UFO
Research: Findings vs. Facts
By Leonard David, Space.com's Space Insider
Columnist | June 22, 2006 06:01am ET
For decades now, eyes and sky have met to witness
the buzzing of our world by Unidentified Flying Objects, termed UFOs or simply
flying saucers. Extraterrestrials have come a long way to purportedly share the
friendly skies with us.'
UFOs and alien visitors are part of our culture-a
far-out phenomenon when judged against those "low life" wonders
Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.
And after all those years, as the saying goes, UFOs
remain a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Why so? For one, the
field is fraught with hucksterism. It's also replete with blurry photos and
awful video. But then there are also well-intentioned and puzzled witnesses .Scientifically
speaking, are UFOs worth keeping an eye on?
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Unusual
properties
There have been advances in the field of UFO
research, said Ted Roe, Executive Director of the National Aviation Reporting
Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), based in Vallejo, California.
"The capture of optical spectra from mobile,
unpredictable luminosities is one of those innovations. More work to be done
here but [there are] some good results already."
NARCAP was established in 2000 and is dedicated to
the advancement of aviation safety issues as they apply to, what they term
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).
Roe said that a decade from now, researchers should
have even better instrumentation at their disposal and better data on UAP of
several varieties. His forecast is that scientific rigor will prevail,
demonstrating that there are "stable, mobile, unusual, poorly documented
phenomena with quite unusual properties manifesting within our
atmosphere," he told SPACE.com.
Paradigm
shifting
NARCAP has made the case that some of these
phenomena have unusual electromagnetic properties. Therefore, they could
disrupt microprocessors and adversely effect avionic systems, Roe explained,
and that for those reasons and others UAP should be considered a hazard to safe
aviation.
"It is likely that either conclusion will fly
in the face of the general assertion that UAP are not real and that there are
no undocumented phenomena in our atmosphere," Roe continued. That should
open the door, he said, to the realization that there's no good reason to
discard outright the possibility that extraterrestrial visitation has occurred
and may be occurring.
"Physics is leading to new and potentially
paradigm shifting understandings about the nature of our universe and its
physical properties," Roe said. "These understandings may point the
way towards an acceptance of the probability of interstellar travel and
communication by spacefaring races."
Sacred
cows to the slaughter
As UFO debunker Robert Sheaffer's web site
proclaims, he's "skeptical to the max." He is a fellow of the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and a
well-known writer on the UFO scene.
Being an equal-opportunity debunker, Sheaffer notes
that he refutes whatever nonsense, in his judgment, "stands in the
greatest need of refuting, no matter from what source it may come, no matter
how privileged, esteemed, or sacrosanct ... sacred cows, after all, make the
best hamburger."
Sheaffer told SPACE.com, in regard to the cottage
industry of UFO promoters, there's a reason there are still so many snake-oil
sellers.
"It's because nobody, anywhere, has any actual
facts concerning alleged UFOs, just claims. That allows con-men to thrive
peddling their yarns," Sheaffer said. "UFO believers are convinced
that the existence of UFOs will be revealed 'any day now'. But it's like Charlie
Brown and the football: No matter how many times Lucy pulls the football
away-or the promised 'disclosure' fails to happen-they're dead-certain that the
next time will be their moment of glory."
Trash
from the past
"I would have to say that we're stuck in
neutral," said Kevin Randle, a leading expert and writer on UFOs and is
known as a dogged researcher of the phenomena. There's no real new research, he
said, and that's "because we have to revisit the trash of the past."
Randle points to yesteryear stories, one stretching
back in time to a supposed 1897 airship crash in Aurora, Texas, long proven to
be a hoax by two con men-yet continues to surface in UFO circles.
Then there's the celebrated Thomas Mantell saga, a
pilot that lost his life chasing a UFO in 1948. There are those that contend he
was killed by a blue beam from a UFO, Randle said "even though we have
known for years that the UFO was a balloon and he violated regulations by
climbing above 14,000 feet without oxygen equipment. I mean, we know this, and
yet there are those who believe that Mantell was killed by aliens."
Randle's advice is to the point: "We need to
begin to apply rigorous standards of research ... stop accepting what we wish
to believe even when the evidence is poor, and begin thinking ahead."
Paucity
of physical evidence
"I've no doubt that UFOs are here to
stay," said Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in
Mountain View, California. "I'm just not convinced that alien craft are
here to stay ... or for that matter, even here for brief visits.
"First, despite a torrent of sightings for more
than a half-century, I can't think of a single, major science museum that has
alien artifacts on display," Shostak said. "Contrast this paucity of
physical evidence with what the American Indians could have shown you fifty
years after Christopher Columbus first violated their sea-space. They could
have shown you all sorts of stuff-including lots of smallpox-infested
brethren-as proof that they were being 'visited,'" he said.
When it comes to extraterrestrial visitors in the
21st century, the evidence is anecdotal, ambiguous, or, in some cases,
artifice, Shostak suggested.
Calling it "argument from ignorance",
Shostak pointed to the claim that aliens must have careened out of control
above the New Mexico desert simply because some classified government documents
sport a bunch of blacked-out text. "How does the latter prove the
former?"
Sure, the missing verbiage is consistent with a government
cover-up of an alien crash landing, Shostak said. "But it's also
consistent with an infinitude of other scenarios...not all of them involving
sloppy alien pilots," he added.
Shostak said that it is not impossible that we could
be visited. It doesn't violate physics to travel between the stars, although
that's not easy to do.
"But really, if you're going to claim-or for
that matter, believe-that extraterrestrials are strafing the cities, or
occasionally assaulting the neighbors with an aggression inappropriate for a
first date, then I urge you to find evidence that leaves little doubt among the
professionally skeptical community known as the world of science."
Residue
of sightings
Why is there precious little to show that world of
science that UFOs merit attention?
"Obviously there is not a simple answer, but
part of it is reluctance of the scientific community to support such
research," explained Bruce Maccabee, regarded as a meticulous researcher
and an optical physicist using those talents to study photographs and video of
unexplained phenomena.
Why
this reluctance?
"In my humble opinion it is largely a result of
'tradition'...tradition set by the U.S. Air Force in the early years when they
publicly stated that everything was under control, they were
investigating...and finding nothing that couldn't be explained," Maccabee
said.
Nevertheless, Maccabee observed, work on the
phenomenon will carry on.
"UFO studies will continue until all the old
cases have either been explained or admitted to being unexplainable-meaning a
residue of sightings that could be ET related-and/or until people stop seeing
unexplainable UFO-like events throughout the world," Maccabee concluded.