<\/p>\n
Dear friends,<\/p>\n
\nJames Harder (1926-2006) was a scientist (Professor of Engineering at
\nthe University of California, Berkeley) with a decades-long interest in
\nthe UFO issue, consultant to UFO groups, who testified along with Drs
\nMcDonald, Hynek, Menzel, Sagan etc on the UFO subject before the
\nCommittee on Science and Astronautics of US Congress in the hearings of
\nJuly-1968. He wrote in 1973:<\/p>\n
\n"Who among UFO investigators has not wished for a clear,
\ncloseup, detailed photograph of a UFO? And what would it prove? Surely,
\nit would help settle the question, still on some agendas, of whether
\nUFOs actually exist … however, is it not time to go beyond that issue
\nto a host of scientific problems and questions that are raised, once
\none has accepted the fact of UFO existence? It seems to me that we
\nshould be well into a second
\nphase of UFO investigations in which the object is not so much to prove
\nthe existence of UFOs as to try and understand more about them<\/strong>."<\/em>
\n— APRO Bulletin Mar\/Apr 1973<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\nI don't wish to discount the significance of the work of the many
\nconscientious UFO researchers working on shoe-string budgets in their
\nspare time, however it seems that decades after Dr Harder's statement
\nquoted above, much of today's public UFO research is still stuck at
\nthe level of collecting puzzling testimony<\/strong> or validating photos
\n(which with today's computerized image manipulation software have
\nbecome even less relevant as evidence than in the past). A noble
\neffort, which provides material for TV documentaries which hopefully
\nheighten public interest. But we don't see e.g. a project of
\ninstrumental monitoring of alleged hotspots like "Marley Woods" USA by
\nteams of scientists, similar to the Hessdalen Norway project (or the
\nresults don't get
\npublished). And despite the frequent airing of UFO-related TV and radio
\nshows, the public's level of understanding is poor, as is evident in
\nmost on-line discussion forums.<\/p>\n\nForgive me for stating the obvious, that the only way to tackle the UFO
\nwould be via a grass-roots effort to affect public policy<\/strong>.
\nTo release all information, as John Podesta urged from the podium of
\nNPC and then to let Science as
\nan institution get involved. The idea proposed by Prof. Peter Sturrock
\n(Professor of Physics at
\nStanford University, who like Harder has a decades-long interest in the
\nsubject and who headed the 1997 scientific panel on UFOs funded by
\nbillionaire L.Rockefeller) was to allow a very small percentage of
\npublic funding of scientific research into areas which the public is
\nshowing a strong interest in, like UFOs. This is relevant of course
\nonly if one believes that the UFO subject has somehow been ignored due
\nto incompetence (as the tragic Prof McDonald believed) and not
\nsuppressed by a conspiracy, i..e. that TPTB haven't been researching
\nUFOs behind the
\nscenes for the past 60+ years, via black projects and to suit their
\nagenda. Regardless, the deep
\neconomic crisis is a good excuse for putting UFOs off the policymakers'
\ntable, at least for the moment.<\/p>\n\nSo, while postponing hopes for an immediate shift in public policy, I
\nasked myself what can I, as a person interested in the UFO problem,
\ncontribute in the near future? My approach of the UFO phenomenon has
\nbeen
\nfrom the perspective of physical sciences, as a technology of unknown
\norigin. But to make the UFO subject more
\nacceptable to people with technical training, some degree of
\ntechnological sense has to be made of UFOs, even to make "seeing
\nbelieving"<\/strong> or one gets the dreaded "defy the laws of physics"
\nargument. As NASA aeronautical engineer Paul Hill and author of
\n"Unconventional Flying Objects" (one of the better books on the UFO
\nsubject) wrote "if much of the UFO pattern can be explained in terms of
\ntoday's scientific principles … it will make UFOs more acceptable."<\/p>\n\nI'm going to echo the thoughts of british UFO researcher Isaac Koi
\n(pseudonym): During the last few years, I've often seen people voice
\ntheir justifiable concern about the amount of time and effort which
\nis completely wasted within the field of UFO research<\/strong>. So many
\npeople (incl consultants of popular TV shows) seem to be content to
\nstart from scratch, ignoring or simply unaware of the vast amount which
\nhas already been written<\/strong>. The rate of progress within Ufology seems
\nslow. This will never change unless the amount of "reinvention of the
\nwheel" within Ufology is reduced.<\/p>\n\nThere is also a quality gap between material about UFOs available
\noff-line (in books and newsletters) and the material available on-line
\n(hopefully the gap will narrow by efforts like MUFON's Pandora project
\nand TBV).
\nFinding useful and interesting material about UFOs on the Internet
\ninvolves a considerable amount of sorting the wheat from the chaff,
\nwhich is hard unless one already has a good understanding of the
\nsubject (catch-22). In addition, some of the better UFO books are
\nhard to obtain (e.g. for most of last year, Amazon.com had no copies of
\nPaul Hill's for sale)<\/p>\n\nSo, what can be done?<\/p>\n
\nRather than simply moan about it, a couple of years ago I decided to
\ndraw together some references to UFO material, seeking answers in
\nprevious work of people with training physical sciences. The web-pages
\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n
- Quick
\nTechnical Overview: What we think we know about UFOs<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n- Executive
\nSummary and essential reading on UFOs<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n- Resources
\nabout possible UFO physics \/ propulsion \/ technology<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\ncontain some of the results of my own attempt to do this
\nsorting over the past couple of years. I hope they will be helpful to
\nyou too and I welcome any feedback.<\/p>\n\nBest regards,
\nDimitris Hatzopoulos
\nThessaloniki, Greece<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}