(UFOs seen over Nuremberg on April 14th, 1561)
The term UFO is an acronym for "unidentified flying object." Throughout human history there have been sightings of things in the sky that could not be identified. Most are astronomical, but some are atmospheric. The qualifier "flying" implies that UFOs are objects unknown to their observers that travel through the air. Stretching the term UFO, we can apply it to "near Earth objects" (NEOs) in orbit around our planet, or passing near the Earth.
An example of the first type would be sunlight reflected from the wings of a flock of birds. An example of the second type would be sunlight reflected from the aluminum skin of a man-made satellite. Both have been classed as UFOs on numerous occasions by puzzled observers on the ground.
It is popularly assumed that UFOs and alien spacecraft are synonymous, but as can be seen from the analysis of the term, this is not necessarily the case. Indeed, the vast majority of sightings of flying objects are natural and easily explainable. Anything seen in the sky that cannot be identified may be legitimately classed as a UFO until its nature is revealed.
Records of UFO sightings consist of eye-witness or hearsay evidence transmitted in the form of drawings or verbal descriptions, and mechanical visual records such as still photographs, movie film, and video images.
When considering a description of a UFO sighting, we must first consider whether the witness is being truthful, second whether the witness has correctly interpreted the evidence of his or her senses, and third whether the witness actually saw anything or merely hallucinated.
There is no way to be certain that a person is not lying. The value of the polygraph is vastly overrated. Indeed, the reverential awe accorded the lie detector machine by some branches of government has an element of primitive superstition. Human beings lie for numerous reasons, and sometimes for no reason that they themselves can specify. Once a lie has been repeated for a long enough time, it may become real to its inventor.
Even when we can be fairly confident that the witness is trying to be completely truthful, there is an ever-present possibility of self-deception. When there is insufficient information to explain an event, the human mind has the habit of filling in the missing details -- the unexplained is frightening, the known reassuring. This form of creative interpolation by the unconscious mind has little or no relation to the actual physical object or phenomenon observed. Imagination can build a complete and detailed impression from the most transitory and vague of visual impressions.
At moments of intense stress, or under the influence of sickness, or drugs, or alcohol, or at the boundary of sleep, or in conditions of extreme fatigue, a person may see something that has no external physical cause. These visions can be completely clear and real to the witness. It is even possible for two or more persons in the same place to see the same vision of a nonexistent object or event. Instances of this mass hysteria of crowds have been recorded over a term of many centuries.
Physical evidence in the form of mechanical images would seem to offer the possibility of a certain identification. Unfortunately, when photos and films of UFOs are examined, they tend to fall into two categories: either they are so poor in quality as to be unidentifiable, or they are obvious frauds.
Most legitimate UFO photos consist of nothing more than a fuzzy dot or blob of light in the sky. In film records, this fuzzy blob is usually moving, or has the false appearance of motion due to movements applied to the camera during filming. Sometimes it can be identified conjecturally as a natural object, such as light reflected from a cloud, or the orb of the moon reflected in a body of water or from a refraction layer in the atmosphere, or as the planet Venus (an ever-popular UFO). These things give a convincing illusion of motion when filmed from a moving car or plane. When the fuzzy blob cannot be identified, it survives as a visual record of a UFO, in the literal sense of the term.
UFO "fuzzies" may also be generated by light artifacts or defects within the mechanism of the still or movie camera. Possible causes are incorrect focus, reflections from glass elements in the camera's compound lens, light infiltration into the body of the camera, dirt on the lens, defects or contaminants on the film itself, and reflections from the camera flash.
There are photographs of UFOs that clearly show physical objects of an unknown kind. These objects are usually saucer or hubcap shaped. Sometimes rivets, windows, doors, colored lights, and other details can be distinguished. In my own experience, I have yet to view one of these clear, detailed photos that was not an obvious fake. They are often based on miniature models suspended in the air on fine threads or wires. One enterprising photographer got his daughter to throw car wheel-disks into the air like Frisbees while he snapped pictures of them. Another hung models from the branches of trees and captured them on film. Since these are actual photographs of physical objects in natural light, it can often be difficult to prove that they are fakes, but they usually have a hokey, naive quality that gives them away.
By far the most convincing photographic evidence falls into the first category, and consists of "fuzzies." But in these cases, what do we actually have, other than a fuzzy blob of light or shadow? And what does such a blob prove? By its very nature, it is impossible to conclusively identify. It remains forever an unidentified flying object. Attempts to demonstrate that these fuzzy blobs or dots of light represent alien spacecraft are doomed to failure before they begin.
So let's recap. UFO means unidentified flying object, and there have indeed been many of these reported throughout human history. In recent times, the term has incorrectly been used as a synonym for alien spacecraft.
