Roughly 95 percent of these reports can be readily attributed to misinterpretations of such common objects as planets, stars, satellites, meteorites, weather balloons, and aircraft. It is astonishing how many people have never studied the sky, and when their attention is called to it they become greatly excited by a sighting of Venus, Jupiter, Mars, or the star Sirius. An additional fraction of the reports turn out to be hoaxes, pranks, or psychopathic phenomena.

Frederick J. Hooven is a consultant to the Ford Motor Company and adjunct professor of engineering at Dartmouth College.

     About 1950, it was suggested that UFOs were vehicles from another world that were observing Earth.  There was something about this suggestion that tickled the fancy of almost everybody, even those who felt certain it was not true,  Since that time people have taken positions on the subject, their beliefs varying along a spectrum, or scale 100, with the absolute unbelievers at the zero end, the utterly faithful enthusiasts at the 100  end, and the majority somewhere between. Most scientists are clustered around the zero mark.

     In October 1966, the U.S. Air Force commissioned the University of Colorado to conduct a thorough study of the UFO question.  The study was conducted by a group directed by Dr. Edward U. Condon, a scientist and public figure of the first rank, and its official report, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects was issued last January.

     I served as a consultant to the Colorado group along with David F. Moyer; we were both working for the Ford Company. There had been a great number of reports that included accounts of automobiles malfunctioning in some way in the presence of UFOs, and, when the project was initiated, Dr. Condon requested assistance from the automobile industry in evaluating these reports. With the assistance of Ford engineers and scientists, a painstaking analysis was conducted of a car that had figured in a UFO report. In the process, techniques were developed and described for analyzing automobiles for possible after-effects of radioactive and magnetic phenomena, neither of which was found in the car examined.

     The report begins with an introduction by Walter Sullivan, science editor of The New York Times, and a fairly complete picture can be obtained by reading it along with the report's conclusions and recommendations, and a summary, written by Condon. The body of the report is voluminous, with detailed analyses of fifty-nine case studies, buttressed by extensive discussions of the physical and perceptual phenomena involved. Special attention is given to radar anomalies, visual illusions, and some of the aspects of common objects likely to be mistaken for UFOs. There is historical background, and extensive documentation. The quality of the writing and the editing is outstanding.

THE report concludes that inasmuch as there is no positive evidence of extraordinary phenomena, it can safely be assumed that UFOs are not anything extraordinary, and that the subject does not warrant further scientific study. The logic of this particular approach is defended in the following passage, quoted from the report's summary:

     There are two shortcomings inherent in the quoted passage. First, those who hold that some of the UFO reports might possibly be extraordinary phenomena will be affronted by the implication that their view is comparable with that of holding diseases to be caused by devils. Second, of the fifty-nine case studies reported, a number could not be "plausibly explained in ordinary terms."

     One cannot demand that positive proof be shown that all UFO reports are ordinary phenomena, as such proof will obviously never be possible. Neither is it reasonable to demand positive proof that a phenomenon is extraordinary in order to conclude that it is worthy of additional study. The ordinary individual, looking for some guidance in forming his opinions, will become impatient with such extreme views, and he is likely to reject the advice, also given in the report's conclusions and recommendations, that he should believe what the scientists tell him about UFOs.

     I do not hold that UFOs are visitors from outer space. For one thing, I cannot believe that such visitors could be so numerous or present in so many different aspects. I do, however, hold that a visitor from outer space or other extraordinary phenomenon are of sufficient possibility to warrant continuing investigation of UFOs. Any discussion of interstellar space travel is predicated on our own far-distant prospects, and illustrates why we cannot accept uncritically what the scientists tell us about the possibility of visitors from outer space.

     It is generally agreed today that there are probably planets other than our own which may be populated by intelligent creatures, more or less like ourselves, but it is highly unlikely that they are anywhere in our own solar system, since our other planets are so inhospitable to life as we know it. Condon, in examining this possibility, points out that planets belonging to any star other than our own sun are so inconceivably far away that no living creature could make the trip by any means we now could foresee. He also points out that in order to suppose that any civilization comparable to ours is presently in existence elsewhere, it is necessary to assume that such a civilization has lived to a very great age, because time is so vast, and our own brief civilization has existed for only a millionth of the probable lifetime of Earth, which is already showing signs of destroying itself with nuclear energy before it gets really started.

     It can therefore be reasoned that if any other civilization such as ours does now exist in our galaxy, it must be many times older than ours, just as any one-day-old infant must recognize that most living people are many times older than he is. We can speculate on the present the capabilities of a technology that is, say, 50,000 years head of ours only in terms of what our own might be capable of 50,000 years from now. About all that can be said of such a possibility is that it would be largely  incomprehensible to us, and, as Arthur C. Clarke has said, it would appear to us to be magic, since it would violate the laws of physical science as we know them today. We are consequently in no position to assert what is or is not possible for some extraterrestrial technology vastly older than our own.

     Speculation is so firmly discouraged in science that scientists generally show no talent for it, or more probably they inhibited by fear of ridicule or disapproval by their colleagues. Consequently, when they are invited to prognosticate, they predict prodigious feats of technology, all of which are built on the foundation of today's physical sciences, implying that the future will bring no more of the kind of scientific discovery that has in the past changed our views of the physical world and the course of our technology.

     This attitude is expressed in an article by William Markowitz in Science, entitled, "The Physics and Metaphysics of Unidentified Flying Objects." Under the physics heading he demonstrates that interstellar travel is impossible by today's laws of physics. Under the heading of metaphysics he then purports to discuss the possibilities of considering that today's laws of physics do not hold. However, he fails to give serious attention to the subject. Instead, he contents himself with demolishing some of the fantasies of the writers of science fiction, and then impatiently proclaims that such exercise is "magic" and that he does not believe in it.

IT is much more difficult to be serious about projecting the capabilities of technologies on the order of 50,000 years ahead of ours today. It has been less than 140 years since Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, which might be called the first truly scientific discovery to result directly in new technology. It has been less than eighty years since we first began to support science in the supposition that it would result in technology, and since that time science and technology have grown and progressed almost exponentially. It is scarcely possible to extrapolate from such a short base over so long a span, as far as the laws of physics are concerned, beyond observing that our science is in its

     Condon complains that the science fiction writers set aside the laws of of physics in order to account for the stories they relate. This is exactly why the writers of fiction have so much better records at predicting the future than the scientists have. They have seized on a much better principle for the long term than the laws of physics, and that is the purposes of mankind. When one considers that one of man's most persistent objectives has been to travel farther and faster, one comes to believe that the writers of fiction have the correct assumption, and that the next 50,000 years will at least accomplish for long-distance travel what the past 140 years have done for long-distance communication.

     The probability of space visitors to our own planet must he put low, but not at zero. We are a single grain of sand on a large beach, and it could well be that the first evidence of our existence capable of attracting the attention of galactic outsiders would be our radio signals. These have been going out in any strength for less than fifty years, so they have probably not yet even reached the nearest intelligent beings. So, perhaps the best argument against the reality of visitors from outer space is that we are too young to have been noticed yet.