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Fig. 1. UFO Sightings and the Oppositions of Mars.The dotted line represents "reliable" sightings in the files of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, 3190 E. Kleindale Road, Tucson, Arizona. They were supplied by C. E. Lorenzen. The solid line represents sightings assembled from published reports by M. G. Quincy and presented by Jacques and Janine Vallée (1962). Quincy showed no records for 1964, and these were obtained from Michel (1958). Obviously there is no correlation between UFO sightings and the distance to Mars in 1947 and 1957, but the Vallées calculated correlation coefficients for the other years and found that the observed correlation would be expected to occur due to chance alone less than one time in a thousand trials (they transposed all sightings two months to account for the lag apparent in 1952, 1954, and 1956). It is interesting to note that the two sighting curves agree so closely, although they obviously include many different data. A third curve, prepared by E. Buelta in Barcelona, Spain, also agrees closely. |