Soft evidence for the existence of UFOs consists of eye-witness accounts or hearsay versions of those accounts. The value of these accounts depends completely on the credibility of the witness. But human beings often lie, and often make mistakes, and often see things that are not really there. They tend to be influenced by what others believe, and by what others want them to believe. So the worth of even the best eye-witness account must always be suspect, and this is doubly true when the account concerns something extremely uncommon or unnatural.
Hard evidence consisting of photos and film tends to be either so blurry that it is impossible for anyone to identify the object photographed, or in many cases even to state with certainty that a physical object was present in the sky, since light artifacts and other image defects are commonly generated by unprofessional photographers; or the images are very sharp and clear, but obviously bogus. A good indicator of the latter is when a single individual produces not one, but dozens or even hundreds of clear UFO photographs. This is almost a sure sign that he or she is manufacturing them.
By now it will be evident that I am somewhat skeptical about UFOs being evidence for visitations of alien life forms to our planet. To me, the fact that virtually all serious UFO photos consist of fuzzy dots, and nothing more than fuzzy dots, it very telling. It means that when a photo is clearer, it can eventually be identified as something common, such as a bird or an airplane. Only the extremely poor quality photos resist such identification. The poorer the quality of the UFO photo, the more likely it is to defy analysis, and to become a candidate for an alien spaceship among UFO fanatics, who, like Fox Mulder on the TV show The X-Files, "want to believe."
I do not think, as many scientists do, that the vast distances between star systems makes interstellar travel impossible. We are not in a position to know what is possible or impossible for an advanced, extraterrestrial race, any more than an Australian aborigine of the 18th century could have judged what was possible for Europeans landing on his shores.
I do think that if an alien species traveled across the gulf of space to Earth, it would not be intent on concealing itself, and very likely would not be able to conceal itself even if it wished to do so. The very aura of uncertainty surrounding UFO accounts renders them less plausible, in my view. First contact with an alien race is apt to be clear, sustained, and impossible to mistake for anything else.
It seems to me that UFO sightings represent a psychological phenomenon of considerable interest for what it reveals about the workings of the human mind. It is a phenomenon that has been occurring for many centuries, probably for many millennia. It appears to be a natural response of the mind to the uncanny and unidentifiable.
To cite one historical example, the illustration at the top of this page shows UFOs sighted surrounding the rising sun on the morning of April 14th, 1561, at the town of Nuremberg in Germany. The objects were described as "red, blue and black bowls, or crosses the colour of blood" (Gazette of Nuremberg). By bowls, disk shapes may have been intended, even though the artist who drew the illustration above interpreted this to mean crescents. Disks are a very common sighting in the sky.
Something has triggered UFO sightings, and all of the events surrounding them, over the past five decades or so. I doubt very much that the trigger has anything to do with visiting space aliens. It is far more likely, in my opinion, that the cause lies in inner space, in the vast, uncharted landscape of the mind. These triggers should not be dismissed as unreal merely because they are nonphysical. It may be that the triggers of UFO sightings, close encounters, abductions, and similar UFO occurrences are just as significant in the course of human evolution and human history as they would be if they actually were generated by space aliens. It is a fallacy of our modern culture to negate the value of anything lacking a physical body.
Or course it is impossible for me to state categorically that not a single UFO sighting or photograph represents evidence of a physical alien visitation. But I find the arguments in favor of this explanation quite unconvincing. My own belief is that the modern eye-witness accounts of alien visitors are merely a resurgence of similar sightings of angels, demons, gods, spirits and ghosts that have occurred throughout human history in every culture around the world.
This similarity begs a number of important questions. Is there a race or hierarchy of noncorporeal intelligent beings seeking communication and interaction with the human race through the medium of the human unconscious mind? Have they been trying to establish this link for thousands of years? If so, what is their nature? And why would they wish to communicate with humanity? What would they gain by such communication? Would such intercourse with spiritual intelligences be useful for humanity, or harmful? Do these spiritual beings possess physical bodies in some other dimension of reality? Or are they communicating with us through our unconscious minds across great physical distances, perhaps interstellar distances?
It is possible that historical accounts of angels and other spiritual beings represent transmissions of data from aliens in distant star systems to human awareness through the medium of the human unconscious. If so, then UFO sightings and encounters may indeed be signs of interactions between humanity and extraterrestrials, though not in the way that is usually assumed by students of UFO phenomena.
I decided not to deal in this article with so-called close encounters of the second and third kind -- alien artifacts and physical contact with aliens. The physical evidence for extraterrestrial contact is in my view negligible and may safely be discounted -- I have yet to see a convincing alien artifact, or hear an alien abduction story that seems plausible as a physical event. This is not to say that all those who claim to have been abducted by aliens are lying. Many are telling the truth as they know it, but they have misinterpreted their experiences as physical episodes, rather than mental episodes.