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"If it does happen, it can happen." [6] In January 2010, the prestigious Royal Society of London convened a two-day conference on "the detection of extraterrestrial life and the “om consequences for science and society." Physicists, chemists, biologists, astronomers, anthropologists, and theologians came together—along with representatives from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs—to discuss the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence. But one issue was not part of the mix: the still unexplained UFO phenomenon. Once again, it was as if the whole mass of evidence simply doesn't exist. And I am quite sure that if any presenters were open or curious, perhaps even informed, about the subject, they would never risk saying so among such esteemed colleagues at a high- profile forum. But the fact that this meeting took place at all, and received international media coverage, illustrates the increasing fascination and greater acceptance being afforded the search for life beyond planet Earth. I believe that after the United States establishes its own government agency to spur UFO research, and thereby changes attitudes within the scientific community, the next such conference will include a credentialed speaker ern on the mystery of UFOs. Gradually, science will sort out the wheat from the chaff, and devise a way to integrate the so far unorganized UFO data into its own framework. Specific steps to be taken have been suggested by some concerned scientists, but lie outside the scope of this book. However, radical changes to the accepted scientific norm—anything leading to profound shifts in understanding—have never come about easily. UFOs seem to be the first to challenge something as fundamental as our anthropocentric, or human-centered, worldview, which could mean that resistance to studying them may turn out to be the longest in human 1 history. As defined by the philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn, author of the classic 1962 study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the process of a paradigm shift begins when a persistent anomaly is discovered that can't be explained by the existing set of assumptions within the current scientific framework. The unexplained phenomenon undermines the foundational tenets of the prevailing worldview. When the anomaly first shows itself, its implications and physical characteristics seem absolutely inconceivable, totally outside the boundary of what could be real, thereby requiring dismissal by the establishment. At first its presence is rejected as an error and often ridiculed, with proponents of its legitimacy scorned and persecuted, their jobs and reputations at risk. As evidence mounts and it can no longer be discarded, attempts are made to incorporate it and define it within the parameters of the existing paradigm. The threat to current understanding is heightened and the establishment clings ever tighter to its self-defining, and self-defined, reality, as if confronted with death. At the same time, as Kuhn describes it, the old paradigm boundaries begin to scientific undermines the