A SURVEY AMONG U.A.P. INVESTIGATORS AND SCHOLARS -- PART IV

It is a wonderful experience to get the opinion of a very selective group of people at an international level and get them together giving answers to just 8 questions referred to the Unusual Aerial Phenomena.

We give a big thanks to all those colleagues who are answering our survey and we are very pleased to present to you their ideas. We hope that what they say would be useful to you in your own work with the UAP and that their criteria would help to shape your own one.

We continue today the publication of the answers of these colleagues, and we are doing so in the order they were received.

WIM VAN UTRECHT  (Belgian) initiated CAELESTIA in 1994 and launched the project’s web site in 2007.
Co-author with Frits Van der Veldt of Unidentified Aerial Object photographed near Zwischbergen, Switzerland, on July 26, 1975 (CAELESTIA, 1995).

Contributor to various UFO magazines and books, including International UFO Reporter (J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO studies), UFO 1947-1997 (John Brown Publishing, 1997) and Ronald D. Story’s Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters (New American Library, 2001).
Special areas of interest within the UFO/UAP field: photographic evidence and identified case reports.

Areas of interest besides UFOs/UAPs: fine arts, especially painting and photography.

---------------------

1) Do you use the acronym UFO or other designation, and if so, why?

I prefer to use "UAP", but occasionally still use "UFO" (mostly in more general discussions.)

2) Have your idea about UFOs changed along the time?

My views on the subject have definitely altered with time: from a credulous teenager to a more skeptical investigator.

3) Should the UFO researcher become an IFO expert?

Definitely so.

4) If there were still some unexplained phenomena, what could they be

That would depend on the case. Some unexplained cases might be eccentric natural phenomena, while others may involve some type of ill-understood or not yet recognized hallucinatory experience.

5) How do you consider this problem in general? What do you think about the whole topic?

It remains a fascinating subject. It certainly thought me a lot about human perception and memory, about good and bad science, and about rare meteorological, astronomical, geophysical and psychosocial phenomena. 

6) Is it possible to do something effective to bring the truth to the public and change the mindset of those who still proclaim or believe that extraterrestrial beings are living with us on Earth?

Impossible to change the minds of those who believe that the scientific method is "just one way of approaching a mystery". Informing the public is a must. Facts are facts, no matter where they take us.

7) Do you think that SETI and similar searches are valid activities?

Of course, but I never made a direct link between UFOs and the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, not even when I was still a believer. 

8) What is your idea about multiple universes?

This is a most complex issue and I tend not to comment on matters I'm not versed in. For the time being, I regard the idea of another universe as equally exotic as the ETH, which is not to say that I find the idea of "intelligent" life elsewhere outlandish or absurd. We just don't know, and at this stage UFO reports certainly cannot be regarded as proof of otherworldly visitors.

 Next publication: answers from Astrophysicist Dr. Massimo Teodorani