Lord Martin Rees recently offered The Huffington Post his opinion about UFOs:
"No serious astronomer gives any credence to any of these stories ... I think most astronomers would dismiss these. I dismiss them because if aliens had made the great effort to traverse interstellar distances to come here, they wouldn't just meet a few well-known cranks, make a few circles in corn fields and go away again."
Such sweeping statements from well regarded scientists are endlessly frustrating to the UFO researcher. Particularly given that interest in UFOs actually drives some people to study astronomy! Unfortunately the idea that only kooks see UFOs is prevalent.
But because Lord Rees is a scientist, the correct answer is to provide him with scientific data that is directly relevant to his claim. I am aware of only three attempts to scientifically gauge what percentage of astronomers see UFOs. Two show that not only do astronomers see UFOs in America, but many are afraid to report their sightings because they fear professional and public ridicule. The final source indicates that astronomers see UFOs at a dramatically greater rate than the general population.
On August 6, 1952, Astronomer J. Allen Hynek offered the USAF's Project Blue Book a "Special Report on Conferences with Astronomers on Unidentified Aerial Objects."
Hynek interviewed some 45 astronomers on their experiences and opinions about UFOs during and following the meeting of the American Astronomical Society that June. Hynek provides some notes on each individual astronomer and their opinions. Here's what some astronomers thought in 1952:
Astronomer Y (no sightings) said, "If I saw one, I wouldn't say anything about it."
Astronomer II (two sightings) "is willing to cooperate but does not wish to have notoriety," Hynek reports.
Astronomer OO: (one sighting) was a new observer at the Harvard Meteor Station in New Mexico. He saw two lights moving in parallel that were too fast for a plane and too slow for a meteor. He had not reported his observation.
Hynek concluded: "Over 40 astronomers were interviewed of which five had made sightings of one sort or another. This is a higher percentage than among the populace at large. Perhaps this is to be expected, since astronomers do, after all, watch the skies."
The next data point comes from 1977. Dr. Peter Sturrock made a questionnaire about UFO attitudes and experiences. Again the target was the members of the American Astronomical Society. The paper was eventually printed in 1994 in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed but decidedly non-mainstream publication.
Sturrock received 1,356 responses from 2,611 questionnaires. Sixty-two astronomers responded that they had observed something they could not explain which could be relevant to the UFO phenomenon. Eighteen of those witnesses said they had previously reported their sightings, and Sturrock notes that a 30% reporting rate is greater than what is assumed for the average population. Section 3.2 of the paper titled "Comparison of Witnesses and Non-Witnesses" contains a table showing that UFO witnessees were actually more likely to be night sky observers (professional or amateur) while non-witnesses are more likely to not even be observing the skies at all!
Sturrock also includes commentary from the astronomers, and again a sample is illuminating:
C1. "I object to being quizzed about this obvious nonsense. Unidentified = unobserved or factually unrecorded: modern mythology. Too much respectability given to it."
C1O. "l find it tough to make a living as an astronomer these days. It would be professionally suicidal to devote significant time to UFOs. However, I am quite interested in your survey."
C16. "Menzel and Condon have made further investigation unnecessary unless some really new phenomena are reported ... There is no pattern to UFO reports except that they predominantly come from unreliable observers."
At the 1969 AAAS UFO debate organized by Carl Sagan, Dr. Franklin Roach delivered a paper on "Astronomers' Views on UFOs." He focuses on the lack of publicized UFO reports from major astronomical research programs that constantly monitor vast swaths of the sky. He offered a quote from the famous astronomer Gerard Kuiper:
"I should correct a statement that has been made that scientists have shied away from UFO reports for fear of ridicule ... A scientist chooses his field of inquiry because he believes it holds real promise. If later his choice proves wrong, he will feel very badly and try to sharpen his criteria before he sets out again. Thus, if society finds that most scientists have not been attracted to the UFO problem, the explanation must be that they have not been impressed with the UFO reports."
As the comments from the above surveys show, Kuiper was idealizing the behavior of younger scientists. Lacking his prestige and tenure, they were less willing to suffer mockery from their peers.
The final data point comes from the Soviet Union. "Observations of Anomalous Atmospheric Phenomena in the USSR: Statistical Analysis" is a report by L.M. Gindilis, D.A. Men'Kov, and I.G. Petrovkaya. It was published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1979 and translated into English by NASA as Technical Memorandum no. 75665 in 1980 and later distributed by CUFOS. It is a statistical analysis of over 200 raw UFO reports in the Soviet Union. Three quarters of the reports come from their massive wave of UFO reports in 1967.
Section 3, "Observers and Witnesses of Observations," contains some very interesting data. They note that "contrary to the widespread fallacy, there is a highly significant percentage of astronomers among the observers." By comparing the number of UFO observers from a given occupation with census data, the authors arrive at a "Activity Coefficient." A higher coefficient indicates a group is reporting more UFOs than expected by population.
At the time, approximately .002% of Soviets over the age of nine were astronomers. Yet they accounted for 10 reports in the Soviet dataset. This yields an activity coefficient of 7500 [Note: NASA's translation reads 7000]. Undergraduates had a coefficient of 3, maintenance workers .9 and Students .02. The Soviet numbers are clear: astronomers report UFOs at astronomical rates.
