UFO, Area 51, etc.

ASTR 1420

Lecture 23

Section 12.4

More than a half of Americans believe UFO• 2002 October poll o 72 percent of Americans believe the government is holding the truth on UFOo men more than women think such information should be shared with the publico The younger you are, the stronger your belief that the government is withholding

information• 1997 CNN/TIME MAGAZINE POLL (June) 54% believe intelligent life exists

beyond earth 64% believe aliens have contacted humans 50% believe that aliens have abducted humans 37% believe that aliens have contacted the US government 75% believe that a UFO crashed near Roswell 26% believe that they would be expected to be treated as an enemy 39% believe that aliens would appear very humanoid

• In a 1947 US Gallup Poll 90% of the population who heard of flying saucers believed they were not real.

1st modern report• June 24, 1947 by a

businessman Kenneth Arnold

• 9 shiny objects with wings streaking the sky at 2,000 km/h

• A reporter mistakenly described the objects as “flying saucers”

“… they flew erratic like a saucer if you skip it across the water.”

UFO sightings• about 10,000 sightings are reported a year• It is true that there are unidentified objects being seen in the sky• Some claims from seasoned pilots or astronauts whose credibility is not in

question.

• Even many astronomers have seen unidentifiable objects in the sky.

• Something unidentifiable ≠ UFOs

• US Air Force started investigation on the UFO phenomenon (largely by Cold War concerns).

Betty and Barney Hill• Best well known alien abduction• Barney (USPS) and Betty (social worker)• 1961, Sep 19, Portsmouth, New Hampshireo traveling home from Montreal on one nighto saw a bright light oval shapeo followed their caro car engine stalled, spaceship landedo abducted and examined.o Betty conversed with an alieno alien showed a starmapo returned home with no memoryo nightmares for yearso story revealed under hypnosis

• Examined by US Air Force, and later under hypnosis by Dr. Simon

In 50s and 60s, experts could identify UFOs into bright stars and planets, aircraft and gliders, rocket launches, balloons, birds, ball lightning, meteors, atmospheric phenomena, and hoax.

Ball lightning• atmospheric electric phenomenon via unknown mechanism.• unlike regular flash lightnings, these ball lightning can last several seconds

with a size in the range of a fist to several meters across.

The physicists produce luminous plasma balls above a water surface which have lifetimes of almost half a second and diameters of 10 to 20 centimetres.

Flying Saucer over Damascus, Syria?

Lenticular cloud formation

Lenticular Cloud

Chinese Lanterns in the Sky

Chinese Sky Lanterns as UFOs

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• Aug 1951, three Texas Tech faculty members

• 15-20 faint white lights in a formation passing the sky. They estimated the altitude being ~50,000 feet 5 miles per second!

• An hour later they saw one more group.

• 2 hours later saw a 3rd group.

It is impossible to determine the distance, altitude, or the speed of an object in the sky

Venus in Georgia• Fall 1967, police officers at 10+ places

reported sighting of UFOs. • Two officers “chased” the “bright-red

football shaped light” for 8 miles and could not chase it. when they returned to their station, it caught up with them!

• They watched it ~30min seeing that the UFO changed in color from red orangewhite, climbing in the sky until it resembled “a star”.

• The police report sparked a local interest in UFOs. Hundreds of UFO sightings in following weeks.

The tendency (ability) of one report to trigger many others!

Venus and Jupiter in Caspian Sea

UFOs• about 90% of the well-documented UFO cases were explainable as earthly

phenomena.• This does not mean that the remaining 10% unexplainable cases are alien

spaceships!

Government Conspiracy• Alien Spaceship crashed in Roswell, TX corpse of alien and spacecraft were transported to Area 51

• Why should alien astronauts travel all the way to Earth to visit only United States?

• UFO sightings from all over the world.• Does this mean that USA, India, Italy, Israel, Croatia, China, Congo, etc. are

all involved in the world-wide cover up?

Roswell, Alien Crash site (July 1947).

Fallen military spy balloons to check Soviet’s nuclear explosion tests

during Cold War

Crop circles

• Over several decades, simple patterns have appeared each summer in southern England.

• Due to the size and the speed of them showing up overnight, they were perceived as alien activity.

• Over time, the pattern got complicated.

• Later, it is publicly demonstrated that such a marking can be easily created overnight with a couple of students.

Others…• Wild animal mutilation by aliens Chupacabras

• Alien abduction sleep paralysis?occur during REM sleep, for a few minutes after the brain wakes up, our body can be still in sleep paralysis with active vision and feeling.

survey says that ~50% of people experiencesleep paralysis at some points in their lives.

Ancient Aliens

Easter island stone statues (14 tons)

Mystical flying machine (Vimanas) inSanskrit epics (more than 2000 yrs old)

Ancient painting in Italy (10,000BC)

Ancient VisitationAncient alien astronauts visited the Earth

leaving behind many relics of their interactions with human beings.

• von Daniken (Charlatan at best)o Ancient Egyptian did not have pre-historical

record of technology/skill to build such large pyramids.

o Sphinx is the image of extraterrestrial visitors.o The height of Khufu pyramid (146.7 meters

high) multiply by 1 billion times 146.7 million km (nearly identical to the distance b/w Sun and Earth)! Can’t be a coincidence. Aliens must have told Egyptians!

o typical ball pens (14.9 cm) trillion times exactly match the distance!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!

Carl Sagan

• NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using the HiRISE (Mar 2012)

In summary…

Important Concepts• Not all UFO sightings can be

explainable. But it does not mean that they are real!

• Reasons why some sightings are thought to be alien related.

Important Terms• Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO)• sleep paralysis

Chapter/sections covered in this lecture : 9.1

Wow signal• 1977 Aug 15 by Jerry Ehman

using the “Big Ear” radio telescope at Ohio State Univ.

• a strong narrowband radio signal lasted for 72 seconds!

Wow signal• Exactly what we

expected for a signal from ETI!• never repeated…• RA=19:22:22• DE=-27:03:00