UFOs – The truth is out there...somewhere.

The interest in UFOs, the name given to these unidentified flying objects in the 1950s, owes much to what is known in UFO circles as “the Roswell Incident”. (Recently the U.S. government decided to rename them UAPs for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, but for the purposes of this blog, I’ll call them UFOs because I like the older term better.) It began in July 1947, when a local sheep rancher who lived not far from the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, discovered debris scattered over a square mile. The debris was primarily made up of metallic material.

He brought some of this debris to the local sheriff, who turned the matter over to the commander of the Roswell Army Airfield. After an intelligence officer investigated the site, a press release was issued by the commander of the airfield, claiming that a “flying disc” had been recovered near Roswell.

On July 7^th, the local Roswell newspaper published an article based on the press release from the Roswell Army Air Field (this was before the Army Air Force became the Air Force) announcing that a “flying disc” had been recovered near Roswell. (The term “flying saucer” was used in the newspaper’s headline.) This did not go over well with Army officials who quickly quashed the story, insisting that the “disc/saucer” was a weather balloon. This explanation was widely accepted until the late 1970s, when the intelligence officer who first investigated the wreckage publicly disclosed that the debris was not from a weather balloon, but from something “not of this Earth”. In 1994, the Air Force admitted it had lied about the weather balloon, and it was actually a high-altitude device made of rubber balloons, tin foil radar targets, and balsa wood struts.

Over the years, there had been rumors and eyewitness accounts of short-statured alien bodies alleged to have been found in the wreckage. In 1997, the Air Force responded to such rumors by claiming the Air Force had used 6-foot-tall mannequins in some projects testing high altitude parachute jumps conducted nearly ten years after the Roswell crash. As for this anomaly, the Air Force made up some other story about people’s memories being faulty. By this time, it was obvious to anyone desiring to know the truth about this subject that they couldn’t rely on the Air Force. Since then, many researchers and investigators have been looking into the matter of UFOs, or the idea of life on other planets, wanting to find real answers.

Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb

The current fascination with the possibility of intelligent aliens became very apparent after the publication of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist and professor of Science at Harvard. Born and raised in Israel, he received a doctorate from Hebrew University in Plasma Physics. He then spent several years at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, where he decided to shift to Astrophysics.

In this book he discusses his work regarding “Oumuamua”, a high velocity, oddly shaped object that flew past the Earth in October, 2017. Although it was 20 million miles from Earth, it was detected and photographed by the powerful telescopes and the world’s largest high definition camera belonging to Pan-STARRS1. An abbreviation for the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, Pan-STARRS1 is a network of astronomical equipment and computers located at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. During the eleven or so days that the object was visible (to STARRS) from Earth, the system collected photographs and other data from which astronomers determined that the object was interstellar. Having passed through our solar system, it headed back to interstellar space at the speed of approximately 85,700 miles per hour, a velocity that enabled it to escape the sun’s gravity.

Most scientists think that it has a natural origin, e.g., a comet or an asteroid, but Loeb disagrees, and claims that given its’ shape, luminescence, high speed and trajectory, it might be an alien artifact, possibly a space probe sent from another star system by an alien civilization - which may or may not still exist. (The name it was given, Oumuamua, is a Hawaiian word that roughly translates as “first distant messenger, or scout”.)

Loeb’s theory has been rejected by the majority of scientific establishment. Nonetheless, Loeb argues for the high probability of intelligent life on other planets, given the sheer number of galaxies in our known universe. He would find it more surprising if there were no other civilizations out there that are more intelligent and technologically advanced than humans. He believes that humans must realize that “we are not the sharpest cookies in the jar” nor are we “the smartest kids on the block.”

In July 2021, Loeb introduced the Galileo Project, which aims to build a world-wide network of sky monitors which would record everything moving through the sky, filter out what would be expected to be in the sky - birds, aircraft, drones, and search for anomalies that may lead to the discovery of evidence of alien civilizations on or near Earth. He writes that the discovery of intelligent life on another planet would have a profound effect not just on astronomy, but on human psychology, and on religion and philosophy as well. It would impact the way people behave and interact with each other, with the hope that we might begin to see ourselves as a single, unified team, rather than focusing on issues that divide us.

UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean

This was a book I found hard to put down. It is primarily made up of the opinions and testimonies of experienced pilots and government officials who have had actual close encounters with UFOs and who tell their stories in a straightforward manner without exaggeration or drama. The author is an investigative reporter who has spent over twenty years studying accounts of verified UFO sightings and incidents happening all over the world. 

Her research includes government reports, case studies, and interviews with eyewitnesses.

What makes her believe that these UFOs might be extraterrestrial is that their technology is far superior to what we have. Their aircraft are capable of traveling at incredibly high speeds and suddenly coming to a full stop and taking off again, and numerous kinds of stunts far beyond what we have now. 

Kean has found the best observers of these UFOs are pilots. Because of their training, they can provide very accurate information and observe things that non-pilots would not notice.

One of the testimonies I found particularly fascinating was that of an Iranian Air Force pilot who described the experience he had after a UFO with bright lights was positioned in Iranian airspace. Messages were conveyed to this UFO from the airbase near Tehran, where this pilot was stationed, informing it that it was violating Iranian airspace. When there was no response, his commander ordered him to approach the UFO in his F-4 Phantom jet and engage if necessary. When the pilot got close to the UFO, he gave warning over his radio that if it didn’t leave, he would fire on it. Not receiving any response, he attempted to fire on the UFO, but nothing happened. Some strange malfunction prevented him from firing the missiles, while at the same time, his radio and instrument panel went haywire. Not knowing what else to do, he turned the plane around and began to head back to base. Suddenly his instruments and radio started functioning normally again. He turned back towards the UFO in order to make another attempt to shoot it down and the same thing happened again, he couldn’t fire off the missiles, and his radio and instrument panel wouldn’t work. He decided it best to return to base, and the UFO eventually disappeared. An almost identical incident occurred involving a Peruvian Air Force pilot who, while attempting to shoot down a UFO violating Peruvian airspace, had the same experience. As it turned out, these two pilots eventually met each other at some international conference and became friends. Kean concludes that this phenomenon does indeed exist. They are physical objects and their presence has been documented for many years, including by the U.S. government. Extremely well researched and documented, this is a great read.

I should note that it was an article by Leslie Kean which appeared in the New York Times on December 17, 2007 that helped create the huge amount of interest in UFOs that we are currently seeing.

- by Elka R. Frankel, West Windsor Branch