Astronomers see UFOs. Unless we think they are kooks simply because they saw a UFO, the data shows that Lord Rees is incorrect. In the United States, astronomers who observe UFOs on their instruments fear ridicule from other scientists and the press. Despite the aura of illegitimacy around UFOs, the data indicates that astronomers even report UFOs at noticeably greater rates than laypeople.
Better and more recently survey data is clearly desirable. Hynek's survey was informal, Sturrock's is 35 years old, and the Soviet analysis is done on unvetted reports. Only Sturrock's paper was subject to peer-review. But as we have seen, it takes considerable courage for a scientist to brave "career suicide" and study UFOs despite proclamations that the subject is off-limits.
There is a lot of hard work that needs to be done if science hopes to understand the UFO phenomenon. It would be particularly useful to adopt the Soviet activity coefficient and apply it to other databases. Hopefully Lord Rees hasn't scared too many people away from applying the scientific method to UFO reports.
Follow Dan Mack on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dandotmack
Nick Pope: Aliens More Popular Than God
anybody else think that the look on that face you see in the moon is the same expression in the Mona Lisa by da vinci
maybe shes the face of the moon or he did like to leave puzzles
was he telling us something?
its a gamma emitting substance that releases rays in to a secured electromagnetic field using gyrograph spinning to maintain the field like those they found at the south pole and in effect it is the reflective color particles that collide cause the power and the gamma radiation is small like that in lightening
There's a collective yearning to know that we are not alone in the universe, and I concede that it isn't impossible that while we're sending space probes onto other planets, some other civilization might be doing the same. However, there are many things that make this scenario highly unlikely. Assume the aliens have some advanced technology that makes space travel a breeze, breaking the speed of light, etc. There is still the matter of time. The universe operates on a much larger timescale than humans. Homo sapiens have been around for approximately 200,000 years. A very tiny window in the grand scheme of things. For another advanced civilization to exist simultaneously (in our very small window) and find us (whether accidentally or on purpose) in the vastness of space (the human mind cannot even comprehend its vastness) is such a longshot that it strikes me as human arrogance to believe it could even happen.
Not saying it's impossible, but the sheer unlikelihood of it happening makes this fantastic speculation.
anybody who wants to comment on the UFO subject should at least watch Dr. Steven Greer's Disclosure Project on you tube
How and why would hundreds of professional pilots, radar operators, ex air-force and other military personnel (all the way up to colonels) why would all of them (from various different countries) all make up the same story?
it simply isn't possible for so many people to tell similar lies...
some of these people we would otherwise trust with operating nuclear weapons... but we don't trust them when they talk about what they had seen.
either all these people are talking nonsense, or there is something behind SOME (not all but some) UFO sightings...
NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTEND OF ....................
UNTILL THEY TURN UP IN ORBIT OR LAND NEAR THE WHITEHOUSE... ITS ALL BULLSHT......
PLENTY OF CAMERA'S NO SPACE SHIPS IN FOCUS YET....
IF YOU KEEP BEING ABDUCTED BY ALIENS BRING BACK AN ASHTRAY NEXT TIIME.....
THEN I'LL BELIEVE YOU.....
there are craft that can travel in and out of visibility and project their appearance to look like airplanes, i've seen strange stuff like this too,
It is absurd to try and figure out the reasons an advance alien race is here since we know nothing about their culture and the rules they go by. But their is one thing that is obvious if they are here: they don't like us and what we do.With that Idea in mind I can see why they just look around. If their is nothing to UFOs I challenge the scientist to prove it in an objective way. That has only happened in France and they came to the conclusion in the COMETA report that you can not exclude ET as a possible conclusion to the UFO enigma. You know there are astronomers all over the world including France and some were part of the COMETA report. By the way the French were right about Iraq too.
Joe Capp
UFO Media Matters
Non-Commercial Blog
:-)
"Unidentified flying objects in classical antiquity" Richard Stothers (NASA) The Classical Journal Vol 103, No. 1 (2007) pp. 79-92
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2007/2007_Stothers_2.pdf
The whole thing about astronomers is a total cop-out, of course. There must be about one billion digital cameras on Earth now. Chances of someone snapping an HD picture or video of an alien spacecraft have increased 100 fold... and NOT ONE result.
In the past 50 years tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousand of people have seen "something" and thousands of blurry photographs (mostly fakes) have been published. Not one alien space ship is clearly visible on these photos, even though hundreds of people claim that they were extremely close to these things.
A witness is never credible. Humans lie. Minds lie to their respective owners. Eyes lie to the minds they are connected to. What are you going to do about it? Nothing.
It also doesn't help that hundreds of individuals in the UFO guild are in it for the money and the 15 minutes of fame amongst the believers.
so your statement : "A witness is never credible. Humans lie. Minds lie to their respective owners. Eyes lie to the minds they are connected to. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. "
hmmm... I guess we should let out a whole bunch of prisoners then?
2) Since anyone can make anything nowadays with cameras and videos, it is almost impossible to tell the difference from real and fake ones. So video and pics alone are not good evidence. That doesnt mean every video and pic is a fake. Videos and pics cant be used as evidence alone.
3) Yes humans in every area from scientist to governement officials lie, that doesnt mean one should automatically assume someone is lying. Scientist also lie.
4) Scientist are in science for fame and money also..as i posted Dr dawkins has published many books.( kaching )...science textbooks which are updated every year cost money, as i stated earlier my friends last textbook cost 300 dollars to buy and 175 dollars to rent ( Kaching ) ..