Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)

By Amal HEWAVISSENTI

Actually speaking, what is a UFO? A UFO is a mysterious object seen in the sky, for which it is claimed no scientific explanation can be found, and believed by many to be a vehicle carrying beings from outer space. People have been espying strange objects in the sky for thousands of years and in ancient times, such sightings were often explained as extraordinary signs from heaven. Today, most people believe that Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) are spacecraft from worlds beyond the limit of the solar system from where strange aliens are believed to come to study us, influence us or even kidnap us.

There is no concrete proof to believe that UFOs are only alien spacecraft and most reports of UFOs can be interpreted in other ways but UFOs reports frequently capture the people's interest and attention. One of the foremost modern UFO reports to draw wide attention was made in 1947 where the pilot of a private plane assertively claimed that he sighted nine objects that moved "like saucers skipping over the water" near Mount Rainier, which is the highest peak in the state of Washington. Reports of sightings from many countries show that UFOs are described as having various shapes such as flat saucers, spheres, cigars and doughnuts and some people have revealed seeing some UFO's which noticeably changed size while it was still in view. These bizarre objects have been observed to be in many different colours while some UFOs were detected to change colour as they were streaking through the sky. Some UFOs have been reported to move in a zigzag route at varying speeds while others have been studied to turn at right angles, move straight up or straight down, or hang motionless in the air. Although the movement of the UFOs were detected at all hours of the day and night, however, most are said to appear around sunrise or sunset. Just as a moving UFO may suddenly seem to divide in to many smaller ones, sometimes a group of UFOs may appear to merge gradually in to a single object. The accidental sightings of "somethings" which can be a scientific ballon used for atmospheric research, an artificial satellite, a cloud, a meteor, a star, an airplane, a bird and a comet have sometimes been misidentified or misjudged for a possible unidentified flying object. Dramatically, UFO hoaxes too have materialised following the captivating reports of this freak of nature. For example, many photographs which pictorially represented the vague movement of UFOs have turned out on close examination, to be fakes.

Arresting sightings of freaky objects

An American Pilot, flying night patrol over the US naval base in Cuba, suddenly spotted a UFO and instantly followed the trial of the object which took the form of an orange light that out-turned, and out dived the plane. Ultimately the light made an unexpected turn to the left, slowed down and hovered above the stretch of water for a moment and then disappeared. This unexpected experience left the pilot speechless for two days because as he later revealed, light of the flying object was so weird that he had given up hopes of his life in the course of his chase of the flying object. A huge search operation followed with this report of the mysterious object but no trace whatsoever was found either on water or on land to prove the presence of any object.

In Texas, two farm workers were driving home late one night when their lorry stalled after a tremendous lightning flash. As the driver was struggling to start the engine, he noticed what seemed to be a flaming ball rolling towards them at an incredible speed. The fiery ball passed right over the lorry giving off heat with a great rushing sound and then it seemed to drift off towards the town. Other people residing in the area emphatically claimed they too had witnessed the eerie flaming balls that night and soon, there were stories of a hazardous visit by a UFO from another world. A thorough survey over the whole town area showed that a fiery object had left burnt marks over the open ground and dry bushes, but where the outlandish object was making its flight to, still remained an enigma to the investigators. Some scientists later interpreted this as a natural phenomenon which involves the unusual form of "ball lightnings" which is supposed to form right after a lightning flash. Yet the scientists too were not perfectly confident about this hypothesis and they called it a proposed explanation based on limited evidence and was used as a starting point of further investigation.

a weather hoax!

In Washington, D.C. radar operators on the night shift at Washington National Airport, detected some black spots on their screens that managed to arouse alarm and, at 10.40 p.m., the operators reported seven "targets" over the capital of the nation. As nearby Andreas Air Force also reported strange radar targets, a fully equipped jet fighter was promptly launched in to the air to capture or destroy the objects. But by the time the plane was able to ransack the area, the objects had vanished from the radar screens. The next day UFO stories were rampant all over Washington. Was the capital being invaded by an alien force beyond the earth?

A week later, at 10.30 p.m. radar at National Airport showed more of the mysterious targets and it was immediately concluded that Washington was being surrounded by a ring of the unknown objects. While Air Force officials were called to the airport immediately, all passenger planes approaching Washington were sent back to other airports and Air Force planes searched the skies around the capital. For several hours the planes patrolled thoroughly but saw nothing. Radar on the ground was still picking up the mysterious targets but the radar in the search planes did not make any object visible. What had actually happened? For weeks afterward, people talked about the "invasion" but as it turned out, a trick of the weather conditions had caused the targets on radar screens of Washington!

Studies of UFOs

Many other UFO reports have been traced to similar phenomena but some are more difficult to explicate. In 1966, the US Air Force asked the university of Colorado to make a study of UFOs sighted since 1940s with the active participation of a team of scientists.

Three years later, they published a lengthy report with nearly 1,500 pages which concluded that there was no logical evidence to support the thesis that UFOs are spacecraft from beyond the earth. Some of the reported sightings were construed to be deliberate falsehoods while in other sightings, it was discovered that some ordinary object had been misjudged for a UFO. Nevertheless, most of the sightings studied, still remain mysterious and unexplained. Simply because such enigmatic sightings have led some scientists to believe that the subject of UFOs is not closed, a group of scientists set up a centre for UFO studies in Illinois in 1973, to make a deeper study of the nature and overall composition of UFOs. They firmly believed that any attempt to explain all UFO sightings as imaginary or natural events was unjustified and they felt, instead, that the subject of UFOs should be studied scientifically.

Since then there have been many more UFO reports which some scientists continue to study in order to fathom this alien phenomenon. Most scientists strongly try to refute the general conception that UFOs are spacecraft from extra terrestrial world. No one has produced a close-up photograph or other firm evidence of an alien spacecraft and the evidence that UFOs carry. Strangers from other worlds, according to the scientific studies, is too far from reality.