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.
“The Advance”52 pages
83 or "trapping" is generally quite well understood. As with mirages, the allowed angle of elevation of the radar beam can only depart from zero by a few tens of minutes of arc for typically occurring inversions and humidity gradients. Ducting with beam angles in excess of a degree or so woulld require unheard of atmospheric temperature or humidity gradients. Care must be taken in inter- preting that statement, since beam -angles have to be distinguished from angles of elevation of the beam axis. For the latter reason, a beam -axis elevation of, say, two degrees still involves emission of some radar energy at angles so low that some may be trapped, yielding "ground returns" despite the higher eleva- tion of the axis. All such points are well described in an extensive literature of radar propagation physics. In addition to trapping and ground return effects, spurious returns can come from insects, birds, and atmospheric refractive -index anomalies that generate radar echoes termed "angels". These are low -intensity returns that no experi- enced operator would be likely to confuse with the strong return from an air- craft or other large metallic object. Also, other peculiar radar effects such as interference with other nearby sets, forward scatter from weak tropospheric discontinuities (see work of Atlas and others), and odd secondary reflections from ground targets need to be kept in mind. When one analyzes some of the famous radar -tracking cases in the UFO literature, none of these propagation anomalies seem typical as accounting for the more interesting cases. (Several examples have already been discussed, (cases 32,35,36, 37, 38, and 39).) SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS In summary, I wish to emphasize that my own study of the UFO problem has convinced me that we must rapidly escalate serious scientific attention tothis extraordinarily intriguing puzzle. I believe that the scientific community has been seriously misinformed for twenty years about the potential importance of UFOs. I do not wish here to elaborate on my own interpretation of the history behind that long period ofmisinformation I only wish to urge the Committee on Science and Astronauticsto take whatever steps are within their power to alter this situation withoutfurther delay. The present Symposium is an excellent step in the latter direction. I strongly urge your Committee that further efforts in the same direction be made in the near future. I believe that extensive hearings before your Committee, as well as before other Congressional committees having concern with this problem, are needed. The possibility that the Earth might be under surveillance by some high civilization in command of a technology far beyond ours must not be overlookedin weighing the UFO problem. I am one of those who lean strongly towards the extraterrestrial hypothesis. I arrived at that point by a process of elimination of other alternative hypotheses, not by arguments based on what I could call "irrefutable proof." I am convinced that the recurrent observations by reliable citizens here and abroad over the past twenty years cannot be brushed aside as nonsense, but rather need to be taken extremely seriously as evidence that somephenomenon is going on which we simply do not understand. Although there is no current basis for concluding that hostility and grave hazard lie behind the UFO phenomenology, we cannot be entirely sure of that. For all of these reasons, greatly expanded scientific and public attention to the UFO problem is urgently needed. The proposal that serious attention be given to the hypothesis of an extrater-restrial origin of UFOs raises many intriguing questions, only a few of which can be discussed meaningfully. A very standard question of skepticism is "Why no contact?" Here, the best answer is merely a cautionary remark that one would certainly be unjustified in extrapolating all human motives and reasons to any other intelligent civilization. It is conceivable that an avoidance of prematurecontact would be one of the characteristic features of surveillance of a less ad- vanced civilization; other conceivable rationales can be suggested. All are specula-tive, however; what is urgently needed is a far more vigorous scientific investiga- tion of the full spectrum of UFO phenomena, and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics could perform a very significant service by taking steps aimed in that direction.
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.