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soften, and a few highly placed scientists start exploring the study of the anomaly, gradually attracting additional researchers into the fold. Finally, the new reality breaks through, often suddenly and quickly, sometimes precipitated by the efforts of a single scientist acting at a crucial time. The anomaly then becomes part of the expected and we're able to see nature in a new way, and soon the once-radical discovery becomes part of the known. Kuhn writes: "A scientific revolution is developmental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one ... the normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone before." With regard to the anomaly of the UFO, it's easy to recognize its potential to create a "paradigm shift” depending on what is discovered once science decides to recognize it. Because of the extraterrestrial saotae 144 . aa 1 soo4 1 possibility—a challenge to our understanding of the physical universe and our place in it—there is, indeed, a risk of a very large scientific revolution. If the UFO is determined to be a secret technological creation of mankind or something more complex such as a manifestation of nature from perhaps another dimension, the discovery would be potentially transformative. And Kuhn says it can all happen due to one defining, "noncumulative" event— perhaps one pivotal, lengthy UFO display, a new type of explosive physical evidence, or even communication via radio waves or other more advanced Unfortunately, history shows that such change usually progresses slowly in the buildup to that defining moment. Based on scientific observations in the early sixteenth century, Copernicus proposed the heliocentric model, according to which the Earth was not stationary at the center of the universe, as orthodox science claimed, but in fact was spinning on its axis, and the planets were moving around the sun rather than the Earth. The movements of the planets were anomalies at the time, and couldn't be explained within the accepted model. Copernicus acquired data that supported this new theory and explained the observed anomalies. But, despite his rationality, his findings were considered impossible—it can't be, therefore it isn't—given what was then understood to be true. xt? 1 6 Worse, as we human beings gazed out to space in a state of ignorance, secure on our fixed planet Earth, his theory also defied our self-imposed religious dogma. A hundred and fifty years passed before the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun was accepted, and only after Galileo, Kepler, and Newton contributed in turn. Finally, humanity witnessed the emergence of the new scientific paradigm. It had been a long and painful road. Galileo had been forced by the church to retract his ideas, and was placed under house arrest for maintaining what was actually the correct view. and contributed in Newton turn. noncumulative means—an event that will leave scientists certain as to the nature and origin of the phenomenon.