Fifty-five years of insanity

Today is a historical day for humanity: 55 years ago, on June 24, 1947, the first publication about unidentified flying objects (UFO) appeared in the USA.

The publication reported that pilot Kenneth Arnold noticed nine disk-shaped objects not far from Mount Rainier (Washington State) when he was searching for a lost plane. The objects were moving at a speed of over 1,000 miles per hour. Later, the words of the pilot were confirmed by locals and servicemen.

Soon, more publications dedicated to UFOs appeared in the press. The US military authorities became very worried about the objects found in the sky over the USA and adopted a special project for the investigation of the UFO phenomenon. US servicemen believed that the flying objects were nothing else than new spy planes of the Soviet Union. In the project’s network, a special task group was initiated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in January 1948. At the same very time, the Pentagon informed that appearence of the UFO was caused by one of three reasons: mass hysteria and hallucinations, fraud, or the wrong interpretation of familiar objects. The results of the investigation revealed that, if the UFO existed, it had nothing to do with the USSR. At the end of the 1940s, another project named Discontent aimed at the detailed investigation of UFOs and their possible effects on the US national security was launched. The project was successfully finished on December 27, 1949 when it was announced that UFOs posed no danger to the security of the USA. The results of the investigation of unidentified flying objects were published in the so-called Blue Book in 1957. Independently of the Pentagon, the CIA set up a special commission to study the connections between the UFO phenomenon and the USSR’s intelligence activity regarding the USA. Special services investigating unidentified flying objects insisted that the objects discovered in the sky over the USA were elements of a psychological war of the USSR against the USA. The investigation was canceled when it was proved that the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the flying objects. Thus, we can say that the UFO phenomenon is the result of the cold war. The atmosphere of fear and distrust of that time and apocalyptic expectations gave rise to hysteria that, in its turn, spread myths about extraterrestrial beings visiting the Earth.

However, official statements did not seem convincing to those people who supported the theory of extraterrestrial beings coming to the planet, and, although the theory has not yet been scientifically confirmed, more and more evidence of the fact that extraterrestrials do exist appears from time to time. For example, it was allegedly reported that a flying object crashed in Roswell, and, once, information appeared about some mysterious circles on the fields of British farmers (as it turned later, the farmers made the circles themselves). Nowadays, the study of extraterrestrial visits is a wonderfully arranged business and not only the concern for small enthusiastic groups. Certainly, this fact hampers the objective investigation of different phenomena that are not yet scientifically explained. Numerous speculations about UFOs make the majority of people rather skeptical about these unaccountable phenomena, not to mention the scientists investigating. In addition, since the launching of the SETI project designed for the search of extraterrestrial civilizations, a signal that could have an artificial origin was received only once. However, this fact does not mean at all that the signal really had an artificial origin. So, no convincing evidence has been found that extraterrestrial civilizations do exist. At the same time, all unaccountable phenomena cannot be treated as the forgeries of people craving sensation. Certainly, all phenomena of this kind should be closely and objectively studied to prove or disprove existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.

Vasily Bubnov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/06/24/43109.html