03 January 2020

UFOLOGY: A STAGNANT AFFAIR



When in 2019 the American press published photos of the FLIR cameras of U.S. Navy fighter jets referred of something pilots saw over the Pacific Ocean during a military exercise claiming they showed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, a kind of renovation of the subject came on.

For days and months that followed the publication of those photos, the “case” continued to be mentioned, amplified with declarations of pilots involved at the moment.

The idea –possibly— was trying to generate a kind of environment of collective psychosis as it was in the late '40s and '50s around what were called "flying saucers".

The media publishing day in and day out headlines on the first page with titles on big capital letters bringing news about someone that saw a “flying saucer” here and there, radios and TVs dealing also with the issue in a prominent way.

But the environment of the Third Millenium in the United States is not the same as that of 70 years ago. The main concerns of the people are different.

Many Americans have learned to think when they see something apparently strange in the sky, and the use to say “that must be something of our boys”, meaning the military.

But curiously the presentation of the subject –military pilots that have seen something strange in the air—and the comments “unlikely maneuvers”, movements that “violate the laws of physics” are exactly the same given 70 years ago. Nothing has changed since then.

And the idea associated with this latest affirmation is to suggest that those UAPs are the result of an extraordinarily advanced technology that must be "out of this world", although the only difference is that this time they officially abstain to talk about extraterrestrials and only venture to say that it is “extra” something...”like extra-dimensional” as someone interviewed on TV said.

But essentially, nothing has changed in more than 7 decades.

Recently, dear friends and colleagues in Spain initiated a kind of prolongation of the work done by the Anomalia foundation, creating a group to which anyone can adhere and participate provided is interested in the UFO subject.

To my surprise and also my deception, of the 75 adherents to the group really few of them have well-deserved credentials as investigators and scholars. Many of them are enthusiasts or fans of the UFO subject; followers of the matter at the level of consumers, and even among the investigators there are some of them that still think in extraterrestrial as the best explanation for the phenomenon.

One interesting finding is that even people with 4 or 5 professional titles tend to think on unacceptable “explanations”, instead of being consistent with their own scientific formation. That only shows how complex and contradictory could be the human mind.

But essentially, it appears that nothing has changed about the issue itself.

People still paid attention to old cases like the “UFO” of Trindade Island, the presumed UFO that was seen decades ago in the Canary Islands, the UMMO affair or the Mothman and other strange stories, and so on.

Therefore, I sincerely think that the UFO issue and the so-called UFOLOGY are a stagnant affair. And even more, I question myself to what extent it is logical, intelligent and pertinent to continue developing the activity of investigating and dealing with something that in the 99 to 99.5 of the reported cases has shown consistently that it is explainable. Something which origin as a subject –by the way-- has been and continues being in the United States, at every stage of the apparent “mystery”.

In 2008, after 50 years of permanent investigation and study the Uruguayan CIOVI (Unidentified Flying Objects Investigation Center) decided to put an end to its work for the reasons that I have just explained.

I wonder if the same reasons do not advocate to put an end to all the activities that go around the UFO subject either private or official.

Otherwise, we will be reaching the hundred anniversary of the Arnold case still making the same questions and discussing the same cases, being incapable to reach a conclusion because unconsciously we will be perpetuating a myth.

Of course, I accept that some situations and cases have not been resolved, and I would welcome any initiative that could call for an international team of investigators to go to different places, made all the possible research, and try to solve those cases and explain those situations as much as possible.

I am talking about the situations happened in Caronia (Italy), and in Colares, Brazil. And cases like the one witnessed by the American physicist, engineer and meteorologist Charles B. Moore on April 24, 1949; that of the RB-47(July 17, 1957); what happened in Malmstrong AFB (March 16, 1967); and the one in Minot AFB (October 24, 1968).

In the 50's it was said that the UFOs were nor Russian neither American. Just at the end of WWII, if they were not Russian neither American, who else could be behind that technology? Only those that at that same moment in history developed by themselves a Physics that was already 50 years ahead to any other one. The answer to me is obvious, but only a few people thought about it, and the vast majority of ufologists never mention this.

Currently, they say: they are not Russian, nor Chinese, and not ours ---the only difference is that they had to add China— but the reasoning is the same. And once again, 70 years later, can we imagine what developments could have been achieved by those that in the '50s were already 50 years ahead?

Crowning all of that come the wise words pronounced by Major General John Samford at the press conference on UFOs held at the Pentagon on July 24, 1952, when he said: "I think that the greater probability is that these are phenomena associated with intellectual and scientific interests on which we are on the way to know more, but that there is nothing in them that is associated with material or vehicles or missiles that are directed against the United States. "

Indeed, 72 years after the Arnold case there is no one case in which it could be concluded that there was something directed against the United States. Those “intellectual and scientific interests” have been well preserved and –if I may say— protected.


Milton W. Hourcade
Iowa City, January 3, 2020.









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