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150 of theories about its origin. Just as nineteenth-century scientists could not explain the aurora borealis, UFOs might be inexplicable in terms of twentieth-century physics.”” Hynek again attacked Condon’s approach in 1975. Instead of asking what the overall, observed nature of the UFO phenomenon was, Condon set out to test the hypothesis that UFOs were visitors from outer space. No attempt was made to find patterns or relationships among the thousands of cases from all over the world. “This would be like asking,” Hynek wrote, “whether the Northern Lights represented interstellar com- munications, and concluding that since the data did not support that hypothesis, the Northern Lights were hallucinations, hoaxes, or sheer imagination.”?* Some supported the Condon report’s conclusions. The New York Times commented that its authors were courageous because they discounted a growing religion. The Nation agreed with Condon’s recommendation to keep school children from reading about UFOs and getting a warped view of science. Others remained unconvinced by Condon’s summation. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics issued a study challenging the report’s conclusion that nothing of scientific value could come from further study of UFOs. The AIAA found it difficult to ignore the small residue of well-documented but unexplainable cases that form the hard core of the UFO controversy.” Years later, physicist Peter Sturrock pointed out that Condon had been open to the possibility that other scientists might at a later date come up with good plans for UFO research and had even advocated that such plans should be funded. “All of the agencies of the federal government, and the private foundations as well,” wrote Condon, “ought to be willing to con- sider UFO research proposals along with others submitted to them on an open-minded, unprejudiced basis.”*” Meanwhile, the Air Force got what it wanted, ridding itself of the issue. On December 17, 1969, the Secretary of the Air Force announced the ter- mination of that service’s 22-year study of UFOs. At a scientific meeting that year, Sagan took a more open-minded posi- tion: There was insufficient evidence to exclude the possibility that some UFOs were space vehicles from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, although the insignificance of our own civilization and the vast distances between the stars made the extraterrestrial hypothesis unlikely. Sagan asked the rhetorical question: Why is that theory so popular? He specu- lated that there were four “resonances”: religious connections, the relief of boredom by believable novelty, military classification, and intolerance of ambiguity.” One might add a broader reason. The desire for contact that underlies the scientific search for signals can be expressed in other ways, including the expectation of visitors. The UFO Controversy