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.
“Scientific American”26 pages
93 from the air in daytime, near Mount Rainier, Washington. The observer, a Seat- tle resident, dubbed them "flying saucers." The sighting received extensive pub- licity. Somewhat similar sightings have been reported ever since. The differences among these observations, however, are as striking as the observations them- selves. Investigations. Because of its national defense responsibility, the U.S. Air Force investigates reports of unidentified flying object over the United States. The number of sightings investigated in 1947-65 is shown in the following table. Reported sightings of UFO's, 1947-65 Year Number Year Number 1947 79 1957 1,178 1948 143 1958 473 1949 186 1959 364 1950 169 1960 557 1951 121 1961 591 1952 1,501 1962 474 1953 425 1963 399 1954 429 1964 572 1955 404 1965 886 1956 778 Source: Tacker, Lawrence, J., Flying Saucers and the U.S. Air Force (Princeton, N.J. (1960), and Library of Congress, Facts About Unidentified Flying Objects (Washington 1966). Evaluation of these reports is difficult. Observations frequently are sketchy, and different reports of the same phenomenon are often dissimilar, or even irre- concilable. Observers tend to exaggerate. Deliberate hoaxes, some involving dou- ble-exposure photogarphy, have been perpetrated. After allowances are made for these factors, the accepted scientific procedure is to attempt an explanation of the observations in terms of phenomena independently observed and understood. Only if an observation is rigorously inexplicable in terms of known phenomena does the scientist introduces alternative hypotheses for which there is no other evidence. Such hypotheses must still be consistent with all other available scien- tific information. The identity of most UFO's has been established as belonging to one of the following categories: unconventional aircraft; aircraft under uncommon weather conditions; aircraft with unusual external light patterns; meteorolo- gical and other high-altitude balloons; artificial earth satellites; flocks of birds; reflections of searchlights or headlights off clouds; reflection of sunlight from shiny surfaces; luminescent organisms (including one case of a firefly lodged between two adjacent panes of glass in an airplane cockpit window) ; optical mirages and looming; lenticular cloud formations; ball lighting; sun dogs; meteors, including green fireballs; planets, especially Venus; bright stars; and the aurora borealis. Radar detection of unidentified flying objects has also occurred occasionally. Many of these sightings have been explained as radar reflections from tempera- ture inversion layers in the atmosphere and other sources of radar "angels." Considering the difficulties involved in tracking down visual and radar sight- ings, it is remarkable that all but a few percent of the reported UFO's have been identified as naturally occurring—if sometimes unusual—phenomena. It is of some interest that the UFO's which are unidentified do not fall into one uniform category of motion, color, lighting, etc., but rather run through the same range of these variables as the identified UFO's. In October 1957, Sputnik 1, the first earth-orbiting artificial satellite, was launched. Of 1,178 UFO sightings in that year, 701 occurred between October and December. The clear implication is that Sputnik and its attendant publicity were responsible for many UFO sightings. Earlier, in July 1952, a set of visual and radar observations of unidentified flying objects over Washington, D.C., caused substantial public concern. Govern- ment concern was reflected in the creation in November of that year of a special panel to evaluate these reports. The panel was established by the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was headed by the late Professor H. P. Robertson of the California Institute of Technology. The Robertson panel, after a thorough investigation of the UFO reports to that date, concluded that all were probably natural phenomena, wrongly interpreted. The most reliable testimony is that of the professional astronomer. Professor Jesse L. Greenstein of Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories (author of the 97-818-68 7
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.