Sunday, May 07, 2006

Science and UFOs - a British View

The UK's Ministry of Defense concluded, in a report written in 2000 but classified until now, that unidentified flying objects present no threat and there is no evidence any are extraterrestrial. The 400-page report blames many UFOs on meteors and other atmospheric phenomena.

COMMENT: I once spent some time looking into this subject. The claims of UFO contact seem more a psychological phenomenon than a physical one, and there's no credible evidence for any of the "crashed saucer" claims. I do think that, in dismissing the subject, we may be overlooking some unknown natural phenomena of great scientific interest. The late Philip Klass and others have postulated the existence of atmospheric plasmas - much larger and more stable cousins of ball lightning. When we have only recently discovered such spectacular phenomena as "sprites" and "elves," it seems unscientific to discount the possibility of other electromagnetic entities, even if we do not understand just how they might work. After all, we don't really understand ball lighting yet.

No comments: