Nexus - 0205 - New Times Magazine-pages

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USAF & UFO's There is one solid advance that has been made though. Jacques and Janine Vallee have taken a particular type of UFO - namely those that are lower than tree-top level when sighted - and plotted the UFO’s estimated diameter versus the estimated distance from the observer. The result yields an average diameter of 5 meters with a very characteristic drop for short viewing distances. This behavior at the extremes of the curve is well known to astronomers and psychologists as the “moon illusion". The illusion only occurs when the object viewed is a real, physical object. Because this implies that the observers have viewed a real object, it permits us to accept also their state- ment that these particular UFO’s had a rotational axis of symmetry. Another, less solid, advance made by _ the Vallee’s At nn tima in tha otar served. 4) No material body can have a speed as great as c, the speed of light in free space. 5) The maximum energy, E, which can be obtained from a body at rest is E=mc2, where m is the rest mass of the body. Laws numbered | and 3 seem fairly safe, but let us hesitate and take another look. Actually, law number 3 is only valid (now) from a relativistic viewpoint; and for that matter so are laws 4 and 5. But relativity completely revised these physical concepts after 1915, before then Newtonian mechanics were supreme. We should also note that general relativity has not yet been verified. Thus we have the peculiar situation of five laws which appear to deny the possibility of intelli- gent alien control of UFO’s, yet three of the laws are recent in concept and may not even be valid. vu did tha eunnacad At no time in the story did the supposed aliens shoot back, although one is left with the impression that the described creatures was their plotting of the total number of sightings per week versus the date. They did this for the time span from 1947 to 1962, and then attempted to match the peaks of the curve (every 2 years 2 months) to the times of Earth-Mars con- junction (every 2 years 1. 4 months). The match was very good between 1950 and 1956 but was poor outside those limits. Also, the peaks were not only at the times of Earth-Mars conjunction but also roughly at the first harmonic (very loosely, every 13 months). This raises the question why should UFO’s only visit Earth when Mars is in conjunction and when it is on the opposite side of the sun. Obviously, the conjunction periodicity of Mars is not the final answer. As it happens, there is an interesting possibility to consid- er. Suppose Jupiter’s conjunctions were used; they are every 13. 1 months. That would satisfy the observed periods nicely, except for every even data peak being of different magnitude from every odd data peak. Perhaps a combination of Martian, Jovian, and Saturnian (and even other planetary) conjunctions will be neces- sary to match the frequency plot - if it can be matched. Further data correlation is quite difficult. There are a large num- ber of different saucer shapes but this may mean little. For exam- ple, look at the number of different types of aircraft which are in use in the U. S. Air Force alone. In is obvious that intensive scientific study is needed in this area; no such study has yet been undertaken at the necessary levels of intensity needed. Something that must be guarded against in any such study is the trap of implicitly assuming that our knowledge of Physics (or any other branch of science) is complete. An example of one such trap is selecting a group of physical laws which we now accept as valid, and assume that they will never be super- seded. Five such laws might be: 1) Every action must have an opposite and equal reaction. 2) Every particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force proportional to the product of the masses and inversely as the square of the distance. 3) Energy, mass and momentum are con- Also, law number 2 has not yet been tested under conditions of large relative speeds or accelerations. We should not deny the possibility of alien control of UFO’s on the basis of preconceived notions not established as related or relevant to the UFO’s. From available information, the UFO phenomenon appears to have been global in nature for almost 50,000 years. The majority of known witnesses have been reliable people who have seen eas- ily-explained natural phenomena, and there appears to be no over- all positive correlation with population density. The entire phe- nomenon could be psychological in nature but that is quite doubt- ful. However, psychological factors probably do enter the data pic- ture as “noise“. The phenomenon could also be entirely due to known and unknown phenomena (with some psychological “noise” added in) but that too is questionable in view of some of the available data. This leaves us with the unpleasant possibility of alien visitors to our planet, or at least of alien controlled UFO’s. However, the data are not well correlated, and what questionable data there are sug- gest the existence of at least three and maybe four different groups of aliens (possibly at different states of development). This too is difficult to accept. It implies the existence of intelligent life on a majority of the planets in our solar system, or a surprisingly strong interest in Earth by members of other solar systems. A solution to the UFO problem may be obtained by the long and diligent effort of a large group of well financed and competent sci- entists, unfortunately there is no evidence suggesting that such an effort is going to be made. However, even if such an effort were made, there is no guarantee of success because of the isolated and sporadic nature of the sightings. Also, there may be nothing to find, and that would mean a long search with no profit at the end. The best thing to do is to keep an open and skeptical mind, and not take an extreme position on any side of the question. NEXUS - 33 were having fun scaring humans. 33. 6 CONCLUSION OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1991 * YEAR BOOK