Alien visitors
A good many SETI researchers assert that as of now we have no evidence whatsoever that extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth or tried to communicate with us. Some take this as evidence no such beings exist. They say that if humanlike civilizations did exist elsewhere in the universe, they would have already explored or colonized every habitable planet in the universe. Other researchers counter that perhaps they are here, or have been here, but we have not noticed them yet. But perhaps some researchers have noticed them. This brings us to the topic of UFOs and alien abductions, as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligences.
Since time immemorial religious traditions, including the JudeoChristian tradition, have reported not only visitations by angels and superhuman beings, coming and going without the use of machines, but also visitations that involve some kind of machines. The Vedic literatures of India are full of descriptions of various kinds of vimanas, or spacecraft, a topic explored in depth by Richard L. Thompson in his book alien identities. Modern UFO reports are therefore not new, but represent a continuing set of observations of extraterrestrial or extradimensional craft.
The modern UFO phenomenon began in 1947 and has continued to the present. The UFO phenomenon has several components. The first is observations of machinelike flying objects that cannot be explained in terms of existing human technologies. The second is humanoid beings associated with such machines. And the third is paranormal phenomena connected with such machines and humanoids and their interactions with humans.
Observations of UFOs have been reported by professional scientists. In a letter to Science, J. Allen Hynek, chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University, said, “some of the very best, most coherent reports have come from scientifically trained people” (Markowitz 1980, p. 255). Hynek served as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force on UFOs from 1948 to 1968, and he was later director of the civilian Center for UFO Studies.
In 1952, a survey of 40 professional astronomers revealed that five of these astronomers had seen UFOs. The survey was included in a section of a government-sponsored report on the UFO phenomenon. The author of this section said about the sightings: “Perhaps this is to be expected, since astronomers do, after all, watch the skies.” He further noted that astronomers “will not likely be fooled by balloons, aircraft, and similar objects, as may be the general populace” (Condon 1969, p. 516).
UFO researcher Jacques Vallee was previously employed as a professional astronomer. He recalled: “l became seriously interested in 1961, when I saw French astronomers erase a magnetic tape on which our satellite tracking team had recorded eleven data points on an unknown flying object which was not an airplane, a balloon, or a known orbiting craft.
‘People would laugh at us if we reported this!’ was the answer I was given at the time. Better forget the whole thing. Let’s not bring ridicule to the observatory” (Vallee 1979, p. 7).
In 1967, James McDonald, a physicist and meteorologist at the University of Arizona, stated: “An intensive analysis of hundreds of outstanding UFO reports and personal interviews with dozens of key witnesses in important cases, have led me to the conclusion that the UFO problem is one of exceedingly great scientific importance.” McDonald favored “the hypothesis that the UFOs might be extraterrestrial probes” as being “the least unsatisfactory hypothesis for explaining the now-available UFO evidence” (McDonald 1967, p. 1).
In the 1970s, astrophysicist Peter Sturrock sent a questionnaire on UFOs to 2,611 members of the American Astronomical Association. The results, published in 1977, revealed that 1,300 members replied, and their reports contained 60 UFO sightings (Sturrock 1977). In July 1979, the journal industrial Research/Development polled 1,200 scientists and engineers about UFOs. They were asked, “Do you believe that UFOs exist?” Among these scientists and engineers, 61 percent said yes, they did believe in UFOs. In fact, 8 percent said they had seen UFOs, and an additional 10 percent thought they might have seen them. Fully 40 per cent said they believed UFOs originated in outer space (Fowler 1981, pp.
221–222).
Probably the most famous scientist to comment favorably on the existence of UFOs was psychiatrist Carl Jung, who said: “So far as I know it remains an established fact, supported by numerous observations, that Ufos have not only been seen visually but have also been picked up on the radar screen and have left traces on the photographic plate . . . It boils down to nothing less than this: that either psychic projections throw back a radar echo, or else the appearance of real objects affords an opportunity for mythological projections” (Jung 1959, pp. 146–147).
After initial reports of UFO sightings in 1947, some high officers in the American Air Force became concerned with the phenomenon. Edward Condon said in his official report on the American military’s research on UFOs: “Within the Air Force there were those who emphatically believed that the subject was absurd. . . . Other Air Force officials regarded UFOs with utmost seriousness and believed that it was quite likely that American airspace was being invaded by secret weapons of foreign powers or possibly by visitors from outer space” (Condon 1969, p. 503).
General Nathan Twining, chief of staff of the U. S. Army and commanding general of the Army Air Force, wrote on September 23, 1947 about the flying disks reported in various parts of the country: “1. The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.
2. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. 3. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena such as meteors. 4. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely” (Condon 1969, p. 894).
To carry out Twining’s directives for a study group, the Air Force organized Project Sign, which continued until February 1949. The research work, which took the extraterrestrial nature of UFOs as a serious possibility, was carried out by the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Thereafter, work by the ATIC continued under the name Project Grudge. But there was a change in attitude toward the phenomenon. J. Allen Hynek, who worked on the project said, “The change to Project Grudge signaled the adoption of the strict brush-off attitude to the UFO problem. Now the public relations statements on specific UFO cases bore little resemblance to the facts of the case. If a case contained some of the elements possibly attributable to aircraft, a balloon, etc., it automatically became that object in the press release” (Hynek 1972a, p. 174). Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, a project officer, said, “This drastic change in official attitude is as difficult to explain as it was difficult for many people who knew what was going on inside Project Sign to believe” (Hynek 1972a, p. 175). The final report of Project Grudge, released in August 1949, said there was no evidence of any high tech devices, and explained away UFO reports as mistakes, illusions, or fabrications. Project Grudge was formally dissolved in December 1949.