The Case for the UFO - Varo Jessup Edition-pages

Page 26 of 165

Page 26 of 165
The Case for the UFO - Varo Jessup Edition-pages

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But there is a third great area of observational data. It is that vast conglomerate of purely astronomical observations which relates to things and phenomena in space or on planets and satellites other than earth. These are the unpopular, poor relatives of orthodox astronomy, the untouchable erratics. These have come to be regarded with such disfavor that there are few published records of them within the past fifty to seventy-five years. We may consider that the sciences of meteorology and mereoritics, whose nature we will discuss later, speak almost eloquently in behalf of the case for space life and UFO's. It is within these fields that we have found the greatest volume of detailed observation and data. And it is just here that we have found the most difficulty in grouping and organizing. Even here, however, we can not a primitive pattern and by simple use of it as a guide, we begin to separate acts of intelligence from "natural" acts of statistical nature. Whereas the actual groupings are given in Parts Two, Three, and Four, the problems involved in the initial research are of interest. The resolution of those problems is still another key to the fact that we are on the right track, that by relating the previously unrelated we have discovered pattern and form. ED: The following has no obvious reference or necessary position. All men of renown had two things, Courage & nviction, often Much that they wer ridiculed. This Man opens & invites same merely by Saying what his observations, Records & Data have shown him, WhatCannot be escaped. There are, of course, such Men who like the one that Would not permit himself to View the Planets Circling the sun Lest it interfere with his religious ‘Dogmas of the day." An example of the way such things develop is our experience in classifying falling objects. Our first thought was that this was a minor field which could be disposed of with a casual perusal. Not so. It soon developed, as the pattern began to evolve, that we could not coordinate these onslaughts from the sky, nor interpret them, unless we gave consideration to their effect, their origins, and to concomitant phenomena. Not only that, but very shortly we were forced to acknowledge that falling objects and other phenomena in the sky must be considered in three categories if order was to ensue from chaos. In short, there seemed to be a class of objects which were merely physical debris cluttering up space and moving in orbits of varying shapes and which had little, if any, relationship to or association with intelligent being. A second group was obviously the product of thinking, if not, indeed, of higher mental characteristics such as purposefulness, determination, morality, and perhaps even humor. Then, especially in those instances where space phenomena appear to intermingle with our native meteorological condition, it became necessary to consider, as a third group, the less spectacular terrestrial events and to clarify our thinking by segregating these and getting them out of our way. The upshot of this coercion was that we found more than half a dozen subcategories wherein we were allied with the sciences of meteorology which is the terrestrial science of the air, and meteoritics which is a branch of astronomy. Let us, then, consider briefly these segments of our problem. To most of you who read this book, falling ice has been limited to hailstones, mostly small, perhaps the size of marbles. But in trying to organize data on ice which falls from the sky, we ran head-on into cases where chunks of ice weighing from a few pounds to some tons were known to fall, and without final proof we were forced to give thought to "spacebergs" which might weigh thousands of tons each, maybe hundreds of thousands, and which arrived from space in swarms of hundreds or even thousands, and left vast scars on the surface of the 26 All of these are terrestrial events--manifestations more or less on the terrestrial surface.