the notion that astronomers spend most 'of their time scanning the skies is quite in- correct; the average patrolman 'almost certainly does more random looking about than the 'average professional astronomer. Despite these consideration's, there are on record many sightings from as- tronomers, particularly the'amateurs, who far outnumber the professionals. A few examples will be considered. 1. Case 20. Las Cruces, N.M., August 20, 1949 A good account of the 'sighting by Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer 'of the planet Pluto, is given by Menzel (Ref. 25). From my own discussions with Dr. Tom- baugh, I confirmed the main outlines of this incident. At about 10:00 p.m. on 8/20/49, he, his wife, and his mother-in-law were in the yard of his Las Oruces home, admiring what Tombaugh described as a sky of rare transparency, when Tombaugh, looking almost directly towards zenith, spotted an array of pale yellow lights moving rapidly across the sky towards the southeast. He called them to the attention of the two others, who saw them just before they dis- appeared halfway to the horizon. The entire array subtended an angle which Tom- baugh put at about one degree, and it took only 'a few seconds to cross 50 or 60 degrees of sky. The 'array comprised six "windowlike" rectangles of light, formed into a symmetric pattern; they moved too fast for aircraft, too slowly for a meteor, and made no sound. Menzel quotes Tombaugh as saying, "I have never seen anything like it before or since, and I have spent a lot of time where the night sky could be seen well." Discussion.—Dr. Menzel explains this phenomenon as resulting from reflection of lights from the ground, possibly "the lighted windows of a house" reflected by an inversion or haze layer aloft. The movement he explains as resulting from a ripple on the haze layer. Such an "explanation" is not merely difficult to under- stand; it is incredible. For an "inversion layer" to produce such a near-normal reflection of window lights would demand a discontinuity of refractive index so enormously large compared with anythinc, known to occur in our atmosphere as to make it utterly out of the question. However, it has been just such casual ad hoc explanations a's this by which Menzel has, in his writings, used meteorolog- ical 'optics to rationalize case after case with no attention to crucial quantitative details. It is a simple matter to show that even inversions of intensity many
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.