UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (46 page)

At this point, we have the option of encouraging the dam to break—slowly and methodically, rather than cataclysmically, if possible. We must recognize that the potential dangers of acknowledging and investigating UFOs are real. The fears are understandable, and even justified; and yes, the repercussions could be socially destabilizing.

But no matter how this enigma is eventually resolved, the American political establishment is monopolizing any decision making for the time being. Official bodies within other countries have obviously not been overcome by projected fears, nor do they think that any risks inherent in discovery justify ignoring UFOs. They are already moving forward, and I suspect most of these officials believe it is more dangerous to ignore UFOs than it is to confront them. The majority of the American public, as shown by various polls, already recognize the reality of UFOs, and they don’t appear to be traumatized about it. Rather, they seem to want to know more.

For the benefit of the political establishment, I believe that bringing any and all fears to consciousness is our only choice. When we decide, as a society, to honestly deal with UFOs, we will be entering into a large-scale “therapeutic” process that will diminish, or even ultimately extinguish, the power of the forces sustaining the taboo. By finally shedding light on these dynamics, we will disarm them. This is perhaps the
only
way for all of us to take the next step, because it will undermine the very foundation of the dysfunctional political system in place, the central obstacle standing in our way.

In the meantime, I hope all the writers for this book have helped assuage some of that existential anxiety. Understanding brings relief, and, as the clichés say, knowledge is power and the truth will set you free. As true “militant agnostics,” we can recognize that political change must incorporate these more philosophical considerations. As in Hynek’s metaphor, the waters are rising to a level that will eventually compel the dam to break. We
can
find a healthy resolution to the challenge of UFOs and all they represent, and we
must
do so.

With the launching of a new U.S. government agency and the liberation of new resources, science could take its rightful place in the study of UFOs by claiming the subject as its own and beginning a new inquiry. Such a scenario would represent a dramatic turnaround from a past in which a few noble scientists made an effort to bring this controversial issue to the table, while others, although interested, were inhibited by the risk of professional ridicule. The rest succumbed to the notion that there was nothing there worth studying, as put forth in the summary of the Condon report.

A few scientists have actively studied and investigated UFOs despite the professional obstacles, and we have much to learn from them despite the passage of time. In 1968, the House Science and Astronautics Committee heard the testimony of Dr. James E. McDonald, senior atmospheric physicist
³
of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, who had spent two years investigating UFO cases. As a result of his focused study—a rarity within his profession—McDonald told the congressional committee that “no other problem within your jurisdiction is of comparable scientific and national importance,” and this extraordinary matter should not be ignored. If other scientists had bothered to undertake such studies, many would have reached the same conclusion, and we’d be in a very different situation today. Instead, shortly thereafter, the University of Colorado’s biased and misleading report quashed the efforts of pioneer scientists such as McDonald to interest the scientific community in studying UFOs.

Since then, Dr. Peter A. Sturrock, emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University and emeritus director of Stanford’s Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, has taken the lead in combating the effects of the Condon report. In 1975, he conducted a survey of the American Astronomical Society and found that 75 percent of the respondents wished to see more information on the UFO subject published in scientific journals. Due to the fact that these journals rejected papers on UFOs and other anomalies out of hand, Sturrock founded the Society for Scientific Exploration and its
Journal of Scientific Exploration
, which began publication in 1987.

Sturrock is perhaps one of the most eminent scientists ever to apply the conventional scientific method to the UFO phenomenon. He has received awards from the American Astronomical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Cambridge University, the Gravity Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics noted his “major contribution to the fields of geophysics, solar physics and astrophysics, leadership in the space science community, and dedication to the pursuit of knowledge.” He has published five edited volumes, three monographs, three hundred articles and reports, and a 2009 memoir.
⁴

In 1997, Sturrock initiated and directed the first major scientific inquiry into the UFO phenomenon since the Condon study, in order to see what a new group of scientists would conclude about UFOs. A four-day conference was convened in upstate New York to rigorously review physical evidence associated with UFO reports. Seven investigators—including Jean-Jacques Velasco and Dr. Richard Haines—presented well-researched cases with photographic evidence, ground traces and injuries to vegetation, analysis of debris from UFOs, radar evidence, interference with automobile functioning and aircraft equipment, apparent gravitational or inertial effects, and physiological effects on witnesses. The review panel of nine scientists from diverse fields—most were “decidedly skeptical agnostics” who did not have prior involvement with UFOs, according to Sturrock—reviewed the presentations and provided a sober, carefully worded summary. Although they were unable to conclude anything specific in such a short time, the panel recommended continued careful evaluation of UFO reports. It recognized that the Condon study was out of date, and that whenever there are unexplained phenomena, of course they should be investigated. And yes, the further investigation and study of UFO data
could
contribute to the resolution of the UFO problem. Those remarks were a significant advance on the position of the scientific establishment.
⁵

Still, this review didn’t change much. Scientists continue to face obstacles, Sturrock notes, such as: a lack of funding for research, a false assumption that there is no data or evidence, the perception that the topic is “not respectable,” and the a priori rejection of research papers by journals. One impediment is that instead of looking at the data and taking steps to acquire more, many scientists have tended to interpret the issue theoretically and then give a theoretical reason for dismissing it. For example, Astronomer Frank Drake stated in 1998 that if UFO reports are real, they must be due to extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, interstellar travel is impossible, therefore the reports must be discounted. This argument boils down to the familiar skeptical assertion that it cannot happen, therefore it does not happen. “In normal scientific research, observational evidence takes precedence over theory,” Sturrock points out. “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 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 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 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 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 a noncumulative 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 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 means—an event that will leave scientists certain as to the nature and origin of the phenomenon.

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. 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.

Smaller discoveries, even though they, too, are initially considered impossible, can shift the norm more expediently. In the early nineteenth century, scientists rejected the idea that rocks could fall from the sky, despite reports to the contrary by multiple eyewitnesses. The consensus was that this couldn’t possibly be, so anyone who said otherwise must be lying, crazy, or a hoaxer. Finally, a scientist collected meteorite fragments reported by villagers in France, which were then studied in the lab, proving the reality of rocks from the sky, and the new phenomenon of meteorites was accepted from that moment on.

Presently, a few physicists are beginning to put forward theories that could explain faster-than-light travel through space, including concepts such as space travel through wormholes, multiple dimensions, and even time travelers.
⁷
According to an August 2009
⁸
Newsweek
cover story, scientists now estimate that 100 billion suns in the Milky Way galaxy support Earth-like planets in orbit around them. Given how many stars there are and the number of extrasolar planets already discovered, the chance of life existing elsewhere in the universe is very high. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 to hunt for some of these planets among 100,000 stars in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra, with the hopes of finding some terrestrial planets with habitable conditions. As of this writing, we’ve already found over 400 planets orbiting other stars.
⁹
By 2013, Kepler is likely to have located hundreds, if not thousands, of potentially habitable planets. NASA has also developed a highly sensitive infrared space telescope
¹⁰
now searching for small, dark asteroids and other near-Earth objects in our solar system, and it sent its first images back through space in January 2010.