THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE

Posted by admin_akashic on Jun 27th, 2022 in Space

UFOS AND SPACE TRAVEL

The phenomenon of UFOs is real and we should approach it seriously and study it.

(Mikhail Gorbachev, during a meeting with workers in the Urals, reported in Soviet Youth; Lebedev, 1991: 64)

Introduction

Orthodox scientific opinion, including that of SETI researchers, totally rejects accounts of visits to Earth by extraterrestrials. Few scientists are willing to bestow credibility on theories which purport to explain how extraterrestrials could visit us, and the branch of investigation known as Ufology is branded as pseudo-scientific nonsense. Yet belief in alien visits, in flying saucers, contacts and abductions, has a vast public following, and discussion of UFOs is, perhaps, the public’s first introduction to the subject of extraterrestrial life. This chapter examines purported evidence of UFO visits and various reports of encounters with extraterrestrials.

Reports of UFO experiences

From earliest times there were beliefs that the heavens were populated, usually by Gods who travelled in supernatural chariots or by spiritual assistance. Only after the Second World War was it finally recognized that rockets provided the most likely means of travel within and beyond the solar system. But this had a sobering effect on those with aspirations towards space travel. The limitations imposed by energy requirements produced more modest predictions of inter-planetary exploration. The most popular conception of an alien spacecraft is the ‘flying saucer’, so named by Kenneth Arnold, a 32-year-old civilian pilot who reported some over the Cascade Mountains on 24 June 1947. This report made newspaper headlines. Within a week flying saucers were reported in every US state, as well as in Canada, England, Australia and Iran. There were thousands of subsequent reports and researchers were later to discover many alleged sightings which pre-dated Arnold’s report such as the reports of ‘Foo fighters’ – luminous balls that followed aircraft – by Second World War pilots. Shortly after Arnold’s sighting, a military aircraft crashed during a search for an alleged UFO. The debate surrounding this crash generated massive interest and fuelled beliefs in a military cover-up with regard to information about ET visitors. Most reports of alien spacecraft are based on a fleeting sight of objects in the sky. Less numerous are accounts of landings, contacts and occasional abductions, where witnesses usually report being treated as medical patients.

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Several years ago a Gallup poll in the UK revealed that one in five educated people believe in alien UFOs, while a similar survey in the USA revealed a one-in-two ratio of believers and a 1973 Gallup poll revealed that 11 per cent of the American public claimed to have seen a UFO (Randles and Fuller, 1990: 12). In 1986 a survey by the Public Opinion Laboratory at Northern Illinois University found that 43 per cent agreed with the following statement: ‘It is likely that some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really vehicles from other civilizations’ (McDonough, 1987: 184). A US poll of MENSA members, reported in the National Enquirer on 1 June 1976, showed that two-thirds of their members believed that UFOs are ‘spaceships from another planet’. A report in the Observer of 13 August 1995 cited an annual rate of 2,000–3,000 UFO reports to the Ministry of Defence in the UK and suggested that the real amount of ‘sightings’ may be higher as many people fear ridicule or don’t know how to file a report (Sweeney, 1995). Yet scientific orthodoxy remains highly sceptical of Extra Terrestrial Activity (ETA). After over fifty years of intense interest, no witness has produced an authentic photograph, alien artefact or piece of testable knowledge from such a source. In fact, one of the problems with UFO reports is not merely whether the information is true or false but whether all of the information has been given. Dozens of people claim to have been aboard extraterrestrial spacecraft but none have brought back any extraterrestrial tools, artefacts or any knowledge that could not have been derived from terrestrial sources.

Do these reports convey real experiences? The answer to this question depends on what is meant by ‘real’ and ‘experience’. For many witnesses they are indeed very real experiences. A helpful distinction in this context can be drawn between ‘inward experiences’ and ‘outward experiences’. The former can be examined by reference to the state of mind of the participant; the latter, if real, would require corroboration by independent sources. Reports of alien spacecraft have been discussed in almost every developed nation on Earth. From a scientific viewpoint this fact itself is an extraordinary social phenomenon. The psycholo-gist C.G. Jung proposed that alien spacecraft reports represented a strange manifestation of the human psyche. Others have argued that they are in some way associated with an external agency.

Many investigators prefer to speak of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) rather than flying saucers. During the past fifty years they have been reported all over the world with widespread publicity. This publicity has rendered it almost

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