THE U.F.O. CATEGORY AND ITS PRACTICAL APPLICATION

The acronym U.F.O. does not determine anything. It is a definition by the negative. It says that we do not know what it is about.

That what we don’t know is the real nature of a “flying object”.

The first objection we can bring is that maybe it is not something that is flying but floating in the air, like a balloon or a soap bubble. Basic point: not all the things that are in the air are flying.

The second objection is that the acronym refers to an object. But it well could be the manifestation of energy or certain kind. For instance: ball lightning, St. Elmo’s fire, Sprites, earthquake lights or Hessdalen lights.

Therefore, if we exclude the second and third letter of this acronym, we are left with the concept of Unidentified.

The immediate question is: who says something is unidentified? Or how many people say it is unidentified?. Are there involved detection instruments?

If –as investigators— we consider the UFO report coming from just one person, the value of that report will be minimal, except if the person is someone with a solid scientific background, which, nevertheless, gives only a plus respect to a common individual, but not so much at all. Even scientists could be confused.

If the report of the same phenomenon comes from a number of witnesses who happen to be in the same area but that are totally independent among them, the report acquires more relevance. 

Undoubtedly something has been seen in the air that many people were not able to identify with anything they knew.

If we add to the UFO report that besides many independent witnesses, the phenomenon was captured in photos, video, and radar, the case comes to be robust. 

No doubt that something strange has happened.

The analysis of photos, videos and the radar tracking –provided it has been recorded— will come in support of what eye-witnesses saw.

It is highly possible that once they are analyzed, photos, videos, and even the radar tracking could have a conventional explanation.

Many times the meteorological conditions and even more, the psychological conditions at the moment of the UFO report, can influence the report itself.

But it is important to agree and concede that the investigator could come to a point at which he/she has not a conventional explanation for the phenomenon. 

We do not know everything. Science provides us with the best methodology if we try to know something, but science in itself is permanently dealing with the unknown that procures to know.

As physicist Brian Cox (*) once said: “I'm comfortable with the unknown—that’s the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there, that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them excites me, and I want to go out and find out about them. And that's what science is. So I think if you’re not comfortable with the unknown, then it’s difficult to be a scientist… I don’t need an answer. I don’t need answers to everything. I want to have answers to find.” 

That is why I accept the general idea that there could be things that still are “unidentified”, which doesn’t mean necessarily that they are not identifiable.

But as investigators, I think that we have to be open to the possibility that we can find something that no matter how much we struggle to identify, could remain unidentified to us. 

And that could be a drop in the vast ocean of identifiable things that the people, in general, could report as “unidentified”, simply because they succumb to the trend of the way society has been given to think, (which is a form of ignorance), because they look for publicity, or –even worst— to make money.

If something remains unidentified to us, investigators, it should be after we have gathered all the possible information about the phenomenon in question. Not because of failed field work or insufficient data.

It is not that certain phenomena are unfathomable, but we need to gather all the possible information along the time to finally arrive at the identification of what could be a new technological development, or a natural phenomenon still not well known or studied. The perfect example for this is the Sprites, whose existence science recognized only in 1994.

(*)Brian Edward Cox OBE, FRS, (born 3 March 1968) is an English physicist who serves as professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.

 Milton W. Hourcade