Dimitris Hatzopoulos (Greece): My estimate of the UFO situation 2009

Dear friends,

James Harder (1926-2006) was a scientist (Professor of Engineering at
the University of California, Berkeley) with a decades-long interest in
the UFO issue, consultant to UFO groups, who testified along with Drs
McDonald, Hynek, Menzel, Sagan etc on the UFO subject before the
Committee on Science and Astronautics of US Congress in the hearings of
July-1968. He wrote in 1973:

"Who among UFO investigators has not wished for a clear,
closeup, detailed photograph of a UFO? And what would it prove? Surely,
it would help settle the question, still on some agendas, of whether
UFOs actually exist … however, is it not time to go beyond that issue
to a host of scientific problems and questions that are raised, once
one has accepted the fact of UFO existence? It seems to me that we
should be well into a second
phase of UFO investigations in which the object is not so much to prove
the existence of UFOs as to try and understand more about them."
— APRO Bulletin Mar/Apr 1973

I don't wish to discount the significance of the work of the many
conscientious UFO researchers working on shoe-string budgets in their
spare time, however it seems that decades after Dr Harder's statement
quoted above, much of today's public UFO research is still stuck at
the level of collecting puzzling testimony or validating photos
(which with today's computerized image manipulation software have
become even less relevant as evidence than in the past). A noble
effort, which provides material for TV documentaries which hopefully
heighten public interest. But we don't see e.g. a project of
instrumental monitoring of alleged hotspots like "Marley Woods" USA by
teams of scientists, similar to the Hessdalen Norway project (or the
results don't get
published). And despite the frequent airing of UFO-related TV and radio
shows, the public's level of understanding is poor, as is evident in
most on-line discussion forums.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, that the only way to tackle the UFO
would be via a grass-roots effort to affect public policy.
To release all information, as John Podesta urged from the podium of
NPC and then to let Science as
an institution get involved. The idea proposed by Prof. Peter Sturrock
(Professor of Physics at
Stanford University, who like Harder has a decades-long interest in the
subject and who headed the 1997 scientific panel on UFOs funded by
billionaire L.Rockefeller) was to allow a very small percentage of
public funding of scientific research into areas which the public is
showing a strong interest in, like UFOs. This is relevant of course
only if one believes that the UFO subject has somehow been ignored due
to incompetence (as the tragic Prof McDonald believed) and not
suppressed by a conspiracy, i..e. that  TPTB haven't been researching
UFOs behind the
scenes for the past 60+ years, via black projects and to suit their
agenda. Regardless, the deep
economic crisis is a good excuse for putting UFOs off the policymakers'
table, at least for the moment.

So, while postponing hopes for an immediate shift in public policy, I
asked myself what can I, as a person interested in the UFO problem,
contribute in the near future? My approach of the UFO phenomenon has
been
from the perspective of physical sciences, as a technology of unknown
origin. But to make the UFO subject more
acceptable to people with technical training, some degree of
technological sense has to be made of UFOs, even to make "seeing
believing" or one gets the dreaded "defy the laws of physics"
argument. As NASA aeronautical engineer Paul Hill and author of
"Unconventional Flying Objects" (one of the better books on the UFO
subject) wrote "if much of the UFO pattern can be explained in terms of
today's scientific principles … it will make UFOs more acceptable."

I'm going to echo the thoughts of british UFO researcher Isaac Koi
(pseudonym): During the last few years, I've often seen people voice
their justifiable concern about the amount of time and effort which
is completely wasted within the field of UFO research. So many
people (incl consultants of popular TV shows) seem to be content to
start from scratch, ignoring or simply unaware of the vast amount which
has already been written. The rate of progress within Ufology seems
slow. This will never change unless the amount of "reinvention of the
wheel" within Ufology is reduced.

There is also a quality gap between material about UFOs available
off-line (in books and newsletters) and the material available on-line
(hopefully the gap will narrow by efforts like MUFON's Pandora project
and TBV).
Finding useful and interesting material about UFOs on the Internet
involves a considerable amount of sorting the wheat from the chaff,
which is hard unless one already has a good understanding of the
subject (catch-22). In addition, some of the better UFO books are
hard to obtain (e.g. for most of last year, Amazon.com had no copies of
Paul Hill's for sale)

So, what can be done?

Rather than simply moan about it, a couple of years ago I decided to
draw together some references to UFO material, seeking answers in
previous work of people with training physical sciences. The web-pages

1. Quick
   Technical Overview: What we think we know about UFOs
2. Executive
   Summary and essential reading on UFOs
3. Resources
   about possible UFO physics / propulsion / technology

contain some of the results of my own attempt to do this
sorting over the past couple of years. I hope they will be helpful to
you too and I welcome any feedback.

Best regards,
Dimitris Hatzopoulos
Thessaloniki, Greece