WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THE PROJECT UFODATA?

 

On October 11, 2015, we received a kind letter from the UAPSG Member Philippe Ailleris, (a technician at the European Space Agency) introducing to us the creation of the Project UFODATA.

For details about this Project, see the article published in this blog on October 22, 2015.

Briefly defined, Ailleris said: 

“Our goal is simple: to build a network of automated stations with a
variety of scientific instruments to capture comprehensive, scientifically
valid data on the UFO phenomenon. We have named the organization UFO Detection
and TrAcking (UFODATA for short), and several members of our team are well
known to the UFO community as pioneers in the study of UFOs in the field,
including Erling Strand, Massimo Teodorani, and David Akers. The project was
conceived by and is led by Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the Center
for UFO Studies, and Alexander Wendt, a political scientist at Ohio State
University.”

Opportunely, from this blog, we requested the reactions or opinions of our readers. No one, with the exception or Germán Vázquez, a dear friend and old member of the “extinct CIOVI in Uruguay said anything about the Project. Vázquez objected the fact that it will imply a recollection of funds among the people interested to see the Project going on.

I promised my own reflection and reaction to the UFODATA proposal.

The first thing I would like to emphasize is that although the Project talks about UFOs, it is really dealing not with presumably some kind of air ships, but with what has been called Anomalous Luminous Phenomena (ALP) about which Erling Strand and Massimo Teodorani are experts, getting a great experience from their scientific work at the Hessdalen Valley in Norway.

Personally, I will succinctly establish my position and what I already have done about the subject Project UFODATA plans to deal with.

July 20, 2008 - I published in this blog the “Comparative Study of Anomalous Luminous Phenomena”, material that later I used to give lectures in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Montevideo (Uruguay).

August 6, 2008 – Dr. Massimo Teodorani explains the Hessdalen lights. He wrote: “The vast majority of the Hessdalen lights have an explanation.” And he gave it.

December 19, 2009 – On an updated look at Ufology I wrote: “Retrospective and Prospective look at Ufology” and there I said: “We no longer have to depend on witnesses. We have to be the witnesses. We have to go where the things are happening, and with an array of instruments, detect, record and measures what is going on, in all possible ways!”

September 5, 2011 – My book “In Search for Real UFOs” was published. On pages 104 to 112 and under the sub-title “The need for a new scientific paradigm” I subscribed the scientific proposal of Dr. Teodarani that he entitled “Physics from the UFO data” whose text was also included in my book.

June 23, 2012 – I wrote in this blog the article: “At 65 years of the Arnold Case – The power of suggestion” and I said: “If there is a strange phenomenon whose nature we still do not know, it seems that it is more related to Earth than to space... there is still a need to determine the real identity of the unusual phenomena.”

October 14, 2012 – Under the title “UFOS: Yes, there is a mystery” I wrote: “...this is a matter science have to get by their own once and for all. Some scientists are already doing that privately, but it has to be done by official or private universities and with enough funds. What we investigators and scholars of the UAP subject can do, is to give all our support and cooperate with those scientists.” 

May 19, 2014 - The British “Daily Mail” publishes an article entitled: “Has the mystery of glowing Norwegian orbs been solved? Expert claims natural “battery” creates the amazing show. And computer engineer Erling Strand of the Ostfold University provides the answer.”

February 2015 – Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos wrote “The Future of Ufology” that we reproduced in this blog on March 5, 2015. He ends his paper saying: “I believe a global discussion is required in order to push the optimal strategy”.

Reached to this point, the question is this: is the Project UFODATA the optimal strategy to follow?

At least is the only one specifically proposed. 

I do agree with it, but I don’t think that the moment we are living in the World is the most appropriate to launch a fund-raising effort in favor of the UFO investigation.

And I think the best strategy would be to get in contact and persuade universities to hold the Project in their hands, to develop and control the proposed plan of automatic stations, and to assure the scientific backing of the data obtained from those stations, together with the scientists belonging directly to Project UFODATA. I think the perfect model for this is provided by the experience done by the Ostfold University in Norway. 

Milton W. Hourcade

Iowa City, December 3, 2015.